The Command

by Christopher Nicole

  ‘Yes, sir,’ answered one of the tank commanders. ‘You have said that the cavalry are going to take part in the initial assault, with the tanks. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, that is correct.’

  ‘It won’t work, sir.’

  Rawlinson frowned at him. ‘It will work, Colonel Fuller. The tanks will provide cover for the cavalry; the cavalry will mop up when the tanks have broken the enemy line.’

  ‘With respect, sir, the two are not compatible. The cavalry are either going to have to walk their horses the whole way, in which case they might as well be infantrymen, or they are going to be far in advance of anything our men can achieve. While when it comes to fighting, well, sir...our tanks will keep out bullets. Horses’ flesh will not.’

  Rawlinson’s frown became imperious, while there was considerable shuffling of feet amongst cavalry officers. ‘No flesh will keep out a bullet, Colonel. I am sure every soldier in this army has learned that by now. I am equally sure that the cavalry will give an excellent account of themselves. Now, are there any other questions...?’

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ Kavanagh growled as he and his officers assembled outside the conference room. ‘Here we are, at last about to be given our chance, and these confounded tank wallahs want us out of it. A service which is hardly a year old.’ He looked over the eager faces with which he was surrounded. ‘As General Rawlinson said, gentlemen, the cavalry corps will give an excellent account of themselves. Remember that, now.’

  *

  It was the most exhilarating news Murdoch had had since Maude had announced his decision to march on Kut-al-Amara. He would dearly have liked to have the regiment under his command, but he had grown to appreciate and have confidence in the Light Brigade, and he had no doubt they would fight with all the verve of the Royal Westerns — he had seen them in action. Yet Colonel Fuller’s words hung in his mind. Because they were absolutely true. Of course wars had been fought since time immemorial with horses — and the men who rode them — being cut down by whatever missile weapon happened to be available at the moment. Nothing had changed, save that the missiles available were more deadly nowadays than at any time in history.

  And at last a method had been found to save horses from the indiscriminate slaughter to which they had been subjected for so many centuries — by not sending them into battle at all. But to concede that they could be replaced by tanks was to accept the end of the cavalry as he knew it. He was a cavalryman, and the son and grandson and great-grandson of cavalrymen. The concept was impossible. Surely.

  He determined to put it out of his mind as he prepared his men at last for battle. And over the following couple of weeks the matter was indeed forgotten, as the whole plan slowly began to change. The more Marshal Foch looked at it, the more he liked its possibilities. The result was that the French Thirty-First Corps was included under Rawlinson’s command, and what had begun as a limited operation was to become a massive counter-thrust.

  Immediately complications set in. The French had very few tanks, and were not prepared to advance without some preliminary softening of the enemy — so a bombardment, as so often in the past, had to be agreed. This was, however, to be as minimal as possible. What the French did bring with them was more than a thousand aircraft, which, added to the eight hundred odd of the RAF, meant an enormous Allied preponderance in the air.

  Complications notwithstanding — and with the plan constantly being changed, so were objectives and requirements, which meant an inordinate amount of staff work —the preparations went ahead with great verve. The key to the operation, as Rawlinson underlined in his instructions to his commanders, was secrecy. Thus no one below the rank of colonel was to know the objectives or the dates of the offensive until within thirty-six hours of zero hour. It was impossible to conceal the fact that there was going to be an offensive, of course, but the preparations were also carried out with as much concealment as possible: all troop movements had to be made by night, reconnaissance patrols were prohibited in case they alerted the enemy, normal work was carried on during the day, new-laid roads were obscured with sand or straw and all ammunition dumps were camouflaged.

  The result of all this was that although the Fifth Australian Division, in complete disregard of orders, at the end of July carried out a raid just north of the Somme, inviting retaliation which duly came in a violent German counter-attack which penetrated eight hundred yards into the British position and all but uncovered the camouflaged material, as well as disrupting the preparations of the Third Corps, by 8 August fourteen infantry divisions, three cavalry divisions, three brigades of tanks and more than two thousand guns had been concentrated just east of Amiens without the enemy, only a few miles away, being the least aware of it.

  This was the first opportunity Murdoch had had actually to inspect a tank, and indeed there were five varieties on show, waiting to go into action, while the three main types, the Marks Four, Five and Five Star, were further subdivided into males and females, although the difference between the two was a matter of armament. These Mark tanks were enormous affairs — the Mark Four measured more than twenty-six feet in length, and the Stars over thirty. All weighed around thirty tons, and were crewed by one officer and seven other ranks. Their armaments consisted mainly of Lewis guns on the smaller versions, and Hotchkiss on the larger, although some had six-pounder cannon. But they were incredibly slow, with a top speed of just over four miles an hour — which ate into their fuel capacity — and an economic speed of not much more than two, and even this gave them a range of only around twenty miles. The idea of their ever replacing horses for screening and scouting had to be a joke.

  Slightly more believable as mechanized cavalry were the Medium Mark A tanks, known as Whippets. These were much smaller affairs, only twenty feet long and weighing fourteen tons. They carried one officer and two other ranks, but were yet armed with four Hotchkiss guns, and had twin engines, only forty-five horsepower each — as compared with the hundred-and-fifty horsepower engine of a Mark V Star — but were capable of a top speed in excess of eight miles an hour, and would cruise for forty miles at five an hour. Their main problem, apart from the lightness of their armour, was their limited span, which was only seven feet, as compared with the ten of the Mark IVs and Vs, and the fourteen of the Stars — this meant that the wider trenches were as impassable to them as to wheeled vehicles.

  Reservations apart, however, it was, as Rawlinson had promised, the largest armoured force ever to go into action. There were three hundred and twenty-four heavy tanks, and ninety-six Whippets, with forty-two heavies in reserve. In addition the attacking force had available ninety-six supply tanks, and twenty-two gun carriers — huge, even slower monsters. This made up a total of five hundred and eighty machines, to which could be added twelve armoured cars.

  The change in the plan meant that the initial assault was to be carried out in the centre, by the Australian and Canadian Corps, with the Third British Corps and the French on either flank to act defensively until the initial breakthrough had been made. The Cavalry Corps was assigned to this assault, in company with the Fifth Tank Brigade, their task being to push through the infantry and secure the Amiens outer defences, and then swing south-east to cut the enemy communications, after which the French would also take up the advance.

  ‘Mark my bloody word,’ commented the tank officer beside whose machine Murdoch, mounted on Jupiter, found himself standing. ‘You chaps are going to be massacred.’

  Murdoch ignored him and looked at his watch. It was three fifty-five ack emma on the morning of 8 August. Zero hour was four twenty, but the movement of the tanks and horses was to begin before that. He drew his revolver and checked that every chamber was loaded, loosened his sword in its scabbard, and felt the adrenaline begin to flow. He looked over his shoulder at Reynolds, but Reynolds was hardly visible. The night, which had begun crisp and clear, had suddenly become shrouded in mist at three o’clock, and the mist had thickened to a dense fog. Which was all to t
he good. It was the thickness of the fog which had given the German onslaught of 21 March such a send-off.

  He listened to growing noise, the roar of a thousand aircraft. He couldn’t see the sky, of course, but he knew the planes would be flying low, their purpose at this stage to hide the noise of the tank engines — later, when the sky cleared, they would begin strafing the enemy rear positions.

  The tank engines were started, with clouds of exhaust fumes helping to thicken the mist and causing the waiting horses, and there were some fifteen thousand of them, to snort and stamp. Then the machines moved forward, through the gaps left by the enormous mass of infantry in front of them, to whispers of ‘Good on you, cobber,’ from the Australians.

  The horses also rode into the gaps, and out into the morass of abandoned trenches and shell craters that lay beyond. Visibility was still non-existent, and Murdoch, at the head of the Light Brigade, could only just see the tank in front of him. As Colonel Fuller had prophesied, even at a walk it was hard to keep the horses from creeping up on the ponderous machines.

  There now came an enormous explosion, quite drowning out the drone of the aircraft, as the Allied artillery opened fire; the time was exactly four twenty ack emma. While the shells wailed overhead, and from in front of them they could hear the enormous crumps as they exploded on the German trenches, tanks and cavalry continued their advance. One or two shots were fired, by nervous German sentries, but they were actually taken completely by surprise. So were the British, at the sudden appearance of the first German trench out of the mist in front of them.

  Murdoch caught a glimpse of astonished faces beneath coal-scuttle helmets, of men throwing forward their rifles, and then gasping their horror as the caterpillar treads of the tanks reared above them. The first onslaught was quite sickening. Immediately in front of Murdoch was a machine gun nest, manned by four men. They had time to loose one burst, the bullets clanging off the steel breastplate of the tank, and then its thirty tons descended on them with a horrifying squelch. The tank never even checked. Its forward tracks had already made contact with the far side of the trench and it rolled on, while Murdoch reined his horse to gaze at what had once been four men, now so crushed into the track-marked mud of the trench wall that only a sleeve here, a helmet there, could be identified. Of the machine gun there was no sign.

  ‘They’re gone, sir,’ Reynolds said, riding up beside him. The Germans had abandoned the trench and were fleeing back to the second line, shouting their fear.

  Major-General Harrison, commanding the brigade, himself appeared through the murk. ‘Now, Mackinder,’ he said. Now’s our chance. Ride through the bastards.’

  ‘The tanks are firing, sir.’

  ‘I’ve told the buggers to give over and let us have our chance. Fifteen minutes. I’ve also instructed the creeping barrage to be lifted.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Murdoch said, and checked his watch, then looked round to find Proud. ‘Pass the word to prepare to charge, Major.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Proud said, and dispatched the three lieutenants who formed his staff left and right to find the regimental colonels.

  Murdoch walked his horse forward behind the tanks, which were now assaulting the second line of trenches with equal success. He listened to the guns fall silent, and the tanks too had stopped shooting as the orders reached them on their wireless sets. ‘Brigade ready to charge, sir,’ Proud reported.

  ‘Bugler, sound the advance,’ Murdoch commanded, and the notes cut across the morning. A relic, Murdoch thought, of a glorious past, in the midst of a mechanical present.

  He touched Jupiter with his spur, and moved forward. It was impossible to raise a gallop, as no one knew when he would come upon a crater or a trench, but the cavalry urged their horses past the tanks and across the open ground beyond, peering into the mist, which was slowly thinning, swords drawn, awaiting at any moment the deadly chatter of a machine gun. The Germans were still demoralized, however, and perhaps the more so when out of the mist there emerged, not tanks as they had been warned to expect by the men who had fled past them, but sword-wielding horsemen. They were prepared to fight these, but were quickly overwhelmed, although it was often necessary to jump the trenches as they were too steep for the horses to negotiate otherwise.

  Inhaling the sweet scent of victory, Murdoch rode on to the next line, which was in and around a shattered village surrounded by his cheering troopers. This too was swept clear of enemy troops, but as the horsemen emerged from amidst the houses the mist suddenly lifted altogether, allowing the morning sun to play on the scene, on a vast mass of cavalry milling about, sabring any Germans who had been left behind...and an absolutely magnificent target for the next line of machine guns.

  These opened up immediately. Horses screamed as they were cut to ribbons, men gasped and died. ‘Sound recall,’ Murdoch shouted. The notes blared across the morning, and he found himself on his feet; Jupiter had dropped like a stone. For a moment he was stunned. Jupiter was the fourth horse shot from under him in his career, and each time it had been almost like being killed himself.

  ‘Here, sir,’ Reynolds was alongside him, giving him a hand up into the saddle as the cavalry scampered back to seek what shelter they could find amidst the houses of the village.

  ‘Regroup,’ Murdoch bellowed. ‘Regroup.’ And listened to the reassuring clanking of the tanks, slowly coming up to take over the advance.

  *

  The Battle of Amiens was the beginning of the end for Germany. General Ludendorff was to call 8 August 1918 the Black Day of the German Army. After it the question was not whether or not the Germans would be beaten, but how soon they would admit it.

  Yet the battle itself had not been an unqualified success. The Allies achieved their objectives, but little more, all on the first day. By nightfall they had penetrated some ten miles into the German position, but by then they had outrun their reserves of men and had used up all their reserves of tanks, while by then too, as the experience of the morning had proved time and again, it had been realized that the cavalry were only an embarrassment in the forefront of battle, and they were being used to round up the vast numbers of German prisoners left behind in their armies’ retreat.

  Next day the Germans had consolidated, and there were insufficient tanks to mount another assault; the battle settled down into an old-fashioned slogging match until the necessary repairs could be carried out. But the Germans kept on retiring, back to their newly built Hindenburg Line some distance behind the original front, and the reason was very simply their fear of what the tanks might do next time they were brought into action.

  It was more than just the unstoppable juggernaut effect which stayed in Murdoch’s mind. That was destructive to morale in a way perhaps nothing in warfare had previously been. But the German High Command was also alarmed by other events on 8 August, such as the feat of the Seventeenth Tank Battalion, Whippets, which had not run out of fuel and had penetrated far behind the enemy lines, catching men at dinner and an entire headquarters staff unprepared, shooting them up, and then returning to their own forces. This was like an old-fashioned cavalry raid indeed, but one carried out by armoured horses accoutred with machine guns. It was like nothing any soldier on either side had ever seen before.

  The next three months saw an unceasing advance. While the British regrouped, the Americans launched their first major offensive of the war and pinched out the St Mihiel salient. By the end of September the British were ready to move again, and while the French and the Americans attacked in the Meuse—Argonne area, the British and Belgians, with French support, stormed the Hindenburg Line. Once again this was the task of the infantry and the tanks; the cavalry did the mopping up.

  ‘We’ll get our chance, one day, Murdoch,’ Kavanagh told him as they sat on their horses and watched the lancers bringing in a steady stream of German soldiers. ‘Once we’re through the Hindenburg Line, there’s open country. No entrenchments, no pillboxes, nothing, all the way back to Berlin. We’ll hav
e to cross the Rhine, of course. But we’ll swim our horses across that, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Murdoch agreed, but he knew better. He stroked the neck of Mars, Jupiter’s replacement, and thought to himself: You’ll never lead a charge, young fellow. So maybe you’ll live to a ripe old age.

  A month later the Germans asked for an armistice.

  Part Two: The General

  Chapter Six: England 1918-23

  The world seemed to stand still. The brigade was unsure what to do, caught in the middle of rounding up another batch of surrendered Germans. Were they still to be treated as enemies?

  A wireless conversation with divisional headquarters assured Murdoch that they were, but that all German units were supposed to lay down their arms where they were, and await further orders. Obviously there might be one or two who would not do that...but those were the responsibility of the line troops.

  The brigade returned to its cantonments, and men looked at each other and scratched their heads. Their officers sat down and lit cigarettes and tried to think about what might happen now; more than half of them had joined the army after 1914, would never have dreamed of a military career before then, and did not consider one now. And yet, the thought of returning to university or office, of learning or persuading rather than commanding, of being able to plan what one might be doing in a year’s time and knowing that one would be alive to make it happen, of not being constantly afraid, was itself a frightening one.

  Murdoch poured John Proud and himself a glass of good Armagnac each, and raised his own. ‘Peace.’