Southern Army was a home service formation of the

British Army during the First World War The British Army during the First World War fought the largest and most costly war in its long history. Unlike the French and German Armies, the British Army was made up exclusively of volunteers—as opposed to conscripts—at the beginnin ...

, responsible for the defence of South-East England, including both sides of the

Thames Estuary The Thames Estuary is where the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea, in the south-east of Great Britain. Limits An estuary can be defined according to different criteria (e.g. tidal, geographical, navigational or in terms of salini ...

. It was formed on 11 April 1916 under the command of Sir Arthur Paget, with headquarters at

Brentwood, Essex Brentwood is a town in the Borough of Brentwood, in the county of Essex in the East of England. It is in the London commuter belt, situated 20 miles (30 km) east-north-east of Charing Cross and close by the M25 motorway. In 2017, the popula ...

.The British Armies of 1914-1918 at the Long, Long Trail
Accessed 7 June 2017.Becke, Pt 4, p. 287. The Army was composed of

2nd Cyclist Division The 4th Mounted Division was a short-lived Yeomanry Division of the British Army active during World War I. It was formed on 20 March 1916, converted to 2nd Cyclist Division in July 1916 and broken up on 16 November 1916. It remained in England ...

65th (2nd Lowland) Division The 65th (2nd Lowland) Division of the British Army was a second-line Territorial Force division, formed in 1914, which served on home defence duties during the First World War. The division was formed as a duplicate of the 52nd (Lowland) Divisi ...

66th (2nd East Lancashire) Division The 66th (2nd East Lancashire) Division was an infantry division of the British Army, part of the Territorial Force, which saw service in the trenches of the Western Front, during the later years of the Great War and was disbanded after the w ...

67th (2nd Home Counties) Division The 2nd Home Counties Division was a 2nd Line Territorial Force division of the British Army in World War I. The division was formed as a duplicate of the 44th (Home Counties) Division in November 1914. As the name suggests, the division recruit ...

and six provisional brigades ( 1st,

2nd A second is the base unit of time in the International System of Units (SI). Second, Seconds or 2nd may also refer to: Mathematics * 2 (number), as an ordinal (also written as ''2nd'' or ''2d'') * Second of arc, an angular measurement unit ...

7th 7 (seven) is the natural number following 6 and preceding 8. It is the only prime number preceding a cube (algebra), cube. As an early prime number in the series of positive integers, the number seven has greatly symbolic associations in religion ...

8th 8 (eight) is the natural number following 7 and preceding 9. In mathematics 8 is: * a composite number, its proper divisors being , , and . It is twice 4 or four times 2. * a power of two, being 2 (two cubed), and is the first number of t ...

9th 9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding . Evolution of the Arabic digit In the beginning, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra and ...

and

10th 10 (ten) is the even natural number following 9 and preceding 11. Ten is the base of the decimal numeral system, by far the most common system of denoting numbers in both spoken and written language. It is the first double-digit number. The rea ...

), with

1st Mounted Division The 1st Mounted Division was a Yeomanry Division of the British Army active during World War I. It was formed in August 1914 for the home defence of the United Kingdom from four existing mounted brigades of the Territorial Force, each of three ...

attached for training purposes. 66th (2nd East Lancashire) Division was established around

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...

. Its training was disrupted by the need to provide large drafts of reinforcements to the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front. However, it finally received embarkation orders in February 1917 and left for France. 71st Division moved into

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

in early March 1917 and concentrated at Colchester where it came under command of Southern Army. It took over responsibility for the defence of the East Coast from

Mersea Island Mersea Island is an island in Essex, England, in the Blackwater and Colne estuaries to the south-east of Colchester. Its name comes from the Old English word ''meresig'', meaning "island of the pool" and thus is tautological. The island is s ...

Walton-on-the-Naze Walton-on-the-Naze is a seaside town on the North Sea coast and (as Walton le Soken) a former civil parish, now in the parish of Frinton and Walton, in the Tendring district in Essex, England. It is north of Clacton and south of the port of Ha ...

.Becke, Pt 2b, pp. 101–5. Southern Army was disbanded on 16 February 1918.

Notes

References

Chris Baker, ''The Long, Long Trail''
* Maj A.F. Becke,''History of the Great War: Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 2b: The 2nd-Line Territorial Force Divisions (57th–69th), with the Home-Service Divisions (71st–73rd) and 74th and 75th Divisions,'' London: HM Stationery Office, 1937/Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2007, . * Maj A.F. Becke,''History of the Great War: Order of Battle of Divisions, Part 4: The Army Council, GHQs, Armies, and Corps 1914–1918'', London: HM Stationery Office, 1944/Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2007, . * K. Mitchinson, ''Defending Albion: Britain's Home Army 1908-1919'' (2005

Field armies of the United Kingdom in World War I Military units and formations established in 1916 Military units and formations disestablished in 1918 {{UK-mil-unit-stub