Forward into Battle

by Paddy Griffin

  By the time we come to twentieth-century battles we find that, apart from a very few ‘near-Napoleonic’ days, such as the 60,000 lost on 1 July 1916, the graph continues to fall. A casualty total of 750,000 in ten months at Verdun averages less than 2,500 per day; half a million in 100 days of Passchendaele makes just 5,000 per day, and about a million lost in 140 days on the Somme averages around 7,000 per day. These rates are comparable to some 40,000 in twelve days at Second Alamein (including POW) making 3,300 per day, plus a daily average of 83 tanks knocked out. In Normandy the figures were 637,000 casualties during 80 days, making 8,000 per day of which perhaps 1,100 might be killed, 4,300 might be wounded and 2,600 POW. Tank losses averaged about 30 per day. The major exception to this general level was in Russia during the Second World War, where it seems that everything was on a greater scale. A total of 30,000 men were lost per day during the six-month drive to the outskirts of Moscow in 1941, and the Russians alone lost some 13,000 per day in the final battle of Berlin.11

  We have already seen how relatively light were the American losses in Vietnam, which work out at an average of only sixteen men killed (but an estimated $50 million spent) each day between deployment in 1965 and final withdrawal in 1973 – although the total combined casualties (including wounded and missing for both sides) may have been as high as 1,000 per day. Israeli losses averaged up to 158 killed per day in 1973, and perhaps 68 per day in 1982; but once again with much higher combined overall totals, at something like 5,000 and 1,700 per day, respectively. The combined tank losses of the two sides were higher still, at around 142 and 60 per day, respectively. British casualties in the Falklands totalled 255 dead and 777 wounded in 42 days’ operations, as against about 10,000 Argentinians (mostly POW). This makes an average of 6 British dead per day, or 263 total casualties from both sides12 – not even a third of the daily rates in Vietnam.

  The above figures, of course, take no account of the numbers initially deployed, or the precise definition of just what constitutes a ‘battle’. Even if we discount the post-1945 examples as being too ‘limited’ to bear comparison with les grandes guerres of earlier times, however, the general trend of casualties per day of fighting is clearly downwards. Soldiers facing improved weapons take more care to hide or protect themselves, and engagements become more fragmentary. Even if much greater total weights of ammunition are expended, the really damaging fire missions become more intermittent and infrequent.

  Ardant du Picq was right to say that:

  In modern battle, which is delivered with combatants so far apart, man has come to have a horror of man. He comes to hand-to-hand fighting only to defend his body or if forced to it by some fortuitous encounter.13

  Close combat, in other words, tends to take place by accident, when the technology fails which might otherwise have prevented it. It is not generally desired by either party, since it represents a removal of psychological restrictions upon aggressive behaviour. It comes closer to the essence of total war than can any amount of fighting at long range.

  When and if they do find themselves face-to-face with an enemy, soldiers may still attempt to limit the intensity of the combat by recourse to a form of tacit mutual understanding:

  During the Crimean War, we are told, on a day of heavy fighting, two detachments of soldiers, A and B, coming around one of the mounds of earth that covered the country and meeting unexpectedly face to face, at ten paces, stopped thunderstruck. Then, forgetting their rifles, threw stones and withdrew. Neither of the two groups had a decided leader to lead it to the front, and neither of the two dared to shoot first for fear that the other would at the same time bring his own arm to his shoulder.14

  For a more modern example of the same thing, compare the case of an American officer, Captain Willis, leading his company along a Vietnamese streambed one night in 1966:

  Two bullets whistled over Willis’ shoulder, fired from not more than ten feet away. He did not return the fire.… One [enemy] soldier had awakened and, hearing the sounds of movement, had gotten off two quick shots, probably not even looking.

  For the next few seconds the numbers of the forms passing him in the stream must have awed him somewhat.

  Willis came abreast of him, his M-16 pointed at the man’s chest. They stood not five feet apart. The soldier’s AK47 was pointed straight at Willis.

  The captain vigorously shook his head.

  The NVA soldier shook his head just as vigorously.

  It was a truce, cease-fire, gentleman’s agreement or a deal. Call it what you will. At least the understanding of the compact was mutual and complete.

  ‘If you don’t try to fire again and alarm the camp, nobody here will try to kill you.’

  The soldier sank back into darkness and Willis stumbled on.…15

  In view of the great reluctance of soldiers to mix it hand to hand, it has long been recognised that the side which goes out and actively seeks a confrontation will enjoy a great psychological advantage. Provided that the enemy can be convinced of both your intention and your ability to reach him, he will in all probability run away and leave you the victory. This was the secret behind Wellington’s successes in the Peninsula, and it continued to be decisive on many occasions throughout the nineteenth century. With improvements in firepower, of course, it became gradually more difficult, both physically and morally, to reach an enemy’s line. Looser formations and heavier fire preparations had to be used in the bayonet charge, while those responsible for training were ever on the lookout for better ways to stiffen the initiative and resolve of their men.

  In the twentieth century a similar process has steadily continued. Formations have become looser still, and the battlefield has become even emptier. As a result personal initiative has loomed ever larger as an essential military virtue which it is the task of training to develop. Whereas in the past this had been done by reference to pseudo-scientific principles, in the Second World War and Vietnam some armies even brought in real scientists – especially psychologists – to help them. The theories of ‘morale’ which had been so despised in their late nineteenth century guise now reappeared in bright new ‘rational’ clothing. The idea of close combat also continued, especially after it had been given a new lease of life by the storm troopers of 1917–18. The quick counter-charge remained as much a part of defensive technique as it had for the Duke of Wellington; while if attacking techniques had become more complex they still demanded soldiers who would ‘go’.

  In numerous wars since 1945 by contrast, we suddenly find that for different reasons the idea of close combat has apparently been lost. In Vietnam the Americans’ policy of ‘Manoeuvre and Fire’ seemed to prohibit it, and in the Middle East the terrain and the weaponry made it generally possible to break up attacks at long range – often a kilometre or more. In these circumstances we might well be permitted to wonder whether technology has at last succeeded in rendering no-man’s-land uncrossable, and whether the bayonet has at last become redundant. It is certainly noticeable that small arms designers today make markedly less provision for the bayonet than at any time since the War of the Spanish Succession.

  As we have already seen, however, the history of the bayonet has been the history of its premature obituaries. Even in Napoleonic times, when it was in its glorious heyday, it had to suffer many predictions that it was already obsolete.16 Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth the same cry has often been repeated17 … and yet the close combat and even the bayonet charge itself have continued undiminished until apparently, the wars since 1965.

  Admittedly the bayonet today has been largely replaced by other close-quarter weapons such as the hand grenade or the SMG; but the real question, perhaps, is concerned more with the ‘spirit’ of the bayonet than with the weapon itself. Are we to conclude that troops no longer need to make the final risky step across no-man’s-land, if they are to win the victory? Are we to accept that long-range technology has finally become decisive? On past performance it would seem unl
ikely that this change has really occurred. Perhaps there were special features in Vietnam and the Middle East which made it seem that a real change had taken place when it had not. The North Vietnamese Army, after all, continued to believe in the attack à l’outrance and in the event they won their war. In the Middle East the terrain was exceptional, as deserts have always been for tacticians. Even Napoleon’s grognards seem to have set aside their ‘battles of Egypt’ as something extraordinary: for them these were a completely different type of action from other battles nearer home.

  For all this we have still, at the backs of our minds, a dark suspicion that in fact the close-quarter combat really is a thing of the past. We have a deep-seated feeling that the cold-blooded technician now controls the battlefield, and that the hot blooded warrior is an anachronism. Tactical analysts such as Mao Tse Tung, who put ‘men above machines’, are easily dismissed as ‘military spiritualists’ or ‘military Luddites’. For all their famous victories, they are deemed to have been superseded by the march of science.

  This process may perhaps be seen at its most intense in the preparations for a possible future war in Germany. There the uncertainty of the unknown itself encourages commentators to look more at tangible things – the hardware and solidly scientific weapon power – rather than more traditional but less tangible human values. When they describe recent real wars in the Falklands or the Middle East, analysts are often able to balance bald, abstract science with a variety of telling human insights and anecdotes, since they are discussing events that are already past and gone. When it comes to describing the shape of the next big state-of-the-art war in Europe, however, there are too many dollars and reputations hanging on the result for similar rules of evidence to apply.

  The debate about the future of warfare is inevitably far more political than the debate about the past. The issues seem far too important to be blurred by such apparently vague factors as unsubstantiated subjective feelings about how particular men may behave. For example, inter-allied discussions of strategy may not be conducted in terms of comparative regimental cohesion or personal devotion, since these are ‘merely’ indefinable, unquantifiable virtues which not even the recent interest in combat stress has made more concrete. It would cut no ice at a NATO planning conference to suggest that the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders might possess stronger military qualities than the US 385th Air Mobile Cavalry Regiment, because all that can be discussed is what can be counted, and all that can be counted is the number of helicopters, guns and rockets they can each bring along with them to the next battle. Such hardware and logistical considerations do of course have an important role to play, and no one would wish to deny it – the Highlanders would certainly like to have more firepower than they actually have! However, the very nature of debate about future warfare often tends to over-emphasise those aspects at the expense of more important but less quantifiable things.

  The bewildering technical complexity of modern military science is in any case itself a source of uncertainty enough. Already in recent wars we have seen countless new types of assault helicopter, guided missile, smart artillery sub-munition and scatterable minefield. New laser designators have been used to find targets for both artillery and air attacks, while new laminated and reactive armour has been seen and even defeated. Numerous advances have also been registered in electronic warfare, remotely piloted vehicles, secure communications, realtime battlefield surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (‘STARS’). The feeling is strong that the micro-chip has really revolutionised warfare as much as did the internal combustion engine in its day.18 There are many still more significant developments waiting just around the corner, not least of which is a family of directed energy weapons that may make battlefield death rays a reality by the year 2020. In these circumstances we may perhaps be forgiven if we find it difficult to attribute a correct value to each of the new systems, let alone form a useful view of how the battlefield as a whole may appear.

  One theme which seems to run through most literature on future tactics is that the ‘emptiness’ of the past battlefield is declining, in that combat units are becoming ever more visible to the enemy. There are many more ways to see men and weapons than there used to be, making traditional camouflage and concealment methods ineffective. Whereas a piece of netting entwined with green scrim was enough to hide a gun position or a vehicle in the past, in future there will have to be additional reflectors to defeat various different types of surveillance, and probably also a set of alternative radiation sources to act as decoys. Still more significant, the cover of darkness or woods will no longer hide vehicles on the move. Innovations will have to be made in concealment and ECM technology if we are to emulate Balck’s surprise night marches with 11th Panzer Division on the Chir in 1942.

  A highly probable solution to decreasing concealment, however, is to restore the ‘empty’ battlefield by increasing dispersion. If large formations can easily be noticed and monitored, the use of smaller ones may well become unavoidable, and all the more so since small units today can pack a much bigger punch than they could in the past. If a tank before the 1970s needed to fire four or five shots to hit an enemy tank, the figure is now reduced to just one or two shots.19 This presumably implies that a squadron today can almost do the job of a battalion yesterday. An all-arms force with as many sub-units, technical support and command elements as a brigade, but perhaps only half its present ‘teeth’ strength, may well become the basic tactical unit of the future. This would bring many advantages in terms of economy of force, and would finally lay to rest the 1941–4 debate about brigade groups or divisions. Neither of those formations is probably now small enough to survive easily or inconspicuously on the battlefield.

  The logic of ever-longer weapon ranges also continues to drive armies towards increased dispersion. Whereas most direct fire anti-tank weapons in 1945 were effective only below 2,000 metres, the average today is 3,000 metres or more, with as much as 10km being possible in some cases. Sufficiently extensive fields of vision, however, are unlikely to be found except in desert or steppe conditions, and it may not be coincidental that there has recently been a great emphasis on the use of indirect fire weapons against armour. Whereas field artillery in the two world wars usually had an effective range of ten kilometres or less, however, this zone can now be fully covered by mortars – including automatically loaded and ‘smart’ anti-tank varieties – while most gun and rocket systems in use today can reach out to 20km or more. Ranges around 30km are attainable not merely with the long Soviet 130mm or American 175mm guns, and with both the BM-27 and MLRS multiple rocket systems, but also with many modern self-propelled 152 or 155mm guns if they fire base-bleed or rocket-assisted projectiles. Still deeper into the enemy’s territory, interdiction by manned aircraft has now been joined and complemented by a variety of surface-to-surface rockets carrying conventional payloads.

  At least in theory, a standard field artillery battery should soon be able to cover a frontage that in 1945 would have required three or four batteries, and with a depth of reach that was attainable only by aircraft or certain very specialised guns. A multiplicity of novel ammunitions will also allow armoured vehicles, radars and command posts to be selectively and appropriately engaged. If greatly enhanced target acquisition, accuracy and responsiveness are further weighed in the balance, it is not too fanciful to talk of artillery soon multiplying its general effectiveness for mobile warfare by as much as ten times since 1945. This must admittedly be set against an equal and opposite increase in the efficacy of counter-battery fire, which will force firing units to keep hidden or keep moving; but a very major increase in artillery power will still surely have become general within the next two decades. In that time we will also doubtless see a shift away from existing solid propellants to the lighter, cheaper and handier liquid propellants.20

  The speed at which forces may be inserted into the battlefield has also increased since the world wars, not only as a result of greatly impro
ved communications, but also through better and faster cross-country vehicles, especially helicopters and hard-hitting light armour. This means that a defender may be able to thin out the forces manning his front line still further, relying on rapid reinforcement, if necessary, only at the last minute. The capacity to fill gaps by scattering minefields rapidly from a distance – by artillery, helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft – is also highly significant in this context. We may thus perhaps be facing a situation similar to that of the Western Front in the First World War, where mobility was easy behind the line, but very difficult in proximity to the enemy.

  Can we really decide just what sort of battle landscape would apply to Germany, as a result of all this increased dispersion? We may certainly expect the ground to be less obviously cluttered with military equipments, and to show fewer scars than was the case in the past. There will not only be fewer tanks and trenches per square mile, but fewer and smaller shells aimed against them, in shorter but more precise bursts of fire. Tactical measures and deployments, however, will probably be necessary scores of miles behind the FEBA, making for a much deeper battlefield than in the past, with a less clear-cut distinction between ‘military’ and ‘civilian’ zones even than was seen in 1945. Civilian machinery will also be exploited to a greater degree; not just for support tasks like transport and the telephone net, but in the firing line itself. Earth-moving plant will be requisitioned to dig troops into position, and motor vehicles to create heat sources and decoys. There may well be an attempt to maintain some of the patterns and intelligence signatures of normal civilian life, so that the armies may blend in more easily. An armoured brigade is far harder to conceal in areas where central heating, cooking and television have all been turned off, and local traffic stopped, than where the population is still going about some version of its everyday business.