Conscripts: Lost Legions of the Great War

Contemporary Review, Dec, 1999

Conscripts: Lost Legions of the Great War. Ilana R. Bet-El. Sutton Publishing. [pounds]19.99/US$35.95. 239 pages. ISBN 07509-2108-0. In 1916 Britain, for the first time, used the law to force men to fight for King and Country through conscription. There has been much debate recently over the success of this policy and some argue that conscription produced no larger number than 1914-1916 style recruitment had done.

While much has been written about Kitchener's 'volunteer army' less has appeared regarding the army of conscripts. In this book Ilana Bet-El examines the history of these men. In Part One she traces how they were enlisted, trained and sent to the battle fronts. In Part Two she uses the men's own recollections to describe the 'actualities of war' and how they survived. In the third part she discusses the discipline and daily schedules these men found and how they saw themselves as soldiers of the King. Rather surprisingly she did not make use of the Rev Andrew Clark's mammoth diary of the Great War as seen from the perspective of civilian life. It is also rather odd that the index is only one page long. Still, the book does attempt to right a balance and to restore historic dignity to an almost forgotten race of men, the conscripts. (J.M.)