No Labour, No Battle

Warfare has always been manpower intensive. Apart from the large number of combatant troops, many more personnel are required to keep the military force operating. These personnel are involved in the manufacture of materials, movement of supplies such as ammunition and food, building and maintenance of camps, mending and cleaning equipment, manning headquarters and training establishments, building railways, recovery of the dead and wounded , and many other tasks. From 1917 British soldiers who were unfit or too old for front line service were to serve unarmed and within the range of German guns for weeks or even months at a time undertaking these tasks. The vital, yet largely unreported role played by these men was crucial to achieving victory in 1918. Labour units were seen as a poor relative of the Army, made up of the old, unfit and foreigners. The majority of the men were non-combatant. At the time, and since, they have not been given the recognition they deserved. Their work may not have been glamorous but can be summed up in four words - No Labour, No Battle.

For this book John Starling and Ivor Lee have brought together extensive research from both primary and secondary sources. They trace how military labour developed from an ad hoc loose arrangement in 1914 to a Corps in November 1918 some 400,000 strong, supported by dominion and foreign labour of more than a million men. Conscientious objectors were also used to supplement labour numbers. Detailing the work of the Corps as far afield as Russia, East Africa and Mesopotamia, the many types of work they were required to do, and the role of prisoners of war, No Labour, No Battle is a unique record of the part played by Labour in the First World War and in its immediate aftermath. Following the war, the grim and solemn work of clearing battlefields and constructing cemeteries fell of course to the newly formed Labour Corps. This book therefore continues the story up until disbandment of the Corps.