103 The full story of Joffre’s thinking has never been properly told, but see e.g. Mémoires du Maréchal Joffre, 1910–17 (2 vols., Plon, Paris 1932) vol. I, pp. 224–94.
104 Lanrezac, op. cit., p. 150–95.
105 General de Castelli, Le Sème. Corps en Lorraine, Aôut–Octobre 1914 (Berger-Levrault, Paris 1925), pp. 27–58. See also French official history, op. cit., book I, vol. I, pp. 200–10.
106 Contamine, op. cit., pp. 244–5, for de Grandmaison. Colin, Gen H., Les Gars du 26ème (Payot, Paris 1932), pp. 50–5, for the actions around Conthil.
107 Contamine, op. cit., pp. 238–9. A detailed eyewitness account from the 143rd regiment, in front of Loudrefing, implies that at least half of its approximately 1,000 casualties were suffered while in a defensive posture (records of the 32nd Division in AHG carton 25 N 147: Anon. ms. report, Opérations des 19 et 20 Aôut).
108 French official history, op. cit., book I, vol. I, pp. 245–59.
109 General Veron, Souvenirs de ma Vie Militaire – Impressions et Réflexions (Maugard, Rouen 1969), pp. 57–8.
110 For artillery, see e.g. Porch op. cit., pp. 232–7, and Percin, op. cit., pp. 165–208.
Chapter 4
1 Wintringham & Blashford-Snell, op. cit., p. 167.
2 De Gaulle, C., The Army of the Future (trans. London, 1940), p. 42.
3 Jünger, E., The Storm of Steel (Mottram, R. H., ed., London, 1929), p. vi.
4 Ibid., pp. 107–8.
5 Ibid., p. 235.
6 Ibid., p. 110.
7 Rommel, E., op. cit., p. 35.
8 Wynne, G. C., If Germany Attacks (London, 1940); see also his article ‘Pattern for Limited War; the Riddle of the Schlieffen Plan’, 3 parts, in Royal United Services Institution Journal, 1958–9.
9 Jünger, op. cit., pp. 286–7. For the uselessness of the tank compare Terraine, J., The Smoke and the Fire (London, 1980), pp. 148–60.
10 Ibid., p. 301.
11 Quoted in ‘Report on the Staff Conference held at the Staff College, Camberley, 9–11th January, 1933’ (PRO WO 32 (3116)), p. 30.
12 Wintringham, T., English Captain (London, 1939), p. 304.
13 Ibid., p. 306.
14 De Gaulle, op. cit., p. 47.
15 Ibid., p. 103.
16 Major General McNamara, in ‘Report on the Staff Conference’, &c., op. cit., p. 16.
17 Quoted in Trythall, A. J., ‘Boney’ Fuller; the Intellectual General (London, 1977), p. 82.
18 Ibid., p. 27. The most recent general treatment of Fuller’s work is Reid, B. H., J. F. C. Fuller, Military Thinker (Macmillan, London 1987).
19 Guderian, H., Panzer Leader (trans. Fitzgibbon, C, Futura edn., London, 1979), p. 21.
20 Ibid., p. 24.
21 Ibid., p. 106.
22 Chuikov, V. I., The End of the Third Reich (trans. Kisch, R., Panther edn., London, 1969), p. 60.
23 See also Ellis, J., The Sharp End of War (London, 1980), Chapter 3, ‘Combat: Infantry’, pp. 52–116.
24 See tactical diagrams in Bidwell and Graham, op. cit., pp. 236–7. ‘Retreating through your anti-tank screen’ was a gambit suggested by Fuller before the war – Reid, op. cit., p. 166.
25 Schmidt, H. W., With Rommel in the Desert (London, 1952), p. 78.
26 For the ‘Snipe’ action I have relied totally upon Lucas Phillips, C. E., Alamein (London, 1962), pp. 262–302.
27 Ibid., p. 296.
28 Orgill, D., The Gothic Line (London, 1967), pp. 112–13.
29 Quoted in Ibid., pp. 95–6, from Bright, J., ed., The 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers 1936–45, pp. 168–9.
30 Bishop, G. S. C., The Battle – a Tank Officer Remembers (Fotodirect Printers, Brighton, Sussex, n.d.), p. 60.
31 Ibid., p. 78.
32 Marshall, S. L. A., Men Against Fire (New York, 1947), pp. 44–5. Spiller, R. J., S. L. A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire, in JRUSI, vol. 133, no. 4, winter 1988, pp. 63–71, shows that Marshall did not conduct nearly as many systematic post-combat interviews as he often claimed. His contribution was less scientific, and more like the good, intuitive press reporter that he was at heart.
33 Ibid., p. 89.
34 Lindsay, M., So Few Got Through (London, 1946), p. 247.
35 Ibid., p. 128.
36 Ibid., p. 216.
37 For battleshock see e.g. Lord Moran, The Anatomy of Courage (first published 1985, new edn. Constable, London 1966); Dinter, E., Hero or Coward (Cass, London 1985); Ellis, J., Sharp End, op. cit.
38 Marshall, op. cit., p. 19.
39 Ibid., pp. 208–9.
40 Badsey, op. cit., pp. 283–343.
41 Badsey, op. cit., especially pp. 305, 320, 334–5, 342–3. The general non-use of a potentially effective battle cavalry in 1914–18 shows many similarities with the same phenomenon in the American Civil War.
42 For the British, see Bidwell & Graham, op. cit., pp. 61–146, especially pp. 122–9. For the French, Guinard, P., Devos, J.-C., and Nicot, J., Inventaire Sommaire des Archives de la Guerre, Série N 1872–1919 (Renaissance, Troyes 1975), pp. 123–31.
43 For artillery, see Bidwell and Graham, op. cit., especially pp. 94–114, and pp. 140–3 for signals. For a sociological explanation of why the continuity of the ‘psychological’ or ‘human’ battlefield died hard, Travers, The Killing Ground, op. cit., pp. 37–82, 250–3; and C. S. Forester’s The General, for a fictionalised account of how it did (allegedly based on Allenby).
44 Champions of the Western Front and its generals liked to portray their heroes manfully surmounting the challenge of radically novel difficulties, while the anti-militarists almost revelled in the no less unprecedented quality of the horror and futility. Apologists such as Cyril Falls attempted to correct the negative tone of ‘war books’ (see his own war book of that name, Davies, London 1930), and in recent times the same mantle has fallen to John Terraine; but by and large they have failed to establish the continuity of warfare in the popular mind.
45 The best air futurism was in Giulio Douhet’s The Command of the Air (first published 1921, English edn. trans. D. Ferrari, Coward McCann, New York 1942). A handy short technical history of bombing in World War II is Frankland, N., The Bombing Offensive Against Germany (Faber, London 1965). The economic ineffectiveness of the campaign is explained in Milward, A. S., The German Economy at War (Athlone, London 1965).
46 Harris, J. P., The British General Staff and the Coming of War, 1933–9, in Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, vol. LIX, no. 140, November 1986, pp. 196–211.
47 Basil Liddell Hart was a British infantry officer, gassed on the Somme, who helped General Maxse reform infantry tactics towards the end of the war and later publicised himself by recommending a (rather vague) ‘indirect approach’ using first armour and then, from the mid-1930s, strategic terror-bombing instead. In the late 1930s he did much to damage the cause of armour in Britain, using a highly selective and self serving interpretation of the past. It was not accidentally that his various writings were omitted from the first edition of this book, and it is gratifying to report that J. J. Mearsheimer’s meticulous Liddell Hart and the Weight of History (Cornell University, New York, 1988) has now at last placed this insecure journalist and his academic devotees in a true perspective.
48 Harris, J. P., British Armour and Rearmament in the 1930s, in The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, June 1988, pp. 220–44. Note that the Germans at this time had to be content with equally light tanks – but by 1943 they had solved the problem by fielding the Panther and Tiger.
49 General Wilson said of Hobart that ‘his tactical ideas are based on the invincibility and invulnerability of the tank to the exclusion of the employment of other arms in correct proportion’. Quoted in Macksey, K., Armoured Crusader (Hutchinson, London 1967) p. 170.
50 E.g. The Armoured Regiment (War Office, London, July 1940); and Handling of an Armoured Division (War Office, London, May 1941). Despite his later attempts to distance himself from Fuller’s view of the proport
ion of infantry to accompany tanks, Liddell Hart actually shared it. Neither of them wanted infantry to have a very great role, but both wanted it to have some: Reid, op. cit., pp. 159–64.
51 Reid, op. cit., pp. 49, 165–6.
52 German weakness in tank strength, 1940, is in e.g. Macksey, K., Tank Warfare (first published 1971, Panther edn., London 1976), pp. 110–12. Carver’s significant study of their relatively inferior technology is summarised in Agar-Hamilton, J. A. I., and Turner, L. C. F., The Sidi Rezeg Battles, 1941 (Oxford University Press, Cape Town 1957), pp. 31–44; although it must be admitted that their tanks were more reliable and all had radios.
53 Macksey, K., Beda Fomm, the classic victory (Ballantine, London 1972), pp. 135–51.
54 See e.g. Rommel’s comments reported by von Mellenthin, F. W., Panzer Battles (trans. Betzler, Cassell, London 1955 and Oklahoma University 1956), p. 63.
55 Armoured divisions were Ariete, 15th and 21st Panzer: motor divisions were Trieste and 90th Light: infantry divisions included Pavia, Savona, Bologna, Brescia. They enjoyed a considerable continuity under Rommel’s command.
56 Note that by the time of the Normandy campaign the German infantry was stiffened by (defensive) lightly armoured self-propelled anti-tank guns, and (offensive) heavier armoured assault guns – i.e. turretless tanks which could fill most of the roles of the British ‘I’ tanks.
57 In theory the tank battalions had 53 tanks each, but very often the entire division might have only 20–30 tanks running at a time.
58 Bidwell and Graham, op. cit., pp. 234–5; Agar-Hamilton and Turner, op. cit., pp. 56–8.
59 Orders of battle in Agar-Hamilton and Turner, op. cit., pp. 474–5.
60 ‘I’ (or ‘Infantry’) tanks were intended to be heavily armoured, but not necessarily fast-moving or heavily gunned.
61 E.g. Agar-Hamilton, op. cit., p. 65.
62 In Alamein to the River Sangro (first published 1948, Grey Arrow edn. 1960), p. 36, Montgomery said ‘methodical’, ‘crumbling’ action is ‘within the capabilities of my troops’ (i.e. infantry troops).
63 Carver, M., Dilemmas of the Desert War (Batsford, London 1986), pp. 50–3.
64 Before ‘Crusader’ Auchinleck had wanted each armoured division to have one tank and one infantry brigade, ‘like a Panzer Division’ but in the event this reorganisation took over a year to implement.
65 Bidwell and Graham, op. cit., pp. 222, 245; Hamilton, N., Montgomery (3 vols., Hamish Hamilton, London 1981–6), vol. 1, The Making of a General, pp. 611–13, 617–20, 630.
66 For the parrot compare Farrar-Hockley, op. cit., p. 8, with Lindsay, op. cit., p. 35. For Montgomery’s desire to seize the initiative, see e.g. Hamilton, op. cit., vol. I, p. 590.
67 The idea was to group two or more armoured divisions together as a mobile reserve, ‘like in the Afrika Korps’. The conception and creation of this force – officially called X Armoured Corps – is recounted in Hamilton, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 589, 591, 641–2. Its novelty is denied in Correlli Barnett, The Desert Generals (Kimber, London 1960) pp. 252–3.
68 Badsey, op. cit., p. 302.
69 Ibid., pp. 302–9.
70 Playfair, I. S. O., and Moloney, C. J. C., The Mediterranean and Middle East (British official history, HMSO, London 1966), vol. IV, p. 77.
71 Hamilton, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 815–24.
72 D’Este, C., Decision in Normandy (Pan edn., London 1984), p. 356.
73 Ibid., pp. 290, 352–69.
74 Field Marshal Carver, quoted in Ibid., p. 290.
75 Ibid., pp. 400–7.
76 Playfair and Moloney, op. cit., vol. IV, pp. 34–5.
77 Both battles are in Horrocks, Corps Commander (first published 1977, Magnum edn., London 1979) pp. 82–111, 151–68. The desired Reichswald timings seem too embarrassing to be specifically mentioned in histories and memoirs, but there are strong hints in the operation orders reprinted in Battlefield Tour – Operation Veritable (BAOR, Germany, December 1947), pp. 27–31. See also Elstob, P., Battle of the Reichswald (Ballantine, London 1970) pp. 66, 75.
78 D’Este, op. cit., p. 65.
79 Ibid., pp. 79–81.
80 His takeover of command in the desert is in Hamilton, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 606–36, while preparations for Alam Haifa are on pp. 637–48, 661–8.
81 Montgomery, El Alamein to the River Sangro, op. cit., p. 18.
82 ‘His’ own account (actually written by a ghost writer) in El Alamein to the River Sangro, op. cit., and Normandy to the Baltic (Hutchinson, London 1946) insists that nothing ever wavered from the plan, with the classic case being the Normandy campaign in general and the battles around Caen in particular. D’Este’s book, op. cit., is devoted largely to exploding this claim for Normandy.
83 A recent example is Hastings, M., Overlord: D Day and the Battle for Normandy (Joseph, London 1984). Creveld, M., Fighting Power (Arms & Armour, London 1983) compares US and German practice, concluding that the Germans were superior because they designed their military institutions around the needs of combat, and ensured their best men were in the front line.
84 Jary, S., 18 Platoon (Sydney Jary, Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, 1987) p. 21.
85 Ibid., p. 17, although Jary did miss his battalion’s most intense fighting in Normandy. Other voices raised against military teutomania include Peters, R., The Dangerous Romance; the US army’s fascination with the Wehrmacht in Military Intelligence, October-December 1986, pp. 45–8; Beaumont, R. A. On the Wehrmacht Mystique in Military Review; vol. 66, no. 7, July 1986, pp. 44–56; Hughes, D. J., Abuses of German Military History in Military Review, vol. 66, no. 12, December 1986, pp. 67–76. Creveld himself replied to the last two in On Learning from the Wehrmacht in Military Review; vol. 68, no. 1, January 1988, pp. 63–71.
86 American defence statisticians have calculated that in June 1943 one German had the combat effectiveness of just over three Russians, although by 1944 this had fallen to 1.6 Russians (as compared to 1.2 British or Americans): Dunnigan, J. F., ed., The Russian Front (Arms & Armour, London 1978) pp. 82–3; and related discussion in Creveld, Fighting Power, op. cit., pp. 5–10.
87 Ms letter of Balck to Capt. R. d’A. R. Ryan, 18 August 1960, privately communicated to the author.
88 Balck’s actions on the Chir are in Mellenthin, op. cit., pp. 175–84. Other stirring memoirs include Guderian, op. cit.; E. von Manstein, Lost Victories (first published 1955, translated Methuen, London 1958); Anon, German Defense Tactics Against Russian Break – Throughs (US Army Department 20–233, Washington DC, October 1951). Another classic, albeit sadly inaccessible to the present author, is von Senger und Etterlin, F. M., Der Gegenschlag (Neckargemünd, 1959).
89 Dunnigan, op. cit., pp. 8, 15, 22, 97, 117–8, 142.
90 Simpkin, R., Race to the Swift (Brassey, London 1985) pp. 17, 37–9, 46.
91 This, and much of what follows, is drawn from Dick, C. J., The Operational Employment of Soviet Armour in the Great Patriotic War, in Harris, J. P., and Toase, F. H., eds., Modern Armoured Warfare (forthcoming from Batsford, London 1990); and Dunnigan, op. cit., pp. 98–106, Chapter 4, Organization of Soviet Ground Forces.
92 Bellamy, C, Red God of War (Brassey, London 1986) pp. 52–3, and see also his other examples on pp. 49–72.
93 Details of the mobile groups are taken from Dick, Operational Employment, op. cit.
94 The depth of Montgomery’s intended tactical breakthroughs was also very short by Russian standards. It normally stood at about ten kilometres, but was twice that at Cobra, and ten times that at Market-Garden. In Russia, by contrast, the Germans started to lay out their defences in much greater depth from 1943 onwards, reaching 150km in places towards the end of the war.
Chapter 5
1 E.g. Thompson, W. S., and Frizzell, D. D., The Lessons of Vietnam (London, 1977), pp. iv and 277.
2 Ibid., pp. 32–3.
3 This comment was made to the international conference on Vietnam held by the British Commission for Military History at Sa
ndhurst in July 1979. Compare the discussion of regulars using guerilla tactics in Heilbrunn, O., Warfare in the Enemy’s Rear (London, 1963).
4 Thompson & Frizzell, op. cit., pp. 200–17.
5 Ibid., pp. 89–96.
6 Berger, C, ed., The USAF in South East Asia (Office of Airforce History, Washington D.C., 1977).
7 Starry, D. A., Mounted Combat in Vietnam (Dept. of the Army Vietnam Studies series, Washington D.C., 1978), p. 3.
8 Dickson, P., The Electronic Battlefield (London, 1976), p. 82.
9 Ploger, R. R., US Army Engineers, 1965–70 (Vietnam Studies, Washington D.C., 1974), pp. 95–104.
10 Tolson, J. J., Airmobility 1961–71 (Vietnam Studies, Washington D.C., 1973), pp. 12, 41 and 200.
11 Marshall, S. L. A., Battles in the Monsoon (New York, 1967), p. 66.
12 Starry, op. cit., p. 160.
13 Dickson, op. cit., pp. 60–64, and Ott, D. E., Field Artillery 1954–73 (Vietnam Studies, Washington D.C., 1975), p. 181 ff.
14 The name of these tactics was later changed several times in a search for euphemism; Palmer, D. R., Summons of the Trumpet (San Rafael, California, 1978), p. 134.
15 Marshall, S. L. A., Ambush (New York, 1969), chapter entitled The Perfect Deadfall’, p. 131.
16 West, F. J., Small Unit Action in Vietnam (US Marine Corps, Washington D.C., 1966), p. 95. Compare Albright, J., Cash, J. A., and Sandstrum, A. W., Seven Firefights in Vietnam (Vietnam Studies, Washington D.C., 1970), Chapter 5, Three Companies at Dak To’.
17 Battles in the Monsoon, op. cit., pp. 334 and 101; and Marshall, S. L. A., Bird, the Christmastide Battle (New York, 1968), p. 152.
18 Ott, op. cit.; and Battles in the Monsoon, op. cit., pp. 84 and 91.
19 Battles in the Monsoon, op. cit., p. 67.
20 Marshall, S. L. A., West to Cambodia (New York, 1968), p. 221.
21 Bird, the Christmastide Battle, op. cit., p. 110. Helicopter operations as seen by the pilot are well explained in Mason, R., Chickenhawk (first published 1983, Penguin edn., London 1984).
22 West, op. cit., p. 103.
23 Starry, op. cit., p. 83.
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