Forward into Battle

by Paddy Griffin

  The road on which the tanks were moving had deep ditches on either side, and the big Shermans could only press on, returning the fire as best they could. The squadron rear-link radio tank, which was in contact with regimental headquarters, was hit at once, so that the tanks were immediately cut off from the regiment. One by one, three more tanks were lost, but the others succeeded in climbing the winding road to Coriano and the start-line. Here they were attacked by German infantry with bazookas, and another tank was knocked out and its commander killed. The tanks now came under heavy shell-fire, and as they crossed the start-line two tanks of squadron headquarters mistakenly turned away from the leading troop and took the road to Coriano by themselves.28

  These two tanks fought a close action in the village, but both were soon knocked out.

  All this seems to have been a far cry from the excellent theoretical precepts which the 2nd Armoured Brigade had been taught in their training. Only two months earlier they had been told that:

  The infantry were the senior partners. They first decided how a position should be attacked, and were then given an appropriate number of tanks to support them. The rest of the tanks were responsible for helping and supporting the leading tanks from behind. The infantry scoured all bushes, hedges, and ditches to clear out any bazooka-men or snipers who might be in a position to pick off tanks or their commanders at a range of a hundred yards and less. The bazooka was a highly effective anti-tank weapon used by infantry.…

  The Germans were very artful in its use and the bazooka-men and snipers sometimes held their fire until the leading troops were a mile or more beyond them. To overcome this it was necessary for the attacking troops to advance in great depth, so that when the leading infantry reached the objective their rear had only recently crossed the start-line. In this way the infantry and the tanks were well spread out over the ground just won and in a position to help each other to deal with the snipers. All-round observation in each tank was vital, because the enemy were just as likely to fire from either flank, or from behind, as they were from in front.29

  The above passages serve to give us some idea of the difficulties which tanks could encounter in the face of infantry with anti-tank weapons. In the event it had turned out almost as pre-war analysts like Wintringham had predicted: the tank by 1944 was often no more than an auxiliary weapon of only occasional significance rather than the decisive war-winner its enthusiasts had hoped. Gone was the age of the successful massed charges which Guderian and others had been able to make for a short time at the start of the war. Once the defending forces had been fully alerted to this threat, their resistance had quickly stiffened. They soon made it obligatory for any tank advance to be properly escorted by infantry and other weapons – thus neatly reversing the earlier assumption that it was the infantry which needed the protection of the tanks.

  The allied armies, however, took many years to recover from the trauma of 1940, insofar as they were slow to accept, in their heart of hearts, that tanks and infantry should always co-operate closely in battle. To them it seemed that excessive stress upon infantry support had been the biggest mistake which the ill-fated French armies had made. The British cavalry regiments, in particular, were long determined that they should not repeat the same mistake themselves. For many individual tank soldiers, on the other hand, it seemed to be folly to ignore the obvious aid which infantry and other arms could lend. Thus when Captain Geoffrey Bishop of the 23rd Hussars took up the advance in Normandy on 29 July 1944, he was happy to have an infantry escort with his tanks:

  It is a fine morning, but there is a sharpness in the air, and the tenseness of a new adventure in a different sort of country, with these infantry soldiers to look after – although really they are here to look after us.30

  By 1944 the shape of minor tactics had been complicated by a new generation of weapons, including many refinements to old ones. They tended to make it more rather than less dangerous to show oneself in front of the enemy, and the impression we have of the Second World War is of an increase in the importance of indirect fire at the expense of direct fire. Soldiers took more care to conceal themselves from the enemy than they had even in the trenches of the Western Front. The battlefield became ‘emptier’ than ever. Thus on one occasion in Normandy Captain Bishop found himself with a squadron of tanks holding a rather exposed field for a whole week. In that time he did not see the enemy more than half a dozen times, and did his best to conceal his own position in turn. He knew that the Germans were within a few hundred yards of his tanks, and there were occasional exchanges of shells or ‘Moaning Minnie’ (Nebelwerfer) salvoes to make the point. For much of the time, however, the area seemed to be completely deserted:

  The same eerie stillness surrounds us, with only the occasional clatter of a bird’s wing as it forsakes its roosting place in a hedge. Little movements of this kind become so noticeable under conditions of such tension – even the flutterings of the leaves left behind by the flapping wings acquires a significance of its own.31

  The American combat historian S. L. A. Marshall made the same point:

  The hardest thing about the (battle) field is that it is empty. There are little or no signs of action. Over all there is a great quiet which seems more ominous than the occasional tempest of fire.

  It is the emptiness which chills a man’s blood and makes the apple harden in his throat. It is the emptiness which grips him as with a paralysis. The small dangers which he had faced in his earlier life had always paid their dividend in excitement. Now there is great danger, but there is no excitement with it.32

  Or again:

  Even when the movement ceases and the opposing fire lines again become static, a reconnaissance along the friendly line is a point-to-point search for the hideouts of men, which is largely fruitless unless it is done by map. One not knowing where to search might move for miles along a main resistance line and see hardly a sign of war.33

  The increasing emptiness of the Second World War battlefield was possibly a more significant change from First World War conditions than any development in armour. The chilling thing, perhaps, was that the landscape itself seemed to be much less seriously ravaged than it had been in 1914–18. Outside the towns battles took place in a countryside which, apart from the absence of living cattle, had almost a peaceful aspect. Shelling did not often continue for days on end, or with as many guns, as it had in the earlier conflict. To compensate, however, each round had become more accurate, more lethal and more flexible. Better communications, in particular, now allowed front line observers to bring down accurate concentrations upon targets of opportunity without having to churn up the entire landscape at the same time. An individual walking in a field five miles away, for example, might now become a legitimate battery target. Such a sophisticated use of artillery had been generally beyond the reach of the soldiers of the Great War.

  The mortar also partook of these developments, and was even more flexible than artillery because it was organic to infantry units themselves. The Germans were especially efficient in exploiting the quick reactions which this weapon made possible, and according to some estimates used it to inflict about a half of the total British casualties in the North-West Europe campaign of 1944–5. Mortar bombs were smaller than artillery shells; but their lesser velocity gave them a greater fragmentation effect because they did not bury themselves as deeply before exploding. Nor did they give as much warning of their arrival:

  Mortaring is not like shelling, you don’t hear the distant whistle of the shells coming slowly from afar. There is a sudden rush and a crack as the first bomb arrives, and you have hardly any time before the others land.34

  The second most important cause of casualties was the mine. The Germans always left a good sprinkling of mines and booby traps behind them when they evacuated a position, and despite every effort to avoid them the pursuing troops would often suffer a toll of random casualties. This was a matter of pure attrition. It could not be in any sense decisive, but was un
doubtedly extremely galling. On 14 November 1944 Major Martin Lindsay of the Gordon Highlanders wrote in his diary that:

  There was a lot of talk this morning about the Hun having pulled out, as he was not seen by our patrols early today. I am glad this was not so as a few spandau boys are preferable to the legacy of mines and booby traps which he would certainly have left us had he gone back.35

  Major Lindsay’s diary forms one of the more vivid accounts to come down to us of the ten and a half months’ fighting from Normandy into Germany. It conveys the great difficulties which even a half-defeated defender could throw in the path of an overwhelmingly superior army; and it conveys a sense of the attrition which the attackers had to suffer. In this campaign the Gordon Highlanders lost one and a half times as many men as they had started with on D-Day, and we gain the impression that most of these casualties were caused by shells, mortars or mines. Scarcely a day seemed to pass without an entry in Lindsay’s diary referring to these problems. For example on 22 February 1945 he says:

  Several more narrow shaves today. They wear one down in the end. Six months ago I found them slightly exhilarating, just as when one has ridden in a number of steeplechases without a mishap, it does one’s nerve good to have a harmless fall. But now I have seen too much and have too great a respect for the law of averages. The shelling here has certainly been prodigious. Last night two new officers got hit on their way to join their companies.… We have been shelled, mortared and minnied all day, and the M.G. platoon has had twelve casualties out of fifteen men, from one unlucky shell, though of course they shouldn’t all have been in one room.36

  Contrary to the common impression that Second World War battles were easy, fast-moving and decisive affairs we find that they were in reality protracted, gruelling, nerve-racking and costly. There were more dangers to counter than there had been in the battles of a quarter of a century before; and it took a higher level of training and morale to overcome them. The tight-rope on which front-line soldiers walked had become thinner and less stable, reflected in higher levels of accidents, ‘psychiatric casualties’ and the general destruction of lives and property. War had become inexorably nastier. If there were occasional spectacular breaks by armoured spearheads, these always had to be paid for in full in the mud and blood of the close fighting which came before and after them.

  Nor do we find that the widespread public faith in machinery was reflected in the writings of tactical analysts immediately after the war. Just as Ardant du Picq in the nineteenth century, and Tom Wintringham in the 1930s had identified machinery as the problem rather than the solution, so in the late 1940’s we find a reaction against the easy optimism of those who believed that indirect approaches and mechanisation could remedy all ills.

  In his book Men Against Fire, published in 1947, S. L. A. Marshall pointed to the confusion and moral isolation which surrounded the contemporary soldier in action. He saw clearly that this isolation was not reduced by piling up machinery on the battlefield, but greatly increased. Advances 37 in weaponry and firepower did not serve to enhance the control which could be exercised over what actually took place on the ground, since ‘The belief in push-button war is fundamentally a fallacy.’38 Scientists and their sprawling industrial resources could certainly do much to heighten the intensity of combat; but they could not determine the ultimate victor. That was the responsibility, as it had always been, of the individual fighting man.

  Marshall suggested that a new technical setting required a new type of soldier. It called for a man who could see through the bewilderments and anonymity imposed upon him by the machine, and who had both the will-power and the training to stick to his ever more complex task:

  As I went about my work I came to see, more fully and more surely … that the great victories of the United States have pivoted on the acts of courage and intelligence of a very few individuals. The time always comes in battle when the decisions of statesmen and of generals can no longer affect the issue and when it is not within the power of our national wealth to change the balance decisively. Victory is never achieved prior to that point; it can be won only after the battle has been delivered into the hands of men who move in imminent danger of death. I think that we in the United States need to consider well that point, for we have made a habit of believing that national security lies at the end of a production line. Being from Detroit, I am accustomed to hearing it said publicly that Detroit industry won the war. This may be an excusable conceit, though I have yet to see a Sherman tank or Browning gun that added anything to the national defence until it came into the hands of men who willingly risked their own lives. Further than that, I have too often seen the tide of battle turn around the high action of a few unhelped men to believe that the final problem of the battlefield can ever be solved by the machine.39

  It would seem that after every war, regardless of the much-heralded advances in technological aids, there will be a reaction of a similar type. After Waterloo there was a just appreciation of the power of the bayonet in the hands of good infantry. After Solferino and Mukden it was seen that although better firearms imposed looser formations and greater fire preparations, it was still the will to charge home which won the victory. After the bitter battles of 1918 the spirit of the picked storm trooper was recognised as an asset of incalculable value. And here, at the end of the only atomic war, we find the same lesson stressed once again. It was not the tank, not the gun; but the man. We are certainly entitled to predict that a similar lesson may be drawn from our more recent wars since 1945.

  The Corps de Chasse and the Mobile Group: Two Questionable Allied Responses to the Panzer Division, 1941–1945

  At the end of the previous two chapters we left infantry attacks baffled in the face of a wall of fire – first at New Orleans, where the British assault was bungled, and then at Sarrebourg-Morhange, where the French failed to apply the full depth of de Grandmaison’s tactics. By 1945, however, we have found that enterprising infantry could once again find technique’s to worm its way into an enemy defensive screen, and it was rather the tanks that were faced with a baffling wall of fire. They started off believing that they held the key to a completely novel style of warfare, but soon found that rather less had in fact changed than had been expected.

  Just how novel were the conditions of combat between 1915 and 1918? For a long time they were not seen as such, since the old habits of thought took time to be jettisoned by tacticians, and of course trench warfare complete with grenades, tin helmets and bombproof shelters had already been venerable in the days of Vauban. Within the British cavalry, for example, the proud skirmishers of August 1914 were still optimistic for a breakthrough in 1915, although they became successively less credible – and individually less efficient – as the trench war continued. By 1917 Lloyd George’s government was plotting to bring the cavalry home, and by 1918 even its genuine battlefield successes could be studiously mocked.40 Nevertheless, it still had many champions, including Haig himself, and beneath the surface its offensive potential actually remained strong. New loose tactics exploiting fire and movement, both mounted and dismounted, had already been devised in the 1890s. When they were applied in the Great War, they allowed machine guns to be charged successfully throughout the hostilities – not only in Palestine or Russia, but even on the Western Front. One 1918 Canadian attack in France, for example, captured 230 prisoners, three cannon and no less than 40 machine guns. At Amiens in August two out of three charges succeeded and 1,300 prisoners were taken. In fact, cavalry units were very rarely massacred by fire in the way the popular stereotype would have it, but far more often deliberately kept out of battle by generals who either did not understand what they could do, or harboured deep-seated personal animosities against their commanders.41

  Within the infantry platoon, equally, tactical attitudes changed only slowly. Hand- and rifle-grenades were added to the formal organisation as early as 1916, to all intents replacing the bayonet as the weapon of hand-to-hand combat. Nevertheless
, assaults were still being made in excessively close-packed formations, despite several constructive experiments during the later phases of the Somme battle. It was not really until the very end of 1917 that new tactics were formally recognised at platoon level by the deployment of light machine guns, and a routine lightening of the assault formations. In the French army a similar reform took place as early as 1916,42 but a profound change in outlook came only after the 1917 Nivelle offensive and the mutinies which followed.

  In artillery tactics there was a similar story, since old-fashioned set-piece bombardments had to become bigger and clumsier before they could start to become more flexible and better adapted to the infantry’s needs. On the Somme in 1916 the fire preparation lasted a week; at Passchendaele in 1917 it lasted a fortnight. It was only at first in more minor actions that bombardments were predicted without prior registration, and pared down to a few hours, in order to achieve surprise. It took time to perfect the full techniques of ‘orchestration’ in depth with the infantry, or to identify communications as a major problem needing a solution.43 The old assumptions had to be ‘tested to destruction’ before they could be grudgingly replaced.

  The slowness of change helped to emphasise the idea of a tactical ‘revolution’ in many people’s minds, since the magnitude of the losses and frustrations had longer to sink in. It seemed obvious that the problem was a big one and needed a radical solution. Yet, ironically, the shocking indecisiveness of the Western Front was already fading, and tacticians were starting to meet the new challenges successfully, just as the wider public was starting to acquire the notion that battle was doomed to remain trench-locked forever. The traditional expectation that every mobile phase would be interrupted by sieges was too quickly forgotten, and too many strident interest groups44 were allowed to drown out those who saw the Great War as merely a change of pace and style, rather than as a decisive rupture with the past.