August 1914 ... Formation and Enlistment
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For a number of years there had been plans for the formation of a unit of Royal Marines called The Advanced Base Force whose intended purpose was to seize, fortify and protect temporary naval bases. At the outbreak of war in August 1914 the unit was formed and consisted of four battalions; Chatham, Portsmouth, Plymouth and RM Artillery. The initial objective of the unit was to protect the channel ports which were essential to the British Naval strategy and would later prove vital in the defence of Paris and the subsequent victories on the Marne and the Aisne.
On August 16th the Admiralty ordered the formation of two Naval brigades from personnel of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve who were surplus to requirements as the Fleet was fully manned. This new unit was to be called the Royal Naval Division. The new battalions were named after historical sailors and went into training at Walmer and Betteshanger. As the Division was part of the Royal Navy it fell under the authority of the Admiralty and ultimately, as First Lord of the Admiralty, future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In the early days of the war the Division was often mockingly referred to as Winston's Little Army and Churchill's Private Army. It retained many naval traditions throughout the war including rank and sitting to toast the King. Its troops were sailors; to call them soldiers would be taken as a great insult.
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On the evening of the twenty-fourth German cavalry patrols were sighted on the outskirts of Ostend and the Advanced Base Force under the command of Brigadier-General Sir George Aston was ordered to the defence of the port the following day. By the morning of the twenty-eighth the Force had landed in its entirety and was entrenched on the perimeter of the town. The threat never materialised and the Marines returned to England on September 1st at which point the Admiralty decided to immediately incorporate the Marines into the Royal Naval Division. The RMA was disbanded and a new battalion, Deal, formed by drawing one company and platoon from each of the other three battalions. The Marine Brigade went into training at Portsmouth independently of the rest of the Division.
The organisation of the Division was now:
1st Brigade | 2nd Brigade | 3rd (Marine) Brigade |
1st Drake | 5th Nelson | 9th Chatham |
2nd Hawke | 6th Howe | 10th Portsmouth |
3rd Benbow | 7th Hood | 11th Plymouth |
4th Collingwood | 8th Anson | 12th Deal |
A number of well known personalities enlisted with the Royal Naval Division and these included the poet Rupert Brooke and Arthur Asquith, the son of the British Prime Minister.
Of the Naval Brigades, almost immediately the needs of the Fleet led to the removal of many of the better trained personnel. The response to the Nation's call for volunteers at the outbreak of war had greatly exceeded expectations and the War Office began pressuring the Admiralty to accept men that the Army did not have the resources to equip or train. The Admiralty finally agreed to accept an excess of men on the third. That same day Thomas Henry Bashton had enlisted with the Durham Light Infantry.
|  Recruitment Poster |
 Parading at the Crystal Palace depot |
The excess of Army recruits absorbed into the Royal Naval Division were mainly drawn from the North Country regiments and largely the Northumberland Fusiliers, Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and Durham Light Infantry. These new recruits were almost all miners and therefore physically strong, of good endurance and courageous. The initial intake of North East miners was around two thousand men and this would eventually grow to over a third of the best fighting men of the Division; all were volunteers. To cope with the large influx of new recruits a new Divisional depot was opened at Crystal Palace during mid September. Thomas was transferred to the Howe Battalion on the seventh as an Ordinary Seaman, service number KX/145.
The Marine Brigade had received two weeks field training and the older personnel replaced by new recruits when it was ordered to Dunkirk to oppose the threat to the port as the trenches raced to the sea. The Brigade embarked on the twenty-first.
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Once disembarked it was necessary for the Marine Brigade to be mobile over a wide area to keep the enemy in doubt as to its strength. Armoured cars of the RNAS were employed to assist in this as well as London motorbuses, the drivers being quickly enlisted into the Royal Marines at Chatham. The Portsmouth Battalion was ordered to Lille to cover the retreat of isolated detachments of the French army.
Towards the end of the month General Aston sustained injuries and the command of the Marine Brigade was passed to Colonel Archibald Paris who was subsequently promoted to the rank of Major-General. By the thirtieth the Germans were closing on Antwerp and bombarding the outer forts of the city. Two days later they broke through the outer line. Churchill personally arrived at Antwerp on the evening of October 2nd and agreed to support the defence of the city where morale was very low. General Paris was ordered to take the Marine Brigade to Antwerp the following day with the objective of delaying the fall of the city.
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 The Marine Brigade at Dunkirk
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