We heard much amusing gossip at G.H.Q. from the soldiers at the Front, who, after a critical weighing of the facts, arrived at the conclusion that the Portuguese were "good sports." That conclusion was not come to all at once. The British soldier is veryconservative, and he was inclined to be, for some reason or other, critical of his new allies at first. In time "Tommy" forgave the Portuguese for having names "that sounded like blooming prayers," which was one of his early reasons for doubt. Here is one incident that helped to determine a favourable verdict:
A forward post held by the Portuguese was subjected to a furious bombardment late one afternoon by the Germans. After a while a polite note came down from the Portuguese officer in charge of the sector informing the British Commander that: "The enemy are heavily bombarding our position. Accordingly we have evacuated it."
There was some inclination to criticise; it was not the withdrawal; the best soldiers on earth have to withdraw sometimes. But the polite little note with its "accordingly" suggested what it was not intended to suggest, and what was not the fact at all. However, plans were at once put in hand for artillery action, preparatory to restoring the position next morning. But some time after nightfall those plans were put aside on receipt of another polite little note:
"The enemy has ceased bombarding our position. Accordingly we have re-occupied it."
When the full facts of the incident came out there was a cheer for the Portuguese. It seems that the officer in charge was a bit of a tacticianand knew his men well. The post he had to hold was very advanced and poorly fortified. When the enemy began to flood it with shells he withdrew his garrison to a safe spot that he had selected, and waited until nightfall. Then, without any artillery preparation, he led his men forward and, with the bayonet and those deadly little daggers that the Portuguese soldiers carried, restored the position.
An earlier incident of the Portuguese co-operation was humorous in another way. "Tommy" had, of course, found a name for the new arrivals, a name which was more humorous than respectful. Like all Tommy's word-coinages it was a good one and spread into common use. High Authority, fearful that offence would be given, issued an order, a very portentous order, which noticed with reprobation "the habit which had grown up" of referring to "our noble allies" as "the —— ——." The Order concluded with the usual warning of disciplinary action. It was to be circulated secretly by word of mouth from officer to officer, but some unfortunate adjutant circulated it in battalion orders so that all could read—including the Portuguese.
To affirm that a great German attack was expected in the Spring of 1918, and that the site of the attack was not altogether unexpected, seems to imply a very serious criticism of G.H.Q. That being so, why did the Germans succeed in breaking through and winning such an extent of territory and coming within a narrow margin of gaining a decisive advantage?
The question is natural, especially as one soldier in high command has stated—or is reported to have stated—that he knew exactly the spot where the Germans were going to attack. Some day there will be an exhaustive inquiry into all the circumstances of the Spring of 1918. Probably as a result it will be found that no serious blame can be attached in any quarter, but that what happened was the result of a series of events which were mostly unavoidable.
For the first time Germany could concentrate her whole strength on this Front. Yet our strength was at the lowest point it had reached for many months and, since we had just taken over a new sector of the line, our defence was thinner on the average than it had ever been since 1915. Further, we were definitely short of some essential defence material. If we had strengthened the sector where the chief attack came we should have had to weaken another sector. Then the Germans would have attacked that sector. They chose, and chose naturally, the point where our line was thinnest. If it can be shown that the sector where our line was thinnest was the sector in which we could best afford to lose ground, it will have to be admitted that, in the main, G.H.Q. had made the best dispositions possible with the means at hand.
A glance at the map of France will show that pretty clearly. Put in a phrase, the German plan was to push the British Army into the sea. In the north our line was dangerously close to the sea. Our most northern port, Dunkirk, was actually under shell-fire and in consequence could be very little used. A very small gain of territory by the Germans in the north would have brought Calais and Boulogne under shell-fire. Then our existence as an Army north of the Somme would have become impossible. We could not have kept an adequate force there in supplies. In the northevery yard of territory was of the greatest strategic value. As our line ran south the French coast bulged out. We had more room to manœuvre there; loss of ground was not so vital. If the Germans had won on the line Ypres-Armentières the same depth of territory that they won on the line Arras-Péronne, we should have had to evacuate all France north of the Somme.
In short we took the biggest risk of loss of ground where the loss was least dangerous to the vital plan of the campaign. In the light of the man-power available it was probably the best course that could have been pursued. We knew we had to lose ground, probably a good deal of ground, and decided to lose it where it mattered least. We had very good ideas as to where.
For proof of this look up the representations as to civilian evacuations which were made by G.H.Q. to the French authorities in February, 1918. Those representations, by the way, were not given any attention at all in some cases; at the best only perfunctory attention. The result was that when the German attack came, civilian refugees added to our difficulties and anxieties. If the prompt and complete evacuation of all civilian refugees from threatened areas and from areas close behind the front line, which were urgently needed for the accommodation of troops, could have beeneffected, the Army's tasks would have been much simplified. But that proved impracticable. Civilians were generally unwilling to abandon their homes voluntarily. The French authorities were reluctant to enforce evacuation. A civilian quitting his home voluntarily was responsible for his own keep. A civilian forced to quit became a charge on the French Civil Authorities. This naturally led to a wish that civilians as far as possible should be compelled to quit their homes by force of circumstances rather than by order of the authorities.
As far back as February, 1918, pressure was brought to bear on the French Authorities to agree to defined measures to meet the emergency of a withdrawal of part of our line, which was then foreseen as a probability. But it was not found possible to secure prompt assent to the steps which were necessary. There were all sorts of complications. For one thing it was feared that to set up the machinery of evacuation would spread dismay among the French civilians. Another obstacle was the financial one which I have already mentioned. Yet another was that created by the status of the miners in threatened areas. These were mobilised men under French Military Command; their wives and children were civilians. If their wives and children were evacuated the miners would not stay.
Later, arrangements were agreed to betweenthe British Force and the French Authorities for the systematic evacuation, with their live stock and supplies, of civilians in threatened areas. But the early difficulties considerably hampered operations. I mention this not at all by way of a tilt against the French Authorities, whose reluctance to make provision for evacuations was natural enough, but to show that G.H.Q. was not "caught napping," and to illustrate also the difficulties which an Expeditionary Force operating in a friendly country has to meet.
There are, of course, many advantages springing from the fact that the country in which you are quartered is friendly. But I am not sure that the disadvantages are not almost as great. In an enemy country you know at any rate where you are; military safety, military convenience are the supreme law; and the civilian population have only to be considered to the degree that the laws of war and the dictates of humanity decide. In a friendly country, where the old civil government remains in operation, an Army is hampered at many points. There are various actions which military convenience prompts but which cannot be taken without the assent of the civilian authorities; and perhaps cannot be urged with the weight of the full facts on those civil authorities. This evacuation difficulty is an instance in point. If G.H.Q. had had itsway the Germans would have won far less material in their advance; and perhaps their advance would have been stopped at an earlier stage if our operations had not been hampered to some extent by the crowding of the road with civilian refugees.
Still, on the big issues the French were splendid. What, for example, could have been more heroic than the decision they came to a little later: that, in case of the German advance continuing, the whole of the Pas de Calais province was to be destroyed, the harbours of Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne wrecked, the dykes and locks destroyed so that the country would have been generally inundated?
To some degree defensive inundations were actually carried into effect, but with fresh water only. The responsibility in the main rested with the British Army which was holding the threatened territory. The only saving stipulation made by the French, who thus offered in the cause of the alliance to give up for half a century the use of one of their fairest provinces, was that before the sea was let in to devastate the land, Marshal Foch should give the word. It was on April 12th, 1918, that the Allied Commander-in-Chief gave orders for defensive inundations to stop the Germans from getting to the Dunkirk-Calais region; and on April 13th the Governor of Dunkirk began to put these into effect. There were two schemesof inundation, one for a modified flooding with fresh water of certain limited areas; the other for a general flooding, with sea-water as well as fresh water, of all low-lying areas around Calais and Dunkirk.
It is impossible to praise adequately the stark courage that agreed to this step. It was courage after the antique model, and it showed that France was willing to make any sacrifice rather than allow the wave of German barbarism to sweep over civilisation. The effect of letting the sea in on Pas de Calais and destroying the canal locks and the harbours would have been to make this great province a desert for two generations. The effect of allowing it to fall into German hands, with all its canal and harbour facilities, would have been to give new life to the submarine war, to make the bombardment and ultimately the invasion of the English coast possible.
At one time it seemed almost certain that an evacuation of at least part of Pas de Calais would have to be carried out; and arrangements were made in detail: that in any area which was evacuated, either deliberately or in consequence of direct enemy pressure, the most thorough destruction should be carried out to deny to the enemy any stores of material or facilities of transport. The method of every destruction and the unit responsible for it were arranged in advance.
The main lines of a policy of destruction were laid down in the event of:—
1. A withdrawal to the Calais—St. Omer defensive line;2. A withdrawal to the line of the Somme;3. An enemy advance along the line of the Somme, cutting off Flanders and Pas de Calais from the South.
1. A withdrawal to the Calais—St. Omer defensive line;
2. A withdrawal to the line of the Somme;
3. An enemy advance along the line of the Somme, cutting off Flanders and Pas de Calais from the South.
Provision was made for the using up or removal of all possible stores; for the destruction of the remainder; for the destruction of all railroads, water-ways, signalling systems, factories, etc. Where British and French troops were operating together in a fighting zone, their respective responsibilities were delimited. Arrangements were also made, in case of withdrawal, to clear from certain water-ways all canal craft which might serve the enemy as bridge material over inundations.
Certainly it was not "gay," as the French say, this preparation for destroying the property of an Ally. But we took comfort from the fact that after all the position was better than in 1914. Then a German victory seemed possible. Now in 1918 the only question was what sacrifices we should yet have to make before achieving victory. In 1914, after 50 years of intensive preparation, the German had rushed upon an unsuspecting Europe. He neglected nothing in preparing for victory. He threwoverboard every scruple in order to secure a rapid triumph, violating the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg merely because by so doing he gained a better field of deployment. His objective was Paris, and, according to authoritative accounts, his plan on reaching Paris was to divide it up into twelve quarters and burn down a quarter every day that the French Army delayed to surrender. The terms of surrender were to include the giving up of the French Fleet and the French ports for use in an invasion of England.
The danger at that time was very real. Germany was the only country adequately armed and organised. The British people had had to sacrifice in great measure the Regular Army to stay the first German onset. France was strained to a point which to any other country would have meant exhaustion. We could recall the preparations that had to be made to meet the imminent fear of an invasion of the British coast; the desperate shifts and expedients which had to be adopted in the first stages of the organisation of the New Armies; the peremptory demands for guns and shells when there were no factories to make either in anything like the quantity demanded. That was a time when it needed the highest of moral courage to remain calm and confident.
The Spring of 1918 is not a pleasant thing to think about; but it is hardly endurable, evennow in safe retrospection, to think on the position of Great Britain at home or in the field from October, 1914, to September, 1915. It was that of an unsuspecting man before whose feet suddenly a pit of destruction opens. He falls scrambling, struggling down, and at last reaches a little ledge which gives a momentary safety. But it is still a desperate task merely to hang on. Far up, remote almost as a star, shines safety. Below are his friends of civilised Europe, all worse situated than himself, some at the point of complete destruction. From above a fierce storm of missiles rains on his head. From below come piteous appeals for help. To hold on to his little ledge, to help the friends below, to climb up and throttle the foe above—he has all these to do and little time to think before he acts. Hardly endurable, yet necessary to think over, so that the greatness of the danger into which the world was plunged by German militarism can be gauged.
In 1914 an occupation of the French Channel Ports with England almost entirely unarmed might have been a very serious thing. The serious view taken of it in Great Britain can be judged from the preparations which were made to devastate a great area in the South and East of England so as to give to the Germans only a desert as a foothold. In 1918 if the Germans had got Pas de Calais they wouldnot have got any ports with it, and an invading force arriving in England would have met a force at least equal to it in equipment and war experience.
So we waited in some confidence for another Marne to follow another Mons, and smiled a little grimly at the change of tone in Germany. The Kaiser, cock-a-whoop again, was declaring now for a "strong German Peace." In one office, side by side with the "situation map" which showed from day to day the depth of the German advance, there were stuck up in derision extracts from the most vituperative of the German press. Here is one from theDeutsche Zeitung:
"Away with all petty whining over an agreement and reconciliation with the fetish of peace.... Away with the miserable whimpering of those people who even now would prevent the righteous German hatred of England and sound German vengeance. The cry of victory and retaliation rages throughout Germany with renewed passion."
"Away with all petty whining over an agreement and reconciliation with the fetish of peace.... Away with the miserable whimpering of those people who even now would prevent the righteous German hatred of England and sound German vengeance. The cry of victory and retaliation rages throughout Germany with renewed passion."
This fromGermania:
"There can be no lasting peace and no long period of quiet in the world until the presumptuous notion that the Anglo-Saxons are the chosen people is victorious or defeated. We are determined to forcewith the sword the peace which our adversaries did not see fit to confide to our honest word. We Germans are an incomparably strong nation."
"There can be no lasting peace and no long period of quiet in the world until the presumptuous notion that the Anglo-Saxons are the chosen people is victorious or defeated. We are determined to forcewith the sword the peace which our adversaries did not see fit to confide to our honest word. We Germans are an incomparably strong nation."
These horrible threats remained on the notice-board until long after the tide of battle turned and the German was in full retreat back to his lair.
And we rather liked the story which the German press had to the effect that a deputation of German business men had put before Hindenburg in February the gloomy prospects of the country's food supplies, concluding: "In May, Germany will be almost without food." Hindenburg thereupon replied: "My reply is that I shall be in Paris on April 1st."
The date chosen seemed so appropriate!
Still, it would be foolish to say that we had no anxieties. Some of our stoutest fellows were up at "advanced G.H.Q.," a temporary H.Q. near Amiens, from which most of the really exciting work was done. At Montreuil we had not the exhilarating feeling of being within the sound of the guns, but had to face perhaps the hardest of the toil. It was rare for an officer in some branches to leave his room before midnight, and the usual hour for starting work was 8.30 a.m. Meals ceased for a time to be convivial affairs. One rushed to the table, ate, and rushed back to work.
The work was so overwhelming because of acombination of circumstances. The character of the War had changed from stationary to moving over almost all the British Front, calling for a return to the mobile system of supply and for new classes of material. British reinforcements were arriving from other Fronts, sometimes without their full supply train and without the full equipment for our Front, and not familiar with its system of working. There were large movements of French troops into British Areas, and in some cases these French troops relied upon British sources for some of their supplies and transport, and in all cases their line of supply had to be dove-tailed in with ours. American troops were moved into British Areas and relied upon British sources for many items of equipment, transport and supplies. British Administration was thus being called upon for supplies to British, French, American and Portuguese troops, at the same time as our lines of supply had to be re-organised and co-ordinated with the new French lines of supply. Further difficulties were created by the necessary frequent changes of railheads and the great movements on the roads of civilian refugees. Territory threatened by the enemy had to be evacuated as far as possible of civilians, and of civilian goods and stock likely to be of use to the enemy in case of capture.
The extent of this accumulated difficulty froma transport point of view can be gauged from the fact that a British Army needs on a day of intense fighting 1,934 tons of supplies of all kindsper mile of front.
The railways came as nearly as possible to a complete breakdown under the strain. After the first Battle of the Somme, our military railway system in France was thoroughly reorganised by civilian experts. It was a reorganisation which followed, I believe, the best models of the great railway companies of England, and it coped with the very heavy traffic during the period of fixed or Trench War quite well. Unfortunately it was not a system adapted for moving warfare.
A civilian railway expert would doubtless find many reasons for amused criticism in a military railway system in the running. It would appear to be rather haphazard, to be run a good deal on the principle of a train getting there if it could, and to be very faulty in the matter of time-tables and so on. Well, the German advance in its brutal practical way simply riddled with holes that admirable railway reorganisation which the civilian experts had conferred on the B.E.F., France.
Perhaps it was only to have been expected. Trench War in its railway requirements was deceptively like peace. You had your railway termini, and the requirements of a Divisionwere fairly stable. You ran so many trains a day and, except for an occasional rush on some sector when fighting warmed up suddenly, there were no problems that differed greatly from those say of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.
In moving war it is different. Then a railway system must be elastic enough to stand such a series of shocks as would be conveyed to the L.B. and S.C. manager if at 9 p.m. he were told: "It is Bank Holiday to-morrow. Provide for carrying 100,000 extra passengers, about 10,000 horses and 4,000 carriages." Then at 10 p.m. he learned: "You can't shunt any trains at Lewes; and you can only run trains through with luck. It is under heavy shell-fire." Then every half-hour subsequently he got a new order, diverting traffic from one point to another, changing the destinations of his trains and so on.
The transport situation for the moment was saved by the Motor Transport. But the Commander-in-Chief had to act promptly and set up a "jury-mast" arrangement for railway control to tide over the crisis. In effect he took the supreme control of the railways out of the hands of the Transportation Directorate and put it under a "Board of Directors" meeting daily, at which the Q.M.G. presided. A later development made the Chief of General Staff Chairman of this Board. Then, when thingssettled down, the system that had been set up by the civilian experts was largely scrapped. Military Railways were again put under the control of the Quartermaster-General. The "stupid soldiery" did rather well with them, not only in the period of pause that came between the German advance and our great counter-attack, but in the gigantic task of following up our advance.
The task of pulling together the railways was not an easy one. The enemy advance had caused a direct loss of some light railway systems, and on the broad-gauge systems important engine depôts were lost, and our front lateral line was brought at several points under the fire of the enemy's artillery. Use of this front lateral line had thus become precarious. The results of this were felt in every part of the railway system. Good circulation is the essence of railway working; and a block at any point has an effect similar to that of an aneurism on a human artery. Because of the loss of engine depôts, and the hindrances to circulation on the front lateral line, the back lateral line along the coast became seriously congested. This congestion reduced the capacity of every engine by an average of 15 per cent.
Further, our rear lateral line had two particularly vulnerable points, one at Etaples, where it crossed the Canche, and the other atAbbéville, where it crossed the Somme. Upon these points enemy aircraft made frequent attacks, imposing delays, occasionally causing minor destruction, always adding to the effects of the existing congestion. An excellent piece of work reduced very considerably the effect of one successful enemy air-raid. Half an hour after midnight, one night in May, the Canche railway-bridge at Etaples was damaged. At once an avoiding line—constructed for such an emergency—was put into operation, and trains were running through at 2 a.m.
On one of the worst nights of the German advance, when we went up to the situation-map without any enthusiasm, half afraid of what we should see, young Captain Hannibal Napoleon deepened our gloom by declaring oracularly:
"If we hold on to Amiens we shall be all right. If Amiens falls to the Germans it is goodbye to Montreuil, and no more Paris leave for a few years."
Hannibal Napoleon (that, of course, was not his name) was very junior and very confident of his strategical genius. It was a favourite amusement to "pull his leg" and draw from him an "appreciation" of the situation, which he was always willing to give with the authority of a Commander-in-Chief.
This oracle was displeasing, because on the appearance of things that night we had not anearthly chance of holding Amiens. But the unexpected happened. Not very many hours afterwards the news came through that a successful stand was being made in front of Amiens; and young Hannibal Napoleon was able to crow like a Gallic cock over his profound strategical judgment.
One night in the Spring of 1918 a mysterious motor lorry drew up in the yard of the Ecole Militaire at Montreuil. Its driver reported and was ordered to stand by. He stood by all that night; and in the morning was relieved by another driver. But the empty lorry still waited. At night a relief driver came on duty. But the empty lorry still waited.
THE ÉCOLE MILITAIRE
Lorries in those days were precious. Because the German had seized many of our light railways, had put under his shell-fire our main front lateral line and had brought our whole railway system to a point perilously close to collapse, the fate of the British Army was to a great extent dependent on its motor lorries. By an intuitional stroke of genius, or ofluck, the new Quartermaster-General had just brought to completion one of his "gyms"—the building up of a G.H.Q. reserve of motor lorries. There had been all kinds of explanations of that reserve—mostly of the humorous-malicious order. It had been said that they were intended to carry about the baggage of the G.H.Q. Generals; that the reserve had no other reason for being than to find a soft job for some potentate near to the golf links of the coast. But whether it was just a guess or a bit of far-seeing on the part of Sir Travers Clarke, that G.H.Q. Motor Lorry Reserve had been built up; and it was available to rush into the breach when the railways could not face the task of supply.
Very nobly the Motor Transport—including that reserve—did its duty. There were drivers who held the wheel for thirty-six hours at a stretch, and were lifted from their seats fainting or asleep; a few—who carried on until no longer able to see through their bloodshot and torturing eyes—ran their cars into trees or walls or ditches. There were many casualties, but the situation was saved.
It was just at this time, when a motor lorry was above rubies in value, that an entirely healthy, well-preserved example, with driver attached, was ordered to remain in the yard of the Ecole Militaire.
Everyone wanted to know the reason why. The position was then at its very worst, so the humourist who surmised that it was "waiting for the wine orders of the —— Mess," for once found his jape fall flat. The truth was for a long time known only to a select few. That motor lorry was told off to carry away the maps and important papers from Montreuil to the coast, since the evacuation of the town and of all France north of the Somme was possible at an hour's notice.
So critical was the position for some days that that motor lorry was never off duty night or day.
But G.H.Q. went about its work unperturbed to all outward seeming, and there was not a whisper of losing the war, not even from those who knew what would be the full consequences of evacuating Pas de Calais. One officer—he would not like his name to be published even now—spoke with the most frank recognition of facts and yet with a robust confidence that was distinctly comforting:
"If we go behind the Somme it will give the Germans the Coast from the Canche right up to the Scheldt for their submarines. That is the most serious factor. We won't leave them much in the way of harbour works, of course; but still they will be able in a year or two to restore things a bit."
"In a year or two? But will it last...?"
"Oh yes, you can give the war another ten years at least in that event. For there won't be any American Army to speak of; no port to land them or supply them from. Our British Army will have to come down in strength for the same reason. You can't keep a bigger army anywhere than you can keep supplied with food and shells. Look at the ports and the railways. There will be Havre, Brest, Cherbourg, Bordeaux as ports of supply and the railways from them as the channels of supply to the front line. No good talking of millions of Americans pouring in. They can't pour. Funnel's too narrow."
But there wasn't in that officer's mind a hint of the possibility of failure.
"It's only a question of organising to get at them. In time weight must tell. The Germans and their friends are, say, 140,000,000 in population. The allies who are in the war against them have 600,000,000 of population and another 400,000,000 of reserve population if Japan came in fully, and China, and Brazil. I count Russia on neither side, but she is still a liability more than an asset to the Germans. In money and resources the odds against them are even greater. I like to go back to the simple basis of arithmetic sometimes. Of course weight doesn't tell against skill. But now the skill is about even. The Germans had their one and only chance at the beginning, the verybeginning, of the war; because they were ready and no one else was. They had to win by Christmas, 1914, or not to win at all."
He went on to sketch vividly the story of the war up to that date, the very nadir of our depression. He argued that the enemy had obviously committed some tremendous blunders. The Prussian military leaders had been very clever in securing spectacular victories (generally after a preliminary corruption of some weak section of their opponents) and thus the military position was not easy to see in its true proportion. But even a surface consideration must show that whilst Germany was always announcing victories, she was never really within sight of victory.
"In the first instance the Prussian Empire had made no sound reckoning of the forces she had to meet. That was the first elementary duty of the strategist. The man who goes out to fight ten thousand and finds he has to fight twenty thousand has blundered irreparably. In 1914 Prussia calculated that Great Britain would not participate in the war, and would consent not only to the destruction of France but to the betrayal of her obligations towards Belgium. The bewildered dismay with which Germany learned that Great Britain would not look upon the treaty with Belgium as a 'scrap of paper,' the wild hatred toward England which found one expression in the 'Hymn ofHate,' were the screams of a savage creature caught in a trap.
"She had then one slender chance, a rush attack on Paris. But the Battle of the Marne killed that chance. Then the only hope of saving Germany was to make peace. But she had made the ghastly blunder of the Belgian atrocities.
"When a man goes out to fight ten thousand and finds himself confronted by twenty thousand it is common prudence to strive to make the stakes as low as possible, the penalty of failure as small as possible. There was a chance that, if that policy had been followed, the war would have come to an end soon after the Battle of the Marne, an end not favourable to Prussian ideas of European domination, giving those ideas a severe check, but still not wrecking them irrevocably nor exacting a very heavy penalty. But the Prussian spirit added blunder to blunder. Having launched a hopeless war it set itself to give that war an 'unlimited' character. Instead of going through Belgium as a reluctant trespasser, the Prussian army trampled through as a ravaging devastator in full blast of frightfulness. By the time Prussia had fought and lost the Battle of the Marne she had steeled her enemies to an inflexible resolution against a compromise peace."
Prussia, he argued, thus early by twoblunders of the first magnitude (1) entered into a campaign against an alliance which ultimately could command vastly superior forces, and (2) embittered the conditions of the campaign so that her withdrawal from it was made exceedingly difficult. Several blunders of a lesser order marked the first stages of the campaign. Belgium having been attacked and Liége taken, the Prussian army showed a strange hesitancy and lack of enterprise when faced by the little Belgian army on the line Haelen-Tirlemont-Namur. Precious days were lost in pottering. Whether it was expected that the Belgian nation would give way after one defeat, or it was thought that French and British armies had been pushed up into Belgium, the German millions were held up an unduly long time by the Belgian thousands.
At Mons the German Army neither crushed the French-British force nor pushed it back so quickly that the main deployment was harassed. Whether this failure of the German Army was due to its bad handling or to the excellent virtues of the French-British force, did not matter. But the Battle of Mons frustrated the only hope that was left to Germany at that time—a successful rush on Paris opening the way to a quick peace. It proved that there was no military genius at the head of the German invaders. Then the Army which had been delayed in Belgium was defeated on the Marneand had to fall back on the Aisne. The explanation for this given in some German quarters was that the Army had outstripped its big guns and ammunition supplies. That was as good as any other. No explanation would clear the Prussian Military Command from the stigma that it failed when there was that one remaining desperate chance of success.
And having failed on the Marne and retreated to the Aisne the German strategic plan lost all coherency. True, the war was lost so far as any hope of winning European dominancy was concerned. But there was still as a possible objective a peace which would secure Prussia something in return for the territory which she had overrun. Such a peace had been made difficult by the cold rage inspired by Prussian frightfulness. But it was the only possible aim left and, from a military point of view, it could only be pursued in one way, by a definite hammering at some vital point to secure a decisive result, with a defensive stand in other quarters. A defensive campaign in the East with a determined offensive in the West, or a defensive on the West with a resolute offensive on the East.
The Prussian vacillated between the two; his effort was always shuttlecocking East to West, West to East, getting a decisive result nowhere. Like a baited bull in the arena Prussia was constantly making sensational rushes here andthere, gratified often by the sight of fleeing foes, but never breaking out of the arena of doom, and always losing blood.
"The first three months of the war," he concluded dogmatically, "were decisive. They do not redound to the military glory of Prussia. During those three months the disciplined and trained devotion of the German troops worked wonders in the battle line. But indecision at Headquarters prevented the proper concentration of their efforts. Prussia had failed to conquer Europe unprepared. She was afterwards face to face with the task of conquering Europe prepared; and her indecision increased. She was always looking for success in a new quarter and never finding it. Recklessness and vacillation and impatience are not sound military qualities, but they mark the whole military history of Germany since November, 1914. Recklessness of ultimate consequences was shown in such matters as the bringing of poison gas into use. Vacillation was shown by the effort which was organised to take the French Channel ports at all costs, and, failing, was diverted to the Eastern Front, and back again to this Front, and then again to the Balkan Front, and back to this Front and then to the Italian Front and finally back to this Front. Impatience was shown in the general failure to push any effort to its logical conclusion, and in details, such as the hastewith which poison gas was put into use on a small and ineffectual scale instead of being kept in reserve for a great and possibly decisive effort."
"Take it year by year," this officer concluded, "it has been always the same. Germany has added always to the area of destruction. She has never got nearer to victory. It will be the same with this Push. If that motor lorry has to carry away the maps from Montreuil it may be another ten years before we beat the Germans, but we will beat them."
"But if France gives in?"
"France won't give in. Look at her now, ready to smash up all Pas de Calais—to blow up every harbour and canal and road. That does not look like giving in. Even if she were forced to it we could go back to our island and carry on the fight from there."
Then we talked of lighter things.
Going out from dinner my friend reverted to the war position.
"Anyhow that lorry is not going to take the maps. I bet you a cigar to nothing."
He was right. Going up to the map room on the Intelligence side we heard that our troops were holding in front of Amiens. We had actually passed the lowest point of our fortunes, and within a week the motor lorry had gone.
I asked one of the drivers detailed to it, whoeither did not know or wisely professed not to know what he had been kept in waiting for, what he thought about it all. He replied with that sound philosophy of the British soldier:
"It was a splendid 'mike,' Sir."
"Mike," it need hardly be explained, is a trade term in the Army for a soft job.
The "unity of command" achieved in the Spring of 1918 caused hardly a ripple of comment at G.H.Q. Some days after it had happened we learned that Lord Milner (then Secretary of State for War) had been over, and that, with the approval of Lord Haig, Field Marshal Foch had become Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies.
I suppose that in their secret hearts many officers felt a little sad that the honour of the united command had not fallen to a British General. But there was no question as to the wisdom of the choice nor as to the wisdom of the step itself. It was one of the early misfortunes of the campaign that the British Government in 1914 had insisted very strongly on keeping our Army as an absolutely independent unit in France. The reasons, one may presume, were political rather thanstrategical; and that there was still some remnant of the old prejudice against "continental entanglements." I do not suppose that if the issue had been left to the soldiers themselves there would have been any doubt but that the small auxiliary British Force would have "reported to" the main French Army and acted under its direction. That would have been the natural military course. But the position became more difficult as the importance of the British Army grew. At the time that the united Command was achieved the British Army was in fighting force an equal unit to the French.
Two questions are often raised in connection with this decision of 1918: Was it necessary? Was it inevitable that the united command should go to Marshal Foch? Both questions may be answered with "yes;" though in each case the "yes" needs to be qualified with some explanation.
AT THE CHIEF'S CHATEAU
It is, for instance, hardly correct to say that the decision to unite the command "won the war;" though it is probably correct that it hastened the date of victory. Before it was achieved there was good co-operation, though not perfect co-operation, between the Allied Forces. After it was achieved there was maintained a certain independence of outlook and of policy on the part of the British Command which was a great factor in the speedy consummation of victory. If thatindependence had not been maintained, the operations of 1918 would, almost certainly, not have been so gloriously decisive. This aspect of the final campaign has never been discussed to my knowledge, yet a knowledge of it is important if the events of 1918 are to be viewed in their proper perspective.
I suppose the average "man in the street" takes the view that early in 1918, the British Army, which had been blundering along up till then, was put under French Command and straightway the war was won. But it was not at all like that. The British Army command, whilst giving the most loyal support to the French Generalissimo and bowing to his decisions when they were finally made, read it as its duty still to keep a share in the conduct of the campaign; and in many most important conclusions it upheld its own view as against the French view. The final result in some matters showed that the British view was the right view, and that if it had not been taken the victorious advance would not have been possible.
In an earlier chapter I have given the facts about the forage ration. It was not exactly a matter of the first importance, some may say. But if the French view had been accepted and the British and American horse ration had come down to the French level our horse transport would not have been able to carry on aswonderfully as it did from August to November, 1918. As things were, it had nothing to spare during the last week, as our pursuing troops can tell. The French with their logical minds argued that if their horses could do with a certain ration, ours could. In this case the apparently logical conclusion was not the sound one; for it left out of consideration some factors—as to whether we did not use our horses more, and as to whether our men could get, or would try to get, the same work out of ill-fed horses. In this matter it was well for the Allied cause that the British had their way.
In another matter logic threatened to lead to a step which might have proved disastrous. The French saw, as the logical corollary of the united command, a union, a pooling of all the supply and transport departments. Not only should the Armies fight under one strategical direction but they should share and share alike all their resources. A decision to this effect was actually come to, the Americans agreeing with the French view. It was logical without a shadow of doubt. But British common-sense recognised that if this radical reorganisation were attempted in 1918 it would be 1920 before the Alliance would have been ready for a great Push. The British Army—let it be confessed with appropriate candour and shamefacedness—was much more exigent in its demands than the French. It needed, or thought it needed,more food, more clothing, more comforts, more ammunition, more transport. It had evolved for itself during the campaign a system of "housekeeping" which was over-liberal, perhaps, as compared with the French, but which was mainly a result of the generosity of the Home people, and was so deeply rooted in our Army organisation that to have torn it up in 1918 would have caused all kinds of trouble.
In June, 1918, the "Executive Inter-Allied Committee on Supply" was formed by an agreement between the French and the American governments, to which the British government at first (apparently) assented. It was to take over control of all Supply, Storage, and Transport, and to have executive functions,i.e., its decisions would be binding on all the Armies. The British Command at once saw that this was impracticable—that it was impossible in the very midst of the preparations for the Great Push to throw into a common pool so much of the actual equipment of the Army. The Allied Command was very stubborn in supporting its plan. But in time British common-sense proved stronger than abstract logic, and in July all was made happy by a decision that the functions of the Board were toadviseon matters of Supply and Storage and methods of utilising material, as far as practicable, for the common benefit of the Allies. The Board, in short, was to have itsscope in assisting to maintain the excellent understanding which already existed between the Armies of the Allies in regard to Supplies and Services.
The position was not at all that the British Army wanted to wallow in luxury whilst its Allies went short, for it was always willing to help in every possible way; but that its command knew that the essentially national system of "housekeeping" which had been set up, could not be thrown down at an hour's notice without grave danger.
The same sort of problem was always cropping up on a smaller scale in areas where French troops were fighting with the British. The French had at first a logical aspiration for an identity of supply systems. Our view was that when British and French troops were operating together, it was not possible to serve both from a common stock, nor by a common railway service. Ammunition and Supplies differed in almost every respect, and the systems of Supply could not be identical. Except in regard to a few items, one Army could not supply the other satisfactorily. Therefore, each Army should have its own depôts, railheads, and—for the sorting of supplies—its own regulating stations, which would receive from Base full trains loaded with particular items of supply and send out to Divisions full trains loaded with the necessary assortmentsof different items. Something could be done in the way of pooling bulk stores, such as forage, coal, and petrol; but for most things there must be different channels of supply.
British policy was that a British Force in a French area should provide completely for its own maintenance, and organise its supply lines and depôts accordingly. Ultimately it was recognised on both sides that this was the only possible policy, and that the trouble of providing separate regulating stations, separate railheads, and depôts must be faced. Any half-way policy was seen to be fraught with too many possibilities of dangerous failures.
To cite yet one more instance of the British policy proving the sounder: In July, 1918, there were very strong indications that the German power of offensive had passed its zenith and that the enemy might be forced shortly to a great withdrawal. There was set on foot in the British Army at the earliest opportunity an examination of the measures of Transport and Supply which would become necessary if the Germans were forced to withdraw their line. In 1916-1917 the enemy had been able to avoid, to a great extent, the consequences of his defeats on the Somme and the Ancre by retiring his line; a promptly effective pursuit was hindered by lack of the necessary material on our part. A foreseeing preparation would enable a better harvest of victory to be reaped if the position of1916-1917 were reproduced in 1918. We wanted to be sure of being able to follow up with about 2,000 tons of supplies per day per mile of front to carry our troops over the Hindenburg Line.
There was found to be a divergence of view as to the best means of following up. The French were inclined to put their faith chiefly in light railways. The British idea was that light railways could be overdone; that there was not a full appreciation of the modification in the rôle of the light railway consequent on the change from trench to moving warfare; that there was a tendency for light railways to attempt to duplicate the work of broad-gauge railways; and a hint of a tendency to look upon light railways as a substitute for, instead of a reinforcement of, roads in the forward area.
The British "pursuit policy," to put it briefly, was to concentrate all available labour on pushing forward with the broad-gauge railways and the roads forward from them, trusting to motor transport and to horse transport to pick up the burden from broad-gauge railhead. This was maintained to be a superior policy to concentrating on light railways, which could not allow so much freedom in lines of advance.
The British view prevailed in our sector, and in the Great Pursuit it proved to be sound. The Germans were followed up on our sectorof the Front in really fine fashion. In the Somme sector of the Front between August 8th and September 8th our broad-gauge railheads were pushed forward an average of 30 miles. To these new railheads, all kinds of traffic could go direct from the Base to meet there our Motor Transport (and, of course, light railways; these were not neglected but given secondary importance).
It was at first the French idea to "sandwich" the various Divisions of the two Armies, to have a British Division or Corps side by side with a French wherever possible. This again would have been a beautifully logical illustration of the complete identity and fraternity of the two armies, but it was not business. It multiplied difficulties of administration, and it was finally abandoned, much to the advantage of the common cause.
These matters I cite not with the idea of deprecating the French General Staff—there were presumably as many instances in which their view was right and ours was wrong—but to show that it is not fair to our G.H.Q. to assume, as many do assume, that the British High Command had little or nothing to do with the planning of the great victory. Marshal Foch is prompt to resent that view when it is obtruded. He would, without a doubt, agree that the British were most loyal in service, and also very independent and stubborn (and oftenprevailing) in council. Probably looking back upon the great victory which was won under hisbâtonhe is profoundly grateful that the British were so forthright in helping to keep the Allied operations on the best track.
The other question, asked at the beginning of this chapter, needs to be explained. Was it inevitable that Marshal Foch should be chosen as Generalissimo? It is quite certain that no other choice was possible in view of all the circumstances. There is no need to come to the question of who was the more renowned soldier, or to argue that if Lord Haig had been given the same chance he would probably have achieved the same result. Personally I think that the British Army in 1918 was in respect of Generalship as in other respects equal to any in the Field. But that was not the issue. We were fighting on French soil and had to demand great sacrifices from the French civilian population, which a French Generalissimo could best get. It was quite certain that the British Army would fight with exactly the same enthusiasm under a French Generalissimo; it was not possible to be so certain that the French Army would under a British Generalissimo.
There was no contested election for the post. Lord Haig as well as General Pershing supported Marshal Foch's claims. It was the work and not the glory of the work which was the first consideration.