The Modern Army
OBERST ADOLF VON SCHELL was in no doubt whatsoever that a fully mechanized army was the way forward. It was true that horses did not require petrol, but they did require fuel and lots of it. Fodder had to be transported, and in any case its production used ground that could otherwise be utilized for the production of food for both the armed forces and the general population. In fact, von Schell had calculated that a fully mechanized army would be 80 per cent more efficient in terms of the supply of men and materiel.
It was with these sorts of calculations in mind that Britain had decided its entire field force should be fully mechanized. Back in March the Territorial Army had been doubled from thirteen divisions to twenty-six and since then mobilized – Bill Cheall, the young Yorkshireman from The Green Howards whose Devon holiday had been interrupted at the end of August, was part of this call to arms. On the outbreak of war, the National Service (Armed Forces) Act had been immediately passed, introducing full conscription. On 8 September, it was agreed that the aim should be to equip fifty-five divisions by the end of the second year of war, i.e. 1941, which would include fourteen from the Dominions of Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and a further four from India. At least twenty divisions were to be equipped within the first twelve months. Priority was to go to the Field Force being sent to France, soon named the British Expeditionary Force in a nod to the army sent overseas back in 1914.
By the end of September, almost 160,000 Army personnel and 22,000 vehicles, along with nearly 10,000 men of the RAF, some 36,000 tons of ammunition and 25,000 tons of fuel had safely been shipped to France, and it was planned that this fighting force would grow significantly over the ensuing months. Because of this rapid growth in the Army, especially, there were now worrying shortages of equipment, particularly guns and tanks, but output was growing on a weekly basis.
Despite these shortages, the British Army was still the best equipped and most modern in the world, not least because its Field Force was entirely mechanized. There were no horse-drawn artillery units, and all infantry were ferried from A to B in trucks. The 15 cwt and 30 cwt lorries equipping much of the BEF were rugged and robust – the motor firms Bedford and Morris producing most of them. British artillery was also of good quality, and most guns were now equipped with pneumatic tyres, which meant they could easily be towed by trucks and gun tractors, unlike most of the German equivalents, which were largely towed by horse. There was also a tracked troop carrier simply called the Universal Carrier. Infantry had never been so well served by machines.
In fact, the British Army was going through something of a revolution. Hand in hand with rearmament had come the recognition that attitudes had to change, that a modern war required modern equipment, and that Britain needed to use its global reach to full effect. Ironically, the impression from German propaganda of a Reich that was creating a modern, mechanized military Moloch had done much to kick-start this new outlook.
Much had changed in the past three years, right down to the uniforms. With the scent of war in the air, Britain had, in 1938, designed the Battledress, a highly innovative concept and the most modern and practical combat uniform adopted by any European power. Made of hard-wearing khaki wool serge, it consisted of a short jacket that came down to its wearer’s midriff. This was very sensible given the high-waisted trousers of the day; the battle blouse, as the jacket was called, therefore only covered the waistband of the trousers, and in so doing saved a significant amount of fabric on earlier designs and on those worn by almost every other army the world over. It was generously cut under the arms, allowing easy movement, and considerable thought had been given to the pockets – two large ones on the inside of the jacket, two large breast pockets, side pockets on the trousers and a further generous pocket on the thigh, big enough for a map or documents. The old knee-high puttees had also gone, relics of a former era, replaced by durable canvas ankle gaiters. This new soldier’s uniform had no frills, wasted no material, and was exceptionally cheap and easy to mass-produce, while at the same time allowing its wearer easy manoeuvrability and warmth.
Also recently introduced was the new Bren light machine gun, capable of firing at a theoretical rate of 500 rounds per minute, which, as had been shown by the phenomenally effective German Maxim gun of the previous war, was around the optimum rate of fire; much faster firing rates created problems of overheating and, obviously, used more ammunition, and in any case there was an argument for having a weapon that could kill twenty enemies with one bullet each rather than one soldier with twenty. Fed by thirty-round magazines, the Bren was rarely allowed to overheat and, in any case, had a thick barrel and wooden grip that made barrel-changing very straightforward. It was also what was considered a light machine gun, and could be operated by just one man. Designed in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and adapted and modified by Enfield in England – hence Br–en – it was versatile, robust and accurate, and had a barrel designed to fire 220,000 rounds. It was a fine piece of kit.
Now out in France with the Royal Fusiliers, Lieutenant Norman Field’s platoon of thirty-six men had three sections of ten men plus a six-man platoon headquarters, and each section was now equipped with one Bren and nine Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifles, the latter capable of firing two five-round clips without a change of magazine. No other rifle at the time could fire as many, and, because the firing bolt came back only a short way, whoever was firing it could pull the bolt back without altering his aim. As this capacity was not something shared by other bolt-action rifles at the time, a reasonably trained rifleman in the British Army could expect to fire around thirty rounds per minute, while the French and German infantrymen could manage only half that.
British webbing – the soldier’s pouches, packs and belts – had also changed with the advent of the Bren and the Battledress. Back in 1914, the British Army had realized that leather, which had been used for centuries to make ammunition pouches, was not so effective in sustained and continuous combat. It was also expensive – very expensive – and if it got wet could become brittle when it dried out again. Far more effective was canvas, which was both cheap and durable. Ever since then, British webbing had been made of this cotton-based material, and the new 1937 pattern included two pouches large enough to carry three Bren magazines each.
Certainly, there were no complaints from Norman Field and his men about the new uniforms. ‘It was a vast improvement,’ he says. ‘In the old service dress, one always felt rather stiff and buttoned up. It was much easier to slither around on the ground in Battledress.’
The British infantry, at any rate, were now well-equipped for war. They had plenty of firepower, trucks and tracked Carriers to move them around rapidly, and new, modern-design uniforms.
None the less, it was, of course, easier to equip a smaller army than a large one. Rearmament since 1935 had focused so heavily on the Navy and RAF, and these decisions by men like Neville Chamberlain, first as Chancellor of the Exchequer and then as Prime Minister, not only largely dictated Britain’s actions in the build up to war, but the approach it would also take as the conflict unfolded. The First World War had underlined to Britain’s war leaders the futility of labour-intensive campaigns, in which huge numbers of men were thrown at increasingly powerful weapons, and which had produced long years of attritional stalemate. The British intention was to invest in machinery and technology to help create a strategy that was less wasteful of men’s lives and, hopefully, would bring about victory sooner. Quite intentionally, the number of men at the coal face of fighting was to be kept as low as possible. In this new war, manpower would be used not just as soldiers on the ground and on ships, but in many more aircraft and, most of all, in factories and shipyards. And considering Britain’s global reach and already heavy investment in research and technology, it was an entirely sensible approach.
With this in mind, Britain was preparing for a massive increase in the size of its Army, but still had no intention of going beyond fifty-five divisions, even though Germany had over a hundred by the outbreak of war, and France, after rapid mobilization, now also had close to a hundred. The men behind these decisions were not only the Prime Minister, peacetime Cabinet and now War Cabinet, but also the Chiefs of Staff, which consisted of the three service chiefs and the man at the top of the pile, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS). This had been General Lord Gort, who had won a Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for valour, in the last war. He had now taken command of the BEF, so General ‘Tiny’ Ironside had become CIGS in his place. Assisting them were the Vice-Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Planning Staff and the Joint Intelligence Committee, or JIC, both of the latter, as their names implied, representing all three services working both separately and together.
Collectively, the planning teams, Vice-Chiefs and Chiefs of Staff and Government had had the vision and wherewithal to create a modern and well-equipped army, but while training now taught soldiers how to operate with all this mechanization and with radio sets and Bren light machine guns, much of the Regular Army had spent the years since 1918 carrying out its more traditional role: policing the Empire. And containing angry Arabs or troublesome Pashtuns on the Northwest Frontier was no real preparation for coming into combat against the combined forces of Nazi Germany.
Intellectually, the British Army was also stymied by a somewhat insouciant and deeply entrenched regimental system, which laid great emphasis on both loyalty to the cap badge and tradition, and which encouraged a culture that frowned on too much talking shop. In the Mess, one discussed cricket, polo or pig-sticking, not how to effectively co-ordinate tanks and infantry. In any case, the cavalry had largely remained cavalry throughout much of the 1920s and 1930s, even though Britain had invented the tank, and its regiments were among the most influential within the British Army. Tanks were the preserve of the Royal Tank Corps and rather looked down upon by the cavalry as a bunch of low-grade Johnny-come-latelys. When the cavalry regiments did finally begin to mechanize, most of their number were appalled. Certain members of The Royal Scots Greys, for example, were so disgusted at the idea of mechanization that in 1938 they lobbied Parliament against such a move and wrote angry letters to The Times.
Yet, by the summer of 1939, most had succumbed to the inevitable and modernized. As Britain began this new war, the thinking was that tanks would perform a variety of roles, which required different types of tank. Cavalry regiments tended to be equipped with light, fast tanks, for use in a forward screening and reconnaissance capacity, such as they had performed in the last war and beyond, while the newly formed Royal Armoured Corps, which contained the new regiments of the Royal Tank Corps, used slower, more heavily armoured tanks in direct support of the infantry.
British tanks were, for the most part, on a par with, if not better than, German versions. The Matilda had the thickest armour of any tank in the world and was virtually immune to most of the guns in the German arsenal, while the Mk II variant had a high-velocity 2-pounder gun that was more than a match for all German panzers apart from the Panzer IV. Early British cruiser tanks were not so good, with complicated suspension systems, and they suffered from being jacks of all trades and masters of none. None the less, the A10 had armour as thick as a Panzer IV’s and was also equipped with a 2-pounder, while the next version, the A13, was fast, was soon upgraded to 30mm of armour and was similarly equipped with the 2-pounder. When this anti-tank gun had first appeared in 1938, it was probably the best of its kind in the world and could fire a 37mm shell at some 2,700 feet per second; by the outbreak of war, this was still a velocity that ranked favourably with most German guns, and could penetrate 50 millimetres of armour at a thousand yards, that is two-thirds of a mile. The thickest armour on any panzer was 30 millimetres. Early British tanks have taken a large amount of criticism over the years, but by the standards of the first year of war they were really not bad at all. What’s more, production was rising rapidly.
By August 1939, the only units where horses and vast amounts of leather were still used were those in the Yeomanry regiments. The Yeomanry had first been raised during the Napoleonic Wars, volunteer units whose members had to own or have access to a horse. By the summer of 1939, this recruitment policy still held, which was why most of its members were landowners, countrymen, mad-keen huntsmen and steeplechasers.
One of those regiments still equipped with its chargers was the Nottingham Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. One of the TA units to have been mobilized on the outbreak of war, it had had a fine record in the last war, where it had served in the Middle East, but since then had been confined to weekend training and the obligatory summer camp each August. Its last camp had been at Welbeck, the estate of the Duke of Portland, and was, in many ways, rather like a grown-up Scout camp on horseback.
Already, though, its ranks were being swelled by an influx of new officers and other ranks, drawn from a much wider pool. One of those was Stanley Christopherson, who was twenty-seven and had already seen something of the world, having been brought up partly in South Africa and having worked there in the gold-mining business after leaving Winchester College. He had since returned and gone into stockbroking in the City, living the life of a highly sociable and extremely charming young bachelor about town. A few years back, he had also joined the Inns of Court, a TA cavalry regiment for barristers, solicitors, stockbrokers and former public schoolboys like himself.
The Inns of Court had not been mobilized at the outbreak of war, but all its members had. Christopherson and two of his old Inns of Court pals had been sent to join the Sherwood Rangers. Having been to see the regimental tailor and boot-maker in London, a week or so later they boarded the train to Malton in Yorkshire, where the Rangers were based, proudly wearing their one pip of a second-lieutenant and sporting riding breeches, boots, spurs and tunics. ‘We were slightly apprehensive,’ Christopherson noted in his diary, ‘as we had heard the Regiment boasted three Masters of Fox Hounds and the pre-war officers were extremely wealthy and very insular.’ To his delight, however, he not only found old City chums like Micky Gold and Mike Parrish were already in the Sherwood Rangers, but so too were Peter and Michael Laycock, with whom he had been at prep school.
At Malton, the Rangers would carry out intense training and complete the business of switching from peacetime TA unit to full-time soldiers. For the time being they would be keeping their chargers; the Sherwood Rangers would not be heading to France, however, but to Palestine. There was no immediate sign of war breaking out in the Middle East, but the problems of the Empire did not stop now that Britain was at war with Germany; on the contrary, in many cases they were exacerbated. The area had been stable enough in the 1920s, but by the late 1930s threatened to break out in violence at any moment. Arab nationalism was an easy way for the Axis to make life difficult for the British, and while Italy had kept out of the war, Italian agents were still agitating in the region. British strategy was therefore not only to make sure there was no uprising but also to ensure there were enough troops out there should Italy enter the war and make a move against British possessions there.
There was, it was true, something about the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry that harked back to an earlier age, but they were by no means representative of the rest of the rapidly enlarging British Army. In any case, these few outmoded Yeomanry and Regular cavalry units affected only one level of warfare – and, in Britain’s case, only one of its three armed services. War, it was widely understood, was to be fought on three levels: the strategic, the operational and the tactical. Tactically, in the Army at any rate, Britain had some growing up to do, but operationally and strategically, she was on much firmer footing. The biggest issue during this first winter of war, was size. Britain was mobilizing fast, but the Army’s growth to fifty-five divisions would take several years, not months. There was no panic yet, however, because France’s Army was huge.
And so with the Nazi swastika now fluttering over Warsaw, the plan as agreed between Britain and France back in the spring still held true: so long as they could hold any German offensive at bay, all would be well. They would sit tight, build up strength and then strike back. There had never been much question of storming into Germany within moments of war being declared; the deal with Poland was to enter the war on its behalf. No one mentioned actually trying to save the beleaguered Poles. Not right away, at any rate.
Certainly, thanks to its existing Air Force, Navy and access to vast resources of merchant shipping, Britain’s own sovereignty was in no way under threat. New, modern factories were already making arms with increased vigour. Sixteen new ordnance factories had been authorized in March, and a further twenty-nine were given the green light in December. Planned spending on arms for 1939/40 was £580 million, half of all government expenditure. More guns, more aircraft, more ships – more war materiel – and with no sign of there being any let-up until Germany was beaten. And this was the point: Britain’s – and France’s – war aims were not for the war to fizzle out in some negotiated peace with Germany. Rather, it was to take on the Third Reich and rid the world of Hitler and Nazism, and beat Germany once and for all. This, however, would take time, so as far as Britain’s war leaders were concerned, the longer Germany delayed the better.
Britain’s appreciation of the situation was precisely what Hitler feared and was why he was demanding his generals prepare for an immediate assault on the West. Hitler’s geo-political understanding was often very suspect indeed. But on the need to crush Britain and France swiftly and decisively, he was absolutely right.