The work and role of military bands has been largely overlooked by scholars writing the histories of the Great War.Footnote 1 The presence of a band is so much a part of military pageantry, in the present as in the past, that it is often taken for granted. Even army-sanctioned histories of Kneller Hall and the Corps of Army Music perpetuate a narrative that army bands were disbanded at the start of the war and therefore did not have a role during the conflict as bands.Footnote 2 This tale is not supported by the evidence. The contributions of military music and musicians to the war effort received significant press comment at the time. Bands were ubiquitous in parades at home and frequently deployed to the front, working as bands as well as fulfilling the more widely-known operational role of musicians as stretcher bearers.Footnote 3 The numbers of musicians involved were impressive. In May 1916, for example, it was possible to gather together the massed bands of the Household Brigade – boasting 500 army musicians on the platform – for a concert at the Albert Hall in support of the Brigade’s Prisoners of War Fund.Footnote 4
This omission of military bands from much of the existing work on the First World War is stark. Research specifically focusing on music and the war tends only to refer to military music in passing, if at all. Grant and Hanna’s Music and Remembrance: Britain and the First World War, surveying music composed during the war and the subsequent uses of music within acts of remembrance, does not mention military bands and their repertoire.Footnote 5 The only appearance of military musicians in the entire chapter is one sentence briefly mentioning the use of the Last Post at the cenotaph.Footnote 6 Glenn Watkins’s book Proof through the Night: Music and the Great War grants military bands slightly more presence, in particular in the chapter titled ‘The Symphony of the Front’, but their place and role remains lightly sketched.Footnote 7 This is part of a more general neglect of the history of military music – as Martin Rempe puts it, ‘Musicology only rarely engages with this historically influential branch of music, while military historians apparently conceive of it as a soft topic, unworthy of study’Footnote 8 – but given the sheer quantity of scholarly literature about myriad aspects of the first world war, the lack of regard for military music and musicians within this particular conflict stands out.
This article aims to capture some of the key responsibilities of military bands in and from the Manchester region, as reported in the press. It focuses on Manchester’s home-grown musicians and local bands, the ways they were drawn into the war effort and ultimately into conflict overseas. In doing so, it encounters important and often problematic questions about the perceived power of music in wartime, the purposes to which military bands were put, the actual lived experiences of musicians within such bands, the balance of propaganda and accurate reporting required of the press, and the evident tensions arising with regard to how musical interventions were described in print.
Propaganda and the Press
The research for this article draws on press accounts, in particular from the pages of the Manchester Guardian, which immediately raises issues of censorship, propaganda and press control, as well as the specific agendas and perspectives of individual writers and newspapers. The Manchester Guardian, supported largely by a northern, middle-class liberal readership, had maintained a vigorously anti-war stance right up until the declaration of war, but once the war arrived, as the editor C.P. Scott wrote in his editorial of 7 August 1914: ‘The war ought not to have taken place, but once in it the whole future of our nation is at stake, and we have no choice but to do the utmost we can to secure success’.Footnote 9 The contribution of the press to the war effort was often willingly given but tensions did arise around what was printed and how it was obtained. David Monger has asserted that there was little need for a systematic propaganda campaign by the British government until the later years of the war, as public support for the war remained strong during the period 1914–16 and anti-war views were only put forward by a very small proportion of society.Footnote 10 However, expectations of appropriate reporting and other forms of press control were deployed from the beginning of the war, and reporting restrictions were imposed. For example, the initial transportation of the British Expeditionary Force across the channel was supressed in the British press even though it was freely reported on the Continent.Footnote 11 Flow of information from the front was severely restricted, in part due to opposition from the military hierarchy to having reporters present at or near battlegrounds at all.Footnote 12 Only a handful of war correspondents were authorized to cover the entire field of battle for the whole of the British press, and their despatches were strictly censored.
The impact of propaganda, press control, and who actually wrote what and with what purpose is not always transparent, so it is necessary to approach newspaper sources with an element of scepticism. However, as Kate Adie highlights in her Foreword to Nigel Fountain’s When The Lamps Went Out, while such accounts have their pitfalls, they also have their own particular strengths:
Why should we return to contemporary reports of a war which has now been analysed, and criticised so often and at such length? Because the voice of the witness is the most compelling. It may not be the entire story – the vantage point may be obscure, the emotions of hope or patriotism may colour the words – but it is a human eye in the storm. What is immediately written down carries a strength that hindsight and reflection might challenge, but that is still potent and sincere … We read these stories with a myriad of other sources now available to us. The private diaries, the scholars’ discoveries, and many opinions as to why the war was fought and to what end. But the wartime newspaper brings us closer. The people who wrote for it were not detached. The editorials reflected hopes as well as considered opinion – and were sometimes proved hopelessly adrift in their predictions. But they are key to what was on the minds of many, and what preoccupied quiet people as they wondered where and when it would all end.Footnote 13
Newspaper accounts of musicians and military bands frequently reinforce such immediacy and sincerity, recording moments of hope and humanity in the darkest of places. But the deployment of music during this war was not always benign.
Music and Recruitment
The place of music within wartime propaganda initiatives in general, and within recruitment in particular, was predicated upon widely held beliefs in the power of music to influence behaviour. Such beliefs have a long history. In an article about uses of music within political campaigning, John Street writes:
At the simplest level, the music chosen to accompany election campaigns acts as a form of propaganda. It serves to evoke particular images and associations … [S]ongs and sounds are more powerful weapons in this armoury because of the way music works directly on our emotions … Whatever their success, these examples emphasize the continued attempt by parties, politicians and states to harness music’s perceived power for propaganda purposes. The futility and the triviality associated with some of them should not deflect from either the serious intent of others nor from the apparently widespread assumption that music is powerful. From Plato to the Frankfurt School and beyond, the case has been made for regarding music (especially popular music) as a source of power, and often one which works to malign effect.Footnote 14
The power and influence of military music in particular, and the fact such influence was not always positive, was also already part of the public consciousness. In 1802 Fanny Burney wrote in her diary about ‘all the delusive seduction of martial music’.Footnote 15 Scott Hughes Myerly has explored in detail the importance of martial spectacle, including the presence of bands, for recruiting during the first half of the nineteenth century.Footnote 16
Such ideas were rapidly picked up by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, established on 31 August 1914 and closed at the end of 1915, which swiftly adopted music into its tactical approach to swelling the ranks with willing volunteers.Footnote 17 Alongside the creation and dissemination of the better-known recruiting posters, the Committee organized 12,705 meetings, 21,400 speeches and a variety of one-off events, modelled on political campaigns.Footnote 18 An indication of the musical scope of their work is provided by the occasion of a ‘great patriotic concert’ in April 1915 at the Royal Albert Hall, in aid of the War Relief Fund for the Professional Classes, attended by the King, Queen and other royalty. This concert featured a massed band of 400 musicians, made up of twenty recruiting bands plus the musicians of the Brigade of Guards. Captain John Mackenzie Rogan, Sir Frederick Bridge, Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Hubert Parry, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, and Percy Fletcher all took turns at conducting.Footnote 19
A valuable account of musical recruiting activities is preserved in The Slogan, a book by Private Joseph Quigley published in 1916.Footnote 20 Quigley was a member of the first famous recruiting band – Harry Lauder’s Pipe Band – which achieved such success in its initial nine-week tour of Scotland that it was sent south of the border for a six month tour, taking part in more than 500 meetings in 80 towns in total. The lines between genuine autobiography and propaganda stories are blurred, with some of the tales of people they meet along the way seemingly too convenient and too aligned to the prevailing cause,Footnote 21 but many of the aspects detailing the day-to-day life of the band on the road ring true, in particular the fondness of the musicians for women and drink. At the outset of the book, the value of bands for morale and for recruitment was clearly expressed, and the support of the War Office for the creation of bands for ‘bandless battalions’ was firmly established.Footnote 22
A Brief History of (Military) Bands in Manchester
The Manchester region has a long, proud history of bands – military, brass, Volunteer, church, temperance, factory and works – contributing to social and civic life. The overlapping histories of Manchester’s bands, together with recognition of their pre-existing pre-war cultural value, set the foundations for their wartime adoption and tasking, as well as for their reception by the public and the press.
Military bands took shape as an established professional force, in Manchester and nationally, during the nineteenth century. The Royal Artillery Band traces its roots back to 1557,Footnote 23 but the formation of bands of music was not made official in Army Regulations until 1803, and even after this bands were funded to a great extent by regimental officers, who saw them as their own private ensembles to make use of as they saw fit.Footnote 24 During the 1840s the civil unrest occasioned by Chartism, the anti-corn law league and the plug riots was of such concern that in August 1842 an entire battalion of Guards and a Royal Horse Artillery battery, more than 1,000 men in total, were dispatched overnight by train to Manchester and the city was effectively placed under martial law.Footnote 25 A resident military meant resident bands, and for the rest of the century military bands provided a colourful addition to the social and musical life of the city. In addition to military duties, whether parades, church services or dinners, the bands regularly appeared around town, sometimes for public engagements or charitable work, and frequently at social events at the whim of the commanding officer. The Grand Soirée of the Athenaeum in the Free Trade Hall in 1846, for example, included the band of the 69th Infantry, by permission of Lieutenant-Colonel Monins, performing overtures, marches and operatic music, and the band of the 56th Regiment, stationed at Bury, playing waltzes, quadrilles, polkas and other dances.Footnote 26
Meanwhile in the civilian world there were growing numbers of brass, wind and reed bands, including church bands, temperance bands, and sponsored factory and works bands. Whether leading parades or competing in contests these bands were highly visible, perhaps excessively so in the case of Wombwell’s Menagerie Band, which often played on arrival into a new town from the top of carriages drawn by elephants and camels as well as horses.Footnote 27 Straddling the civilian and military worlds were Volunteer bands, with the 1859 Volunteer movement subsidizing bands, providing rehearsal rooms, instruments and uniforms.Footnote 28 To confuse matters, there was also a trend for bands to call themselves ‘military’ as an indicator of instrumentation, when they were in fact civilian. The Accrington Band, for example, can be dated back to 1842. Over the next 60 years it was variously named Accrington Brass Band, 7th Lancashire Rifles Volunteers (Accrington), the Primrose Reed Band, Accrington Old Prize Band and Accrington Military Band. They joined the Rifle Volunteer movement only when assured they would have plenty of spare time for private practice and contests. As time went on they came under increasing pressure to carry out regimental duties so they split with the Volunteers who in turn demanded their instruments and uniforms back.Footnote 29
Both military and civilian bands were busily employed for the season of concerts each year in the region’s parks. In 1913 the Manchester Parks Committee spent around £3,000 for 480 concerts by 44 bands. Even so, at the end of that year the principle and execution of park music came under debate, to the extent that the Manchester Guardian made it the subject of a campaign.Footnote 30 There were calls for ‘fewer and better bands’, and Manchester was compared unfavourably with Stockport. The correspondence includes a letter, signed ‘Musician’, who pronounced: ‘Of the 44 bands mentioned in your paper only a very small proportion are really worth listening to. The balance would be better employed practising on a remote village green’.Footnote 31 The first fruits of the campaign were seen during Whit Week 1914, when newspaper reports praised the quality of the bands appearing in Heaton Park and Platt Fields, the size of the crowds and the quality of their attention to the music.Footnote 32 The press reported:
The Whitsuntide holidays have been marked by notable developments in the music of the Manchester parks, each day seeing large audiences gathered in the principal parks, especially in Heaton Park and Platt Fields, to listen to the bands, the chief of which were, of military bands, the Gordon Highlanders, the Manchester Artillery Band, the band of the Duke of Lancaster’s and the Earl of Chester’s Yeomanry, and the Manchester Professional Military Band; and of the purely brass bands ‘Crosfield’s Perfection’ and many other prize bands. Each day the band programmes have been regarded as important news for the afternoon and evening papers, and everywhere the audiences have been no mere casual idlers in the parks, but have been apparently intent on the music.Footnote 33
Come the outbreak of war in 1914, therefore, there was a tremendous number of bands in existence, already part of the military or available to be co-opted by the military.
Bands and Recruitment in Manchester
In the local press, as nationally, there was much discussion about the beneficial influence of military pageantry on enlistment, and the place of bands within that. The use of bands for recruiting purposes gained significant momentum from November 1914. The rate of recruitment had slowed, so new strategies were put in place. The Manchester Guardian reported:
[P]rojects for quickening the rate of recruiting in Manchester were given definite form yesterday. The chief recruiting officer, Captain Walkley, stated yesterday that arrangements have been made for a series of military parades. It is hoped to hold the first of them on Wednesday next, and to have others on the Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays of the following two weeks. The parades will consist of route marches by those members of the 1st and 2nd City Battalions, who have been equipped with uniforms and arms. An endeavour is being made to secure the services of the band of the Royal Artillery of the East Lancashire Territorial Force, now billeted in Southport. It is hoped that this band may be allowed to stay in Manchester for a fortnight. These route marches will cover every district in the city, and it is intended that the people who come into the streets to see them shall be addressed at convenient points on the needs of the army and the duty of men qualified to serve with the forces.Footnote 34
The positive effects of military pageantry and display on recruitment were reported on in the same paper a few days later, describing how recruiting numbers in London had been higher by six hundred men on a day of military pageantry in comparison with the following day. The article expanded upon equivalent activities in Manchester, stating that interest in parades was shown ‘by the considerable crowds which collected along Oldham Street and Piccadilly and stood there in heavy rain’.Footnote 35
Subsequently, the presence of a band generally occasioned comment in newspaper reports, particularly when additional colourful features rendered them unusual or attractive. On 3 May 1915, for example, the Welsh Regiment recruiting party was in town: ‘Accompanied by the goat, which is their regimental mascot, the band played in various parts of the city’.Footnote 36 On 7 September 1915 the Manchester Guardian reported on the activities of Lord Derby’s Recruiting Band (the pipers of the Liverpool Scottish), plus speakers supplied by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee.Footnote 37 The absence of bands was also reported upon, such as the departure for Southport from Victoria Station of about 2,000 members of the reserve battalions of the Manchester Territorial Force, which ‘might have been made still more of a spectacle, with the idea of assisting recruiting, if some of the bands which are available in Manchester had been engaged to head the march of the various corps’. The band presence was not universally popular. During Kitchener’s visit of 21 March 1915, it was reported, ‘One could not hear the “tramp of armed men” – a sound to which the martial spirit in a man so quickly thrills, for a military band played incessantly and loudly, filling the ear to the exclusion of most other sounds’.Footnote 38
Whit Week 1915 became a key recruiting moment, as military parades, bands and pageantry were deliberately deployed to capture something of the spirit of the parades and music of peacetime Whit Weeks. The particular importance of this holiday period for the region was noted: ‘Whit-week is in this part of the country a week when men are available for appeal more than at any other time … The parks, picture-houses, music-halls, and theatres will be full of young men’.Footnote 39 A target was set to recruit 2,000 men within the week for the Manchester Pals – the largest figure the local recruiting team had so far set.Footnote 40 Parades, accompanied by three bands – the Royal Field Artillery band, the band of the 14th Manchester Regiment and the band of the Depot Manchester Regiment – were to begin every day at 9 a.m., with regular stops for speakers to address the crowds and soldiers to speak to individual young men directly. All the theatres, music halls and picture houses had recruiting speeches scheduled during their intervals.
In addition to recruitment and parades, military bands continued to perform in Manchester during the war as part of the programme of park concerts. The number of genuine military bands decreased as the war progressed, with civilian ‘military’ bands taking up more of the dates, but bands of reserve units maintained a presence throughout. The Manchester Guardian commented on the changing nature of the bands as the park concert season of 1915 got underway:
Last Whitsuntide there was a quite sudden development in the popularity of the music in the city parks, and until the war came and spoilt all our pleasures the development of interest was maintained … This year we see the elimination of all the bands of what were called the poorest class, though to balance this improvement we have to set the absence of certain military bands and of many members from all bands.Footnote 41
Their reviewer was very outspoken with regard to appropriate repertoire:
‘the inclusion of numerous pieces which have neither any genuine merit nor any genuine popularity to recommend them should be avoided. Small pieces of a routine and hackneyed type of sentiment cannot very well stimulate the feelings of listeners in these stirring times, and when, as not infrequently happens, they are by fifth-rate German composers or from dead musical comedies of the same nationality they have less than no right to a hearing’.Footnote 42
Bands engaged for the 1916 season included, in a list primarily constituted of civilian bands and choirs, the band of the Manchester Royal Field Artillery.Footnote 43
The third public arena for military bands after parades and concerts was in the church. Services to mark or commemorate significant military events were routinely reported in the press, and the involvement of bands was frequently described. On Gallipoli Day in June 1916 a cathedral service was preceded by a march from Belle Vue to Albert Square, where ‘as the troops pass the inspecting officer in the Square the band of the East Lancashire Royal Engineers will play the regimental march of each unit’.Footnote 44 In August 1917 a parade and a cathedral service marked the third anniversary of Britain’s entry into the war. The King’s Dragoon Guards Band provided the music.Footnote 45
One particularly important feature to draw out of these newspaper reports is the changing language used to describe the bands, the parades, and public responses to them. On 9 January 1915:
The first four City Battalions – three of them encamped at Heaton Park and one at the White City – marched through the streets of Manchester yesterday to the Free Trade Hall, where Brigadier General Westropp addressed them on the traditions of the Manchester Regiment … But, as it turned out, the afternoon’s proceedings fulfilled a wider purpose. Since there was no room for the general public in the Free Trade Hall the attention of the town was concentrated on the march of the battalions through the streets, with bands and bugles to enhance the martial effect. Such a profound impression was made on the thousands of people who crowded the pavements by the splendid appearance of the men that the parade will probably prove the best piece of recruiting work that has been done so far in Manchester. The majority of those who saw the troops march past or saw them drawn up after the meeting in Albert Square realised what a magnificent thing Manchester has done in raising these city battalions. Here, gathered into one vast body, was the pick of the young manhood of the city … The men marched to the Free Trade Hall by devious ways, so that people in many parts of the city might see them, and all along the routes, both going and returning, they were made glad with cheers of admiring spectators. Pride of possession was expressed in each greeting. They were ‘our boys’, to borrow the Lord Mayor’s happy phrase, and if there were any young men among the onlookers who did not flame with a desire to share the honour of marching like this they must have been singularly unresponsive to the influences which visibly stirred both the soldiers and the majority of the civilians in the streets … Altogether there was more stir and excitement in the city than at any time since the war began. The bands had no small share in firing the popular feeling.Footnote 46
By 4 October 1915 the jingoism was largely removed:
A great recruiting rally was held in Manchester on Saturday and yesterday … The Bishop of Manchester conducted an impressive Drumhead service in Albert Square, and in the evening many places of entertainment were turned to serious uses when the Lord Mayor and other speakers urged again upon the city, which has already done so much, the need for men and yet more men. The review of troops on Saturday afternoon before Henry Mackinnon, the general officer commanding in chief, Western command, was not spectacular. The old days when the idea of war as a coloured adventure was reflected in scarlet tunics and slashings of gold are happily passed; there is a matter-of-fact utility about khaki that may be supposed not inaptly to interpret the newer conception of war. Missing, too, on Saturday was the clamour of popular applause. The saluting base was at the Town Hall steps, and Albert Square was filled with people for more than an hour before the troops were due to pass. By three o’ clock a great crowd pressed close about the barricades, yet as the slow file went by, rank after rank, for 35 minutes there was scarcely a cheer. A new spirit in the people has come with the new uniform. This war has touched every home too nearly for us to manifest more than a sober pride and a quiet resolution that does not shout … It was a dull day, with a grey threat of rain. The Square, enclosed by lifeless buildings, was gloomy and severe, and the people assembled silently. The battalions came down from Heaton Park with stir and music, but they, in turn, as soon as they had the order ‘Stand easy’ were enveloped in the pervading silence.Footnote 47
Then, by January 1916:
The Joint Recruiting Committee is still in being, and it was with this object, no doubt, that the Lord Mayor has appealed to Alderman McCabe, his predecessor in office, who is chairman of that Committee. The time has gone by for general appeals in the streets, by meetings and bands and processions, but a great deal might still be done by individual appeals, for which the Recruiting Committee has all the necessary machinery.Footnote 48
Manchester Bands at War
With the expansion of military force there was a corresponding expansion in musical force, resulting in the widespread recruitment of musicians into the army. Alongside band recruitment, there was a particular call for drummers and buglers, with leave granted to take them at the age of seventeen, and the older practice of recruiting boy drummers meant boys remained part of the strength of many regiments.Footnote 49 These youngest members of their battalions proved attractive to the press. Alfred and James Boocock, sons of Quartermaster-Sergeant Boocock, served as buglers in the 1/9th Manchester Regiment (Ashton Territorials), also assisting their father in the stores. They had participated in four annual encampments prior to the war. They both formally joined the Battalion a few days after mobilization aged just fifteen and fourteen, and were adopted as its mascots. Father and sons all saw action at Gallipoli, with the boys deployed carrying ammunition and rations from boat to store. Regimental records indicate Alfred and James both served for the duration of the war and survived to discharge in 1919.Footnote 50
Sometimes adverts were placed calling for a complete band. For example, in September 1915:
Colonel Petrie, the commanding officer of the 16th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment (1st ‘City’) now stationed at Grantham, asks for a full band of 22 players to accompany the battalion to the base in France. Bandmasters are asked to communicate at once with Captain Walkley … The men must be organically sound, but on the question of eyesight a little latitude will be allowed. It is possible that at times at the base the musicians may be employed in ambulance work.Footnote 51
What bfell the Band of the 16th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment is recounted later in this article. Just as full bands were sometimes sought, so too did existing bands occasionally seek to join up in their entirety, with a view to functioning as a military band for the duration of the war. One such example was the New Mills Band. Located a short distance from Manchester on the edge of the Peak District, New Mills Band positions itself as one of the oldest brass bands in the country, dating its origins to 1812 and active continuously until the present day.Footnote 52 In November 1914 the members of the band decided to volunteer for the same battalion, and found themselves adopted as the battalion band of the 6th Battalion of the Sherwood Foresters.Footnote 53 Their bass drum survives and holds the inscription ‘The Drum of the First Band to land in France Feb. 1915 and carried by 6th Bn The Sherwood Foresters until the end of the war’.Footnote 54 The Regimental history describes how ‘Only one band had been allowed to come out with the Brigade, and after some discussion that of the 6th Battalion was selected, and carried on up to the end of the war, virtually as a Brigade Band’.Footnote 55 The band appears at various moments in the Regiment’s account of its war. The description of a moment in May 1915 is particularly evocative:
It was the remnants of a Canadian Battalion returning from this fighting in the [Ypres] Salient shortly after midnight on one occasion, whilst we were back at Locre, which made us think we must have had more than an ordinary nightmare, for we awoke with a start to hear the strains of a brass band coming along the pavé – at 1 a.m. such a proceeding seemed decidedly strange. It was not long, however, before we found that all was well, and that it was our own Brigade Band playing the Canadians through the village.Footnote 56
The 8th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment were deployed early in the war, sailing to Egypt in September 1914. The battalion included its band, and the divisional history records their arrival in Alexandria Harbour on 25 September, where they passed an American battle-cruiser:
To the delight of the Lancashire men the Americans manned ship; their band played ‘God save the King’ and generally did us proud. The Division was keen to show its appreciation. The Band of the 8th Manchesters, uncertain whether ‘Yankee Doodle’, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ or ‘My Country, ‘tis of thee’ is considered the national anthem of the United States, and doubting their ability to render either of the first two airs pleasingly – the third tune being that of our own national anthem, and therefore open to misconstruction – struck up ‘Marching through Georgia’. All too late came the reflection that possibly the cruiser’s complement had been drawn from States which might not appreciate this air.Footnote 57
The 8th Battalion were present at the annexation of Cyprus, parading with their band for a ceremony in Limassol to mark the occasion.Footnote 58 Then, on 6 May 1915, they arrived at Gallipoli, where the nature of their war service rapidly changed. The Battalion, including the band, sustained heavy losses. Among the dead was Bandsman William Harrop, a flute and piccolo player, who was killed by a sniper on 12 May 1915 while fetching water from a well.Footnote 59
The reporting of such band activities in the press became part of the public perception of the war. An article published in the Manchester Guardian in October 1917 painted a vivid picture:
… the Lancashire battalions – the battalions whose growth was registered by the great thermometer outside the Manchester Town Hall in the days which seem now like ancient history … It is behind these lines that the scene becomes more definitely military. Here, on wide, wind-swept spaces, the British army begins to exhibit itself in the familiar blue shirt-sleeves, the carrying in processional order of the old familiar barrack-yard buckets, the hurrying about of preoccupied sergeants with large envelopes … It is in these zones, subtropical when compared with the true tropics of the trenches, that one comes across the battalion band. I saw a certain Manchester battalion which was cradled at Belle Vue and learnt its earliest paces at Morecambe played into camp along the winding, dusty road after a morning’s thirsty exercise, by its own band, and dismissed by its colonel to dinner in its brown metal wigwams. A football match which I attended in another camp was accompanied by the swishing of a restless aeroplane and a highly-modern musical programme by the divisional band.Footnote 60
The battalion bands were clearly much loved, highly valued and thus held a privileged position, within their units and in the press. This privilege sometimes put them into the most unimaginable situations. On 21 March 1918, the 16th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment fought desperately to defend Manchester Hill.Footnote 61 The regimental history records: ‘In the early evening [of March 18th] as the Battalion marched off towards the redoubt, the Platoon singing competition was judged by the Divisional Commander and when the band turned back (for they were not to go into action) the Commanding Officer said: “Those are the only fellows that will come out alive”’.Footnote 62 By 2 p.m. on the 21st most of the Battalion were dead, wounded or captured. Of the 168 soldiers on the redoubt, only 2 officers and 15 other ranks made it back to British lines. Of the wider battalion, the War Diary recorded on 1 April 1918 that 18 officers and 593 other ranks remained unaccounted for, out of the 23 officers and 717 men on roll.Footnote 63 Just two officers and 70 men were present at the next Battalion role call. It is impossible to begin to imagine how it must have felt to have been a member of that band, sent away from a battle in which so many comrades were subsequently lost.
Conclusion
In a speech made in January 1915, Rudyard Kipling advanced the need for the ‘New Armies’ to be provided with adequate music. He cogently summarized some of the practical benefits of bands to the war effort:
From the lowest point of view, a few drums and fifes in a battalion are worth five extra miles on a route-march – quite apart from the fact that they swing the battalion back to quarters composed and happy in its mind no matter how wet and tired its body may be.
Or a band, not necessarily a full band, but a band of a few brasses and wood winds is immensely valuable in districts where troops are billeted. It revives memories; it quickens associations; it opens and unites the hearts of men more surely than any other appeal. In that respect it assists recruiting perhaps more than any other agency.
Kipling then strikes right to the heart of the matter:
More than that. No one – not even the Adjutant – can say for certain where the soul of a battalion lives; but the expression of that soul is most often found in the Band. It stands to reason that a body of twelve hundred men whose lives are pledged to each other’s keeping must have some common means of expressing their thoughts and moods to themselves and to their world. The Band can feel the mood and interpret the thought. A wise and sympathetic bandmaster – and most that I have known have been that – can lift a battalion out of depression, cheer its sickness, and steady and recall it to itself in times of almost unendurable strain.Footnote 64
This idea – music as the soul of the battalion – is where bands in wartime appear to wield their greatest power. The value of bands as a recruiting tool, deployed for their spectacle and their ability to stir the emotions, guided perceptions of the power of music at home in the early months of the war. But in reports from the front, frequently printed in the newspapers, the bands and their musicians played a fundamentally different part. In the press, many of the more general articles about music at the front refer to song, and several of these are pure propaganda pieces.Footnote 65 References to bands are more scattered but also appear significantly more genuine. Although the use of music within wartime initiatives was co-opted to serve a variety of purposes, there was little need to control the press reporting of music, and therefore the reports, editorials and correspondence which mention bands, musicians and their music tend to have a sincerity to them, an unfiltered quality, which speaks to genuine responses to genuine experiences, at home and on the front. Whatever the purpose to which it was being put, music still seems to find a way through the propaganda and the reality of wartime life to reach the humanity of the soldier, the reporter and the reader.
Rachel Johnson’s research focuses on the cultural history of music in Britain. She is currently researching (British) military musicians and modern conflict, the history of music in (English) prisons, nineteenth-century British flute culture, light music and historical recordings. And She has completed a Share Our Sounds research residency (British Library/RNCM/Manchester Archives+) evaluating the RNCM’s archive of student recordings. Rachel’s PhD, supported by an AHRC Studentship and undertaken at the Royal Northern College of Music, investigated musical life in Manchester in the nineteenth century. It demonstrated how music contributed to the formation of identity, community and new models of citizenship in the world’s first industrial city. It uses neglected archives to explore the emergence of a distinctive musical culture in Manchester, investigating the establishment of a variety of institutions and societies, from glee clubs to Mechanics’ Institutes. A book based on the PhD, titled Music and the Creation of Social Identity during the Industrial Revolution: Manchester, 1819–1857, is forthcoming with Routledge. Rachel currently lectures for the Royal Northern College of Music, the University of Sheffield and the Open University.
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