The other thing regarding the shell scandal that Christmas has not mentioned of course is the fact that Lord Northcliffe owner of both The Times and the Daily Mail went after and singled out Kitchener with such vigour was because he held Kitchener directly responsible for the death of his nephew. Ultimately Northcliffe was told to back off by the War Cabinet. In all this mud-slinging Northcliffe was aided and abetted by General French, commander of the BEF who was involved in his own private pissing contest with Kitchener, with the end result that the problems being faced were totally misrepresented to the public by the press (Same thing was done by the Press with regard to WMD and Iraq in 2002 and 2003) - the problem in 1915 was not that the army did not have enough shells, the problem was that the army did not have enough of the right type of shell for offensive operations.

If you have an army establishment of 247,000 regulars and 145,000 reserves then you obviously do not have munitions manufacturers churning out munitions for a force five times that size (Ultimately eight times that size) - something our current government has chosen to conveniently forget, and they too will be caught out in the same way - such facilities and capabilities have to be built from scratch and that takes time, it was therefore perfectly logical and reasonable that a separate Government department was set up to look after this problem - Ministry of Munitions - It remained active from 25th May 1915 to the 21st March 1921.

So let's see, in 1914 a tiny armed force was sent to France, where they did not select what battles they had to fight as the initiative lay with the much larger German armies who were attacking them. Quite contrary to what most "experts" at the time believed, that tiny armed force that consisted of 80,000 men, very skillfully managed to delay the advance of the Germans and remain intact as a fighting force much in the same way that Wellington kept his tiny force alive in Portugal and Spain as a force in being. During those early encounters in Belgium and France the weaknesses in the nature of Britain's field artillery were not made evident as at the time they were exactly what was needed to fight a series of highly mobile rearguard actions in retreat. The French contribution to the First Battle of the Marne, where the Schlieffen Plan was defeated, completely dwarfed the British (39 French Divisions to 6 British) so it was not until 1915, when the British went over onto the offensive that anything was seen to be wrong. By 1916 there was no shortage of shells and no shortage of guns for the now much expanded British Army, there were problems with quality control and fuses but they were quickly identified and rectified. The Battles of the Somme and Verdun although costly ended all hope the Germans ever had of achieving a victory on the Western Front.

Fast forward to March 1918 and you see how "on-top-of-things" the Ministry of Munitions had become:

21st March 1918 to 18th July 1918 - German Spring Offensive:
The Germans last gasp attempt in the West, the British lost 1,300 artillery pieces and 200 tanks - and didn't even notice the loss as they were all replaced within a month without having to reduce the level of reserves held.

That capability then enabled the launch of what is known as "The 100 Days Offensive" by British, Belgian, American and French troops that finally ended the fighting on the western front. It started on the 8th August 1918, only 21 days after the end of the largest German offensive of the war.