Royal School of Military Engineering

The Royal School of Military Engineering (RSME) Group provides a wide range of training for the British Army and Defence. This includes; Combat Engineers, Carpenters, Chartered Engineers, Musicians, Band Masters, Sniffer Dogs, Veterinary Technicians, Ammunition Experts, Bomb Disposal Operators, and Counter Chemical Warfare experts, as well as Command and Leadership.

The Peninsular War (1808–14) revealed deficiencies in the training and knowledge of officers and men in the conduct of siege operations and bridging. During this war low ranking Royal Engineers officers carried out large scale operations. They had under their command working parties of two or three battalions of infantry, two or three thousand men, who knew nothing in the art of siegeworks. Royal Engineers officers had to demonstrate the simplest tasks to the soldiers often while under enemy fire. Several officers were lost and could not be replaced and a better system of training for siege operations was required. The need for a school was highlighted by problems experienced during Wellington's Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo in January 1812 and the Siege of Badajoz in March 1812.

On 23 April 1812 an establishment was authorised, by Royal Warrant, to teach "Sapping, Mining, and other Military Fieldwork's" to the junior officers of the Corps of Royal Engineers and the Corps of Royal Military Artificers, Sappers and Miners.

Captain Charles Pasley who had been pressing for such an establishment since 1809 was selected as the first Director with the rank of major and was sent to Woolwich.

In 1815 Pasley recommended that the Royal Sappers and Miners Training Depot at Woolwich be closed, to concentrate all training at Chatham which was, at that time, a strongly fortified naval town. The town was surrounded by batteries, bastions and ditches designed to be defended by 7,000 men and so provided excellent areas for training in siege operations. (Records show that there had been a military base on the high ground above Chatham built to defend Chatham Dockyard since at least 1708.) But that was not achieved until 1850 when the training Depot was moved to Brompton Barracks, Chatham. The move was made possible by the completion of the North Kent Line, which facilitated a fast transport link into London. The Headquarters of the Royal Engineers, also based in Woolwich, was not moved to Chatham until 1856.

The first courses at the Royal Engineers Establishment were done on an all ranks basis with the greatest regard to economy. To reduce staff the NCOs and officers were responsible for instructing and examining the soldiers. If the men could not read or write they were taught to do so and those that could read and write were taught to draw and interpret simple plans. The Royal Engineers Establishment quickly became the centre of excellence for all fieldworks and bridging. Pasley was keen to confirm his teaching and regular exercises were held as demonstrations or as experiments to improve the techniques and teaching of the Establishment. Public demonstrations of siege operations took place at Chatham from 1833.

In 1869 the title of the Royal Engineers Establishment was changed to "The School of Military Engineering" (SME) as evidence of its status, not only as the font of engineer doctrine and training for the British Army, but also as the leading scientific military school in Europe.

At the start of World War I the Royal Engineer battalions based at Chatham were deployed to defend the local area. Immediately recruits started to arrive - in the first six weeks of the war 15,000 men arrived. A hundred recruits per day had been expected to arrive but they arrived at a rate of two hundred rising to a peak of nine hundred per day. The Depot coped so well with this influx that on 3 October 1914, the King and Queen paid a private visit to the Corps, 12,001 all ranks were on parade in uniform on the Great Lines.