Military Labour During The First

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Introduction

For over 90 years the British use of military labour during the First World War has rarely rated more than a brief mention in Official and Regimental Histories or contemporary and modern accounts of the war.

Prior to 1914 the main source of labour to support soldiers engaged in a campaign was locally recruited civilians. In August 1914 the British Army planned to continue in this manner. However on the Western Front civilian labour became difficult to find as most able-bodied French and Belgian men were called up for military service. Initially the British created both Army Service Corps and Royal Engineer Labour units to provide unskilled labour to support the front line troops. It soon became evident that far more labour would be needed not only on the Western Front but also in Gallipoli and Salonika, Egypt and Palestine, Mesopotamia and East Africa. By November 1918 some 1,000,000 British and Dominion soldiers and around 2,000,000 civilian labourers had been used to support the Army.

The neglect of this important aspect of military history has been rectified with the publication of

“No Labour, No Battle”
by The History Press
(ISBN 9780752449753)
in September 2009.

This book, the culmination of over fifteen years research, by Ivor Lee and John Starling, of contemporary records is intended to give the reader a clear picture of what was a complex and ever evolving military labour organisation.

This website is not a digital version of No Labour, No Battle” but complements it making use, wherever possible, of new material.

Military labour units were the poor relations of the Army. In November 1918 there were 325 Labour Corps Companies in Britain (almost 173,000 men), supporting the Army and in Agricultural Companies. None of the companies kept War Diaries and there are almost no other references to them in other Army records.

References to Labour Corps companies serving overseas is often superficial in War Diaries. Although the Labour Corps kept its own records these were destroyed by German bombing in 1940.

Native recruited labour was, at the time, often treated little better than slaves with many forced to work for the British. Records were often not kept about native labour. There is, for example, no record of how many Egyptians served in the Egyptian Labour Corps.

With so few Army records still existing I am always interested in any information that helps build an even better picture of military Labour units during the First World War

Ivor Lee