The British Territorial Army of the Second World War was a far more disciplined force than both the Australian Imperial Force (aif) and the 2nd Maine of earlier conflicts. Whereas both the 2nd Maine and the aif displayed general patterns of protest throughout their respective wars (including, in each force, incidences of mass protest), the 50th and 51st Divisions of the British Army during the Second World War displayed a generally strict adherence to authority. Class differences and antagonisms in the British military during the 1930s and 1940s were certainly evident to the men of the rank and file, and, once again, those differences replicated the class differences of civil society; but a key difference was that those men of the rank and file rarely resorted to any form of direct action within that military environment. However, as will be seen, all men had their limits; and, much like their American and Australian counterparts, the rank and file of those Territorial Army divisions would not tolerate a gross breach in the military moral economy that they had nurtured and seen legitimized by familiar officers over several years of exhausting warfare. A small group of men from the 50th and 51st Divisions had their limits tested in September 1943.

The men of the 50th and 51st Divisions were drawn from a vast geographical area encompassing Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, and the Scottish Highlands. By the start of the Second World War, the units formed in these areas had established long and proud histories of service with the British Army. Following the Act of Union in 1707, men from the Highlands had served within the military forces of the British Crown; and by the end of the nineteenth century Highland regiments such as the Black Watch, the Seaforth Highlanders, and the Gordon Highlanders, among others, were regarded as among the army's elite. Battalions from those regiments made up the core of the 51st Division during the Second World War. Similar regiments from the region – such as Yorkshire's Green Howards and the East Yorkshire Regiment, and the Durham Light Infantry – also shared similar prestigious reputations upon which the 50th Division was built.