Abstract
In 1922, just as the Irish Free State came into existence, the ‘Geddes axe’ subjected the British armed forces to drastic cuts in manpower and expenditure. After years of industrial-scale warfare the adjustment of British military organisation to postwar conditions would be a difficult one. During the First World War the British officer class had undergone an enormous expansion. Owing to high officer casualty rates and the need to rapidly build up the ‘New Armies’, the War Office was forced to abandon the recruitment of officers exclusively from the upper classes. In effect, the social and educational requirements for entry into Sandhurst and Woolwich were changed and consequently, by 1917, the parental backgrounds of entrants showed a marked decrease in gentlemen and military professionals, and a marked increase in businessmen, managers and civilian professionals, compared with pre-war intakes.1 Moreover, by war’s end numerous battlefield commissions had been awarded to non-commissioned officers (NCOs) in recognition of their hard-earned experience and leadership qualities. This radical change in the social profile of British officers was not continued into the interwar period.
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Notes
Keith Simpson, ‘The officers’ in A Nation in Arms: A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War, ed. Ian F.W. Beckett and Keith Simpson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 70.
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O’Connor, S. (2014). Who Became an Officer?. In: Irish Officers in the British Forces, 1922–45. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137350862_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137350862_2
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