When WW1 began, the modest British Expeditionary Force (BEF) headed across the Channel to support its French allies on the Western Front. The German Kaiser ridiculed it as a ‘Contemptible Little Army’ but these ‘Old Contemptibles’ soon showed their mettle. At the Battle of Mons (23 August 1914), the Royal West Kents were among the first British infantry confronting the enemy and gave opposing German forces a badly bloodied nose. Come the Armistice there had been four years of attritional bloodshed with 880,000 British servicemen dead – 6 per cent of the UK’s adult male population.