The Forgotten Spy by Nick Barratt Read Free Book Online Page B

and resulted in a general retreat. The British Expeditionary Force fought its first major engagement at the Battle of Mons on 23 August, suffering over 1,600 casualties and was similarly forced to retreat beyond their defensive lines even though they inflicted far greater damage on the enemy.
    An offensive campaign quickly turned into a rearguard action. By October, remaining British units were involved in a frantic race to halt the German advances to the coast which would have cut off British supply lines andeffectively curtailed their involvement on the Western Front, possibly ending the war as quickly as some had predicted. With the line stabilised, thanks to little known but crucial actions such as the defence of Gheluvelt, a new pattern of war developed around defensive trenches and artillery bombardment. Although they were not to realise it at the time, the troops on the Western Front had dug in for the long haul.
    Increasingly bad news from the front, coupled with growing casualty numbers and a realisation that the war would not end quickly, punctured public optimism. As a result, the number of volunteers gradually tailed off so that by the middle of 1915 there was a crisis in recruitment. On 11 October, the Prime Minister appointed the aforementioned Earl of Derby as the Director General of Recruitment and five days later he unveiled a new scheme to enforce a form of moral conscription, encouraging men to voluntarily register their name. They were then placed into a group according to their age and marital status with the promise that this group would only be formally enlisted to a service battalion when needed. Perhaps it was the stipulation that bachelors would be called up before married men that made Oldham rather reluctant to come forward.
    A poster issued in November 1915 made it clear that time was running out. Voluntary attestation into one of the groups had to be made by 11 December, with rumours that conscription was on its way. While Ernest Oldham doubtless wished to play his part for King and country, he left it very late to do so. On 10 December 1915, aged 21 years and 2 months, he walked out of the Foreign Office building to enlist at the Whitehall recruitment centre. He signed a short service attestation form, agreeing to serve ‘for the duration of the war’ after which he would be ‘discharged with all convenient speed’. 31
    Oldham had elected for deferred recruitment – class A – whereby he was recruited for a nominal day’s active service before being immediately placed with the army reserves and sent back to resume his civilian duties until the time came for his call up to the colours. He was placed in group 4 – single men born in 1894.
    Five days later, the Derby scheme was abandoned, deemed to be a failure because only 215,000 men were directly recruited for immediate serviceas class B – although around 2.75 million were placed on the reserve list as class A. Oldham’s group was called up for service between 20 December 1915 and mobilised on 20 January 1916 but under the deferred scheme he was one of the staff for whom Tilley secured an exemption from service. By stepping forward, Oldham had acted in the nick of time; conscription was introduced in January 1916 under the terms of the Military Service Act.
    Although initial efforts were made to keep as many staff within the service as possible, by the end of 1915, the need was less intense.
    At a later period of the war the number of telegrams fell off, negotiations being less necessary as more and more of the neutrals became allies; two shifts from 8.00 am to 4.00 pm and from 4.00 pm to midnight were thus enough. Eight hours was as much as any eyes could stand at a time of this sort of work. A minor difficulty was that of sending home the typists who worked for the Cipher Department till midnight. Trams and omnibuses had sometimes stopped and those who lived in the suburbs had to be sent home by car. 32
    Now that Oldham was on the