RAILWAY DESTRUCTION IN WAR
One of the earliest and most obvious criticisms advanced against the
use of railways in war was based on the vulnerability of the iron
road. The destruction of a bridge, the tearing up of a few rails or
the blocking of a tunnel would, it was argued, suffice to cause an
interruption in the transport of troops or supplies which might be of
serious consequence to the combatants prejudiced thereby, though of
corresponding advantage to the other side. By means of such interruption
the concentration of troops on the frontier might be delayed; an army
might be divided into two or more parts, and exposed to the risk of
defeat in detail; the arrival of reinforcements urgently wanted to
meet a critical situation might be prevented until it was too late for
them to afford the desired relief; a force advancing into an enemy's
country might have its rail connection severed and be left to starve
or to surrender at discretion; invaders would find that the force they
were driving before them had taken the precaution to destroy their
own railways as they retreated; or, alternatively, lines of railway
constructed to the frontier, and depended upon to facilitate invasion of
neighbouring territory, might--unless destroyed--be of material service
to the enemy, should the latter become the invaders instead of the
invaded.
While these and other possibilities--foreshadowed more especially in
the controversies which the whole subject aroused in Germany in the
'Forties--were frankly admitted, it was argued that, however vulnerable
railways might be as a line of communication, it should be quite
possible either to defend them successfully or to carry out on them
such speedy repairs or reconstruction as would, generally speaking,
permit of an early resumption of traffic; though experience was to show
that these safeguards could only be assured through a well-planned and
thoroughly efficient organisation prepared to meet, with the utmost
dispatch and the highest degree of efficiency, all the requirements in
the way of railway repairs or railway rebuilding that were likely to
arise.
The earliest instance of an attempt to delay the advance of an enemy
by interrupting his rail communications was recorded in 1848, when the
Venetians, threatened with bombardment by the Austrians, destroyed
some of the arches in the railway viaduct connecting their island city
with the mainland. Then in the _Italian campaign of 1859_ the allies
and the Austrians both resorted to the expedient of destroying railway
bridges or tearing up the railway lines; although the allies were able,
in various instances, to repair so speedily the damage done by the
Austrians that the lines were ready for use again by the time they were
wanted.
It was the _American Civil War_ that was to elevate railway destruction
and restoration into a science and to see the establishment, in the
interests of such science, of an organisation which was to become a
model for European countries and influence the whole subsequent course
of modern warfare.
The destruction of railways likely to be used by the North for its
projected invasion of the Confederate States was, from the first,
a leading feature in the strategy of the South. Expeditions were
undertaken and raids were made with no other object than that of
burning down bridges, tearing up and bending rails, making bonfires of
sleepers, wrecking stations, rendering engines, trucks and carriages
unserviceable, cutting off the water supply for locomotives, or in
various other ways seeking to check the advance of the Northerners.
Later on the Federals, in turn, became no less energetic in resorting to
similar tactics in order either to prevent pursuit by the Confederates
or to interrupt their communications.
For the carrying out of these destructive tactics use was generally made
either of cavalry, accompanied by civilians, or of bodies of civilians
only; but in some instances, when it was considered desirable to destroy
lengths of track extending to twenty or thirty miles, or more, the
Confederates put the whole of their available forces on to the work.
At the outset the methods of destruction were somewhat primitive; but
they were improved upon as the result of practice and experiment.
Thus, in the first instance, timber bridges or viaducts were destroyed
by collecting brushwood, placing this around the arches, pouring tar or
petroleum upon the pile, and then setting fire to the whole. Afterwards
the Federals made use of a "torpedo," eight inches long, and charged
with gunpowder, which was inserted in a hole bored in the main timbers
of the bridge and exploded with a fuse. It was claimed that with two or
three men working at each span the largest timber bridge could be thrown
down in a few minutes.
Then the method generally adopted at first for destroying a railway
track was to tear up sleepers and rails, place the sleepers in a heap,
put the rails cross-ways over them, set fire to the sleepers, and heat
the rails until they either fell out of shape or could be twisted around
a tree with the help of chains and horses. But this process was found
to require too much time and labour, while the results were not always
satisfactory, since rails only slightly bent could be restored to
their original shape, and made ready for use again, in much less time
than it had taken for the fire to heat and bend them. A Federal expert
accordingly invented an ingenious contrivance, in the form of iron
U-shaped "claws," which, being turned up and over at each extremity,
were inserted underneath each end of a rail, on opposite sides, and
operated, with the help of a long wooden lever and rope, by half a dozen
men. In this way a rail could be torn from the sleepers and not only
bent but given such a spiral or corkscrew twist, while still in the cold
state, that it could not be used again until it had gone through the
rolling mills. By the adoption of this method, 440 men could destroy
one mile of track in an hour, or 2,200 men could, in the same time,
destroy five miles.
The most effective method for rendering a locomotive unfit for service
was found to be the firing of a cannon ball through the boiler.
Carriages and wagons which might otherwise be used by the enemy, and
could not be conveniently carried off, were easily destroyed by fire.
In one period of six months the Federals disposed of 400 in this way.
Stations, water-tanks, sleepers, fuel and telegraph poles were also
destroyed or rendered useless by fire or otherwise.
In the first year of the war--1861--the Confederates gave the Federals a
foretaste of much that was to come by destroying forty-eight locomotives
on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and making a complete wreck of 100
miles of the North Missouri Railroad track and everything thereon.
Much more serious than this, however, from a strategical point of
view, was the wholesale destruction carried out by the Confederates,
in April, 1862, on the Fredericksburg Railway, connecting Richmond
and Washington, the immediate result of the mischief done being to
prevent an impending combination between the Federal armies of the
Potomac and the Rappahannock, neither of which could act without the
other, while neither could join the other unless it could make use
of rail communication. There was much that required to be done, for
the Confederates had carried out their work in a most thorough-going
fashion. Several indispensable railway bridges had been destroyed; three
miles of track had been torn up, the rails being carried south and the
sleepers burned; and wharves and buildings had been burned or wrecked.
The whole transportation service, in fact, had been reduced to a state
of chaos.
At the urgent request of the Secretary of War, the work of restoration
was undertaken by Mr. Herman Haupt, a railway engineer who had already
distinguished himself more especially as a builder of bridges, and was
now to establish a further record as the pioneer of those Construction
Corps of which so much was to be heard later on in connection with
railways and war.
In carrying out the necessary repairs the only help which Haupt could
obtain, at first, was that of soldiers detailed from the Federal ranks.
Many of these men were entirely unaccustomed to physical labour; others
were sickly, inefficient, or unwilling to undertake what they did not
regard as a soldier's duties, while the Army officers sent in a fresh
lot daily until Haupt's remonstrances led to their allotting certain
men to form a "Construction Corps." Other difficulties which presented
themselves included an insufficient supply of tools, occasional scarcity
of food, and several days of wet weather; yet the work advanced so
rapidly that the Akakeek bridge, a single span of 120 ft., at an
elevation of 30 ft., was rebuilt in about fifteen working hours; the
Potomac Creek bridge, 414 ft. long with an elevation of 82 ft. above
the water, and requiring the use of as much roughly-hewn timber as
would have extended a total length of six and a half miles, if put end
to end, was completed in nine days;[5] and the three miles of track
were relaid in three days, included in the work done in that time being
the preparation of more than 3,000 sleepers from lumber cut down for
the purpose in woods a mile and a half distant from the track. General
McDowell subsequently said, concerning the Potomac bridge:--
When it is considered that in the campaigns of Napoleon
trestle bridges of more than one story, even of moderate
height, were regarded as impracticable, and that, too, for
common military roads, it is not difficult to understand why
distinguished Europeans should express surprise at so bold a
specimen of American military engineering. It is a structure
which ignores all rules and precedents of military science as
laid down in the books. It is constructed chiefly of round
sticks cut from the woods, and not even divested of bark; the
legs of the trestles are braced with round poles. It is in four
stories--three of trestle and one of crib work.
While constructed in so apparently primitive a fashion, the bridge was,
General McDowell further said, carrying every day from ten to twenty
heavy railway trains in both directions, and had withstood several
severe freshets and storms without injury.
Thus early, therefore, in the more active phases of the Civil War,
evidence was being afforded that, although the railways on which so
much depended might be readily destroyed, they could, also, be rapidly
restored; and subsequent experience was to offer proofs still more
remarkable in support of this fact.
On May 28, 1862, Haupt was appointed Chief of Construction and
Transportation in the Department of the Rappahannock, with the rank of
Colonel. He was raised to the rank of Brigadier-General in the following
year, and did much excellent construction and other work for the
Government, though mainly in Virginia, down to September, 1863. In his
"Reminiscences" he relates that the supplies of repair or reconstruction
materials, as kept on hand by the Federals, included the interchangeable
parts of bridge trusses, in spans of 60 ft., and so prepared that, taken
on flat cars, by ox-teams or otherwise, to the place where they were
wanted, and hoisted into position by machinery arranged for the purpose,
they could, without previous fitting, be put together with such rapidity
that one of his foremen claimed to be able to build a bridge "about as
fast as a dog could trot." When the Massaponix bridge, six miles from
Fredericksburg, was burned down one Monday morning, a new one was put
up in its place in half a day--a feat which, he says, led some of the
onlookers to exclaim, "The Yankees can build bridges quicker than the
Rebs can burn them down." In May, 1862, five bridges over Goose Creek
which the "Rebs" had destroyed were reconstructed in a day and a half.
In the following month five other bridges, each with a span of from 60
ft. to 120 ft., were renewed in one day. At the Battle of Gettysburg
Lee's troops destroyed nineteen bridges on the Northern Central Railroad
and did much havoc on the branch lines leading to Gettysburg; but the
Construction Corps was hard at work on the repairs whilst the battle
was still being waged, and rail communication with both Washington and
Baltimore had been re-established by noon of the day after Lee's retreat.
In some instances railway bridges underwent repeated destruction and
reconstruction. By June, 1863, the bridge over Bull Run, for instance,
had been burned down and built up again no fewer than seven times. Many
of the bridges, also, were swept away by floods, and this even for a
second or a third time after they had been rebuilt. Precautions thus
had to be taken against the destructive forces of Nature no less than
against those of man.
Haupt's pioneer Construction Corps in Virginia was succeeded by the
one set up on much broader lines by McCallum when, in February, 1864,
he became General Manager of railways in the Military Division of the
Mississippi. This corps eventually reached a total of 10,000 men.
"The design of the corps," wrote McCallum, in his final report, "was
to combine a body of skilled workmen in each department of railroad
construction and repairs, under competent engineers, supplied with
abundant materials, tools and mechanical appliances." The corps was
formed into divisions the number of which varied from time to time, in
different districts, according to requirements. In the military division
of the Mississippi the corps comprised six divisions, under the general
charge of the chief engineer of the United States military railroads
for that military division, and consisted at its maximum strength of
nearly 5,000 men. In order to give the corps entire mobility, and to
enable it to move independently and undertake work at widely different
points, each of the six divisions was made a complete unit, under
the command of a divisional engineer, and was, in turn, divided into
sub-divisions or sections, with a supervisor in charge of each. The
two largest and most important sub-divisions in any one division were
those of the track-layers and the bridge-builders. A sub-division was,
again, composed of gangs, each with a foreman, while the gangs were
divided into squads, each with a sub-foreman.[6] Under this method of
organisation it was possible to move either the entire division or any
section thereof, with its tools, camp requirements and field transport,
in any direction, wherever and whenever needed, and by any mode of
conveyance--rail, road, with teams and wagons, or on foot.
To facilitate the operations of the corps, supplies of materials were
kept at points along or within a short distance of the railway lines,
where they would be comparatively safe and speedily procurable in
case of necessity. At places where there was special need for taking
precautionary measures, detachments of the corps were stationed in
readiness for immediate action, while on important lines of railway
Federals and Confederates alike had, at each end thereof, construction
trains loaded with every possible requisite, the locomotives attached
to them keeping their steam up in order that the trains could be
started off instantly on the receipt of a telegram announcing a further
interruption of traffic.
At Nashville and Chattanooga the Federals built extensive storehouses
where they kept on hand supplies of materials for the prompt carrying
out of railway repairs of every kind to any extent and in whatever
direction.
On the Nashville and Chattanooga Railway itself the Construction Corps,
from February, 1864, to the close of the war, relaid 115 miles of
track, put in nineteen miles of new sidings, eight miles apart and each
capable of holding from five to eight long freight trains, and erected
forty-five new water tanks.
The reconstruction of this particular line was more especially needed
in connection with General Sherman's campaign in Georgia and the
Carolinas--a campaign which afforded the greatest and most direct
evidence up to that time alike of the possibilities of rail-power
in warfare, of the risks by which its use was attended, and of the
success with which those risks could be overcome by means of efficient
organisation.
In that struggle for Atlanta which preceded his still more famous march
to the sea, Sherman had with him a force of 100,000 men, together with
23,000 animals. His base of supplies, when he approached Atlanta, was
360 miles distant, and the continuance of his communications with that
base, not only for the procuring of food, clothing, fodder, ammunition
and every other requisite, but for the transport to the rear of sick
and wounded, refugees, freedmen and prisoners, depended on what he
afterwards described as "a poorly-constructed single-track railroad"
passing for 120 miles of its length through the country of an extremely
active enemy. Yet Sherman is said to have made his advance in perfect
confidence that, although subject to interruptions, the railway in his
rear would be "all right"; and this confidence was fully warranted by
the results accomplished.
Early in September, 1864, the Confederate General, Wheeler, destroyed
seven miles of road between Nashville and Murfreesboro', on the
Nashville and Chattanooga Railway, and in the following December Hood
destroyed eight miles of track and 530 ft. of bridges between the same
stations; yet the arrangements of the Federal Construction Corps allowed
of the repairs being carried out with such promptness that in each
instance the trains were running again in a few days.
The Confederate attacks on the Western and Atlantic Railway, running
from Chattanooga at Atlanta, a distance of 136 miles, were more
continuous and more severe than on any other line of railway during
the war; but, thanks again to the speed with which the repair and
reconstruction work was done, the delays occasioned were, as a rule, of
only a few hours, or, at the most, a few days' duration. One especially
remarkable feat accomplished on this line was the rebuilding, in four
and a half days, of the Chattahochee bridge, near Atlanta--a structure
780 ft. long, and 92 ft. high. Hood, the Confederate General, thought
still further to check Sherman's communications by passing round the
Federal army and falling upon the railway in its rear. He succeeded
in tearing up two lengths of track, one of ten miles, and another of
twenty-five miles, in extent, and destroying 250 ft. of bridges; but
once more the work of restoration was speedily carried out, McCallum
saying in reference to it:--
Fortunately the detachments of the Construction Corps which
escaped were so distributed that even before Hood had left the
road two strong working parties were at work, one at each end of
the break at Big Shanty, and this gap of ten miles was closed,
and the force ready to move to the great break of twenty-five
miles in length, north of Resaca, as soon as the enemy had left
it. The destruction by Hood's army of our depôts of supplies
compelled us to cut nearly all the cross-ties required to relay
this track and to send a distance for rails. The cross-ties were
cut near the line of the road and many of them carried by hand
to the track, as the teams to be furnished for hauling them did
not get to the work until it was nearly complete. The rails used
on the southern end of the break had to be taken up and brought
from the railroads south of Atlanta, and those for the northern
end were mostly brought from Nashville, nearly 200 miles distant.
Notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which the labour
was performed, this twenty-five miles of track was laid, and the
trains were running over it in seven and a half days from the
time the work was commenced.
Concluding, however, that it would be unwise to depend on the railway
during his further march to the sea, Sherman collected at Atlanta, by
means of the restored lines, the supplies he wanted for 600,000 men,
sent to the rear all the men and material no longer required, and
then, before starting for Savannah, destroyed sixty miles of track
behind him in so effectual a manner that it would be impossible for the
Confederates--especially in view of their own great lack, at this time,
of rails, locomotives and rolling stock--to repair and utilise the
lines again in any attempted pursuit. It was, in fact, as much to his
advantage now to destroy the railways in his rear as it had previously
been to repair and rebuild them.
All through Georgia, for the 300 miles from Atlanta to Savannah (where
he was able to establish communications with the Federal fleet), Sherman
continued the same tactics of railway destruction; and he resumed them
when his army, now divided into three columns, turned northward to
effect a junction with Grant at Richmond.
On this northward march, also, there was no need for Sherman to make a
direct attack on Charleston. By destroying about sixty miles of track
in and around Branchville--a village on the South Carolina Railroad
which formed a junction where the line from Charleston branched off in
the directions of Columbia and Augusta respectively--one of Sherman's
columns severed Charleston from all its sources of supply in the
interior, and left the garrison with no alternative but to surrender.
Commenting on this event, Vigo-Rouissillon remarks, in his "Puissance
Militaire des États-Unis d'Amérique":--
Ainsi il avait suffi de la destruction ou de la possession
de quelques kilomètres de chemin de fer pour amener la chute de
ce boulevard de l'insurrection, qui avait si longtemps résisté
aux plus puissantes flottes du Nord. Exemple frappant du rôle
reservé dans nos guerres modernes à ce precieux et fragile moyen
de communication.
In the aggregate, Sherman's troops destroyed hundreds of miles of
railway track in their progress through what had previously been
regarded as a veritable stronghold of the enemy's country; though
meanwhile the Construction Corps had repaired and reopened nearly 300
miles of railway in North Carolina and had built a wharf, covering an
area of 54,000 square feet, at the ocean terminus of the Atlantic and
North Carolina Railroad in order both to facilitate Sherman's progress
northwards, by the time of his reaching the lines in question, and to
enable him to obtain supplies from the fleet. The railways, in fact,
contributed greatly to the brilliant success of Sherman's campaign, and
hence, also, to the final triumph of the Federal cause.
The total length of track laid or relaid by the Federal Construction
Corps during the continuance of the war was 641 miles, and the lineal
feet of bridges built or rebuilt was equal to twenty-six miles. The
net expenditure, in respect alike to construction and transportation,
incurred by the department in charge of the railways during their
control by the Government for military purposes was close on $30,000,000.
From this time the interruption of railway communication became a
recognised phase of warfare all the world over; and, not only have
numerous treatises been written on the subject in various languages, but
the creation of special forces to deal alike with the destruction and
the restoration of railways has become an important and indispensable
feature of military organisation. These matters will be dealt with more
fully in subsequent chapters; but it may be of interest if reference
is made here to the experiences of _Mexico_, as further illustrating
the universality of practices with which, in her case, at least, no
effective measures had been taken to deal.
"How Mexican Rebels Destroy Railways and Bridges" was told by Mr. G.
E. Weekes in the _Scientific American_ for September 13, 1913, and the
subject was further dealt with by Major Charles Hine in a paper on "War
Time Railroading in Mexico," read by him before the St. Louis Railway
Club, on October 10, 1913. The term "rebels" applies, of course, in
Mexico to the party that is against the particular President who is in
office for the time being; and in the revolutionary period lasting from
1910 to 1913 the "rebels" of the moment found plenty to do in the way
of destroying railways not only, as in other countries, in order to
retard the advance of their pursuers, but, also, to spite the national
Government, who control about two-thirds of the stock in the railways of
the Republic.
Altogether, the mischief done by one party or the other during the
period in question included the destruction of many hundreds of miles of
track; the burning or the dynamiting of hundreds of bridges, according
as these had been built of timber or of steel; and the wrecking of many
stations and over 50 per cent. of the rolling stock on the national
lines.
Concerning the methods adopted in the carrying out of this work, Mr.
Weekes, who had the opportunity of seeing track and bridge destruction
in full progress, says:--
Up to the past six months track destruction had been
accompanied either by the use of a wrecking crane, which lifted
sections of rails and ties (sleepers) bodily and piled them up
ready for burning, or by the slower process of the claw-bar,
wrench and pick. But a Constitutionalist expert devised a new
system.
A trench is dug between two ties, through which a heavy
chain is passed around two opposite rails and made fast in the
centre of the track. To this one end of a heavy steel cable is
hooked, the other end being made fast to the coupling on the
engine pilot. At the signal the engineman starts his locomotive
slowly backward, and as they are huge 220-ton "consolidations,"
with 22-inch by 30-inch cylinders, one can easily imagine that
something has to give. And it does! The rails are torn loose
from the spikes that hold them to the ties and are dragged
closely together in the centre of the road bed. The ties are
loosened from the ballast and dragged into piles, while in many
cases the rails are badly bent and twisted by the force applied.
A gang of men follows the engine, piling ties on top of the line
and leaving others beneath them. These are then saturated with
oil and a match applied. In a short time the ties are consumed
and the rails left lying on the ground twisted and contorted
into all sorts of shapes and of no further use until after they
have been re-rolled.
As for the bridges, those of timber were saturated with oil and burned,
while in the case of steel bridges rows of holes were bored horizontally
in the lower part of the piers and charged with dynamite, which was then
exploded by means of fuses connected with batteries of the type used in
Mexican coal mines.
Another favourite method adopted for interfering with transportation
by rail was that of attacking a train, compelling it to stop, taking
possession of the locomotive, and burning the cars.
There is no suggestion by either of the authorities mentioned above
of any well-organised Construction Corps in Mexico repairing damage
done on the railway almost as quickly as it could be effected by the
destroyers. Mr. Weekes believed, rather, that it would take years to
restore the roads to the condition they were in before the rebellion
against President Diaz, and he further declared that it would cost
the national lines of Mexico many millions of dollars to replace the
destroyed rolling stock, bridges, stations, etc.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] In May, 1864, when this bridge had been again destroyed, it was
rebuilt, ready for trains to pass over, in forty working hours.
[6] A division, completely organised, consisted of 777 officers and
men, as follows:--Division engineer, assistant engineer, rodman,
clerk, and 2 messengers (6). Sub-division I: Supervisor of bridges and
carpenters' work, clerk and time-keeper, commissionary (taking charge
of transport and issue of rations), quartermaster (in charge of tools,
camp equipment, etc.), surgeon, hospital steward, 6 foremen (1 for
each 50 men), 30 sub-foremen (1 for each 10 men), 300 mechanics and
labourers, blacksmith and helper, and 12 cooks (356). Sub-division II:
Supervisor of track, and remainder of staff as in Sub-division I (356).
Sub-division III: Supervisor of water stations, foreman, 12 mechanics
and labourers, and cook (15). Sub-division IV: Supervisor of masonry,
foreman, 10 masons and helpers, and cook (13). Sub-division V: Foreman
of ox-brigade, 18 ox-drivers, and cook (20). Train crew: 2 conductors, 4
brakesmen, 2 locomotive engineers, 2 firemen, and cook (11).