From enlistment to training to the trenches.

How were British soldiers of the Great War brought into the army, made ready for battle,

and then sent off to fight along that old front line.

While leading a battlefield tour recently, I was asked a question about how long it took

from the enlistment of a soldier through his training

to be posted overseas to go into the front line,

to go into the trenches.

So I thought it would be a good idea to do a podcast episode about that, where we'll look

at the enlistment of regular soldiers before the war, men of the territorial force, and from the

outbreak of the war in 1914, the enlistment of men into Kitchener's army, the new army

that was formed then to expand the size of the British army as it was clear that the war was

going to progress on beyond that much lauded end of the war in Christmas of 1914.

And we'll follow those soldiers from their enlistment through to training, through to the

assembly of these men from the different parts of the army, the regulars, the territorials, the

volunteers, where they were camped, where they were billeted, where they were trained, and then

the process of sending them overseas to be in the front line.

And it's a subject that whenever I think about it, whenever I discuss it with groups

when I'm out on the ground on the battlefields of the old front line,

I'm mindful of the veterans that I interviewed back in the 80s and 90s

and their recollections of their routes from civilian to soldier

to frontline veteran. And we'll no doubt dip in and out of some of their reminiscences of this as well.

And so if we begin with the army as it was on the eve of the Great War, on the outbreak perhaps of the Great War on

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