Temporary gentlemen
Temporary gentlemen is a colloquial term referring to officers of the British Army who held temporary commissions, particularly when such men came from outside the traditional "officer class".
Historically the officers of the British Army were drawn from the gentry and upper middle classes and the expensive uniforms and social expectations placed on officers prevented those without a private income from joining. The outbreak of the First World War required a rapid expansion in the size of the army and a corresponding increase in the officer corps. During the war more than 200,000 additional officers were recruited, many on temporary commissions. Many of these were drawn from the lower middle and working classes. They came to be referred to as "temporary gentlemen", a term reflecting the expectation that they would revert to their former social standing after the war. At the end of the war, many were unwilling to return to their former positions on reduced salaries and there were too few managerial positions to provide full employment, resulting in considerable hardship. Some former temporary gentlemen became leading literary figures and temporary gentlemen featured in many inter-war stories, plays and films.
The term was revived in the Second World War, which saw a similar increase in the number of officers holding temporary commissions. A staggered demobilisation at the war's end helped alleviate some of the issues faced by their forebears. The term continued to see use for officers commissioned from those conscripted for National Service, which lasted until 1963. It has also been used as a translation for miliciano, a term used to describe conscript officers in the Portuguese Army of the 1960s and 1970s.
Background
Until the Cardwell Reforms of 1871 officers' commissions in the British Army were achieved by purchase, except for those in the artillery or engineers. A substantial sum of money was required to enter the profession and to progress via promotion, when the new commission had to be purchased. The official price ranged in the line infantry from £450 for an ensign to £4,500 for a lieutenant colonel. Cavalry commissions were more costly, and those in the foot guards the most expensive at £1,200 for an ensign and £9,000 for a lieutenant-colonel. The purchase was handled by an auction house in London and buyers were often required to pay a supplementary over-regulation or "regimental" price, which varied depending on how popular the regiment was. Sometimes this was many times greater than the official rate; James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan was reported to have paid £40,000 in 1836 for the lieutenant colonelcy of the 11th Hussars. The profession was therefore only open to the wealthy; it was popularly chosen for the younger sons of the gentry and aristocracy, who would not inherit the family estates and who could sell their commissions upon retirement. The purchase system also meant that the government did not need to provide a proper salary or pension to officers, saving costs.Landed families developed traditions of service, successive generations serving in the same regiment. Such men were considered gentlemen, a term encompassing the upper portion of the British class system, inheriting this status from their fathers and holding it for life no matter their behaviour. Due to this close connection, holders of officers' commissions generally came to be regarded as gentlemen by association, as reflected in the phrase "an officer and a gentleman". Many of the traditional "officer class" had attended public schools, and sometimes universities, with Officers' Training Corps units and so had been in training for the role from the age of thirteen.
Even after the purchase system was abolished the profession of army officer remained largely the preserve of the landed classes. Officers were required to take part in expensive sports, such as polo, and pay high mess bills. This required a significant private income which precluded the lower classes. Officers also had to purchase their own uniforms and equipment, which cost at least £200 in the infantry and £600–1,000 in the cavalry, and, depending on regimental practice, pay subscriptions to provide coaches, bands, theatre tickets, wine cellars and packs of hunting hounds. In 1900 it was estimated that a junior officer in the 10th Royal Hussars, renowned as the most expensive in the army, required a private income of £500 per year as a bare minimum. The Coldstream Guards considered £400 per year as a requirement of entry for new officers and the rest of the Household Brigade £300. In unfashionable regiments such as the artillery and engineers and some infantry regiments it was considered possible to live on a private income of £60–100. Officers' pay had not increased since 1806 with the most junior officers receiving a salary of £95 16s 3d per year, much below what professionals earned in the private sector.
Efforts were made to reform the profession in the early Edwardian era but were stymied by resistance from serving officers and a reluctance by the government to provide funding for subsidies to those without the means to maintain the lifestyle. Only a small number of men from outside the officer class were granted commissions, often those acting in professional roles such as veterinarians or paymasters. In contrast, the other ranks were almost all drawn from the working class and in the ten years from 1903 an average of just 11 officers per year were commissioned from the ranks.
First World War
The term "temporary gentlemen" first came to prominence during the First World War to describe officers who received temporary commissions, often men from outside the traditional officer class. It was sometimes abbreviated to "TG". The term was used by traditional officers to remind temporary officers that they were expected to resume their former positions after the war and was considered offensive by most of those to which it was applied. The use of the term declined once the new officers had proved themselves capable on the battlefield, though some temporary officers adopted the term in an ironic fashion. Some temporary gentlemen used the term themselves to refer to those promoted from the ranks, though these men were also referred to as "ranker officers". The war poet Wilfred Owen, a middle-class Territorial Force officer commissioned in 1916, used this form of the term when he wrote a letter to his mother describing "temporary gentlemen... glorified NCOsSometimes the opposite situation occurred when men who would seemingly have no problems fulfilling the requirements to hold a commission in peacetime chose instead to serve in the ranks during the war. This included David Lindsay, 27th Earl of Crawford who, at the age of 45, served as a lance corporal, and Leslie Coulson, assistant editor of The Morning Post, who refused a commission to "do the thing fairly take place in the ranks". Coulson died as a sergeant in the London Regiment at the Battle of Le Transloy in 1916.
Outbreak of war
At the outbreak of the war there were 10,800 officers in the British Army with another 2,500 in the Special Reserve and 10,700 in the Territorial Force, which was 2,000 below the British Army's theoretical full strength. During the next four years more than 200,000 men became officers, mostly on temporary commissions—with the intention being that they would return to civilian life after the war was over.Some men were commissioned directly from the ranks in the early stages of the war, mainly senior NCOs and warrant officers from the regular army. On 1 October 1914 an unprecedented 187 men were commissioned in this manner, the largest single influx of working-class officers the army had ever received. By the end of 1914 almost 1,000 men from the ranks had received officers' commissions and by the end of the war in 1918 some 10,000 had been commissioned.
Men commissioned from the ranks at this stage of the war were discharged from the regular army and appointed to temporary commissions, a process that caused problems upon demobilisation when many wished to continue their service in the army. Those who received commissions in this manner included the Royal Artillery's Sergeant Major George Thomas Dorrell and Sergeant David Nelson, who both won Victoria Crosses for gallantry during the action at Néry on 1 September 1914.
Some NCOs who received temporary commissions found themselves in financial difficulty as they lost their entitlement to extra pay while on active service. Financial concerns led to some potential officers refusing to accept commissions, despite pressure from their superiors. The issue was partly remedied later in the war with the introduction of grants to all officers below the rank of major and allowances paid for officer's children. By 1916 all subalterns received 7s 6d a day in pay, an initial £50 kit allowance, a 2s daily lodging allowance, 2s 6d daily field service allowance and free mess rations and travel. A newly commissioned officer on active service could therefore earn upwards of £210 per year, on top of which some civilian employers also continued to pay their former employees half wages. As such, during the later part of the war temporary gentlemen on active service had few financial concerns.
Former NCOs sometimes found the transition from holding authority over up to 1,000 men to the more humble commands of a second lieutenant difficult. They would also be removed from their units and posted elsewhere as the army authorities considered that officers should not be too familiar with their men. Some of those commissioned from the ranks were subject to hostility from their men for knowing too much of army life and being difficult to fool compared to traditional officers. General Richard O'Connor felt that the system of promoting from the ranks deprived the regiments of experienced and reliable NCOs. Not all officers promoted from the ranks were from the lower social classes; many had attended public schools and had chosen to serve in the ranks or had missed out on commissions at the start of the war.
The British Army expanded rapidly during the early months of the war; almost 1.2 million recruits joined the British Army by the end of 1914, many entering the all-volunteer Kitchener's Army. Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, turned first to volunteers from retired officers to fill the new vacancies before selecting men from among the recruits. Most new commissions in this period went to members of the traditional officer class with a few former tradesmen, clerks and manufacturing workers, particularly in the pals battalions. There was considerable favouritism shown towards those who had attended public or grammar schools with OTC units, and among those there was a bias towards better-known schools. There may have been no intention to select officers on the basis of class, merely a preference for prior military service such as that provided by the OTC; with the majority of OTCs being based at the major public schools this led to a bias towards those who had studied there. Possibly because of this selection, the officers of Kitchener's Army were, as a cohort, amongst the best educated to serve with the British Army during the war. The rapid commissioning of officers for Kitchener's Army caused some difficulties. There were cases of men holding commissions simultaneously with the army and the Royal Navy, having applied to both, and of men who had first enlisted as private soldiers being sought for desertion following their commissioning.
Future prime minister Harold Macmillan joined the army in November 1914 as a second lieutenant in the 19th Battalion of the King's Royal Rifle Corps. Macmillan came from a family of good social standing and he was soon able to secure a transfer to the more prestigious Grenadier Guards through the intervention of his mother. Though he himself was a temporary officer, Macmillan used the term "temporary gentlemen" to refer to others; he later reused the term in his political career to refer to Lord Hailsham, whom he considered unfit to succeed him as leader of the Conservative Party.