MOTG_OP_Brochure_2018-01-19_V1_Proof

The End of the Pals
As a recruitment strategy and as a popular image, the ‘Pals’ worked
well. As fighting units too they would prove to be effective. They
were a phenomena of the early weeks of the war. But by late 1914
the stock of volunteers was running out. In early 1915, conscription
would be introduced and men would be assigned to units as
necessary, with very little option as to which battalion or regiment
they could serve in. As far as recruitment was concerned the ‘Pals’
had run their course.
Almost from day one of arriving in France the idea and structure
of the pals battalions changed as casualties occurred and
replacements arrived. The Pals battalions became more and more
diluted. More than any other time, it was on the first day of the
Somme Offensive, 1 July 1916, that can be seen as the beginning
of the end of the ‘Pals’. On that day it was the Pals battalions
which took the full weight of the 60,000 casualties. From then
on fewer and fewer of the original volunteers were remaining and
the replacements were more likely to be conscripts. They would
be strangers, perhaps not even from the same home town. By the
end of the war the idea of the ‘Pals’ perhaps only remained in the
minds of the survivors.
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| The Oswestry Pals