Chapter LXXXIX: Regiments, Rifles and Truck-all Else.
The Chetwode inspired Army re-organisation was logical, direct and solved several lingering problems, it was naturally therefore fiercely resisted by many existing and former Army personnel. The opposition caused consternation in the War Office (and Cabinet) with serious consideration was given to watering down the reforms, perhaps to the point of de-facto abandoning them entirely as too unpopular. Fortunately lessons had been learnt from earlier Army re-organisations and it was recognised that compromise in such matters did not damp down opposition but merely encouraged it. As (almost) all parties involved agreed that reform was needed the government put their weight behind implementation of the full report, reasoning it was better to face the opposition for tangible results instead of a potential 'worst of all worlds' results of a hard fight for little gain, as had happened with the mechanisation of the cavalry and other such efforts.
For the infantry the bulk of the reforms boiled down to grouping the existing regiments together into regional brigades with most, but not all, the administrative functions of the existing regimental HQs transferred to the new central depot. To give an example the The Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge's Own), the successors to the renowned 'Die Hards' of the 57th Foot, was, naturally enough, the regiment for Middlesex and recruited in that county. These recruits were trained at the regiment's depot, the Inglis Barracks in Mill Hill, and allocated within the regiment on the basis of the needs of the battalions. Under the Chetwode reforms the Middlesex Regiment became part of the Home Counties Brigade based out of Canterbury as, using an unusual definition of 'Home Counties', the brigade was also responsible for the regiments of Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Recruitment was directed centrally as was the training and assignment of all new recruits, enabling manpower, especially the valuable specialist manpower, to be distributed across the entire brigade as needed.
It was of course not quite that simple, nothing British is ever that straightforward, the light infantry and the fusilier regiments were combined into their own brigades on the basis of role not region, leading to their recruitment area being scattered across the country. The rifle regiments continued to be almost wilfully different, the two regiments continued to recruit from across the entire country but were still combined into a single brigade, the Green Jackets Brigade, leading to the unusual looking situation of a 'corps, the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, and a brigade, the Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own), both being subservient to a mere brigade. Finally the Scottish, Welsh and Irish regiments were organised purely regionally, hence their fusilier and light infantry regiments were assigned to the relevant regional formations; the Welsh, Lowland, Highland and North Irish Brigades respectively. There was, naturally, an exception, the eccentric Highland Light Infantry which refused to wear a 'highland' kilt preferring 'lowland' trews, was based in and recruited from Lowland Scotland (Glasgow) but nevertheless somehow ended up in the Highland Brigade.
One of the less attention grabbing reforms enacted as part of the re-organisation was the insertion of the administrative brigades into ambitious officers career paths. It became 'expected' that candidates would have experience of running one of the brigades as preparation for more senior roles requiring the same co-ordination skills. Of course in the finest traditions of the Army none of this was written down, the flexibility to do pretty much what they liked was too highly prized by the Imperial General Staff, but it nevertheless became an established precedent, being all the more potent for not being formalised. Along with an expansion of the intake at the Imperial Defence College and the complete restructuring of Camberley Staff College this measure would provide one of the foundations for professionalism of the next generation of middle and senior officers.
Less public but more significant was the power the administrative brigades would have over training, promotions and expansion. More centralised control of training was resisted by colonels used to almost total control over their regiments but would prove to be invaluable for raising standards and encouraging professionalism in junior and middle officers. While small unit tactics, Company level and below, stayed with the regiment (no-one thought central control of, for instance, platoon small arms drill would be anything other than a disaster) any exercise above that had to be cleared by the brigade. The benefit of this was co-ordination, the brigade would ensure that several battalions from different regiments would work together with as many units from other branches (armour, artillery, etc) as possible, providing invaluable combined-arms experience. Contrary to popular belief the reforms was not intended to remove regimental rivalries but to use them; losing an exercise against a sister battalion was tolerable, but losing to a 'rival' unit would lead to months of mess room ribbing for the unfortunate commanding officers. Aside from this informal, but no less powerful, motivation regional recruiting allowed more tangible carrots to be offered to ambitious officers, instead of army expansion being on the basis of which unit could recruit enough men it could now be used as a reward for 'professional' regiments. For future army expansions the IGS, through the administrative brigades, ensured that regiments that performed well in exercises and who's officers excelled at staff college received the extra battalions. Quite aside from the prestige this was a significant carrot; the officers and NCOs for a new battalion were typically drawn at least in part from the regiment's existing battalions. As it was well known in the Army that the second fastest route to promotion was for your regiment to recruit a new battalion (the fastest being very bloody combat 'creating' a vacancy above you) even officers dismissive of the value of exercises began taking them very seriously indeed.
While the Army would never become 'bookish', indeed it retains an affectation of rugged anti-intellectualism to this day, studying manuals and discussing tactics did lose the stigma the 'amateur army' attached to them. Through the carrot of promotion and preference and the stick of mockery and bruised egos professionalism began to spread through the officer corps, though it would take many years and the retirement of the stubborn hard core before the process could be called complete. Over the long term it was correctly believed the expansion of Army education (through enlarging Sandhurst, Camberley and the Imperial Defence College) would ensure the next generation never knew any attitude other than professionalism.
Before leaving the infantry there is one last change to note, one that links with the tanks to come; the re-emergence of specialisation. The process had began years earlier with the Rifle regiments being designated as the sole source for the new motor-rifle battalions, the building blocks for the Support or 'Pivot' Groups that were intended to support armoured units. For the remainder of the regiments a less elaborate mechanisation was intended; assigned fleets of trucks from the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) they were to become lorried infantry. Despite the RASCs unique status as a combatant rear echelon corps the order of battle for a lorried infantry battalion was essentially unchanged from a foot unit, the lorries were only intended for strategic transport (i.e. between battles) and not for tactical deployment. The Chetwode review recommended that as additional motor-rifle units would be needed to support the expansion of the armoured forces (more on which in the next chapter) it would be wise to spread the burden of supplying these additional battalions beyond the Green Jackets Brigade. The meat lay in one of the reviews rare forays into tactical details, given the mission of the motor-rifle units standard tactics and weapons, including the latest Lee-Enfield Rifle No.1 MkVI, were dismissed as quite inappropriate and dedicated tactics and new weapons were explicitly recommended.
Trucks such as the Morris 30cwt would form the backbone of the lorried infantry, though despite the best efforts of the logistic units there was no standard truck and a variety of manufacturers were approached to contribute subtly different models. Eventually logistical concerns would triumph over ideology and a standard pattern was decreed, depriving the Army of the occasionally nebulous benefits of competition and innovation in favour of the far more concrete advantage of standardisation and mass production.
Whether Chetwode intended this recommendation as a Trojan horse with which to completely replace the standard service rifle or if he genuinely just intended that only certain units receive the new weapon is unclear. While the later was a not unreasonable possibility, the armoured units had a distinct supply train from the infantry so it would not have been too logistically difficult to maintain different rifles for different units, the evidence of his analysis of both the Great War and the Abyssinian War indicated the standard .303" cartridge was unnecessarily powerful and long ranged in almost all engagements. While too much power was not itself a problem a smaller, lighter cartridge would be a logistical boon and, more importantly, would also allow individual automatic and semi-automatic weapons that were just not practical with a heavy recoil cartridge such as the .303". It is therefore tempting to believe that total replacement was always the aim and only the Treasury's opposition (based on their deep seated desire to avoid obsoleting the tens of millions of rounds of 0.303" ammunition and associated weapons that lay in warehouses across the Empire) forced Chetwode into the subterfuge.
Regardless of the reasoning it was accepted by the IGS that a new cartridge and weapon would be required for certain units and a requirement was issued for a new semi-automatic weapon based on the most promising cartridge from the 1920s trials, a rimless variant of the .256" British. With the Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield working on both the revised Lee-Enfields and the new Bren light machine gun, the contract went to the Birmingham Small Arms Company who only had the Besa tank machine gun on their books. As a backup a small contract went to the little known Sterling Armaments Company to develop their proposal for a light fully automatic weapon, an option dismissed by many officers as either impractical or downright undesirable, it nevertheless went ahead as the IGS' weapons sub-committee revelled in their freedom to finally escape the .303" monoculture. When the time came to decided which brigade should provide the battalions for these new units there was only one option, one set of regiments already marked out due to their predecessors unusual firearms; the men of the Fusilier Brigade would be the first to receive the new rifles and, when the full potential of them became apparent, become the envy of the rest of the infantry.
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Notes;
To the men of tanks I say this, I always promised tanks and trucks. And surely a tank is close enough for now?
Game effects, well the big ones you can see. Slight org and morale uplift, more to come when doctrines are developed later, that's also the point I'll add the combat event changes. Other change you can see is the new truck brigade I modded in. Add that to an infantry unit and you get almost, but not quite, a motorised infantry unit but a little cheaper.
Lorried infantry was how the army ran most infantry units, the trucks just carried you to the battle but then you fought on foot. The exception was the Motor Rifle units but even then they weren't really supposed to fight from the trucks along side the tanks, more support the tanks when they stopped or bogged down. I think it's this that left the British Army with a post-war doctrine that you never fought from an APC but instead dismounted as fast as possible.
The defence colleges got a big re-org in 1938 which I've added to as Chetwode was very keen on education for officers, seemed natural he'd apply the lessons from India to the rest of the Empire. On which note all these courses are of course Empire wide with candidates from India and all the Dominions attending. That in fact was part of the OTL problem, spaces were limited and many of them were taken up by Empire students squeezing out British Army candidates.
A new infantry weapon was on the cards for much of the 1930s but the cost of replacing all the old rounds and weapons held it back. The 1920s tests were real as is the cartridge, however the Treasury baulked at the idea so the Army laboured on with the .303". Worse, as they were stuck with it, new weapons like the Bren were expensively re-chambered for it and so it became deeper and deeper entrenched. The cunning plan therefore is to argue that men jumping out of the back of trucks need short range, rapid firepower (hardly arguable) and that the standard rifle doesn't do that. From their the new weapon can sneak across to other units (Paras, Marines, special forces, anyone who needs firepower really) and eventually the rest of the Army.