British Fighting Methods in the Great War

Paddy Griffith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135196776
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This collection points out the very real and substantial evolution of tactics that went on in response to new warfare and how this had a real effect on the positive performance of the British Army from 1916 onwards.

CHAPTER ONE

The Extent of Tactical Reform in the British Army¹

Paddy Griffith

British generalship on the Western Front has often, and rightly, been criticised for major defects of both style and content. The remotely aloof style of command has been discussed too often to require any further elaboration here,² apart perhaps from a plea to remember that battlefield communications were often very poor indeed, and ‘A General without a telephone was to all practical purposes impotent – a lay figure dressed in uniform, deprived of eyes, arms and ears’.³ As for content, it is clear that many of the big operational decisions were ill-advised, such as Haig’s selection of the Ypres salient as the decisive battlefield for late 1917, or his unbounded faith in Fifth Army’s defensive resilience in early March 1918. At lower levels of command, there was a very wasteful tendency to demand that attacks should be launched before they had been properly prepared, or to insist that failed attacks should immediately be repeated.⁴ It was only in 1918 that the lesson was fully learned that an attacker should bank his winnings after the first two or three days, and not continue gambling recklessly against a rapidly stiffening enemy defence. Even in the field of minor tactics, there were many mistakes that may be attributed directly to generals, and not to colonels or their subordinates. The blunders between infantry and tanks at the first battle of Bullecourt on 9–11 April 1917, for example, may fairly be laid at the door of the army commander, General Gough, rather than that of any of his subordinates.⁵

MINOR TACTICS

It is nevertheless fair to point out that minor tactics were not really the domain of generals, and that very considerable progress could be, and often was, made in this field by ‘colonels or their subordinates’, even if the higher generalship was shockingly bad – which was far from always being the case. The true picture seems to be that both General Headquarters (GHQ) and individual army, corps, or divisional commanders often did support the new technologies and the new ideas that were being pushed forward by innovative ‘Young Turks’ from lower strata of command. It helped a general’s reputation if, by picking the brains of his subordinates, he could show his peers that he was energetically abreast of modenity and not merely sitting on his hands. Thus Sir John French himself had won credit for introducing the first motor car into Aldershot command before the war; then he placed the first specification for trench mortars as early as October 1914, and eventually staked at least half of the success of the Loos battle upon a completely untried new weapon – gas. Equally, Gough on the Somme was basing his tactical prescriptions not only upon detailed local analyses submitted by articulate battalion commanders, but also upon hazardous personal observations from aircraft and even from studying cinema films of attacks.⁶

As for the ‘Young Turks’ themselves, they were almost always keen to find patrons in more elevated ranks, or even in Parliament,⁷ and were often successful. Thus symbioses were often established between senior commanders and junior innovators, and centres of tactical excellence gradually accumulated. This was true not only of the more obviously technical specialities such as the Royal Flying Corps or the tanks, but also of certain infantry division or corps headquarters which happened to take a particular interest in tactics. Currie’s Canadian Corps, Maxse’s XVIII Corps, Tudor’s 9th or de Lisle’s 29th divisions immediately spring to mind, although there were many more. Once such formations had won a reputation for tactical expertise and dependability, they would be sought out by GHQ – whether consciously or subliminally is not entirely clear – for any obviously difficult job that loomed over the horizon. It is striking to see how often the same ‘élite’ formations found themselves fighting alongside each other, with their higher staffs in direct contact and exchanging ideas with each other. This type of grouping usually occurred during epic attacks which had failed at first but were subsequently better prepared, such as the final capture of Thiepval, Beaumont Hamel or Passchendaele village itself. The conclusion must be that the association of particular headquarters was by no means a product of chance, but a recognition by the high command that certain command groups were working efficiently in the field of tactics whereas others were still sitting on their hands.

Admittedly, the emergence of such élites was not a uniform development throughout the BEF or in any one particular level of command. Nevertheless, it seems to have been effective. If the tactics of 1916 were generally better than those of 1915, then those of 1917 were very much better than those of 1916. Alas, there was then an exhausted relapse which led to several serious set-backs during the winter and following spring; but by the time of the final 1918 autumn offensive, it seems that British tactics had effectively reached a pitch that would scarcely be surpassed for at least 30 years thereafter.⁸

The axiom that ‘practice makes perfect’ tends to hold true in every field of human endeavour, unless the immediate consequences of the practice itself are so terminally dire that the practitioners are physically prevented from repeating their experiments. On the Western Front, this prohibiting condition was indeed very much more than merely a distant theoretical possibility: but, in the event, it was usually reached only in personal or somewhat localised cases, rather than for entire units or higher headquarters. Even if a battalion was ‘wiped out’ in the course of making an attack, it would often still leave a core of experienced survivors which numbered perhaps 20 or even 50 per cent of its starting strength,⁹ let alone the official ‘nucleus’ of perhaps ten per cent that was deliberately left out of action in order to serve as a core for subsequent regrouping. For much of the time, moreover, most battalions were engaged on trench warfare duties which, although certainly uncomfortable and miserable, were not anything like as deadly as a big ‘show’.¹⁰ Besides, the casualty rate among a battalion’s more senior officers was markedly lower than that among subalterns, and it was the senior officers who were most influential in deciding tactics.

It was up to the survivors of each attack to refine and improve technique in time for the next attack. In doing this, they would be hindered both by the need to absorb large numbers of fresh drafts and by the exhausting routine demands of life at the front. They might find themselves stymied by blithely nonsensical imperatives, showered upon them from the safety of some remote higher headquarters, or they might be thrown into an improvised second attack before there was time to digest the lessons of the first. To a great extent, they would be ‘running in order to stand still’. Nevertheless, the incentive for study was enormous, since each attack was such a traumatic event that it greatly concentrated the minds of everyone connected with it. Brigadier Jack summed this up as follows: ‘I detest attacks; they mean seeing friends lying about dead and mangled. In addition to this the personal attention to countless details before and during operations imposes a very severe mental and physical strain on one.’¹¹

In the case of Lieutenent-Colonel W. D. Croft of 11th Royal Scots (11 RS), the traumatic experience of his successful attack on Logueval on 14 July 1916 spurred him into a careful revision of his training regime, in the spirit of the tactical reflections contained in the influential 1903 pamphlet The Defence of Duffer’s Drift.¹² Croft’s battalion had lost around three-quarters of its strength in casualties, and he was determined that it would do better in its subsequent operations. Energetic and ‘thrusting’ officers like him would certainly agonise long and hard about every detail and every conceivable source of friction in their future attacks, even though they probably knew in their hearts that too much of what happened would still remain beyond their control when the fatal moment actually arrived.

Before the end of 1915, the preparation for a deliberate attack had been reduced to a routine that was designed to leave as little as possible to chance. The terrain would be reconnoitred both visually and from maps and air photos. A small scale model of it would be constructed for briefing, and then a life-size replica would be taped out as a training area behind the lines. Everyone would be fully drilled in their roles during each of the phases – assembly, assault, mopping up and consolidation. Watches would be synchronised and equipment minutely checked. The assault troops would be rested and fed just before the supreme effort was demanded of them. Security precautions and camouflage would be imposed, supported by diversionary ‘Chinese attacks’ on neighbouring sectors of the front. Flanking formations would be fully briefed according to the complex rules of professional etiquette and ‘staff writing’.

Behind these comprehensive immediate preparations there was also a more general endeavour to set up a network of training schools and short courses designed to cater for every level of command and for every technical or tactical speciality. Not only would these courses give officers precious time out of the line, when they could think and discuss tactical questions, but they would also help to keep all formations briefed about the latest developments and perceptions. Beyond these again, there was a large-scale effort to write and disseminate manuals for the benefit of junior officers, in the hope of stiffening their natural British initiative and sporting instincts with a reassuring framework of doctrine.¹³ It should certainly not be imagined that this apparently ‘German General Staff’ approach was in any way neglected by the BEF. On the contrary, it was an endeavour which gathered momentum remorselessly alongside the steady expansion of the army and its share in the war. By the summer of 1918, there were even complaints that too much doctrine had been originated and too many manuals had been issued.¹⁴ An Inspectorate of Training (IT) was set up under General Maxse in order to co-ordinate the indoctrinators, although one suspects that this merely added one more storey to what he dubbed the doctrinal ‘Tower of Babel’,¹⁵ rather than bringing the competing diversity of claimants into a more unified tactical authority.

There is a sense in which the central problem of interpretation for the whole of BEF tactics is encapsulated in the way we choose to view Maxse’s Inspectorate of Training. On one hand we might regard his attempt to codify practice as a belated but effective wound dressing, staunching an anarchy of half-baked but entrenched opinions which had failed to provide very much positive progress during the preceding four years of war. This was apparently the way in which Maxse himself tended to regard it, and he was often dismissive of his predecessors and rivals in the tactical field. Yet when viewed from another perspective, we may see the IT as the crowning achievement in a long process of evolution and constructive development. Maxse was certainly only one among many forceful tactical analysts and his contribution, although welcome, may to some extent be seen as an attempt to ‘fix’ a machine that had never really been broken.

No firm final conclusion can probably be reached between these two competing interpretations, except to say that strong elements of truth are contained in both. Many more positive achievements had indeed been made by Maxse’s predecessors than he would himself allow, and British infantry attacks had been able to make almost unopposed bounds forward of more than a kilometre on a surprisingly large number of occasions. This phenomenon was even seen in some divisions’ sectors at Loos in September 1915, which has generally been written off as an exceptionally dismal example of the BEF’s art of attack. It happened again on the Somme right flank on 1 July 1916, which was otherwise a day of still more searing humiliation. By 1917, the process had become almost routine, and the formal ‘first days’ of Arras, Messines, Third Ypres and Cambrai were all very successful, whatever else may have followed in each case. So brilliant was Plumer’s attack at Broodseinde on 4 October that it was acknowledged by the Germans as their ‘black day’ almost a year before the more famous Amiens attack in August 1918.¹⁶ If the British did particularly well during the Hundred Days following Amiens, therefore, we should see it more as a vindication of the laborious groundwork of the preceding four years than as the instantaneous effect of Maxse’s arrival at GHQ.¹⁷

Yet against these many undoubted successes we must note that Maxse’s alleged ‘Tower of Babel’ did indeed have a certain existence in reality. The problem was not perhaps a matter of doctrine in the strict sense of the term, since there is plenty of evidence to show that all arms were fully consulted and co-ordinated before any important new manual was finally issued, just as the training schools were peppered with fruitful intellectual cross-fertilisation between officers from different branches. To this extent, the higher staffs functioned smoothly and effectively in their work of analysing performance and updating doctrine accordingly across the whole BEF. At a more atavistic or visceral level, however, there was undoubtedly a widespread failure of inter-arm friendship and co-operation which tended to delay and distort the integration of new technologies into the fighting line.

THE PROBLEM OF CAP-BADGES

The popular stereotype of British tactics in the Great War depicts a line of infantry floundering across an impossibly muddy No Man’s Land under a hail of bullets, obstructed by barbed wire and hindered rather than helped by supporting artillery fire. This is not an ‘all arms’ attack, and not even a sensible act of tactics at all, but rather an unequal sacrifice of exposed foot soldiers against a highly efficient all-arms defence. Nor was such a stereotype always far removed from reality, especially during the first half of the war, before artillery had become properly effective. Even after that there were many occasions when, for various reasons, such as the mud in the last month at Passchendaele or the strategic overstretch in March 1918, too few guns could be deployed to support the front line. In these circumstances, the infantry was left to fight its battles almost unaided, and it has not been an accident that by far the most moving and celebrated literature from the war has come from that particular arm. The servitude et grandeur of the Western Front has been appropriated almost exclusively by the infantry, and every other arm has tended to be regarded as very secondary.

This effect was heightened within the British Army by a heavy weight of regimental tradition and battalion pride. Despite persistent bureaucratic attempts to draft reinforcements into regiments which were not their own,¹⁸ the cap-badge continued to exercise a powerful magnetism and tribalism throughout the war. Many regiments grew to a strength of more battalions than an entire infantry division,¹⁹ and, through loyalty to their battalion, most soldiers surely felt more loyalty to t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. The Extent of Tactical Reform in the British Army
• 2. British Artillery in the Great War
• 3. Co-stars or Supporting Cast? British Divisions in ‘The Hundred Days’, 1918
• 4. The Operational Role of British Military Police on the Western Front, 1914–18
• 5. The Treatment of Casualties in the Great War
• 6. The Rise of Armour
• 7. Cavalry and the Development of Breakthrough Doctrine
• 8. The SHLM Project – Assessing the Battle Performance of British Divisions
• Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations
• Selected Bibliography
• Index