THE MOTOR LORRY THAT WAITED.
How a motor lorry waited at the Ecole Militaire to take away the maps to
the Coast--The Motor Lorry Reserve--An "appreciation" of the
position--Germany lost the War in the first three months--Some notes of
German blunders.
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.
[Illustration: THE ECOLE 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 of luck, 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 very beginning, 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 of Hate,' 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 two blunders 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 Marne and 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 and there, 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 haste with 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, who either 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.