It was not only a target within the beaten zone that was at risk, of course. At short ranges anyone between the gun and the target was liable to be hit. The bullets emerged from the gun in an expanding cone, the lowest shot at 600 yards’ range being eight minutes of angle from the centre of the cone. The ideal line of fire for a machine gun was therefore level ground all the way out from the gun; in this situation a virtually impenetrable barrier of bullets could be created. Because of the effect of gravity, the barrel of any firearm actually points above the direct line of sight to the target, and at longer ranges men between the gun and the target would not necessarily be hit. If the gunsights were set to 2,800 yards, the maximum effective range of the Vickers, a man standing directly in front of the gun and 200 yards from it was perfectly safe, as the bullets rose well above the line of sight before descending to fall on the target. At maximum range bullets took twelve seconds to travel from the gun to the target, travelling at rather less than the speed of sound.
In a defensive position guns were sited so that the arcs of fire overlapped, either with the two battalion guns interlocking with each other, or with the guns sited together and their arcs of fire interlocking with those of another battalion. At the beginning of the war the British saw the machine gun as being both a defensive and an offensive weapon, its use in the latter role being to support troops advancing over open ground. This firepower was in the hands of the infantry battalions. It was said that the Germans had many more machine guns, and the British army is criticised or this omission. In fact the German regiment of three battalions had the same number of guns as three British battalions – six – but the Germans saw machine guns as primarily defensive weapons, designed to prevent an enemy crossing no man’s land. German machine guns were grouped into a regimental machine-gun company, which allowed them to be concentrated and used more efficiently than those of the British, who had delegated control to battalion level. As time went on the British realised the advantages of concentrating their machine guns. Brigade machine-gun companies were often cobbled together by withdrawing guns – increased to four per battalion in February 1915 – from battalions. Eventually this arrangement was formalised with the establishment of the Machine Gun Corps on 22 October 1915. Battalions were compensated for the withdrawal of their heavy firepower by the issue of the Lewis gun, and conversion took place on a rolling programme as Lewis guns were manufactured and issued.
The Lewis gun was a breakthrough in infantry firepower, as it could be carried by one man and could thus provide the infantry platoon with its own intimate fire support, which previous heavier guns could not do. The gun was originally developed in the USA by a Colonel Lewis from a design by Samuel MacLean. Unable to interest the American army, Lewis took the design to Europe and had it adopted first by the Belgians; at the outbreak of war he moved to Britain, where his gun was manufactured by the Birmingham Small Arms Company under licence. The Lewis was air-cooled, had a bipod on the end of the barrel to steady it when it was fired, and had a drum magazine of forty-seven .303 rounds, the same ammunition used by the Vickers and the rifle. Although the cyclical rate of fire was 550 rounds a minute, it was normally fired in bursts of five or ten rounds. The maximum range was 1,500 yards, but 300 to 600 yards was the usual range of engagement. The gun was subsequently adapted for use on aircraft, with a magazine of ninety-seven rounds. In this role, firing incendiary bullets, it was particularly effective against balloons and Zeppelins.
To begin with, in late 1915, each infantry battalion was issued with eight Lewis guns, and with a further eight in the spring of 1916. This meant that by the time of the Somme offensive in July 1916 each platoon had its own portable machine gun. So effective was this gun as a platoon weapon that the British infantry was reorganised in 1917 along functional lines: the Lewis was treated as the main weapon of the platoon, whose role was to support its machine gun and bombers (grenade-throwers) rather than simply to act as forty men with rifles and bayonets.
The Machine Gun Corps, which now provided the heavy machine-gun support, could provide each brigade with a machine-gun company of sixteen guns. In April 1917 a further divisional machine-gun company, also of sixteen guns, was formed. Thus after April 1917 a division could field sixty-four medium machine guns, compared with twenty-four in 1914. As brigades were reduced from four battalions to three in 1917, the firepower available per battalion was even greater.
With warfare conducted mainly from trenches, either as positions to defend or as a jumping-off line whence to mount an attack, it quickly became evident that the infantry needed a means of projecting high explosive a short distance – either into the enemy trench when opportunity arose, or as covering fire for movement outside one’s own trench, or to allow an instant response that the artillery could not provide. One of the ways of doing this was with trench mortars, originally called bomb guns or trench howitzers. A trench mortar is a weapon which is portable, can be set up inside a trench, and lobs a high-explosive bomb a short distance. As a mortar was intended for firing at relatively short distances, the pressure in the barrel to propel the shell could be much less than that needed in an artillery piece; hence the shell casing itself could be thinner and lighter than that of an artillery shell. Thus a trench mortar delivered a much greater quantity of explosive on target than an artillery piece of the same calibre. In 1914 the German army had a considerable number of trench mortars, some capable of delivering sixty pounds of explosive over a distance of several hundred yards. As the bombs travelled through the air relatively slowly they could be seen in flight, and this gave an opportunity to dodge them; but if one landed in a trench bay when men could not get out of the way, it left very little of either bay or occupants. The standard German light trench mortar, or Minenwerfer, had a barrel of 2.99-inch calibre and delivered eight pounds of explosive on the target. It had a rapid rate of fire, and while a bomb might be in the air for fifteen seconds or so, a good crew could have six bombs in the air at once. The British had no trench mortars in 1914, and one of the tasks of our own artillery was to shell identified trench-mortar positions; this could only be done effectively with howitzers, themselves in short supply.
The French too had few trench mortars, and their initial solution was to raid museums and employ mortars last used in the Napoleonic Wars. It was those great improvisers of warfare, the Indians, who produced the BEF’s first effective trench mortar, manufactured in a factory in Béthune.12 These were crude but effective weapons, although their use of black powder, and hence the emission of clouds of smoke, tended to attract retaliation in kind and made their crews unpopular with the inhabitants of the trench from where they fired their contraptions. The British started to search for a practical trench mortar, and by early 1915 a number of models were in service. Woolwich Arsenal produced a two-inch version that fired the ‘toffee apple’ shell with twelve pounds of explosive out to a range of 600 yards. The most effective mortar produced during the war was that invented by Wilfred Stokes, which, after many trials and tribulations, was accepted into service in March 1915. It was simple to operate, had few moving parts to go wrong, was fired by a fixed firing-pin in the base of the tube and used smokeless ballistite as the propellant. It projected a cylindrical steel shell with twenty pounds of explosive and had a range of between fifty and 430 yards, later extended to 700 yards and then to 800 with improvements in bomb and propellant. In 1918 experiments were being conducted with the French Brandt mortar shell which would, had the war continued, have given the Stokes a maximum range of 2,500 yards. The three-inch Stokes was operated by the infantry, while its larger brothers, the four-inch and six-inch versions, were the province of the Royal Artillery. The three-inch Stokes was sited in the firing or support line, dug into pits so that no part of it projected above ground level. It was unfortunate that the Stokes mortar pit was of very much the same dimensions as a latrine, and German artillery, firing at targets identified from air photographs, spent much time shelling British latrines, thus increasing th
e incidence of constipation amongst soldiers in the firing line.
Another method of projecting high explosive a short distance was by a grenade, either thrown by the soldier or projected from his rifle. The British did have a percussion grenade in 1914, derived from one used by the Japanese in 1904–05, but it had very few of them. This weapon had a sixteen-inch wooden handle and was more dangerous to the thrower than to his opponent, being liable to strike the rear wall of the trench on the backswing and thus to explode. Eventually men were instructed to throw it by the head, in the manner of a darts player, and this consequently reduced the distance at which it could be used. Various types of percussion fuse were used but none were satisfactory, and so improvisation produced the jam-pot, or jam-tin, bomb. The jam-tin bomb was made from discarded empty jam tins, packed with a mixture of explosive and bits of shrapnel, horseshoe nails, broken glass, stones or anything else that could be guaranteed to cause injury if whizzing about, and sealed with a wooden plug with a fuse inserted. The fuse was lit with a match, cigarette or pipe and the device thrown. It was used mainly in trench fighting, when British troops raided a German trench or when the reverse happened, and was thrown from bay to bay over the traverse. It was unreliable on a number of counts: the fuse did not always light in wet weather; if the bomb landed in mud the fuse went out; the missile could be picked up and thrown back if the fuse was too long, and had a disconcerting habit of blowing up in the thrower’s hand if the fuse was too short. Nevertheless, it was all that was available to begin with, and it came to be considered almost unpatriotic not to eat as much jam as possible. Further types followed: the Indians produced the Battye bomb, with a handle for throwing it, and commercial manufacture of the jam tin, using shrapnel balls rather than any old scrap iron, was begun. From the end of 1914, when the requirement was identified, to the spring of 1915, a plethora of grenade types was issued, and by the time of the Battle of Loos in September 1915 no fewer than twelve different varieties were in service. Despite all these stopgap measures, the number of grenades reaching the BEF was inadequate: in August 1915 Field Marshal Sir John French, the Commander-in-Chief, told the War Office that the BEF requirement was 63,000 a week. By October of the same year the supply of all types had reached 8,000 a week. The problem was in the manufacture of the detonator, as what was wanted was a timed, rather than an unreliable percussion, fuse. Many of the factories that made timed fuses were German, and thus unavailable to fill British orders, and the firms in England which could make them were already making fuses for the mining industry, itself essential to the war effort. Some of the grenades issued were so dangerous that in some battalions the men who used them were referred to as the Suicide Club. The so-called lemon grenade had a friction igniter, which was set off by pulling a ring at the top of the grenade. Many rings were so stiff that men were instructed to place the grenade between the knees and use both hands to withdraw the ring. As the fuse had a five-second delay before the grenade exploded, any fumbling or dropping of the grenade tended to be fatal. The pitcher grenade had a cast-iron body which was intended to fragment as an antipersonnel feature; unfortunately it flung out its fragments in a circle of 200 yards’ radius, thus disposing of the thrower too, if he was not safely under cover. There were so many accidents with this grenade that in September 1915 the Commander-in-Chief ordered that it was not to be used. A similar device, the cricket-ball grenade, was so unreliable that during the fighting at Loos eighteen out of twenty grenades issued failed to ignite, with deleterious results to attempts by the BEF to fight through buildings and fortified areas. One of the major problems of having a diversity of grenades all in service at the same time was training. Men might be trained in one type of grenade and then find themselves having to use another, and there were many accidents due to unfamiliarity, overconfidence or carelessness.
At last, starting in May 1915, the first safe, effective and easily employed grenade began to come into service. This was the Mills bomb, a fragmentation grenade which by the end of 1915 replaced every other grenade in service. Although initially it was not entirely reliable, with a number of modifications it ended the war as the No. 36 Grenade, the most effective grenade used by any army, and remained in service until the 1970s. Weighing between 1 lb. 7 oz. and 1 lb. 9 oz. depending on the version, it could be thrown or bowled twenty or even thirty yards. The Mills bomb did away with matches and pipes in the grenade-throwing industry for ever. It had a spring-loaded striker and a percussion-cap igniter within the body of the grenade. The striker was held away from the igniter by an external lever, which was itself held in position by a split pin. When the soldier wanted to throw the grenade he gripped it with the lever close against the body of the grenade and removed the split pin. Once he threw the weapon the lever was released and the striker hit the cap, which ignited a five-second fuse. The Mills bomb withstood damp and vibration, was easy to use and eventually came in a rifle-grenade version, fired from a cup discharger and propelled by a ballistite cartridge.
The British army started the war with far fewer machine guns and less artillery than the Germans, whose army was structured for a war of conquest, and with virtually no grenades. Once the requirements were identified swift action was taken to supply the infantry – the men who had to close with and defeat the enemy – with the weapons and the support that they needed. Despite the difficulties of converting an industrial base that was not under state control into a machine that could play its part in total war, by 1916 the weapons available to the British infantry were as good as anything the Germans had, and in some cases – such as the Lewis gun and the rifle – better. All that was needed was an understanding of how best to use them, and that could only be learned by experience.
NOTES
1 The British infantry today has a number of ranks all equating to private, including fusilier, highlander, kingsman and ranger (until recently). During the Great War they were privates in the line infantry, Irish and Welsh Guards, and riflemen in rifle regiments. The Grenadier and Scots Guards had guardsmen; the Coldstream Guards had privates until 1918 when they became guardsmen; and all members of the Guards Machine Gun Battalion, part of the Machine Gun Corps, were guardsmen.
2 Substantive rank is permanent and cannot be taken away other than for disciplinary reasons. Acting rank confers the powers of the rank and counts for pay and increments, but the holder can be required to revert to his substantive rank if the post he is holding disappears, or if he is moved to another post that is established in a lower rank. Local rank carries the powers but no pay benefits, and is granted for a specific short-term task, or for a post which the incumbent is not expected to hold for long.
3 Major T. J. Mitchell and Miss G. M. Smith, Official History of the War, Casualties and Medical Statistics, Imperial War Museum (reprint), London, 1997.
4 Most modern artillery pieces are designed to be used in both high- and low-angle mode, that is as both guns and howitzers.
5 The calibre is the diameter of the barrel of the weapon. Guns may be described by calibre or by the weight of shell they fire: e.g., six-inch gun, eighteen-pounder gun.
6 The ammunition remained the same, but the trail and cradle were redesigned so that the gun could achieve greater elevation, and hence longer range.
7 Called after Colonel (later Lieutenant General Sir) Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842) who invented a hollow shell filled with musket balls and a bursting charge that had a timed fuse; the shell was first used in 1804. Shrapnel never did get the royalty of 6d. a shell promised by the East India Company. The term is still used today, incorrectly, to refer to the fragments of a burst shell casing, which are more properly ‘shell splinters’.
8 The French were the first Allied army to use sound ranging, and the British began to experiment with it in October 1915. By the spring of 1916 it was a very effective way of locating enemy guns.
9 Unexploded shells are regularly turned up by ploughing. Farmers stack them by the side of the road and they are removed by the French or
Belgian army and blown up. Occasionally even the bomb-disposal experts get killed doing this.
10 In 1914 it was known as the Maxim; then the lock was reversed and it was made under licence by Vickers, hence the Vickers-Maxim, until after more modifications it became the Vickers. Its longevity was not quite a record: the Brown Bess smooth-bore musket was in service for 180 years.
11 The term ‘cyclical’ means that the gun was capable of firing that number of rounds if the trigger was kept engaged. In practice, bursts of fire were much shorter, ten to twenty rounds being the norm.
12 See my Sepoys in the Trenches, the Indian Corps on the Western Front 1914–15, Chapter IV, Spellmount Publishers, Staplehurst, 1999.
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GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED POLO CLUBS
All the British generals were from cavalry regiments and clung to an outmoded equestrian concept of warfare. Battle, they thought, was fox-hunting with rather less chance of a broken neck. Horses had no place in modern war, and yet twenty-five per cent of all the shipping from England to France was taken up with fodder for these pampered beasts, which spent most of their time standing in stables, being cosseted by their riders who had nothing else to do, and playing no part in the prosecution of the war. Such is the popular conception of the horse in the First World War.
We shall get to the generals later, but it is certainly true that the British army had a great many horses, both on the Western Front and in the other theatres of war. In August 1914, just before war broke out, the army was established for 25,000 horses. As soon as mobilisation was declared this was raised to 165,000. By August 1915, when the war had been going on for a year, the British army had over half a million horses, 368,000 of them on the Western Front. It also had 82,000 mules in France and Belgium. By 1917 the number of equines in all theatres had peaked at 591,324 horses and 231,149 mules, of which 368,149 and 81,731 respectively were on the Western Front. In the more exotic theatres of conflict, in addition to its horses and mules, the British disposed of 47,000 camels, 11,000 oxen and 6,800 donkeys.1
Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military) Page 15