Reflections on the Great War
Good morning good morning
The General said
As the troops marched past on their way to the line
But the men that he greeted are now mostly dead
And we’re cursing his staff as incompetent swine
He’s a cheery old card grunted Harry to Jack
As they trudged up to Arras with rifle and pack
But he’d done for’em both with his plan of attack
Every night at 8pm in a small Belgium town, the police stop traffic passing under a gateway. A member of the local fire brigade, in dress uniform, marches out with a bugle and blows ‘Last Post’. Old men quietly come to attention and then there is silence; the assembled stand alone with their thoughts. I have stood there many times with a lump in my throat & seen even the boldest reduced to tears.
The town is Ypres and the gateway is the Menin Gate. Through it passed Allied soldiers on their way into ‘Wipers Salient’. The Gate is inscribed with the names of 54,896 Allied soldiers who died – but this is not the entire casualty list – the names are merely the dead whose bodies were never found. The total losses were much more horrendous. A couple of miles up the road, the armies of Britain and our allies stood for 4 years; they stood and held their ground.
The received wisdom on the conflict is one of lions led by donkeys & chateau generalship. Lines of Tommies mowed down and left hanging on the wire while their commanding officers passed the port. . It is the war that gave war a bad name. A British officer corps bereft of ideas and constantly outwitted by their more professional German foes,
“Two up, bags of smoke, last one deads a sissy”
It seems to represent the total nadir of any 'art' of war there might be, while the war memorials in every town or village stand as a permanent reminder of the horrific human cost.
However, a more balanced and objective study of the British Expeditionary Force’s (BEF) tactics gives a different conclusion. The war represents a key turning point between 'old' and 'new' methods of fighting. It was the first war in which all the new weaponry of the later nineteenth century was properly used in. The Great War was 'the first modern war' not because it saw extensive use of trenches (a technology well known to Julius Caesar), but because it used High Explosives. (Many commentators have stated that the American Civil War was in fact the first modern war – I do not believe this to be the case for reasons that I will cover in a future post) Whilst smokeless powder had been a factor in the Boer War at the turn of the Century, it is the massed use of artillery that sets World War I apart. It is estimated that 70% of all casualties were caused by artillery.
The dilemma that faced commanders on both sides was how to overcome defensive firepower. This was not just an Allied problem. In 1914 British soldiers armed with their SMLE No.3 rifles cut German units to shreds. The weight of fire that ‘The Old Contemptibles
’ were capable of putting down with a bolt action rifle, led German intelligence to vastly over-estimate the number of Vickers machine guns possessed by the British; and to name the failed attack The Slaughter of the Innocents.
A closer study shows that even by 14 July 1916, during the Battle of the Somme, tactical reform is evident. This reform was persistent and relentless, resulting in the war winning virtuosity in the summer of 1918. British infantry tactics developed at least as fast as the Germans did. The official manual issued in February 1917 has more than a passing resemblance to the current British Army manuals on the matter – Pamphlet 45 & Survive to Fight. The BEF pioneered the concepts of fire & manoeuvre as well as sniping/counter-sniping employed so successfully in Iraq.
The weapons employed by the infantry were superior the those of the Germans. The Lewis light machine gun (although referring to the Lewis as light is a oxymoron) provided support at section level & the Stokes Trench Motor is one of the truly classic weapons of the 20th Century. More importantly, in the tank, a weapon systems had at last been developed that could breech wire & defensive positions. Of greatest significance is the integration of artillery to provide infantry close support.
By the end of 1917 the Royal Artillery's combination of creeping barrages for close support, and accurate predicted fire for long range counter-battery work, gave their art of attack a major advantage over their opponents. In the spring of 1918 the British art of defence turned out to be woefully defective - but in August the offensive momentum was regained in such a way that the Germans could find no real answer.
This spoils the traditional view of 'butchery and bungling' of the first half of the war, and who think it is somehow 'spoiling the story' to report the many things that the British got right.
By way of illustration, in the Tyne Cot British Military Cemetery are the graves of 11,908 British & Commonwealth soldiers. Visible are the roofs of two former German blockhouses. Tyne Cot is so named by the men of the 50th Northumbrain Division. In 1916, a brigade attack failed to take the bunkers with huge casualties. A year later, 3rd Australian Division, utilising the BEF’s new tactics took both positions with only 2 platoon attacks.
Comments
What the Anglo-French armies lacked was not weapons, training, organization, bravery or even competant leadership; it was a lack of vision. Of course, the Germans were equally deficient in this.
There was, in the First World War, none of that vision at the top which sent an army to Spain in 1808, to Savannah in 1864, or to Guadalcanal in 1942. Gallipoli was a try for such vision and so, though erroneously placed, was the Salonika expedition - but never did such moves capture the imagination of the political or military leadership sufficiently to ensure their succeess.
There is a sense of tragic inevitibility in the First World War; as if it had to be got trough precisely as it turned out, for some reason only known to Providence.
Posted by: Mark Noonan | November 22, 2003 8:48 PM