Fields of Victory Part 8

Its one enemy is a wind which blows towards the hostile gun and prevents the sound reaching the recording apparatus. It can detect a gun as easily if it is in a wood or in a building as if it were on a hill-top.

"Simple as it appears, however, it is not so easy as one might think to make a practical ally of sound ranging. We have succeeded. The Germans failed. Towards the end of the war at least ninety per cent, of the German artillery was marked down accurately by these means; and the staff employed on sound-ranging and flash-spotting (the last a kindred method depending on a mixture of observation and mathematics) had grown from _four_ in 1914 _to four thousand five hundred_ in 1918.

"Casualties have been heavy, and the work arduous. But those responsible for it have, at any rate, 'done their bit.'"

This is just one instance, such as we ignorant at home can more or less follow, of that concentration of British wit and British perseverance on the terrible business of war which carried us to our goal. Germany prided herself, above all, on "scientific war." But the nation she despised as slow-witted and effete has met her again and again on her own boasted ground, and, brain for brain, has won.

With the ever-growing importance of artillery has gone, of course, a constant increase in artillery _personnel_, and in the proportion of gunners to infantry. The Third Battle of Ypres in the autumn of 1917 was "one of intense struggle for artillery supremacy," says the Field Marshal. Germany had put out all her strength in guns, and was determined to beat down the British artillery. The British Command met the attack and defeated it, in a long-drawn battle, in which, naturally, the proportion of artillery _personnel_ to infantry was exceptionally high--at one time eighty-five per cent. Last spring, for a short time, owing to the transference of batteries from the Russian front, the enemy command succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng "a definite local artillery superiority." But it was soon over. Before the breakdown of the March offensive "our guns had regained the upper hand," and in the later battles of the year the German artillery was finally mastered.

But immense as was the growth of the artillery factor, the ultimate problem was the old problem of co-operation and combination of _all factors_. "Deep study of work other than one's own," "understanding of the other man's job"--for the highest success in any branch of the Army, these were and are indispensable. Only so can the vast machine work satisfactorily; only so can the human intelligence embodied in it come to its own.

To the two subsidiary services most in the public eye--tanks and aeroplanes--I will return presently. As to the Signal Service, the "nervous system" of the Army, on which "co-operation and combination"

depend, it has grown, says the Field Marshal, "almost out of recognition." At the outbreak of war it consisted of 2,400 officers and men; by the end of the war it had risen to 42,000. Cables, telegrams, wireless, carrier-pigeons and dog messengers--every kind of device was used for keeping up the communications, which mean everything in battle. The signal officer and his men creeping out over No Man's Land to mend a wire, or lay down a new one, in the very heart of the fighting, have carried the lives of thousands in their hands, and have risked their own without a thought. Sir Douglas Haig, from his Headquarters, spoke not only to every unit in the British Army, but to the Headquarters of our Allies--to London, Paris, and Ma.r.s.eilles. An Army Headquarters was prepared to deal with 10,000 telegrams and 5,000 letters in twenty-four hours; and wherever an army went, its cables and telephones went with it. As many as 6,500 miles of field cable have been issued in a single week, and the weekly average over the whole of 1918 was 3,000.

As to the Rearward and Transport Services, seeing that the Army was really the nation, with the best of British intelligence everywhere at its command, it is not surprising perhaps that a business people, under the pressure of a vital struggle, obtained so brilliant a success. In 1916, I saw something of the great business departments of the Army--the Army Service, Army Ordnance, and Motor Transport depots at Havre and Rouen. The sight was to me a bewildering ill.u.s.tration of what English "muddling" could do when put to the test. On my return to London, Dr. Page, the late American Amba.s.sador, who during the years when America was still neutral had managed, notwithstanding, to win all our hearts, gave me an account of the experience of certain American officers in the same British bases, and the impression made on them. "They came here afterwards on their way home," he said--I well remember his phrase, "with the eyes starting out of their heads, and with reports that will transform all our similar work at home." So that we may perhaps trace some at least of those large and admirable conceptions of Base needs and Base management, with which the American Army prepared its way in France, to these early American visits and reports, as well as to the native American genius for organisation and the generosity of American finance.

But if the spectacle of "the back of the Army" was a wonderful one in 1916, it became doubly wonderful before the end of the war. The feeding strength of our forces in France rose to a total approaching 2,700,000 men. The Commander-in-Chief tries to make the British public understand something of what this figure means. Transport and s.h.i.+pping were, of course, the foundation of everything. While the British Fleet kept the seas and fought the submarine, the Directorate of Docks handled the ports, and the Directorate of Roads, with the Directorates of Railway Traffic, Construction and Light Railways, dealt with the land transport. During the years of war we landed ten and a half millions of persons in France, and last year the weekly tonnage arriving at French ports exceeded 175,000 tons. Meanwhile four thousand five hundred miles of road were made or kept up by the Directorate of Roads. Only they who have seen with their own eyes--or felt in their own bones!--what a wrecked road, or a road worn to pieces by motor lorries, is really like, can appreciate what this means. And during 1918 alone, the Directorate of Railway Traffic built or repaired 2,340 miles of broad-gauge and 1,348 miles of narrow-gauge railway. Everywhere, indeed, on the deserted battle-fields you come across these deserted light railways by which men and guns were fed.

May one not hope that they may still be of use in the reconstruction of French towns and the revival of French agriculture?

As to the feeding and cooking and was.h.i.+ng of the armies, the story is no less wonderful, and I remember as I read the great camp laundry at etaples that I went through in 1917, with its busy throng of Frenchwomen at work and its 30,000 items a day. Twenty-five thousand cooks have been trained in the cookery schools of the Army, while a jealous watch has been kept on all waste and by-products under an Inspectorate of Economies. As to the care of the horses, in health or in sickness, the British Remount and Veterinary Service has been famed throughout Europe for efficiency and humanity.

Of the vast hospital service, what can one say that has not been said a thousand tunes already? Between the spring of 1916, when I first saw the fighting front, and November, 1918, the hospital accommodation in France rose from 44,000 to 175,000 persons. That is to say, we kept our wounded in France during the height of the submarine campaign, both to protect them from the chance of further suffering, and to economise our dwindling tonnage, and fresh hospitals had to be built for them. Of the doctors and nurses, the stretcher-bearers and orderlies, whose brave and sacred work it was to gather the wounded from the battle-line, and to bring to bear upon the suffering and martyrdom of war all that human skill and human tenderness could devise, Sir Douglas Haig has said many true and eloquent things in the course of his despatches. He sums them all up in his last despatch in the plain words: "In spite of the numbers dealt with, _there has been no war in which the resources of science have been utilised so generously and successfully for the quick evacuation and careful tending of the sick and wounded, or for the prevention of disease_."

Most true--and yet? Do not let us deceive ourselves! The utmost energy, the tenderest devotion, the n.o.blest skill, can go but a certain way when measured against the sum total of human suffering caused by war. The ablest of doctors and nurses are the first to admit it. Those of us whose wounded brothers and sons reached in safety the haven of hospital comfort and skilled nursing, and were thereby brought back to life, are, thank Heaven, the fortunate many. But there are the few for whose dear ones all that wonderful hospital and nursing science was of no avail. I think of a gallant boy lying out all night with a broken thigh in a sh.e.l.l-hole amid the mud and under the rain of Flanders. Kind hands come with the morning and carry him to the advanced dressing station. There is still hope. But miles of mud and broken ground lie between him and the nearest hospital.

Immediate warmth and rest and nursing might have saved him. But they are unattainable. Brave men carry the boy tenderly, carefully, the three miles to the casualty clearing station. The strain on the flickering life is just too much, and in the first night of hospital, when every care is round it, the young life slips away--lost by so little--by no fault!

Is there any consolation? One only--the boy's own spirit. A comrade remembers one of his last sayings--a simple casual word: "I don't expect to come through--but--it's worth it."

There one reaches the bed-rock of it all--the conviction of a just cause. What would it avail us--this pride of victory, of organisation, of science, to which these great despatches of our great Commander-in-Chief bear witness, without that spiritual certainty behind it all--the firm faith that England was fighting for the right, and, G.o.d helping her, "could do no other."

CHAPTER IX

TANKS AND AEROPLANES

THE STAFF WORK OF THE WAR

I have quoted in the preceding chapter the warning words of Sir Douglas Haig on the subject of "mechanical appliances." The gist of them is that mechanical appliances can never replace men, and that the history of tanks in the war shows that, useful as they have been, their value depends always upon combination with both infantry and artillery. So far from their doing away with artillery, the Commander-in-Chief points out that the Battle of Amiens, August 8th, in which the greatest force of tanks was used, and in which they were most brilliantly successful, was "an action in which more artillery ammunition was expended than in any action of similar dimensions in the whole war."

The tank enthusiasts will clearly not be quite satisfied with so measured a judgment! They point to the marked effect of the tanks on the strategy of the last three months of the war, to the extraordinary increase in the elements of mobility and surprise which their use made possible, to the effect of them also on German opinion and _morale_, and they believe that in any future war--if war there be!--they are certain to play, not a subsidiary, but a commanding part.

One of the most distinguished officers of the Tank Corps, who was wounded and decorated before he joined the corps, was severely wounded twice while he belonged to the corps, and was an eye-witness of the incidents he describes, allows me to print the following letter:

"You ask me for a short account of what tanks have done in the war. In doing so, you set me a difficult problem! For three years I have thought of practically nothing else but tanks, so that I find it very difficult to deal with the subject briefly. However, I will try.

"The basic idea and purpose of tanks is a very simple one: to save infantry casualties. A new tank can be built in a few months; a new soldier cannot be produced under eighteen years. This idea--of the use of mechanical means to save casualties--undoubtedly had much to do with the production in the Tank Corps, a new unit and without traditions, of the very high _esprit de corps_ it has always shown, and without which it could not have developed successfully.

"Tanks were first used by the British on the 15th September, 1916, in the Battle of the Ancre. They had, however, been designed to meet the conditions which existed _in the preceding year_, before the tremendous artillery bombardments of the middle stages of the war reduced the ground to a series of sh.e.l.l-holes and craters, which were so closely continuous over a large area of ground that they could not possibly be avoided. Compared with the latest type of tank, our first effort--known as Mark I.--may appear crude; but much genius had been expended upon it, and it is worth noting that both the French and German tanks, produced long after this tank, were much inferior to it.

"The Ypres salient, let me begin by saying, was never favourable to the employment of tanks. In the Third Battle of Ypres (31st July to November, 1917), which I personally believe to have been the hardest battle of the whole war, the tanks were unable to cope with the wet and sh.e.l.led ground."

Nevertheless, towards the end of the Ypres battle the tank attack in the first Battle of Cambrai was being planned, and there, at last, the enthusiasts of the Tank Corps had the conditions for which they had been long hoping--a good ground and a surprise attack.

"It is important to remember, the letter continues, that the Hindenburg line at that time presented an insoluble problem. The _sea of wire_ which protected its well-developed trenches and machine-gun positions was placed almost throughout on the _reverse slope_ of the hills or rising ground of which the line took advantage. The artillery observer could hardly get a view of the wire at all; beside which, it was so deep it would have taken a month to cut it by artillery fire.

"_The tank provided the solution_--the only solution. The tank, by _crus.h.i.+ng down the wire_--in a few minutes--was able to do what there seemed no other way of doing. And the tank success at Cambrai was not a mere flash in the pan. To the end of the war the Hindenburg line, or any other line organised in the same way, was entirely at the mercy of the tanks.

"The tanks, however, did not make their full weight felt until August, 1918. They had become a very important factor before that, and had saved thousands of lives; but from the beginning of the counter-offensive of last year they were a dominating feature of the war. Ludendorff had already recognised their importance in July, after the French use of them in the Battle of Soissons, when he wrote to his Army Commanders that 'the utmost attention must be paid to combating tanks. Our earlier successes against tanks led to a certain contempt for this weapon of warfare. We must now reckon with more dangerous tanks.'"

The "earlier successes" mentioned were those of the Third Battle of Ypres. In the Ypres salient, however, the real anti-tank defence was the mud, and the general conclusions which the German Higher Command drew from the derelict tanks they captured during the fighting of October, 1917, were entirely misleading, as they soon discovered to their cost, a few weeks later, in the First Battle of Cambrai. They showed, indeed, throughout a curious lack of intelligence and foresight with regard to the new weapon, both as to its possibilities and as to the means of fighting it. They were at first entirely surprised by their appearance in the field; then they despised them; and it was not till July and August, 1918, at the beginning of the last great Allied offensive--when it will be remembered that Sir Henry Rawlinson had 400 tanks under his command--that the Germans awoke--too late--to the full importance of the new arm.

Thenceforward "the enemy was overcome by a great fear of the Allied tanks, and in some cases even over-estimated their effect." But it was now too late to put up an adequate defence against "the more dangerous tanks," which were already available in large numbers on the Allied side. It seems incredible, but it is true, that _the Germans never possessed at any time more than fifteen tanks of their own_, plus some twenty-five captured and repaired British tanks; and the only action in which they employed them with any considerable success was at the capture of Villers Bretonneux, April 24th, 1918 (the success which was so quickly turned into defeat by the Australians). After last July, however, the German panic with regard to them grew rapidly, and on the 15th of August we find it stated that everything possible must be done to give the artillery "freedom of action _in its main role_, viz., the engagement of tanks." "Its main role!" The phrase shows that under the pressure of the tanks, the two chief pillars and axioms of the former German defence system--"protective barrages" and "immediate counter-attack"--were giving way, in the case at least of tank attacks, with, of course, the natural result of confusion and weakness. After the Battle of Amiens (August 8th) the German Command issued an explanation of the defeat, signed by Ludendorff. Chief among the reasons given appears: "The fact that the troops were surprised by the ma.s.sed attack of tanks, and lost their heads when the tanks suddenly appeared behind them, having broken through under cover of fog and smoke." The Crown Prince's group of armies reports on the same battle: "That during the present fighting large numbers of tanks broke through on narrow fronts, and, pus.h.i.+ng straight forward, rapidly attacked battery positions and the headquarters of divisions. In many cases no defence could be made in time against the tanks, which attacked them from all sides."

And the peremptory order follows:

"Messages concerning tanks will have priority over all other messages or calls whatsoever."

Naturally the German Army and the German public had by this time begun to ask why the German Command was not itself better equipped with tanks before the opening of the Allied offensive. The answer seems to be, first of all, that they were originally thought little of, as "a British idea." "The use of 300 British tanks at Cambrai," says a German doc.u.ment, "was a 'battle of material.' The German Higher Command decided from the very outset not to fight a 'battle of material.'" They preferred instead their habitual policy of "ma.s.sed attack"--using thereby in the fighting line a number of inferior men, "cla.s.sified as fit for garrison or labour duties," but who, if they "can carry a rifle, must fight." The German Command were, therefore, "not in a position to find the labour for the construction of new and additional material such as tanks." For the initial arrogance, however, which despised the tanks, and for the system which had prevented him from building them in time, when their importance was realised, the enemy was soon plunged in bitter but unavailing regrets.

All he could do was to throw the blame of failure on the Allies' new weapon, and to issue despairing appeals to his own troops. The Allies were sometimes stated to have captured such and such a place "by the use of ma.s.ses of tanks," when, as a matter of fact, very few tanks had been used. And this convenient excuse, as it appeared in the official _communiques_, began soon to have some strange and disastrous results.

The German regimental officer began to think that as soon as tanks appeared, it was _a sufficient reason for the loss of a position_. For the German Army last year might be divided into three categories: "A small number of stout-hearted men (chiefly machine-gunners), who could be depended on to fight to the last; men who did not intend to fight, and _did_ intend to put up their hands on the first occasion; and, thirdly, the 'great middle cla.s.s,' who were prepared to do their duty, and had a sense of discipline, but who could not be cla.s.sed as heroes.... It was they who came to consider that when tanks arrived, 'there was nothing to be done.'"

Moreover, the failure of the German Higher Command to produce tanks themselves to fight those of the Allies had a very serious effect, not only on the faith of the troops in their generals, but also on the _morale_ of the public at home. German war correspondents and members of the Reichstag began to ask indignant questions, and the German War Office hurriedly defended itself in the Reichstag. As late as October 23rd General Scheuch, the German War Minister, declared: "We have been actively engaged for a long period in producing this weapon (which is recognised as important) in adequate numbers." It seems to be true that efforts were then being made, but not true that these efforts were of long standing. "Altogether 'slowness' was the keynote throughout of the German att.i.tude towards the tank idea." He neither appreciated their true use nor the best means of fighting them; and even when we presented him with derelict tanks, as was soon the case on the Ancre in 1916, he failed to diagnose the creature accurately.

"It is natural, I think," my correspondent continues, "that the British should pride themselves on being the introducers and leading exponents of this weapon. What the future will bring no one knows; but if war is to persist, there can be no doubt that mechanical means in general, and tanks in particular, must develop more and more. If any civilised state is compelled to use force, it will, if really civilised, strive to sacrifice its wealth and its material as far as possible, rather than its human lives.

"As to incidents, you asked me for some recollections of those which had particularly impressed themselves upon me. It is hard to choose. The Third Battle of Ypres, to which I have referred, brought out many wonderful deeds of deliberate self-sacrifice.

Take the following:

"In one case a section of three tanks were the only ones available to support an infantry attack. The ground over which they had to proceed was in a terrible state, and their chances of success were small. Their only chance of success, in fact, depended on their finding in the early dawn, and in the fog of battle, one single crossing over the marshy stream. The enemy front line was actually in front of this stream. The officer commanding the section considered that the only way of finding the route was on foot.

With the knowledge that this meant certain death, he led his section of tanks through the bad ground under very heavy fire. He found the bridge safely, and was killed as he reached it. The tanks went on and succeeded in their mission, and many infantry lives were saved by this act of sacrifice."

Then take the case of the incident of General Elles at the First Battle of Cambrai. As my correspondent of the Tank Corps, who was in the battle, says: "In modern warfare the place of the General Commanding is almost invariably in the rear of his troops, in a position where communications are good, and where he can employ his reserves at the right moment. At this battle all the available Tanks (about four hundred) were being used. There were no reserves. So the General Commanding led the attack, flying the Tank Corps flag. He came safely through the attack, which undoubtedly owed some measure of its success to the inspiration which this act gave to the troops."

A quiet account!--given by a man who was certainly not very far away from his General in the affair. Let me supplement it a little by the story of Mr. Philip Gibbs, who seems to have seen as much as any correspondent might, of this wonderful "show" of the Tanks.

"For strange, unusual drama, far beyond the most fantastic imagination, this attack on the Hindenburg line before Cambrai has never been approached on the Western Front; and the first act began when the Tanks moved forward, before the dawn, towards the long wide belts of wire which they had to destroy before the rest could follow.

These squadrons of Tanks were led into action by the General Commanding their corps, who carried his flag on their own Tank--a most gallant gentleman, full of enthusiasm for his monsters and their brave crews, and determined that this day would be theirs. They moved forward in small groups, several hundreds of them, rolled down the Germans' wire and trampled down its lines, and then crossed the deep gulf of the Hindenburg main line, pitching nose downward as they drew their long bodies over the parapets, and rearing themselves again with forward reach of body, and heaving themselves on to the German parados beyond.... The German troops, out of the gloom of the dawn, saw these grey inhuman creatures bearing down upon them, crus.h.i.+ng down their wire, crossing their impregnable lines, firing fiercely from their flanks and sweeping the trenches with machine-gun bullets." A captured German officer thought "he had gone mad," as he watched the Tanks, while his men ran about in terror, trying to avoid the bursts of fire, and crying out in surrender. "What could we do?"

Meanwhile, our own men, English, Irish, and Scottish troops, went behind the Tanks, "laughing and cheering when they saw them get at the German wire and eat it up, and then head for the Hindenburg line, and cross it as though it were but a narrow ditch."

And yet, after this experience, the Germans still delayed to make Tanks! No doubt they argued that, after all, the Cambrai attack, in spite of the Tanks, had ended in a check for the British, and in the loss of much of the ground which had been gained by the surprise attack of the "grey monsters." Meanwhile, the Russian front was rapidly breaking down, and in their exultant antic.i.p.ation of the fresh forces they would soon be drawing from it to throw against the British Armies, the standing contempt of the German Command for "British ideas" and a "battle of material" won the day.

The German General Staff, therefore, maintained its refusal to spare labour and material to make Tanks, and the refusal must have seemed to them fully justified by the initial success of their March offensive.

Tanks played practically no part in the fighting withdrawal of the British Armies in March and April, 1918. But all this time Tank development was going on; and the believers in Tanks were working away at the improvement of the types, convinced now, as ever, that their day would come. It dawned with the Australian attack at Villers-Bretonneux on April 24th, when the fortunes of battle were already changing; it rose higher on July 4th, when the Australians again took Hamel and Vaire Wood, the Tanks splendidly helping; it was at the full on and after August 8th, at the Battle of Amiens, the first page in the last chapter of the war.

The next incident described by my correspondent occurred at the taking of the St. Quentin section of the Hindenburg line by the 4th British Army, two American divisions leading the way.