Recruitment WW100

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6 from volunteering to conscription
From So It Looks To Me (London,1952) the autobiography of SirWilliam Darling
6
O n the outbreak of war,William Darling,a future Lord Provost of
Edinburgh,expressed an attitude that was shared by many young
Scotsmen,declaring ‘I must somehow,get into uniform’.
Reflecting on the mood of the country he wrote:
What an urgency there was in these days! How eager men were to
enlist!Was it that they were bored with their civil occupations or was
it because there had not been any opportunity since 1900 to take part
in a war? The excitement was general and it possessed me.
He joined Kitchener’s newArmy,initially serving as a Company
Quartermaster Sergeant with the 9th BlackWatch.Darling was
an educated man and received rapid promotion on account of his
background.Like many he held rather romantic ideals of war and what
military service entailed,imagining himself ‘a Sir Galahad in the field of
battle’.He would soon become familiar with the hard work,training and
physical exertion that was the life of a new soldier.
I recall my circumstances as a new soldier: we had no weapons of war.
We had,at this stage,no had only an ardent willingness to train
for battle,and to get into it with the least possible through the long
t h e l u r e o f w a r :
“ i mu s t s om e h ow ,
g e t i n t o u n i f o r m ”