CHAPTER 5

Military Considerations, Reconnaissance

Attention now has to be paid to the nature of war. The armed forces of Britain once committed to war by Parliament are required to win the conflict. Nothing can be more misguided than to ignore this fundamental obligation that the military takes on when war arrives. The utter defeat of the enemy using all the resources the state makes available is the task. Nothing else will do, there are no prizes at all for coming second. When making this position clear there must be acceptance that the term winning includes participation as a partner in a winning alliance. Victory does not always need to be achieved on the basis of single nation combat, although that is a situation with which the British forces are not unfamiliar. In this comment I have assumed for the sake of charity that writers and historians were too polite to frighten their readers with the hard fact that military adventure is about winning, no more, no less. Military writers probably do not wish to look foolish by stating what to them is too obvious to require repetition. Civilian and academic writers seem reticent, avoiding this essential requirement of a military dimension to events. Unable maybe to confront their own consciences and realise that although they must be free to criticise, it was not they who faced demanding and dangerous decisions, day in day out, twenty-four hours a day for weeks on end. Decisions that the commanders knew would cause the deaths of many, including their friends. Several senior British officers, and the Prime Minister Asquith as well, had to come to terms with the death of one of their sons as part of the toll of casualties.

Historically speaking wars have the tendency to provide surprises for the participants. The eponymous Captain Jenkins must have been surprised to find the nation at war over his amputated ear. (Statements of the blindingly obvious are the admitted mark of a writer who is a desperate beginner.) Even for those who have made some plans and preparations, events during a period of conflict have a nasty trick of producing an unexpected sequence of events or requirements. The Government of Britain under Mr Asquith was profoundly shocked by the sequence of events. The whole fabric of their defence and foreign policies was destroyed by the escalation of event from a nasty spat in the Balkans into a full blown European war, all in a few weeks.

Essentially the issue is summed up in the previously quoted dictum, ‘We make war as we must, not as we would’. Both Wellington and Kitchener are credited with this aphorism. General von Clausewitz made the second point of note when he reminded the German General Staff that, ‘No plan survives the first contact with the enemy’; one of the certainties of war, is that it is uncertain; another is that casualties will be suffered. Two or more parties, nations or alliances are engaged in armed conflict with the specific objective of imposing a particular policy, ideology or practice on another, or defending themselves from such an imposition. One party or the other has to be victorious; each must therefore create conditions that will put their enemy at a disadvantage of such severity that defeat must inevitably follow.

In retrospect the impression given by contemporary accounts of the incidents of the day in Sarejvo were not recognised as a moment of significance, the spark that would ignite the European powder keg. Austria/Hungary could have another local dispute with the Serbians, though that would be nothing new. Then Willie handed over the ‘so called’ blank cheque to the Austrians and the fat was in the fire. Effectively Germany agreed to underwrite any risk that the Austrians took to seek satisfaction for their grievances following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, however unreasonable the demand. Suddenly after a state funeral, Europe was looking into the abyss of war. Russia went for partial mobilisation as a ‘precaution’, Germany let Russia get ahead by a few hours, before putting the full mobilisation plan of German forces into effect. France joined the rush and Britain sent her fleet to its war station at Scapa Flow. The fleet had actually got together for one of its periodic parties, alternatively known as a review. Winston Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty) was then able to get ahead of the game by telling the admirals to put the party hats and fancy dress back in the locker and prepare for war. The army left for France and the Foreign Office rolled up the maps and put the lights out, on the instructions of Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary.

Mobilisation is the arrangement of the armed forces of a nation to institute a plan of attack or resist such an incursion. This means in very simple terms calling on all the trained reserves of manpower to supplement the existing embodied force, providing all the equipment needed to sustain the planned operation and moving the formed units to their war stations; all to be done in a few days. In the case of Germany there was a complicated plan using the national railway system on a precise timetable to move the army to the prearranged positions preparatory to opening the offensive against France, Belgium and Russia. The essential to grasp at this point is that although mobilisation is serious, it is not of itself, war. War requires further steps, a declaration, serious shooting, which could be at sea, and/or invasion of territory to cite a few. In theory at least, two opposing mobilised armies could face each other for years without firing a shot.

In the 1870/71 Franco Prussian War, one contributing factor in the French defeat was poor supply arrangements. The lesson was not lost on the military establishment of either nation as well as others who observed the events. The Germans further refined their supply arrangement and built large parts of their railway system specifically to supply and transport their army at war in Europe. The French made vast improvements to their supply arrangements as well. Both of these nations were clearly anticipating the possibility of a conflict to come. This they could see would be fought on the old battleground of northern Europe, using short and secure lines of communication. Armies organised for war on this basis have the luxury of planning their operations on a generous scale of supplies. This is in marked contrast to those armies operating with extended supply lines over territory with only minimal road and rail facilities and sometimes dependent on supplies travelling by ship as well; the common condition under which the British Army served with its worldwide commitments.

Supplies, the perennial dilemma, for the British Army; successive governments of Britain and their ‘bean counters’ at the Treasury have always had difficulty understanding the use of equipment and supplies in times of war. It seems inconceivable that after so many conflicts in all four corners of the globe that the British Army always ends up with inadequate equipment and supplies. Soldiers are just cannon fodder if they cannot use their weapons. It took just twelve weeks of war in 1914 to reduce the artillery to an allocation of four rounds per gun, per day. Soldiers on active service also need every piece of their kit in reserve: socks, towels, soap, shirts, boots, etc. all have to be available on demand, not next week when the Pickford’s van comes by. To say nothing of the daily demand for ammunition, food, and in 1914–18, fodder for the numerous animals, all forming part of the army’s establishment. Equipment scales as discussed earlier reflect the defence policies set for the army prior to the conflict. The Imperial Police role required of the British Army was not an ideal preparation for a continental European war. By way of example consider for a moment the criticism made that British infantry battalions began the 1914 war, established for only two of the Vickers. 303 Medium Machine Guns (MMGs). Both the British and German armies nominally deployed two guns per battalion. The German Army in 1914 concentrated its MMGs in a company of eight weapons per regiment of four battalions (the equivalent of a brigade in the organisation of the British Army). These weapons, introduced from 1908, were some of the first battle worthy automatic weapons available for infantry use. This was a weapon for defence, as explained below. The man portable light machine gun, the Lewis, was not to become available for general use by infantry battalions until 1916.

The MMG itself is not easily moved; manhandling over any significant distance required the gun to be broken down into three loads. The barrel/water jacket and breech mechanism weighing about 45Ib (20kg) can be carried by one soldier. The mounting tripod, weighing about 30Ib (13.5kg), carried by a second man and the one gallon cans of water necessary to provide cooling for the barrel during firing, hoses and ready use ammunition by a third. Only for a short distance is this practicable. Then of course the gun has to be reassembled, coupled to its cooling water cans, loaded, aimed and firing commenced. All whilst the enemy sits and watches, in all probability the said audience will bring down a steady drizzle of rifle fire, not applause. For the more remote corners of the imperial estate two weapons of this description were valuable additions to the offensive capacity of the battalions. More, and the supply overload was probably too great. The ‘Home Army’ could have accepted a more liberal scale of equipment. That would have financial implications, for which political will was needed.

The cyclical rate of fire of the Vickers was 500 rounds per minute. Normal rate of fire was 250 rounds (one belt) per minute. Two such weapons could require a thousand rounds a minute, for a continuous fire tasks. Every last round of which has to be brought to the firing position, by somebody, from somewhere at the rear. Not an easy task in a benighted corner of the Hindu Kush. When the supply line is well served by transport facilities and good roads such ammunition consumption can be contemplated. If though the supply train depends on bullock carts, mules and pack horses over rocky, muddy tracks, which is also bringing up rations, replacement boots and spare weapons, different assessments are made.

Supplies (now known as logistics) were to become a recurrent nightmare for the infantry soldier of the 1914—18 conflict. The only way front line soldiers could be supplied was by the unrecognised efforts of working parties, usually found from the battalions in reserve who had just completed a stint in the line. It was they who carried food and supplies forward through the trench system at night to their fellow soldiers. This task done against a background of mortar and machine gun activity, artillery fire put down to disturb planned reliefs and re-supply efforts and the sheer misery of carrying forty or fifty pounds of supplies in sandbags, through mud, in the dark, filth and disorder created by trench warfare. This was the only way this essential task could be undertaken.

The armies mobilised and moved to the start lines, the world held its breath but not for long, the Napoleonic dictum ‘march divided fight united’ was adapted by the complicated plans of the German General Staff’s interpretation of Schlieffen’s master plan. Developed as a plan to make the most of the element of surprise by a march through neutral Belgium and the speed with which this initial phase would be achieved: would that the reality of events as they were accomplished were as straightforward as the concept. Concentration was the second essential ingredient of the plan after surprise. In this scheme for German success, the weight of the action would be on the right of their advance. Allowing the German force to march through Belgium across northern France, then swing to the west of Paris and trap the French Armies between this advance and a second advancing German force, deployed originally as a blocking force, to defeat a French advance through Alsace and Lorraine; the classic hammer and anvil offensive. This plan needed the German force in the north to be successful quickly, and the blocking force not only containing but also forcing the French advance through Alsace into retreat. This created two competing requirements for the German Army, the concentration of fighting resources and supplies. The German plan hoped to make a virtue out of this situation and incorporated the idea of a ‘revolving door’ into the scheme. Essentially this would mean the French using too many resources in the east, Alsace and Lorraine, allowing German efforts to the north in Belgium to gain the benefits of surprise and speed. Neat thinking but did the good Field Marshal Schlieffen have a word with the Belgian and French generals to explain the part they were expected to play? I think not. Re-enter our friend Murphy.

The French Army stayed a few kilometres west of their border with Germany during the early days of August 1914. The Austrians had already had a poke at the Serbians and come away with a bloody nose. The Russians put their team together faster than anticipated and the Germans swept into Belgium and Northern France. The BEF (British Expeditionary Force) made its way, by cross channel ferry, to the northern flank of the Allied line and found itself once again on the familiar territory over which many of its previous campaigns had been fought by regimental ancestors. The Belgian Army, outnumbered, fought tenaciously, with the BEF on its eastern (right) flank retreating towards Ypres and the channel coast, fighting all the way. The German Army, high on early success, was delayed and deflected from the plan brought by Willie from Herr Schiefflen as a consequence of the combined efforts of these two forces and a shortage of supplies. The French despatched their army into the ceded territories of Alsace/Lorraine to implement Plan XVII, their campaign plan, and were severely mauled. Falling back towards Paris and the River Marne and exposing the British right flank to danger.

Fortunately the deflection of the German advance and the decision of the German commander, von Kluge, to follow a line of advance east of Paris exposed the flank of his own forces and the Governor of Paris, a perceptive old soldier, General Gallieni, scraped together a force of sufficient size and sent much of it in a fleet of Parisian taxis, with their meters running, to take advantage of this mistake, saved the day and prevented a repetition of 1871. This forced the German to battle on Allied terms in the first Battle of the Marne.

The German commander, General Helmuth von Moltke (the younger), was dismissed and replaced by General Erich von Falkenhayn, the Minister of War, on 14 September, six weeks only after the outbreak of this unnecessary war. Von Moltke was the nephew of the victorious Prussian commander of the same name in the 1871 ‘set to’ against France, hence ‘the younger’.

The German High Command now faced a situation for which it was unprepared. The Western Allies were undefeated and showing serious signs of continuing the fighting. In the east the Austrians had had a few inconclusive scraps with the opposition, the Russians remaining unbeaten. Willie ought to have been appalled; there was no Plan B. This was war on two fronts, plus a full-scale naval blockade by the Royal Navy. The late Otto, Prince Bismarck was vindicated, to the last detail. The British Army had been launched on a European war for which it had not been organised, trained or equipped in recent times, now it had to make the best of the situation to provide the successful outcome required by the political leadership. One major issue for any small army that has to undertake a large scale operation is that it is a one shot campaign. Unless there is the desired outcome in the first engagements there are few if any reserves that the army can use to mount repeat actions and offensives against the enemy, so it was for Britain. The campaign was to be over by Christmas, claimed popular sentiment; the commanders knew they could not sustain a long campaign with the existing forces. Few reserves either of men or equipment were available to the field army. The planning and financing of the pre-war force did not match the circumstances faced by commanders and the army when war was thrust upon them. As the poet observed of another military adventure, ‘Someone had blundered.’

The French Army went to war in 1914 with more than fifty divisions; the Germans, eighty in the west, and more deployed on the Eastern Front. The British Army deployed five infantry divisions and one cavalry division in August 1914. If every depot/cadre battalion in Britain and Ireland had been incorporated into war establishment divisions the total would still only have been seven divisions of infantry and at most three of cavalry. The recall of every battalion from its overseas station would not have doubled the size of the available force and time was not on the side of such a re-deployment.

There is also the issue of practicality. In addition to the infantry battalions of a division, there are the troops who form the divisional regiment of Artillery, another of Engineers, Service and Ordnance units as well as medical and veterinary services and other support services such as pioneers and military police. The problem is not confined to the available weapons and manpower. There is the need for transport and tents, horses and harness, rations and fodder, and almost anything else you can think of in quantities not previously imagined, because the army will need it. None of which had been incorporated into the provisions of the military or their political masters on a scale that matched the needs of the war that broke out in August 1914.

Above all there is an overwhelming need for manpower, trained, experienced, fit and available. The ex-warrant officer urgently needed for training new recruits who is farming in New Zealand is no use at all in the short term. The same goes for every other rank, including generals.

A division at war establishment in 1914 totalled around 16,500 men, of whom the fighting infantry totalled 7,800 in round figures. (There will always be a shortfall through sickness, injury, training etc.) To this must be added the gunners and engineers who are also classed as ‘combatant arms’. Put in simple terms, every fighting soldier needs the support of one other on the divisional strength to undertake his role effectively. That ratio takes no account of the troops who form the line of communications, supply depots, hospitals, railway operating units, pay and record units, mobile bakeries, laundries, hygiene units and so on. Total war has an insatiable demand for men, money and material. When the first movements of the 1914 campaign failed to produce a winner in the enclosure to grandstand the crowd, the alternatives became fewer and less attractive as time passed, whilst the demands increased on an exponential scale. Virtually all of the enthusiastic volunteers of 1914/15 had to be trained from scratch in every aspect of military affairs, whatever the branch of the army to which they were assigned.

Once the first phase of the war was completed the relative military positions could be evaluated. The Germans had not achieved their objective and could from one standpoint be said to be in the least satisfactory situation with war on two fronts. On the other hand the German Army had invaded and now occupied virtually all of Belgium and a significant slice of Northern France. Additionally with her ally Austria/Hungary, Germany had dealt the Russians a thoroughly good beating on the Eastern Front; in all for the Germans a negotiating position of some strength. Their army despite losses, was confident and aggressively positioned to pursue campaigns that could deliver Willie the victory he so desired. The French Army had lost badly in the opening moves and battles of the war in Alsace and Lorraine, over 300,000 casualties, including 20% of the regular officers, in the first few weeks of the conflict. It was though in a position to draw upon reserves of colonial troops and was also fighting on home ground.

The British Army was seriously depleted, digging into all its reserves, bringing battalions from overseas postings, mobilising portions of the Indian Army to fight in Europe and looking to the Territorial Forces for replacements of all ranks, before committing the Territorial units as formed battalions and divisions. The Minister of War (Kitchener) is reported to have had a low opinion of the volunteer Territorial Forces and had to be persuaded by necessity and events to deploy the units in France from March 1915. A small number of Territorial battalions were deployed in the autumn of 1914 and some, mainly from the West Country, were sent as relief for the regular units in overseas postings now required for service in France. However, as in the past, when Britain fought a continental war, not one single acre of British ground had been conceded, the national integrity was intact; Britain, if it so wished, could walk away from the war and have no more to do with the land actions. That was a viable military option but politically untenable.

Almost by chance in the four years leading to the outbreak of war in 1914, the initiative was taken by a British general on the make, Major General Henry Wilson, later Field Marshal, by all accounts a schemer and Francophile, but on the evidence, a superb staff officer. With few resources and it seems even less authority, he prepared the brilliant plan used in 1914 to mobilise and deploy the BEF to its war position on the left flank of the French armies, thank heavens for the mavericks.

Criticism of the army’s preparation for a continental war needs to focus on the apparent lack of planning for the expansion of the army to meet the requirements of a continental war. The dilemma faced by both government and military planners was that to provide an army with a European defence dimension would require a two part force, one for the Empire and one for Europe. Nobody it seems was willing to grasp that nettle. Although the politicians were not making funds available for actual increases to the establishment, detaching six or eight bright younger officers in twelve month stints to prepare the blueprints for a rapid increase in strength was an essential, and low cost, responsibility the War Office failed to undertake. The governments of the ten years prior to the events of 1914 allowed the nation to sleep walk its way to Armageddon. The possible solution of up to sixteen British based divisions formed, trained and equipped for a war in Europe would have been too awful to contemplate. In particular this would mean the navy would have had to do without some of its big ships to help finance the army’s expansion. The navy though was the darling of the nation, whilst Thomas Atkins needed to kept in his place until, that is, there was ‘trouble in the wind’ and ‘the troopers on the tide’.

These defects meant that the enthusiasm of the volunteers of 1914 was degraded by the poor conditions they found waiting for them. Living in tents without uniforms or equipment under instruction from cadres of elderly reservists, the surprise is that their morale held together at all. Additionally no serious enquiry had been instituted to establish how national manufacturing and economic resources could be brought into action to equip and accommodate the expanded army. When this omission is added to the poor appreciation of the methods that would be used to fight a major European land war, the outline of the bleak conditions that Kitchener and the generals were to face in August 1914 begin to fall into place.

The commanders who faced the need to fight the war with Germany picked up the pieces with which they were presented and made war as best they could with the components available. The shortcomings with which they were faced were not of their making, the mistakes had been accumulating for three decades and more, Robertson, French, Haig, et al, are the names laid out in the history books for criticism, these were the fall guys who did their duty: to wage war, trust the fighting qualities of their armies and with their Allies win the war.

Odd that the critics are very strong on Allied, and in particular, British defects and failures but nip smartly round the need for comment on the eventual outcome; that the Allies, having recovered from the early reverses, were victorious. The Germans and Austrians who engineered events to achieve their own objectives were defeated, in both military and political terms. I will repeat that in case anyone missed it the first time; the Central Powers, whose responsibility it was for setting the whole miserable train of events going, then lost the war? Remember that inconvenient reality the next time a commentator spouts the received wisdom of waste and failure.

The issues for all the participant armies now reverted to the classic requirements of military doctrine; definition of the objective, concentration of effort, surprise, maintenance of the initiative, economy of resources, reinforcement of success. Easily said, but solving the issues of what to be done and how to focus the attention and minds of some very experienced soldiers and politicians as realism dawned and winter drew in on the Western Front; revealing through the fog of war an untidy placement of armies, ill equipped for the position in which they found themselves, dug into trenches as protection from artillery and machine gun fire; to say nothing of political cross fire of a different variety. A complicated debate that continues to this day.

The greatest enigma that occurs to me from my superficial amateur analysis of the events of the summer of 1914 is quite simply put. What on earth possessed Willie, the German High Command and the nation at large to initiate a strategy to which such colossal risks were associated? The price of failure was always going to be enormous, militarily, economically and politically. Yet ahead the German nation went. It makes the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ appear to be a well planned and brilliantly executed action. Was this war of 1914, ostensibly a war against France and Russia, in reality a means of drawing the real enemy, Britain, into a major European conflict? If it was, then the stakes were raised to stratospheric heights.

Britain’s Army was by continental standards a ‘contemptible little army’, but it had a lot of fighting experience, and above all made a culture of the use of high quality small arms (rifle) fire. These attributes coupled with a nasty habit of coming through on the rails at the last minute and winning the battle that mattered, the last one. Any half decent bookmaker would think long and hard about the odds he would offer on the outcome of a campaign which would include the British Army.

One aspect of the British Army that attracted unfavourable comment from, it is alleged, the German High Command, was to the effect that it was ‘an army of lions lead by donkeys’. Some considerable effort has been made over past years to attribute this quotation to a particular source, to no effect unfortunately. The sentiment has however been picked up and adopted by the armchair critics to prop up their prejudices and condemn the casualties sustained. Superficially the comment has some attractions, but what of the French whose casualties amounted to 5.6 million, killed and wounded, Germany six million, Britain and her imperial partners by comparison, three million. More detailed thought on this vexed question will follow in Chapter 9.

At this point in the review it is worth putting the question, who were the guilty men of the 1914—18 nightmare? Nothing is as it seems; beware the glib, the censorious, and the politically expedient comments. The real issues have been buried by three generations of propaganda and axe grinding.

Now on to some further complications to confront the platitudinous pundits’ preconceptions.