A RETROSPECT OF WHAT TANKS HAVE ACCOMPLISHED
Like all other human energies, war may be reduced to a science, and had
this, throughout history, been better understood, how many countless
thousands of lives and millions of money might not have been saved, and
how much sorrow and waste might not have been prevented!
Science is but another name for knowledge--knowledge co-ordinated,
arranged and systematised--from which art, or the application of
knowledge to existing and ever-changing conditions, is derived and
built up on unchanging principles.
The fundamental difficulty in the art of war is in the application
of its theories in order to test their values. Like surgery and
medicine, it demands its patients or victims as its training-ground,
and without these it is most difficult to arrive at expert judgments
and conclusions. It is an art which is neither directly commercial,
materially remunerative, nor normally applicable, consequently it has
generally been looked upon as a necessary evil, an insurance against
disaster rather than the application of a science which should have as
its main object the prevention of the calamity of war.
As an applied science, war is half human, half mechanical; it is,
therefore, pre-eminently a live or dynamic science, a science which
must grow with human understanding itself, so that its means of action,
materialised in the soldier, may not only keep level with progress but
absorb it to its own particular ends. When we look back on the history
of war, what do we see? A school of pedants fumbling with the past,
hoodwinked against the future, seeking panaceas in past victories,
the circumstances under which these were won being blindly accepted
as recurring decimals. Thus do they lumber their minds with obsolete
detail, formulæ and shibboleths, precepts and rituals which are as
much out of place on the modern battlefield as phlogiston or the
philosopher’s stone would be in a present-day laboratory.
Time and again has it been asserted that war itself is the sole test of
a soldier’s worth and that on the battlefield alone will the great be
sifted from the little.
And why? Because, until to-day, we have never emerged from what may be
called the “alchemical” epoch of warfare, the compounding of illusions
without knowledge, the application of actions without understanding;
we have not reduced war to a science founded on definite principles
nor learnt that 99 per cent. of victory depends on weapons, machinery
placed in the hands of man so that he may kill without being injured.
Galen was a great physician and so was Paracelsus, but who to-day would
apply their methods when they can employ those of Pasteur and Lister?
Where we have been so wrong and will continue to remain so wrong,
unless we radically change our peace methods of warfare, is that we
possess no process of producing great peace soldiers--scientists for
war. We do not realise that an army is formed to prevent war, that it
is composed of human points, that the good player will not lose many
of these points, and that the bad player will go bankrupt. That the
loss or gain depends on superiority of brains and of weapons and not
necessarily superiority of rank and numbers of men. When we do realise
this, then shall we cast the ancient balsams, solvents, and coagulants
to the winds and set about developing the mental and mechanical sides
of war in days of peace, so that, should wars become inevitable, we may
win them with the minimum of human loss.
Soldiers have laughed at Joly de Maizeroy, Massenbach, and Maurice
de Saxe for suggesting “victory without fighting,” “wars without
battles”; but seldom are their eyes dimmed with a tear when they read
of a victory which cost thousands of lives, and a victory which might
have been won at the cost of a few hundreds. Yet surely is the saving
of men’s lives and limbs as great an attribute of good leadership as
the taking of those of the enemy; is it not in fact endurance, or the
staying power in human lives, which is the backbone of victory itself?
In August 1914 the Great War opened to all intents and purposes as
an exaggerated 1870 operation. The doctrine of the contending armies
was 1870, its leaders were saturated with 1870 ideas, its weapons
were improved 1870, it was 1870 in complexion, in tone, in manner,
in thought, in tactics, and in movement. If this be doubted read the
text-books prior to the war and compare them with those of 1872 and
then with the events of the war itself. Take any great army of 1918 and
place it over the same army of 1914: the sides do not coincide. What is
the one great difference? Mechanical progress in weapons, not numbers
of men, for men potentially had in numbers decreased; yet any 1918
equipped army would have beaten a 1914 one because of guns, heavy guns,
super-heavy guns, mortars, shells, bombs, grenades, gas, machine guns,
machine rifles, automatic rifles, range-spotters, sound-detectors,
smoke, aeroplanes, lorries, railways, tramways, armoured cars, and
tanks.
What to-day would be thought of a mechanical engineer who applied 1870
methods? Nothing; he would go bankrupt in six weeks if he started
business on 1870 lines. This is exactly what the armies of 1914
did; they tactically went bankrupt because they were sufficiently
big, or the area of operations was sufficiently small, to deny to
them strategical movement. Could this have been foreseen? Given
the numbers, given the weapons, and given the area of operations,
a simple rule-of-three sum can be worked out, the answer to which
is siege warfare and the tactics of which is the frontal attack of
penetration;[38] yet every _Field Service Regulations_, in 1914,
favoured envelopment and paid but a passing attention to trench warfare.
Inevitably the preordained tactics of penetration were forced on the
contending parties, and human points were thrown over the parapets
in handfuls; as if men, armed with a rifle and bayonet, who could
only secure their existence by remaining underground, had any chance
whatever of attaining a decisive victory by forsaking their shelters
and facing weapons in the open which had previously forced them to
earth. What was the result? The Germans failed at Ypres and Verdun;
the French in the Champagne, at Verdun, and at Reims; and we at Neuve
Chapelle, Loos, the Somme, Arras, and Passchendaele. Between 2,000,000
and 3,000,000 casualties on one side of the balance sheet and a few
square miles of uninhabitable ground on the other was the sum-total
of these united endeavours, and all because no single army had, since
1870, realised the mechanical side of the science of war. In October,
ten weeks after the war had opened, as the second chapter of this book
has already related, the mechanical side was realised and a solution
was found in the production of a chariot not so very dissimilar to that
depicted on the “Victory Stele of Eannatum” of Lagash, 3,000 years
B.C.--no very novel mechanical invention!
Time, a few months, was, however, requisite for the substitution of the
petrol engine for the horses of the Assyrians, and as time could not
be wasted other mechanical lapses were made good which might have well
been foreseen had penetration and not envelopment been diagnosed as the
leading tactical act of the war.
At first each contending nation in turn passed through its barbed-wire
crisis, its gun shortage and its ammunition scandal. Millions of miles
of wire were produced, thousands of guns were made, and ammunition was
manufactured not by thousands of rounds, but by hundreds of thousands
of tons. Had any one side been able to fire at the other, in September
1914, 100,000 tons in a couple of days, that side would have, probably,
won the war. This is practically what happened at the Dunajec in
1915--the Russians were out-weaponed and consequently defeated.
On the Western Front, as the artillery competition was more or less
mutual, stagnation became still more complete. In place of hurling men
against uncut wire, shells were hurled instead, the bombardments being
sufficiently long to enable the Germans to transport troops from the
east of Poland to France in time to meet the assault. As the frontage
of this assault was usually under ten miles, the total battle-front
being over 500, the operation may be compared with that of attempting
to take the life of a rhinoceros with a hat-pin. These tactics
inevitably failed, not only through the impossibility of economically
wearing away the enemy’s reserves, but on account of the impossibility
of rapidly moving forward our own; for in the act of destroying wire,
simultaneously did the guns create an area so difficult to move over
that, had it been possible to advance the infantry, it would never have
been possible to feed or supply them.
That stationary warfare should have increased in endurance as the
gun-power of each side was multiplied was not necessary; this was
clearly proved during the first two German battles of 1918. By this
date, on all sides, had artillery attained its zenith, but the Germans,
by threatening a front of nearly 250 miles--practically from the
Channel to the Meuse--and then, after an intense bombardment lasting
but a few hours, attacking on a comparatively wide front of some fifty
miles, were able to develop their machine power to its fullest effect,
that is to say, with the least opposition.
It took nearly three years from the date of the battle of the Dunajec
before the use of the gun as a weapon of surprise was grasped; this
will probably prove one of the most astounding tactical anomalies of
the war. During this period two other weapons were devised which were
destined in most respects to outclass the gun; the idea of both must
have arisen at approximately the same time.
For years before the war the French and ourselves had been the leading
mechanical engineers of Europe; in a similar respect the Germans were
its leading chemists. Both, once a deadlock had arisen in the war,
sought aid from the sciences they best understood during peacetime,
and from which, had they understood war as a science, they would have
looked for assistance years before its present outbreak.
The first stroke of genius delivered in the war was the use the Germans
made of gas on April 22, 1915, and the second the use we made of tanks
on September 15, 1916; both failed through want of a scientific grasp
of war. They were tentative attacks, not delivered in strength or mass,
yet curious to relate both were delivered by armies which, having been
brought up in the 1870 school of thought, were fully conversant with
the old precept of “superiority of numbers at the decisive point”;
but, thinking in muscular terms only, they failed to apply it to the
mechanical and chemical contrivances now placed at their disposal.
By many soldiers even to-day it is not realised that gas is a
missile weapon following directly along the evolutionary path of all
projectiles. A solid shot has to hit a target in order to injure it;
as targets became difficult to see it became necessary to increase the
radius of effect of the solid shot by replacing it by a hollow one
filled with explosive. By means of this shell, a target might be missed
by the shell yet hit by a flying fragment; the danger zone of the solid
shot was increased many hundreds of times. Once targets not only become
invisible but disappear into under-earth shelters, the shell has but
little effect unless days are spent in bombardment, consequently the
most effective manner of hitting them is to replace the shell by a gas
inundation which will cover extensive areas and percolate into trenches
and shelters. Gas has, in fact, multiplied the explosive radius of
action of a shell indefinitely, and had it been used in quantity by
the Germans before the Allies could protect themselves against it, the
enemy might well have won the war.
Gas, whatever its possibilities were before this protection was
obtained, remains but a projectile evolved as above described.
Tanks were a “creation,” and the introduction of the petrol-driven
cross-country tractor on the battlefield, it is thought, will mark a
definite close to the “alchemical” epoch of warfare. All war on land,
in the past, has been based on muscular energy; henceforth it will be
based on mechanical. The change is radical, and Wilson’s “Big Willie”
will one day pass into legend alongside Stevenson’s “Rocket.” As steam,
applied as a motive force, in 150 years changed the world more than
it had previously been changed since the days of palæolithic man, so,
before the present century has run its course, may as great a change
take place in the realms of war. The cause of both is the same: as the
invention of the steam engine rendered obsolete to a high degree the
hand-tool and replaced it by the machine-tool, so the application of
petrol to the battlefield will force the hand-weapon out of existence
and replace it by the machine-weapon. That the tank will continue in
its present form is as unlikely as it would have been to expect, in
1769, that Watt’s pumping engine was the “Ultima Thule” of all such
engines. It is not the form which is the stroke of true genius, but
the idea, the replacing of muscular energy by mechanical force as the
motive power of an army.
Had the combatant nations of the Great War possessed more foresight,
had they thought of war as a science in place of as an insurance
policy, they could have had a steam-driven tank thirty years ago and a
petrol-driven one immediately after the South African War. The Batter
tractor existed, anyhow in design, in 1888, and during the South
African War Mr. W. Ralston drew a comic picture entitled “Warfare of
the Future: The Tractor Mounted Infantry in Action,” to say nothing
about the story by Mr. H. G. Wells. But no, the breath of ancient
battles had to be breathed, and whilst military students were studying
Jena, Inkerman, and Worth, the commercial sciences were daily producing
one invention after another which a little adjustment would help win
the next war more speedily than the study of scores of Jominis and
Clausewitzs.
To show how unscientific the soldiers of the 1870-1914 epoch had become
it is only necessary to quote that after the battle of the Somme in
the highest German military circles the machine was considered as a
veritable joke. Apparently it could not be seen that, though the Mark
I tank was far from perfect, it, being able to reintroduce armour and
to provide the soldier with a mobile weapon platform, revolutionised
the entire theory of 1870 warfare.
On July 1, 1916, the opening day of the battle of the Somme, the
British Army sustained between 40,000 and 50,000 casualties. On
September 25, one single tank forced the surrender of 370 Germans at
a cost of five casualties to ourselves, yet in July 1917 the Mark IV
tank was still considered but as a minor factor. Its design was not
sufficiently reliable, its true powers were more or less a matter of
conjecture; the troops were not fully accustomed to it, nor would
they place sufficient faith in it to accept it in lieu of artillery
support, in fact, in its present state of development the tank was
but an adjunct to infantry and guns. Such were some of the views held
regarding it when, like a bolt from the blue, the battle of Cambrai
shot across the horizon of 1870 battles.
At Cambrai it was the Mark IV tank which was used, the same which
had existed in July; the Tank Corps had not increased materially in
size; the infantry were for the most part used-up troops--some had
received a few days’ training with tanks, others had never even seen
these machines. The assault was an overwhelming success: at the cost
of some 5,000 infantry casualties an advance was made in twelve hours
which in extent took ninety days at Ypres, and which in this last-named
battle cost over a quarter of a million men. Yet, in spite of this
astonishing success, so conservative had the Army grown to the true
needs of victory that there were certain soldiers who now stated that
the tactics employed at Cambrai could never be repeated again and that
the day of the tank had come and gone.
* * * * *
Then came the “crowning mercy”--the attack on Hamel. Something had
to be done to reinstate the credit of the Tank Corps. There were but
three suitable localities to do it in: the first, against the Merville
salient--the ground here was bad, being intersected by dikes and
canals; the second, eastward from between Arras and Hebuterne--the
ground here was much cut up, and the tactical objective was not
suitable; the third, eastwards from Villers-Bretonneux--the ground here
was excellent, but the Australians, who held this sector, had little
confidence in the tank.
Human prejudice is, however, not difficult to overcome to the student
of psychology. After tactful persuasion the Australian Corps was
induced to accept sixty machines, as an “adjunct” to their operations.
The tanks (Mark V.s) were drawn up 1,000 yards _in rear_ of the
attackers, yet, nevertheless, within a few minutes of the attack being
launched, they caught up with the leading wave and carried this wave
and those in rear right through to the final objective. The loss of the
4th Australian Division was insignificant; their prejudices vanished
and a close comradeship between them and the Tank Corps was established
which redounds to their gallantry and common sense.
Hamel, minor incident though it was, was of more importance to the
immediate problems of the British Army than Cambrai itself. General
Rawlinson, commanding the Fourth Army, saw his opportunity, and the
result was that from Hamel onwards the war became a tank war. The
machine had made good in spite of prejudice and opposition. The Germans
lost their heads, and with their heads they lost the war. That the
war might have been won without tanks is quite possible, but that
fifty-nine British divisions would, without their assistance, have
beaten ninety-nine German ones in three months is extremely unlikely.
What had the influence of the tank really been? Let us examine this
question and so close this retrospect.
The effect of the tank’s mobility on grand tactics was stupendous.
Between the winter of 1914 and the summer of 1918, to all intents and
purposes, the Allies waged a static war on the Western Front. During
these three and a half years various attempts were made to wear down
the enemy’s fighting strength as a prelude to a decisive exploitation
or pursuit, but these battles of attrition were mutually destructive
and the Allies undoubtedly lost more casualties than they inflicted.
Attrition without the possibility of surprise or mobility is a mere
“push of pikes,” it is a muscular but brainless operation. At the Third
Battle of Ypres it cost us a quarter of a million men. Then came the
tank, and true attrition was rendered possible; in other words, in tank
battles the enemy lost more in human points than we did: it is doubtful
whether in killed and wounded we lost, between August 8 and November
11, 1918, as many men as the prisoners we captured. This was only
possible by our possessing the means of putting the grand tactical act
of penetration into operation, by breaking down the “inviolability” of
the German front, and by so doing rendering envelopment a reality.
In minor tactics it was possible, by means of the tank, to economise
life by harmonising fire and movement and movement and security; the
tank soldier could use the whole of his energy in the manipulation of
his weapons and none in the effort of moving himself forward; further
than this, sufficiently thick armour could be carried to protect him
against bullets, shrapnel, and shell splinters. Human legs no longer
controlled marches, and human skin no longer was the sole protection to
the flesh beneath it. A new direction was obtained, that of the moving
firing line; the knight in armour was once again reinstated, his horse
now a petrol engine and his lance a machine gun.
Strategy, or the science of making the most of time for warlike ends,
had practically ceased since November 1914. Even the great advances
of the Germans in 1918 came to an abrupt stop through failure of
road capacity, and roads and rails form the network upon which all
former strategy was woven. The cross-country tractor, or tank, widened
the size of roads to an almost unlimited degree. The earth became a
universal vehicle of motion, like the sea, and to those sides which
relied on tanks, naval tactics could be superimposed on those of land
warfare.
With the introduction of mechanical movement every principle of war
became easy of application and, to-day, to pit an overland mechanical
army against one relying on roads, rails, and muscular energy, is
to pit a fleet of modern battleships against one of wind-driven
three-deckers. The result of such an action is not even within the
possibility of doubt: the latter will for a certainty be destroyed, for
the highest form of machinery must win, because it saves time, and time
is the controlling factor on the battlefield as in the workshop.