The Old Contemptibles

by Robin Neillands

  Williamson, S. R., The Politics of Grand Strategy: Britain and France Prepare for War, 1904-1914, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1969

  Wright, Patricia, Conflict on the Nile; The Fashoda Incident of 1898, Heinemann, London, 1972

  Primary Sources

  INTERVIEWS AND PRIVATE PAPERS

  Interviews on horse management and artillery in 1914 with Captain Neil Cross, RA, The King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, London, and Lt. Col. William Townend, RA (retd), The Firepower Museum, Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, May 2003.

  Papers of Field Marshal Sir William Robertson (Ref. GB99 KCLMA), Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College, London.

  The diaries of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum, London.

  MANUSCRIPT SOURCES

  The PRO sources on the First World War are enormous but the following documents were particularly useful:

  WF Scheme (WO 339/14401). Action taken by the General Staff since 1906 in preparing a plan for rendering military assistance to France in the event of an unprovoked attack on that power by Germany. PRO. Undated.

  Winston S. Churchill. Military Aspects of the Continental Problem, CID Papers, 132-B, August 1911.

  Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) (Cab. 4/3), Minutes of the Meeting, 23 August 1911-Action to be taken in the Event of a European War

  R. McKenna, Remarks by the Admiralty on proposal (b) of the Memorandum by the General Staff. Cab. 4/3, p. 195.

  PRIMARY PRINTED SOURCES

  Callwell, Major-General Sir C. E., Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, His Life and Diaries (2 vols), London, 1927.

  Edmonds, Brigadier General J. E., History of the Great War; Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 1, London, 1922.

  Gooch, George. P. and Harold Temperley, British Documents of the Origins of the War, 1898-1914, vol. X, London, 1938.

  MAGAZINE ARTICLES

  Bate, Brigadier-General T. R. F., 'Horse Mobilisation', RUSI Journal, November 1921, pp. 1154-8.

  Buchanan Dunlop, Major C. N., 'Ammunition Supply', RUSI Journal, January 1913, pp. 88-9.

  Coogan, John, and Peter F. Coogan, 'The British Cabinet and the Anglo­ French Staff Talks 1905-1914; Who knew what and when did he know it?', Journal of British Studies, vol. 2, January 1985, pp. 110-31.

  DePree, Major H., RFA, 'The Supply of Ammunition and Motor Transport', RUSI Journal, August 1912, pp. 88-9.

  Donoughmore, The Earl of, 'The National Horse Supply and our Military Requirements', RUSI Journal, February 1908.

  Grey, Robert, 'Ready for the Greater Game; the Role of the Horse in the First World War', The Field, November 2002, pp. 89-90.

  Hussey, John, '"Without an Army, and Without any Preparation to Equip One"; the Financial and Industrial Background to 1914', British Army Review, 109, April 1995.

  Miller, Roger G., 'The Logistics of the British Expeditionary Force, 4 August to 5 September, 1914', Journal of Military Affairs, October 1979.

  Tarle, Capitaine d'Artillerie A. de, 'The British Army and a Continental War', trans. from article in Revue de Paris (October 1912), RUSI journal, March 1913.

  Wilson, K. M., 'The Making and Putative Implementation of a British Foreign Policy of Gesture, December 1905 to August 1914; the Anglo­ French Entente Revisited', Canadian Journal of History, August 1996, pp. 227-55.

  Acknowledgements

  One of the most enjoyable parts of writing a book is thanking the many people who made it possible - few books are written by the author alone. First among these must be Eric Garner, my most able researcher and master of the Internet, who has proved invaluable in tracking down references and finding information I had to include. Thanks also to Terry Brown, an old Royal Marine 'oppo', for the maps and his company on many visits to France and Belgium. Thanks also to Grant Mcintyre and Caroline Westmore of John Murray for their help in bringing this project to fruition.

  Next I must thank my tutors in the Department of History at the University of Reading, Professor Michael Biddiss and Dr Frank Tallett, for encouraging me to complete my MA dissertation on Henry Wilson and the BEF's move to France in 1914, and my own students on the First World War Studies course at Rewley House, Extramural Studies Department, University of Oxford - Richard Ashmore, Dr Paul Garnerus (Germany), Arthur Hall (USA), Mike Hodgetts (Australia), Paul McNicholls (Canada), Noriko Roberts (Japan), plus Barbara Topley, Tom Taylor, Bill Thompson and Mike Smith - for their enthusiasm, their extensive research into Great War studies, their various helpful contributions, and their willingness to argue.

  Thanks also to William Spencer, Military Specialist at the PRO, Kew, the officers of the King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery (RHA), Lt.-Col. Will Townend of the Firepower Museum, Woolwich, Alan Rooney of Midas Tours, the Historial Museum, Peronne, France, and museum staff in Ypres and Albert, together with those of the Library and the Department of Documents at the Imperial War Museum, most notably for help with the diaries of Henry Wilson, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in Whitehall, and the London Library. Lastly to Judy, my wife, who endures all this.

  If you enjoyed The Old Contemptibles you may be interested in The Death of Glory, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from The Death of Gloryby Robin Neillands

  About This Book

  During the 1960s, forty years after the First World War, two events struck heavy blows against the fragile reputations of the First World War generals, and in particular against that of the British generals. One was the advent of Joan Littlewood's Stratford East musical production Oh, What a Lovely War. The second was the publication of Alan Clark's Great War history The Donkeys, published by Hutchinson in 1961.

  The Donkeys has been in print ever since, and the remark that inspired the title, an alleged exchange between General Ludendorff and an aide, quoted in Field Marshal Falkenhayn's Memoirs, that the British soldiers were 'lions led by donkeys', has long since passed into common currency. As for Oh, What a Lovely War, the play was subsequently filmed and has been regularly presented by professional and amateur dramatic companies all over the country in the last five decades, playing to packed houses, convinced audiences and general applause.

  That these two presentations, the play and the book, have muddied the waters of Great War history to the detriment of the generals is a proven fact. Every Great War historian, academic or popular, knows that however strong and well founded his defence of the First World War generals might be, one TV or local performance of that entertaining musical play puts the generals back in the dock, at least as far as the general public is concerned ... and so it is for The Donkeys, a detailed and damning indictment of the Great War generals' character and competence, written with style and considerable verve.

  This present book concentrates on the charges levelled against the generals in The Donkeys and arises from the fact that Clark's history is almost entirely concerned with the battles and events of 1915 - just one year in a four-year-long war and a year which, as the military historian Gary Sheffield remarks, 'remains something of a forgotten year as far as the Western Front is concerned'. (1)

  This seems to be true, and that alone is somewhat surprising, for 1915 was a very difficult year for the Entente powers - France, Britain and Russia - and therefore worthy of much closer attention. As the Official History remarks, 'The twelve months following the close of the battles of First Ypres in October and November 1914 brought little but disillusion and disappointment.' (2)

  This disillusion and the various disasters that marked out that disappointing year cannot be entirely confined within that single, twelve-month time span. Battles and campaigns do not work like that; they arise from what happened before and contribute, for good or ill, to what follows. On the other hand, the events of 1915 provide a link with the recent past and lead on towards those that followed, while providing experiences that largely relate to that year alone. The chief effect of the 1915 battles was to destroy what was left of the British Regu
lar Army; this army had mustered just eleven divisions in August 1915 and most of these had gone by the end of 1915.

  The other effect was on the general public. In August 1914 the British people had rushed to volunteer, many worried that this war would be 'over by Christmas' before they had a chance to take part in it. That rush for glory subsided in 1915, when these eager volunteers, especially those in the Territorial Force, were gradually committed to battles that culminated in the battle of Loos.

  Among the deaths of 1915 we must include the death of glory, of any idea that modern war was anything like the popular image of conflict, one where bayonets glint in the sun, generals gallop about on white horses and the skid of bagpipes fills the air as the infantry go forward. All this was gradually seen to be a complete illusion. When wounded men on stretchers, fresh from the Western Front, carpet the forecourt of London's mainline stations, their bodies caked in mud, any notion of glory swiftly disappears. The notion that war was glorious vanished during the disastrous battles this book will describe.

  The cause of those various catastrophes in 1915 lay deeper, not least in the pre-war unwillingness of the British people and government to understand the nature of modern war and make adequate preparations for it, should it ever arise and they opt to engage in it. Nor should it be forgotten that at the start of 1915 the British Army had been engaged in this new and massive war for just five months.

  The results of this pre-war failure to understand modern warfare could not be made good in five months and were fully felt during 1915. Added to these errors was the contradictory order given to Field Marshal Sir John French, commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on his departure to France in August 1914: This order, given in full in the Appendix, directed him to cooperate closely with Britain's French allies but not to hazard his force, which was an entirely independent, British command. Advice on how the field marshal should reconcile these conflicting objectives was lacking - unlike French pressure to conform to French wishes, which was constant.

  This book concentrates on the Western Front and the battles fought there in 1915 by the BEF and, at least to a certain extent, by the BEF's comrades-in-arms in the French and Belgian armies. That point made, the Western Front cannot be seen in isolation; the war grew in scale and went on elsewhere. War expanded steadily in 1915, to Italy, Gallipoli and Serbia, to Salonika and Mesopotamia and most notably in Russia. To concentrate on just one theatre of war in 1915, albeit the most important one, without some reference to the others, is to present the narrow view and bias the conclusion.

  Nor is it fair to allege that the Allied generals on the Western Front and the 'powers that be' in London and Paris were simply acting like donkeys in 1915. Certainly, the popular impression is that the generals were butting their heads against the Western Front defences as if there was no other way to break through them, while ignoring the possibilities of strategic warfare by attacking elsewhere or developing technical innovations, such as the tank. As we shall see, this impression is totally false; by Christmas 1914, strategic moves and technological improvements were already in hand.

  Essentially, the problem for the British generals was time. By the New Year of 1915, they had simply not had the time to make up the pre-war shortages in men, kit and materiel, or time to develop either new weapons or a strategic plan. All this would take time, and what could they do in the interim but fight on, doing the best they could in very difficult circumstances?

  Doing their best was all the Western Front generals could do in 1915, and the bloody battles of Neuve Chapelle, Second Ypres, Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Loos, five somewhat neglected BEF encounters, are therefore carefully evaluated in this book. These battles saw a gradual escalation in the Western Front fighting, while the second battle of Ypres in the spring of 1915, which is mainly remembered for the German gas attack with which it opened, also saw the end of the professional career of General Horace Smith-Dorrien, one of the better of the First World War generals, a man destroyed by the malice of his senior commander. The character and capabilities of the Allied commanders will be covered in this book, since these personal aspects are closely linked to the battles and the way in which they were fought.

  The battles of 1915 enveloped them after the heavy losses in the early campaigns of 1914 and the establishment of the Western Front trench system but before the British generals had the men, the kit or the experience to fight this new kind of war - 'total war', as it came to be called. Any study of that period therefore has to begin by describing the situation in the New Year of 1915, and explaining how this situation came about. The subject of this book is the Western Front in 1915, but that time and place has to be seen in a wider context.

  In some ways every year of the First World War was a unique experience and there can be no objection to any author or historian singling out 1915 for special attention or concentrating on its peculiar features. The problem arises when the reader, or the general public, is led to believe that that year was typical of the whole war, or is led to assume that the disasters that occurred during that year went unrecognized or uncorrected. The field commanders are blamed for chronic errors that were not always the fault of the generals and which, in many cases, they were constantly striving to correct.

  This is not to say that the generals or politicians of 1915 were entirely blameless for the events of that terrible year; far from it. There were no 'great captains' in the field in 1915 - except in the ever fertile imagination of the French. What we have is a number of general officers striving to get a grip on a war that in almost every aspect was outside their experience and - or so it often appeared - a little beyond their understanding.

  Many of the tactical errors should have been foreseen. Many battles, especially the battle of Laos, were fought in conditions or over terrain that virtually ensured failure and great loss of life. The British commanders, Field Marshal French and General Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the First Army, certainly knew this about Laos, and the reasons why they still proceeded with their attack require elucidation. This book is not an attempt to whitewash the commanders or excuse incompetence at any level - and there was plenty of incompetence at every level.

  That said, the various tragic events of 1915 should be put in the context of the war as a whole so that we can see what the commanders were trying to achieve at this time, judge whether their strategic decisions were soundly based and examine what other courses of action were open to them ... at the time. Hindsight is a wonderful gift - historians would be lost without it - but the use of hindsight has to be restricted or objectivity and fair assessment go out of the window. It is also, I think, most important to be fair.

  Therefore, before we start on the detail, the background to 1915 can be briefly summarized. Essentially, what the generals of 1915 were trying to do was to make the old methods of war work in an entirely new situation. For several hundred years, certainly since the creation of professional armies in the seventeenth century, the process of fighting a battle had become somewhat standardized. Having reached a point of confrontation, the armies would pound each other's positions with artillery, send in the infantry to force a breach and then exploit any subsequent success with cavalry. Both sides would apply such tactics and the strongest, best-trained force under the most astute general would usually win.

  These three elements, artillery, infantry and cavalry, augmented by engineers and, from 1914, by air power, remained the backbone of the military effort in 1915. The generals therefore saw their prime task as a search for a way to use these elements in some combination that would deliver success on the battlefield and victory in this war. What most of them failed to realize was that the kind of warfare they were now engaged in was essentially new.

  The hard fact was that the old, proven methods for mounting successful attacks would never work on the Western Front. What was needed was new kit, for example the tank, new tactics other than frontal assaults and, above all, new thinking - not least an understanding that g
lobal wars had to be fought on a global, strategic basis, employing some form of supreme command, directing the overall effort to a common strategic purpose.

  All that would come in time, but that time was not yet, not in 1915. The campaigns of 1915 and the battles they embraced are therefore a particular kind of tragedy, a last attempt to make the old ways work. These battles were fought through a dawning realization that against the defensive combination of barbed wire, deep entrenchments, automatic weapons and artillery that constituted the Western Front, flesh­and-blood soldiers would hurl themselves in vain. You cannot fight flying steel with the bodies of brave men.

  Given the inestimable benefit of hindsight we can see all this now, but none of it was quite so obvious in 1915. Both sides had made plenty of mistakes since the guns began firing in August 1914; the evidence of those mistakes still littered the fields around the Marne and the Aisne, along the Belgian frontier and around the town of Ypres; everywhere the bodies and bones of countless thousands of soldiers still lay unburied. All this evidence of the cost of modern war was in plain sight by the start of 1915.

  Nineteen fifteen can be seen as a year of striving, of efforts to find some way of breaking the lock that the Western Front had imposed on the tried and tested methods of making war which had delivered victory so often in the past. How that effort was applied and what it led to is the subject of this book.

  1. Reflections on the War, August 1914 - January 1915

  You will be home before the leaves fall.

  Kaiser Wilhelm II, address to the Prussian Guard, August 1914

  In spite of all expectations, the Kaiser's forecast and the hopes of Europe's embattled populations, this war into which the Continent had entered so willingly in August was not over by Christmas 1914. 'And so the old year goes out, with rain and wind and sobs,' recorded Major General Henry Wilson in his diary, (1) before slipping off to dine in the New Year with the staff of the French Mission. The lesser orders in the opposing armies were not so lucky; on the front line, a few miles away, no celebrations saw in the New Year of 1915.