CONTROL OF RAILWAYS IN WAR
Curtailment of the efficiency of railways during war may be due to
friend no less than to foe; and there have been occasions when, of the
two, it is the friend who has caused the greater degree of trouble,
hindrance and interruption.
These conditions have arisen mainly from three causes--(1) questions of
control; (2) irregularities in the employment of railway material; and
(3) absence or inadequacy of organisation for military rail-transport
purposes.
When the use of railways becomes an essential factor in the conduct of
war, it may appear only natural that the military authority charged with
the duty of furthering or defending national interests should, through
the Government concerned, have power to command the transport facilities
of all railway lines the use of which may be necessary for the movement
of troops or other military purposes.
Yet, while the soundness of the principle here involved is beyond
dispute, there is much to be said as to the circumstances and conditions
under which a military control of railways should be exercised.
It is, in the first place, especially necessary to bear in mind that the
railway, as a means of transport, must needs be regarded from a point of
view wholly different from that which would apply to ordinary roads. On
the latter any sort of vehicle can be used, and there are, generally,
alternative roads along which traffic can pass, in case of need.
Railroads are not only available exclusively for vehicles constructed
to run upon them, but the degree of their usefulness is limited by
such considerations as the number of separate routes to a given
destination; the important matters of detail as to whether the lines are
single track or double track and whether they are on the level or have
heavy gradients; the number of locomotives and the amount of rolling
stock available; the extent of the station and siding accommodation;
the provision or non-provision of adequate facilities for loading and
unloading; and, in war time, the damage or destruction of a particular
line or lines by the enemy. The amount of traffic it is possible to
convey between certain points in a given time may thus be wholly
controlled by the physical conditions of the railway concerned, and such
conditions may be incapable of modification by the railway staffs, in
case of a sudden emergency, however great their desire to do everything
that is in their power.
In the next place, all these physical conditions may vary on different
railway systems, and even on different sections of the same system.
It does not, therefore, necessarily follow that military requirements
which can be complied with on one line or in one district can be
responded to as readily, if at all, under another and totally different
set of conditions elsewhere; though it is conceivable that a military
commander or officer who fails to realise this fact may, if he is
left to deal direct with the railway people, become very angry indeed
at non-compliance with his demands, and resent protests that what he
asks for cannot be done at one place although it may have been done at
another.
Then a railway must be regarded as a delicate piece of transportation
machinery which can easily be thrown out of order, and is capable
of being worked only by railwaymen as skilled in the knowledge of
its mechanism, and as experienced in the details of its complicated
operation, as military officers themselves are assumed to be in the
technicalities of their own particular duties. The Chief Goods Manager
of a leading line of railway who offered to take the place of a General
at the seat of war would arouse much mirth in the Army at his own
expense. It is, nevertheless, quite conceivable that the General would
himself not be a complete success as a Chief Goods Manager. In the
earliest days of railways it was assumed that the men best qualified
both to manage them and to control the large staffs to be employed would
be retired Army officers. This policy was, in fact, adopted for a time,
though it was abandoned, after a fair trial, in favour of appointing
as responsible railway officers men who had undergone training in
the railway service, and were practically acquainted alike with its
fundamental principles and its technical details.
In the operation of this delicate and complicated piece of machinery
dislocation of traffic may result from a variety of causes, even
when such operation is conducted by men of the greatest experience
in railway working; but the risk, alike of blocks and interruptions
and of accidents involving loss of life or destruction of valuable
property must needs be materially increased if military commanders, or
officers, themselves having no practical knowledge of railway working,
and influenced only by an otherwise praiseworthy zeal for the interests
of their own service, should have power either to force a responsible
railwayman to do something which he, with his greater technical
knowledge, knows to be impracticable, or to hamper and interfere with
the working of the line at a time of exceptional strain on its resources.
Under, again, a misapprehension of the exact bearing of the principle
of military control of railways for military operations in time of
war, there was developed in various campaigns a tendency on the part
of commanders and subordinate officers (1) to look upon railways and
railwaymen as subject to their personal command, if not, even, to their
own will, pleasure and convenience, so long as the war lasted; (2)
to consider that every order they themselves gave should be at once
carried out, regardless either of orders from other directions or of
any question as to the possibility of complying therewith; and (3) to
indulge in merciless denunciations, even if not in measures still more
vigorous, when their orders have not been obeyed.
Apart from other considerations, all these things have a direct bearing
on the efficiency of the railway itself as an instrument in the
carrying on of warfare; and it is, therefore, a matter of essential
importance to our present study to see how the difficulties in question
had their rise, the development they have undergone, and the steps that
have been taken to overcome or to guard against them.
It was once more in the _American Civil War_ that the control problem
first arose in a really acute degree.
The fundamental principle adopted for the operation of the railways
taken possession of by the Federal Government for military purposes
was that they should be conducted under orders issued by the Secretary
of War or by Army commanders in or out of the field. It was for the
Quartermaster's department to load all material upon the cars, to direct
where such material should be taken, and to arrange for unloading and
delivery; but _because_ the Government had taken possession of the
railways; _because_ the Quartermaster's department was to discharge the
duties mentioned; and _because_ the railways were to be used during the
war for the transport of troops and of Army supplies, therefore certain
of the officers came to the conclusion that the whole operation of the
particular lines in which they were concerned should be left either to
themselves individually or to the Quartermaster's department.
Among those holding this view was General Pope, who, on taking over the
command of the Rappahannock Division, on June 26, 1862, disregarded
the position held by Herman Haupt as "Chief of Construction and
Transportation" in that Division, gave him no instructions, and left him
to conclude that the Army could get on very well without his assistance
as a mere railwayman. Thereupon Haupt went home. Ten days afterwards
he received from the Assistant-Secretary of War a telegram which
said:--"Come back immediately. Cannot get on without you. Not a wheel
moving." Haupt went back, and he found that, what with mismanagement of
the lines and the attacks made on them by Confederates, not a wheel was,
indeed, moving in the Division. His own position strengthened by his now
being put in "exclusive charge of all the railways within the limits
of the Army of Virginia," he was soon able to set the wheels running
again; and from that time General Pope exercised a wise discretion in
leaving the details of railway transportation to men who understood them.
Then there was a General Sturgis who, when Haupt called on him one
day, received him with the intimation, "I have just sent a guard to
your office to put you under arrest for disobedience of my orders in
failing to transport my command." It was quite true. Haupt had failed
to obey his orders. Sturgis wanted some special trains to convey 10,000
men, with horses and baggage, the short distance of eighteen miles.
The railway was a single-track line; it had only a limited equipment
of engines and cars; there was the prospect of further immediate
requirements in other directions, and Haupt took the liberty of thinking
that he had better keep his transportation for more pressing needs than
a journey to a prospective battle-field only eighteen miles away--the
more so as if the men were attacked whilst they were in the train they
would be comparatively helpless, whereas if they were attacked when on
the road--doing what amounted to no more than a single day's march--they
would be ready for immediate defence. These considerations suggest that,
of the two, the railwayman was a better strategist than the General.
Sturgis followed up his intimation to Haupt by taking military
possession of the railway and issuing some orders which any one
possessing the most elementary knowledge of railway operation would have
known to be impracticable. Meanwhile Haupt appealed by telegraph to the
Commander-in-Chief, who replied:--"No military officer has any authority
to interfere with your control over railroad. Show this to General
Sturgis, and, if he attempts to interfere, I will arrest him." Told what
the Commander-in-Chief said in his message, Sturgis exclaimed, "He does,
does he? Well, then, take your damned railroad!"
Haupt found it possible to put at the disposal of Sturgis, early the
following morning, the transportation asked for; but at two o'clock
in the afternoon the cars were still unoccupied. On the attention of
Sturgis being called to this fact he replied that he had given his
orders but they had been disobeyed. Thereupon the cars were withdrawn
for service elsewhere--the more so since no other traffic could pass
until they had been cleared out of the way. The net results of the
General's interference was that traffic on the lines was deranged for
twenty-four hours, and 10,000 men were prevented from taking part in an
engagement, as they might have done had they gone by road.
Of the varied and almost unending irregularities which occurred in the
working of the lines as military railways during the progress of the
same war a few other examples may be given.
One prolific source of trouble was the detention or appropriation
of trains by officers who did not think it necessary to communicate
first with the Superintendent of the Line. A certain General who did
inform the Superintendent when he wanted a train was, nevertheless, in
the habit of keeping it waiting for several hours before he made his
appearance, traffic being meanwhile suspended, in consequence.
Special consideration was even claimed for officers' wives, as well as
for the officers themselves. On one occasion Haupt was much disturbed by
the non-arrival of a train bringing supplies which were urgently wanted
for a body of troops starting on a march, and he went along the line to
see what had happened. Coming at last to the train, which had pulled
up, he made inquiries of the engine-driver, who told him that he had
received instructions to stop at a certain point so that an officer's
wife, who was coming in the train to see her husband on the eve of an
engagement, could go to a neighbouring town to look out for rooms for
herself. At that moment the lady put in an appearance. She took her seat
again and the train then proceeded; but her side-trip in search of rooms
meant a delay of three hours alike for this one train and for three
others following behind.
The impression seems to have prevailed, also, that officers were at
liberty to make any use of the trains they pleased for the conveyance
of their own belongings. To check the abuses thus developed, Haupt was
compelled to issue, on June 25, 1862, the following notice:--
Assistant Quartermasters and Commissaries are positively
forbidden to load on to cars on any of the Military Railroads of
the Department of the Rappahannock any freights which are not
strictly and properly included in Quarter and Commissary stores.
They shall not load or permit to be loaded any articles for the
private use of officers, or other persons, whatever their rank
or position.
Officers, again, there were who, regardless of all traffic
considerations, would order a train to pull up at any point they thought
fit along the main line in order that they could examine the passes and
permits of the passengers, instead of doing this at a terminal or other
station. In still another instance a paymaster adopted as his office a
box car standing on a main line. He placed in it a table, some chairs, a
money-chest and his papers--finding it either more comfortable or more
convenient than a house alongside--and proceeded with the transaction
of all his Army business in the car. Invited to withdraw, on the
ground that he was holding up the traffic, he refused to leave, and
he persisted in his refusal until troops were called up to remove his
things for him.
Defective arrangements in regard to the forwarding of supplies were
another cause of traffic disorganisation. The railwayman made from time
to time the most strenuous efforts in getting to the extreme front large
consignments of articles either in excess of requirements or not wanted
there at all. After blocking the line for some days, the still-loaded
cars might be sent back again, no fewer than 142 of such cars being
returned on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in the course of a single
day. If the excessive supplies so sent were unloaded at the front, they
might have to be loaded into the cars again when the Army moved; or, as
was frequently the case in exposed positions, they might be seized or
destroyed by the enemy. Under a well-organised system an adequate stock
of supplies would, of course, have been kept in stores or on sidings at
some point in the rear, only such quantities being forwarded to the
advanced front as were really needed.
At the railway stations there were frequent disputes between the
responsible officers as to which should have the first use of such
troop trains as were available, and Haupt found it necessary to ask the
Commander-in-Chief to delegate some one who would decide in what order
the troops should be forwarded.
Much trouble arose because, in their anxiety to send off as many wounded
as they could, medical officers detained their trains for such periods
as dislocated the service, instead of despatching at schedule time the
men they had ready, and then asking for an extra train for the remainder.
In other respects, also, the arrangements for the transport of the
sick and wounded were defective. Telegraphing on this subject to the
Assistant Secretary of War on August 22, 1862, Haupt said:--
I fear that I may be compelled to-night to do what may
appear inhuman--turn out the sick in the street. Doctors will
persist in sending sick, often without papers, to get them
off their hands, and we cannot send forward the troops if we
must run our trains to Washington with sick to stand for hours
unloaded. My first care is to send forward troops, next forage
and subsistence.
Still more serious were the irregularities due to delays in the
unloading of trucks and the return of empties. The amount of rolling
stock available was already inadequate to meet requirements; but the
effect of the shortage was rendered still worse by reason of these
delays, due, in part, to the too frequent insufficiency of the force
available for unloading a train of supplies with the expedition that
should have been shown, and in part to the retention of the cars for
weeks together as storehouses; though the main cause, perhaps, was
the inability of military men, inexperienced in railway working, to
appreciate, as railwaymen would do, the need of getting the greatest
possible use out of rolling stock in times of emergency, and not
allowing it to stand idle longer than absolutely necessary.
How such delays interfered with the efficiency of the railways was
indicated in one of Haupt's oft-repeated protests, in which he wrote:--
If all cars on their arrival at a depôt are immediately
loaded or unloaded and returned, and trains are run to schedule,
a single-track road, in good order and properly equipped, may
supply an army of 200,000 men when, if these conditions are not
complied with, the same road will not supply 30,000.
On July 9, 1863, he telegraphed to General M. C. Meigs:--
I am on my way to Gettysburg again. Find things in great
confusion. Road blocked; cars not unloaded; stores ordered
to Gettysburg--where they stand for a long time, completely
preventing all movement there--ordered back without unloading;
wounded lying for hours without ability to carry them off. All
because the simple rule of promptly unloading and returning cars
is violated.
As for the effect of all these conditions on the military situation as
a whole, this is well shown in the following "Notice," which, replying
to complaints that railwaymen had not treated the military officers with
proper respect, Haupt addressed "To agents and other employés of the
United States Military Railroad Department":--
While conscious of no disposition to shield the employés or
agents of the Military Railroads from any censure or punishment
that is really merited, justice to them requires me to state
that, so far, examination has shown that complaints against them
have been generally without proper foundation, and, when demands
were not promptly complied with, the cause has been inability,
arising from want of proper notice, and not indisposition.
Officers at posts entrusted with the performance of certain
local duties, and anxious, as they generally are, to discharge
them efficiently, are not always able, or disposed, to look
beyond their own particular spheres. They expect demands on
railway agents to be promptly complied with, without considering
that similar demands, at the same time, in addition to the
regular train service and routine duties, may come from
Quartermasters, Commissaries, medical directors, surgeons,
ordnance officers, the Commanding General, the War Department
and from other sources. The Military Railroads have utterly
failed to furnish transportation to even one-fifth of their
capacity when managed without a strict conformity to schedule
and established rules. Punctuality and discipline are even more
important to the operation of a railroad than to the movement of
an army; and they are vital in both.
It is doubtful if even the Confederate raiders and wreckers had, by
their destructive tactics, diminished the efficiency of the Union
railways to the extent of the four-fifths here attributed to the
irregularities and shortcomings of the Federals themselves. The clearest
proof was thus afforded that, if the new arm in warfare which rail-power
represented was to accomplish all it was capable of doing, it would have
to be saved from friends quite as much as from foes.
Haupt, as we have seen, suffered much from officers during the time
he was connected with the Military Railroads in Virginia. He had the
sympathetic support of the Commander-in-Chief, who telegraphed to him
on one occasion (August 23, 1862), "No military officer will give any
orders to your subordinates except through you, nor will any of them
attempt to interfere with the running of trains"; and, also, of the
Assistant Secretary of War, who sought to soothe him in a message which
said:--"Be patient as possible with the Generals. Some of them will
trouble you more than they will the enemy." But the abuses which arose
were so serious that, in the interest of the military position itself,
they called for a drastic remedy; and this was provided for by the issue
of the following Order:--
War Department,
Adjutant-General's Office,
Washington,
_November 10, 1862_.
SPECIAL ORDER.
Commanding officers of troops along the United States
Military Railroads will give all facilities to the officers
of the road and the Quartermasters for loading and unloading
cars so as to prevent any delay. On arrival at depôts, whether
in the day or night, the cars will be instantly unloaded, and
working parties will always be in readiness for that duty, and
sufficient to unload the whole train at once.
Commanding officers will be charged with guarding the track,
sidings, wood, water tanks, etc., within their several commands,
and will be held responsible for the result.
Any military officer who shall neglect his duty in this
respect will be reported by the Quartermasters and
officers of the railroad, and his name will be stricken from the
rolls of the Army.
Depôts will be established at suitable points under the
direction of the Commanding General of the Army of the Potomac,
and properly guarded.
No officer, whatever may be his rank, will interfere with
the running of the cars, as directed by the superintendent of
the road. Any one who so interferes will be dismissed from the
service for disobedience of orders.
By order of the Secretary of War.
J. C. KELTON.
Commenting on this Order, General McCallum says in his report that
it was issued "in consequence of several attempts having been made
to operate railroads by Army or departmental commanders which had,
without exception, proved signal failures, disorganising in tendency and
destructive of all discipline"; and he proceeds:--
Having had a somewhat extensive railroad experience, both
before and since the rebellion, I consider this Order of the
Secretary of War to have been the very foundation of success;
without it the whole railroad system, which had proved an
important element in conducting military movements, would have
been, not only a costly but ludicrous failure. The fact should
be understood that the management of railroads is just as much a
distinct profession as is that of the art of war, and should be
so regarded.
In _Europe_, Germany and Austria-Hungary were the first countries to
attempt to solve problems that seemed to go to the very foundations of
the practical usefulness of rail-transport in war. Various exhaustive
studies thereon were written by railway or military authorities, and
it may be of interest here to refer, more especially, to the views
expressed by an eminent German authority, Baron M. M. von Weber, in "Die
Schulung der Eisenbahnen," published in 1870.[7]
Railway irregularities peculiar to war service were stated by this
writer to be mainly of three kinds:--(i) Delays from unsatisfactory
arrangements of the service and from the misemployment of rolling
stock; (ii) temporary interruption of traffic owing to the crowding of
transport masses at the stations or sidings; (iii) unsuitableness of the
stations and conveyances for the required military services. The special
reasons for the first of these causes he defined as (_a_) the absence
of sufficient mutual comprehension between the military and the railway
officials; (_b_) the strict limitation of the efficiency of individual
railway authorities to their own lines only; (_c_) the ignorance of
the entire staff of each line with regard to the details and service
regulations of the neighbouring lines; and (_d_) the impracticability
of employing certain modes of carrying on business beyond the circuit
to which they belong. It should, however, be borne in mind that these
criticisms of authorities and their staffs relate to the conditions of
the German railway system in 1870, at which time, as told by H. Budde,
in "Die französischen Eisenbahnen im Kriege 1870-71," there were in
Germany fifteen separate Directions for State railways; five Directions
of private railways operated by the State; and thirty-one Directions of
private railways operated by companies--a total of fifty-one controlling
bodies which, on an average, operated only 210 miles of line each.
On the general question von Weber observed:--
The value in practice of mutual intelligence between
military and railway officials has hitherto been far too
slightly regarded.
Demands for services from military authorities,
impracticable from the very nature of railways in general or
the nature of the existing lines in particular, have occasioned
confusion and ill-will on the part of the railway authorities
and conductors. On the other hand the latter have frequently
declared services to be impracticable which were really not so.
All this has arisen because the two parties in the
transaction have too little insight into the nature and
mechanism of their respective callings, and regard their powers
more as contradictory than co-operative, so that they do not,
and cannot, work together.
If, on the contrary, the nature of the railway service,
with its modifications due to differences in the nature of
the ground, the locality, and the organisation of transport
requirements, is apparent to the military officer, even in a
general way; if he appreciates the fact that the same amount of
transport must be differently performed when he passes from a
level line to a mountain line, from a double line to a single
line, from one where the signal and telegraph system are in use
to one in which these organs of safety and intelligence are
destroyed; if he can judge of the capability of stations, the
length of track, and arrangements for the loading, ordering
and passing of trains, etc., he will, with this knowledge,
and his orders being framed in accordance with it, come much
sooner and with greater facility to an understanding with the
railway executives than if his commands had to be rectified by
contradiction and assertion, frequently carried on under the
influence of excited passions, or attempted to be enforced by
violence.
The railway official, also, who has some acquaintance with
military science, who understands from practical experience and
inspection, not confined to his own line, the capabilities of
lines and stations in a military point of view, will, at his
first transaction with the military authorities, enter sooner
into an understanding with them than if he were deficient
in this knowledge, and will find himself in a position to
co-operate, and not be coerced.
Here the suggestion seems to be that the individual Army officer and the
individual railway executive, or railway official, should each become
sufficiently acquainted with the technicalities of the other's business
to be able to conduct their relations with mutual understanding. It
would, however, be too much to expect that this plan could be carried
out as regards either the military element in general or the railway
element in general.
The real need of the situation was, rather, for some intermediary
organisation which, including both elements, would provide the machinery
for close co-operation between the Army on the one side and the railway
on the other, guiding the Army as to the possibilities and limitations
of the railway, and constituting the recognised and sole medium
through which orders from the Army would be conveyed to the railway,
no individual commander or officer having the right to give any direct
order to the railway executives or staffs on his own responsibility, or
to interfere in any way with the working of the railways, except in some
such case of extreme emergency as an attack by the enemy on a railway
station.
All these problems were to form the subject of much more controversy,
together with much further practical experience, in various other
countries--and notably in France during the war of 1870-71--before,
as will be told in due course, they were solved by the adoption of
elaborate systems of organisation designed to provide, as far as
possible, for all contingencies.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] See Bibliography.