Did British soldiers in WWI on the Western Front get paid in foreign currency?
Upvote:12
British Army rates of pay at the beginning of the First World War were set out in War Office Instruction 166 (1914). You can see the figures on the Long, Long Trail website.
Some General Regulations and Orders (GRO's) for the army at that time are informative. GRO 1887 and GRO 2240 which limited the amount of advance pay an officer could withdraw from a field cashier always specify the amount in francs (the limits were 200 francs for officers of Field Grade [colonel, lieutenant colonel, major, and captains holding an adjutant's appointment] and 125 francs for officers below field grade - provided that their agents had enough funds to match the advance).
My Gt-grandfather served as an officer in the Highland Light Infantry (HLI). His Advance pay book for 1915-16 only shows amounts in francs.
I've also seen a number of pay books showing that Privates serving with the 2nd Battalion HLI posted to the front at Guincy in 1916 were being paid in French Francs in 1916.
The Birmingham Pals Living History Association website states that the men were paid in French Francs. I've also come across a number of mentions of men being paid in Francs in memoirs and history from the first world war, for example the letters of Lionel Tennyson mentioned in The Final Over: The Cricketers of Summer 1914.
There are other cultural references from the period that record soldiers being paid in Francs. The following poem was written by Private J.J Jackson, 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards, while convalescing in Haigh Lawn Hospital, Cheshire in December 1916.
"We are but little Coldstreams meek
We only get five francs a week The
more we do the more we may
It makes no difference to our pay
Then to the trenches we do go
And carry sandbags to and fro
Bully and biscuits is the bill of fare
For there is no Hotel Cecil there..."
Any pay advanced to the soldiers in France would be deducted from their pay later. Soldiers also often arranged for a proportion of their pay to be sent home to relatives, which would limit the amount available to be advanced to them while serving in France.
I'll see if I can find copies of the GRO's somewhere online and add a link if I do.
More post
- 📝 Where and how did pinky promises / swear originate?
- 📝 Does anyone know what type of structure this is?
- 📝 How common are the following activities historically?
- 📝 How widespread was literacy in classical Greek in Europe during the medieval period?
- 📝 Which historians argue that WWII was caused by Fascism as a reaction to Communism?
- 📝 Was there any treaty during WWI and II with the world countries and Sir Henry Dunant's Red Cross to respect those with Red Cross?
- 📝 If the nazi is a far-right party, why is it socialist?
- 📝 Qin's use of the number six
- 📝 What is the age of Machu Picchu principal temple?
- 📝 Are there any ancient sources clearly testifying a frozen Tiber river in the year 398, 396, 271, and 177 BCE?
- 📝 Does the Great Revival and the Great Awakening refer to the same thing?
- 📝 What was the range of round shot on level ground?
- 📝 Which factors led to the different casualty ratio betwen British and German forces during the Battle of Normandy?
- 📝 Why is the leap day on February 29th?
- 📝 Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council: Listed by India from when to when?
- 📝 How did German racial laws affect people who weren't Jewish but one of their parents wasn't German?
- 📝 Was there a "European Balance of Power Strategy" for Anglo-American interests in between 1925 and 1935?
- 📝 Why was the Aeolipile not put to practical use in classical antiquity?
- 📝 Was the M4 Sherman used frequently in artillery capacity?
- 📝 Why did the USSR support the PRC entry into the UN?
- 📝 Did S. Korea choose petroleum refining as part of WW2 reconstruction?
- 📝 How was Napoleon able to take power from the Republic
- 📝 Why didn't the Ottoman Empire remain neutral in WW1?
- 📝 Are there any accounts of everyday life during the Black Death?
- 📝 How was debt handled in the change over from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian?
- 📝 Are former British colonies better off now compared to other colonies and why
- 📝 How could someone avoid US military service in the early 1950's?
- 📝 Was the Kara-Khanid Khanate founded by Karluks or Uyghurs?
- 📝 How could wells back in the day work?
- 📝 What was the impetus for some African nations to participate in the slave trade?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Did British soldiers in WWI on the Western Front get paid in foreign currency?
- 📝 How much did J. Robert Oppenheimer get paid while overseeing the Manhattan Project?
- 📝 How did the British Army unit size and structure in WWI change from 1915 to 1918?
- 📝 How long did Adolf Hitler serve on the front lines as an infantryman in WWI before becoming a courier?
- 📝 What did the end of the western front look like at the Swiss Border?
- 📝 How did melee soldiers in the front rank of a formation fight without getting tired?
- 📝 What capabilities did Southern soldiers in the American Civil War have to get news about the North?
- 📝 How did soldiers in WWI who wore jackboots keep the boots from being sucked off in the mud?
- 📝 Why did the British scuttle the u-boats surrendered after WWII?
- 📝 Did Russian winter seriously contribute to German defeat on the Eastern Front in WWII?
- 📝 Why did the Western Roman Empire collapse but not the Eastern Roman Empire?
- 📝 Where did Hitler get the funds to invest in economic development programs such as the autobahn when the German economy was in a depression?
- 📝 Why did the German army execute so few soldiers in World War I compared to most other armies?
- 📝 Did the end of the British Raj in India create an economic loss for Britain?
- 📝 Did Muslim states hire Western European knights as mercenaries before the Crusades?
- 📝 Did any British working class men have the vote before 1918?
- 📝 Why did the Soviet Union get 3 seats in the UN?
- 📝 Why did Peter the Great name Saint Petersburg, Russia with a foreign styled name?
- 📝 Why did the Dutch, French & British acquire minor colonies in South America?
- 📝 Why did Mozambique join the British Commonwealth?
- 📝 What role did the Eastern Roman Empire play in the fall of the Western Roman Empire?
- 📝 How did the British Navy pass orders to its fleet before radio?
- 📝 Why did the UK allow India to be a republic rather than a democratic parliament under the British Monarch?
- 📝 Why did the British not introduce the sterling in India?
- 📝 Why was the Western Front so static in World War I?
- 📝 How did Alexander III of Macedon get the title "the Great"?
- 📝 Why did some people need to pay a bond in the 1700s in order to get married?
- 📝 How long did it take to get news of the sighting of the Spanish Armada from Land’s End to London?
- 📝 When did the acceptance of diversity become such an important social goal in Western countries?
- 📝 When did the Soviets get the ability to drop a nuclear bomb on the United States?