Allan Mallison: When the Wolds wagons rolled off to war

Now probably the smallest military museum in the country, commemorating possibly the shortest-lived corps in the history of the Army, is about to hold an unusual open day.

This Sunday the Wagoners’ (Special Reserve) Museum at Sledmere House near Driffield will be re-staging the wagon-driving tests that the pre-1914 reservists took to qualify for their annual bounty.

The “Wolds Wagoners” were a unique corps, the brainchild of Sir Mark Sykes, 6th baronet of Sledmere. In the reforms following the Army’s poor performance in the Boer War, an “Army Reserve” had been created as a holding organisation for regular reservists (former regulars who were still liable for recall) as a ready source of trained manpower for reinforcements and casualty replacements for the Army in the event of war.

To increase the number of reservists, however, a further category was instituted – the “Special Reserve” (SR) – comprising volunteers who were given six months’ basic training at regular rates of pay and then released to their former civilian occupations. The SR replaced the old Militia, which could not be compelled to serve overseas.

Sir Mark, whose family had farmed the Wolds for a century and a half, had served in South Africa with the Green Howards, and was convinced that in a future European war the Army Service Corps (ASC) would need more wagon drivers, military transport being still mainly horse-drawn.

And since the type of wagon the ASC used was the pole-hitch rather than the shaft, which by the early 1900s was found mainly in the Wolds, he proposed to the War Office that the agricultural workers of East Yorkshire be signed up as reservist drivers, but excepted from military training since that might discourage farmers from releasing them, or indeed the farmworkers from volunteering. Initially the War Office was sceptical, but Sykes went ahead anyway, unofficially mustering drivers at his own expense, giving them the grades of “Wagoner”, “Foreman” and “Roadmaster” and designing a brass and enamel lapel badge showing a bridled horse’s head encircled by “Wagoners Special Reserve”, and a coloured-ribbon button-hole for their waistcoats in lieu of uniform.

He then invited a senior officer of the War Office’s transport department to come to Sledmere to observe the driving tests. Duly impressed, the officer recommended incorporating the wagoners into the ASC SR, and formal attestation began in February 1913, the War Office taking over the annual bounty payments — a sovereign for a wagoner, two for a foreman and four for a roadmaster.

The drivers called it “the silly quid” since it seemed so easy to earn – a timed run around a figure-of-eight obstacle course at the annual agricultural show at Sledmere, the horses driven postilion style (the driver astride), with additional competitions dismantling and reassembling wheels and axles, and loading and unloading 50lb sacks against the clock.

By the summer of 1914, there were 1,127 Wagoners, including farriers and harness makers — a considerable reinforcement for the ASC in the event of war. It was an exceptionally early harvest that year, and on August 5, the day after war was declared, many wagoners were handed their mobilisation papers in the fields. Wagoner Bill Maltby recalled how “it was in the middle of corn harvest when the postman turned up with the letter. I went home, got something to eat and got changed, and rode straight over to Sledmere”.

The orders were to report to the ASC’s northern depot in Bradford, and by 8pm that day more than 800 wagoners had arrived. Here they assumed army rank, drew uniform, and had hasty lessons on the rifle. A fortnight later most of them were sailing for France. And that was the end of the Wolds Wagoners as such; as planned, they were absorbed into the ASC as individual reinforcements. They were meant to be “Third Line” transport, operating from railheads away from the fighting but inevitably in the confusion of the retreat from Mons some wagoners found themselves in action.

Later in the war, their term of service spent, many volunteered to re-enlist, some with the infantry. Four wagoners were awarded the Military Medal; many did not return. Their founder, Sir Mark, on his return from service in the Middle East, designed a remarkable monument to the Wagoners, a “Trajan’s column” depicting the story of their mobilisation and service. So graphic were the depictions of German outrages in Belgium that in the 1930s the Nazi ambassador in London, von Ribbentrop, demanded they be removed, backed by an Appeasement-minded Foreign Office. Sir Mark’s son, the 7th baronet, refused, and the memorial still stands proud in Sledmere today.

The last wagoner died in 1993, but there remains a strong association of wagoners’ families in the Wolds and the tiny museum in the stable yard at Sledmere House is much cherished. The open day will include demonstrations of wagoner skills, with an original 1914 ASC GS (General Service) wagon, and the band of 150 (Yorkshire) Transport Regiment, Royal Logistic Corps (Volunteers), will play. The quick march of the old ASC (now a part of the RLC) was, appropriately enough, “Wait for the Wagon”.