Lionel Wigram,Battle Drill and the British Army in the Second World War

Abstract

Like many thousands of his contemporaries, Lionel Wigram (1907-44), a London-based solicitor and property developer, joined the British army at the outbreak of the Second World War. Already commissioned in the Territorial Army, he joined the Colours as a captain. Battle drill, invented during the First World War and revived by the then Lieutenant-General Harold Alexander in I Corps after Dunkirk, was a method of teaching infantry minor tactics. Wigram played the leading part in spreading this training technique to the whole of the Home Army. Having founded and run 47th Division's School of Battle Drill in 1941, he was appointed chief instructor at the new GHQ Home Forces Battle School at Barnard Castle early in 1942. It was from here that battle drill swept through Home Forces. Later that year, the Barnard Castle school became a wing of the new War Office School of Infantry established on the same site, and battle drill gained War Office blessing.

Battle drill was, however, a controversial training technique. Many officers, particularly those of the regular army, did not trust it. The War Office withheld its approval until battle drill's popularity with the troops threatened to make a mockery of official reservations. Although there were respectable pedagogical objections to battle drill, there were also other less honourable motives for the hostility battle drill aroused in some quarters. That Wigram was not a regular officer yet nonetheless presumed to teach the army its business was chief among them. Wigram reciprocated with a large measure of contempt for the regular army, which in his view had failed to maintain elementary infantry fighting skills.

Dissenting from previous interpretations, this article contends that battle drill was a highly promising development that both rescued infantry morale and improved military efficiency. However, it proved not to be the panacea that many had hoped, although not for the pedagogical reasons that had prompted regular army doubts. The author explores the reasons for this situation, arguing that ultimately the regular army's failure to take Wigram into its confidence robbed British troops of their best chance of thorough training for the problems they would face in battle.