Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights Part 21

DREAD INSTRUMENT OF WAR.

The instrument of war most dreaded by the Crusaders, as they found it in the hands of the Turks, was the incendiary bomb--a projectile that flew through the air "like a fiery dragon" as they described it, and set fire to whatever it touched. Sometimes it was provided with iron barbs, by which it clung to buildings.

This was one of the ways in which the Saracens employed the celebrated "Greek fire"--an inflammable compound that is understood to have been a mixture of petroleum, saltpeter and pitch. The chief horror of it, from the Crusaders' point of view, was that it was unquenchable. Mere water had no effect upon it. Hence they were sure that it must be of diabolical origin.

But the up-to-date incendiary bomb is a great improvement on its original of the Middle Ages. The modern contrivance is thoroughly scientific, and it does its destructive business with certainty and dispatch.

No less effective are the gas bombs which were introduced by the German soldiers at Rheims, and which when exploding near the trenches occupied by the French and English threw off vapors and poisonous gases which killed or overwhelmed thousands of brave men. These devices used in violation of all rules of civilized warfare sent hundreds to the hospitals. Seventy-five victims were taken at one time from the trenches to the hospital at Zuydcoote, north of Dunkirk, where it was found that some of those who had inhaled the fumes turned a violet tinge.

Altogether it was estimated that from 3000 to 5000 men were affected by the gas fumes in this first onslaught and at least 10 per cent of those who were overcome succ.u.mbed to the deadly fumes. Many of those who inhaled the poisons expectorated blood and for days afterward were racked by terrible coughing. In many cases fever developed in a few days ending with pneumonia. When the men were not sufficiently poisoned to cause death they were so affected that their usefulness as soldiers was ended for all time. The poison made them confirmed invalids.

INTRODUCTION OF GAS MASK.

Naturally human ingenuity was called into play to protect men against the poisons and the gas mask came into being. These were of many types.

The early creations consisted primarily of a nose and mouth covering with a receptacle for inclosing a sponge or gauze soaked with a chemical which possessed the power to neutralize the gas fumes. Such devices have been used by fire fighters in large cities the world over where the men battling to save buildings have been compelled to enter smoke-filled rooms and cellars. Other types which have proven more effective are designed after the fas.h.i.+on of the diving apparatus, and having a small tank of compressed oxygen with feeding tubes running to the mask. The oxygen combines with the contaminated air breathed through absorbent cotton or sponge and provides the wearer with the proportion of oxygen necessary to existence. And even the horses have been provided with such masks.

But to go back to bombs. All through France and Belgium, and wherever the Prussian soldiers found their way, there was evidence of the use of hand grenades which were thrown against the sides of or into buildings to set them in flames. Some of these devices, made of sheet metal, were in their action similar to the "Fourth of July torpedoes" familiar to every American school boy. When thrown they exploded throwing oil and chemicals over walls and floors. Some of them seem to have been loaded with bullets and were in effect hand shrapnel.

Then there developed from the primary use of these nefarious weapons the recognized hand grenade, which is actually hand-shrapnel, plied by men at close quarters. Thousands of these have been thrown by the armies in their charges on the trenches. And then, to offset the use of these devices in the offensive, there came into being also the smoke bombs.

These when exploding throw up great clouds of black smoke which hang over everything.

EFFECTIVE IN A HUNDRED WAYS.

The use of such bombs has proved effective in a hundred ways. They have been used to create a perfect s.h.i.+eld of smoke to conceal the movements of troops, or prevent the enemy from finding the range with their long distance guns. Similarly bombs which contained burning chemicals have been used to hold in check the approaching enemy forces.

Half way between the great gun and the hand grenade stand among war weapons the trench mortars. The first of these were used by the j.a.panese in their war with Russia. The j.a.panese mortars were mere logs hollowed out and strengthened by wrappings of bamboo rope. The projectiles fired from these were empty provision tins filled with high explosives, sc.r.a.ps of metal, bits of stone or whatever, in the emergency, could be found to fill them.

The mortars are pitched at an angle and the projectiles are shot with a skyrocket effect, to land in the trenches or camp of the enemy. The Germans developed the idea and the perfected mortars are of steel, and capable of throwing bombs weighing several hundred pounds.

And then the great moving fort which has been called "the tank!" Those snorting, fire-spitting dragons which were depicted for us in childhood can scarcely bring to our mind a greater element of the fanciful, the horrible, and the powerful than the steel hulks which came into being in this war under the name of "tanks."

We see them in our mind's eye spitting fire as they crossed No Man's Land, amid the smoke and dust of bursting sh.e.l.ls. Keeping steadily on their courses they dived into huge craters made by exploding sh.e.l.ls; stretched themselves across trenches, brushed trees and boulders aside, and kept steadily on their courses. German wire entanglements were as so many pieces of string before their huge frames. Nothing deterred them.

They moved forward into the face of the enemy, reaching the first line of German trenches. There the soulless devices sat complacently astride the trenches, and turning their guns along the ditches swept them in both directions.

THE TANK DEFIES ALL OBSTACLES.

The tanks which were introduced by the English, move along on revolving platforms, so to speak. These platforms enable the tank to overcome all obstacles as the caterpillar tread is curved up in the arc of a huge circle at the front which gives the vehicle its wonderful tractive powers. This large curvature acts as a huge wheel with a tremendously long leverage equal to the radius of the circlet or the spokes of the imaginary wheel of the same diameter. Only that portion of the a.s.sumed wheel which would come in contact with the ground acts as the lever, and it is just this portion that is reproduced in the front end of a caterpillar belt.

Although varying in size and details, all tanks have the common characteristic of being divided into three main compartments between the two side caterpillar frames. The first is the observation compartment in which the driver and his helper are perched high above the ground to direct the movements of the huge steel beast.

In the middle is the ammunition room from which the guns carried in the two side turrets are fed. At the rear is the engine room. From two or four gasoline engines are used--these driving the rear axle and its integral sprockets over which the caterpillars run. The latter run an idler pulley or sprockets at the extreme front ends and are supported by means of rollers attached to the upper portion of the frame on each side when pa.s.sing over the top. This movement of the caterpillar belts is exactly a.n.a.logous to that of the ordinary variety of garden insect with the same name which similarly lays down his own track by humping his back continuously and regardless of the land surface.

The tanks are steered by a pair of small ordinary wheels at the rear.

These are supported in a pivot on a frame extended from the rear. They are merely for steering, and support none of the weight of the tank except when bridging wide trenches or dips in the surface. Steering can be accomplished by making one caterpillar go faster than the other by manipulating clutches on the driving mechanism.

TANK'S "CATERPILLAR" FEATURE.

The "caterpillar" feature of the tank had its origin in the caterpillar belts or shoes which were first used on the great field guns and mortars--those tremendous weapons which shoot bombs and sh.e.l.ls weighing tons and containing 500 or more pounds of guncotton or explosive which on contact is discharged, rending everything for yards around.

These guns, as well as the smaller field guns, have had attached to them great s.h.i.+elds of steel behind which the gunners stand, so that they are protected against the old-fas.h.i.+oned sharpshooters whose duty it was to pick off the gunners.

The caterpillar or wheel belts on the big guns consist of flat blocks, or shoes, wider than the tires of the wheels. They are hinged and fastened together so as to form a great chain, and when placed on the wheels present broad surfaces to the ground and keep the gun carriages from sinking into the soft earth. With a set of these shoes a heavy gun can be drawn over soft and irregular ground, which would be almost impa.s.sable where the gun is mounted on wheels of ordinary width.

Before these belts were devised it was necessary for every gun crew to carry a supply of beams, jackscrews and devices to be used in extricating the heavy guns when they got fast in the mud. Now every gun has these belts which can be put on or detached in a few minutes.

Paradoxically, this is the day of the big gun's greatest effectiveness, and the day of its greatest limitations. The war has taught us more in two years about gunnery and the effect of various types of ordnance under varying conditions than could have been learned in twenty years of theoretical research--for actual experience proves where theoretical research merely gives ground on which to base an opinion.

NATIONAL RESOURCES TO DISLODGE A MAN.

One of the things that we have learned is that when man takes unto himself the humble pick and shovel and proceeds to dig a hole for himself in the ground, we can get him out of that hole only by drawing on the combined resources of a nation, by constructing one of the most complex and expensive instruments in the world, and with it hurling at man dug-in a projectile weighing a good part of a ton.

The blunder, perhaps unavoidable, which stands out with equal emphasis among the preliminary preparations of all the nations engaged in the struggle was the underestimation of the artillery power required for the conduct of a successful military campaign under modern conditions of warfare. It was an underestimation so great that in the light of developments it will some day prove ridiculous.

At the opening of the war two opposed theories of artillery effectiveness were held by the combatants. The French swore by the medium calibre, rapid-fire, low-trajectory field piece. The Teutons had devoted their best efforts to the development of guns so big that their opponents were tempted, before they learned better, to regard them as too unwieldy for effective field service. Both were right, the French in the full sense and intention of the term, the Teutons by pure accident.

It should be explained here that the word Teuton is used advisedly, for in reality it is to the Austrians before the Germans that the development of the 11-inch and bigger field gun, with its special carriage and caterpillar-tread wheels owes its existence. It was Austrian guns and Austrian gunners that first made the heavy artillery of the Teuton armies famous.

The French field piece performed all that was expected of it, but it was handicapped by unforeseen conditions of warfare. The heavy Teuton guns performed their mission in the very introductory stages of the war, then failed, and later, by the irony of fate, proved to be the very things required when the unforeseen war conditions developed.

A WONDERFUL GUN.

The Germans and Austrians believed that they could develop a big gun which could be given sufficient mobility for use in the field, and with commendable and methodical application they proceeded to do so. The theory was, first, that it could batter down any permanent fortifications that man could build, and when it was pitted against the concrete ramparts of Liege and Namur it blew them out of existence in a few hours. The Teutons had scored, and scored so heavily that the Allies barely escaped the fate the Germans had prepared for them in an overwhelming sweep on Paris. That they did escape this fate is no doubt in a large measure due to the fact that the second effectiveness claimed by the Teutons for their heavy ordnance failed in its full accomplishment. Used in open fighting, the great explosive sh.e.l.ls hurled by these guns did not do the damage expected to the wide, open firing lines of the Allies, nor did they produce the moral effect expected. The great sh.e.l.ls tore tremendous craters in the ground, from which the force of the explosion was expended upward in a sort of cone-shape, shooting above the heads of any troops in the vicinity except those immediately adjacent to the explosion. In the meantime the field pieces of the French, with their extreme mobility and rapidity of fire, were scattering death and destruction with their straight shrapnel fire in the solid formations which were so popular with the Germans in the early stages of the war, and which today they do not seem to be able to drop entirely.

So far the French piece did all expected of it. The German piece had proved its ability only to blow up permanent fortifications, and this was nullified immediately by the action of the French in abandoning the concrete shelters and moving their own guns into newly and quickly-constructed trench forts.

A THING UNDREAMED OF.

But the thing that neither side had dreamed of was the settling down of the war on the west front into an eternal line of opposing trenches to face each other for years. That it did so was due to the monumental blunders on the part of the German staff in allowing itself to be outmaneuvered and beaten back from the gates of Paris by numerically inferior forces, and still further outmaneuvered in the extension of the lines northward in that famous series of flanking movements which finally reached the sea.

It was their success in driving the German army to earth when it was stronger than they were that saved the Allies, and gave them the breathing time required in which to further their preparations and train new troops, and likewise it is this same mode of trench warfare which has made their task so difficult when they have taken the offensive.

Against ordinary trench lines, as known in the early stages of the war, the French field pieces were more effective than the heavy cannon of the Teutons, just as they had been in the open. Shooting in flat trajectory across the trench, and exploding just above it, the shrapnel scattered more death downward than the heavy projectile could scatter upward after it had buried itself in the soft earth.

But with the continuous line of trenches stretching from Switzerland to the sea, with consequent impossibility of out-flanking, demonstrated by the Germans to their sorrow in repeated repulses of their drives to cut through to Calais, each side felt justified in replying to the artillery of the other by digging deeper and more permanently, with many feet of shelter overhead. This ended the effectiveness of shrapnel except for the repulse of attacks, and again the heavy guns swung into the position of pre-eminence.

A SITUATION ALMOST BEYOND CONTROL.

It was at this stage, however, that both sides realized how totally inadequate the supply of these heavy guns and ammunition was to cope with the situation. While the heavy gun was more effective in blasting out the enemy from his dugouts than the field piece, it required many times the artillery power which either side possessed to handle the job.

Then commenced the race of the ammunition and gun factories to turn out their products by the ton where they had been turned out by the pound before; a race in which the Allies took and held the lead.