Includes two Rifle Platoons which contain: one Webley Pistol Team (Formation HQ), three SMLE Rifle Teams, one Hales Rifle Grenade Team, one Lewis MG Team. Four Vickers HMG teams, four 3″ Stokes trench mortar teams, two OQF 18pdr Field guns, one Mark V male or female tank, one Mark IV male or female tank, one Mark A Whippet tank and one Sniper Team.
The British started the war with a small but professional army. Great Britain’s initial response to the invasion of Belgium was to send the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France. By the end of 1914 it had grown to two Armies (the First and Second) drawn from the British regular army. However, the heavy fighting of the battles of Mons, Le Cateau, the Aisne, and the First Ypres had taken a heavy toll on the manpower of the regulars of the BEF. The arrival of the volunteers of Kitchener’s ‘New Army’, the Canadians, and then the Australians and New Zealanders after Gallipoli, went someway to filling the void.