The Old Contemptibles

by Robin Neillands

  The BEF had been formed in the early years of the twentieth century to avoid the sort of chaos that had ensued during the South African War of 1899-1902. During the immediate pre-war years, however, that devious and rabidly Francophile officer, Henry Wilson, currently a major general and sub-chief of staff to Field Marshal Sir John French, had laboured mightily to get the BEF committed to the battle alongside the French in the event of a European war.

  Wilson succeeded in that particular aim, but his scheming had produced two fatal flaws. First, he could not persuade the British government to equip the British Army for a European war in which the enemy forces would be numbered in millions and enter the fray equipped with all the necessary impedimenta for such a struggle, including heavy guns and unlimited quantities of ammunition. The BEF was a small, colonial army, created and designed to protect British interests, not to pursue French ones.

  Unlike the continental powers, Britain had not introduced military conscription in the pre-war years and had failed to expand her armaments industry. As a result, the British Regular Army of 1914 was small and the arms industry that supported it was also small. Post­August 1914, this last was the more serious problem. A million men might rush to the colours but until they had been armed, trained, organized and equipped, they could play no part in the war. A shortage of factories and machine tools and the stubborn resistance of the trade unions to 'dilution', the employment of unskilled labour and women in the arms industry, further inhibited an increase in arms production - and therefore the expansion of the British armies in the field.

  The second flaw arising from Wilson's scheming was a growing misunderstanding with the French. In those giddy pre-war years, the French had convinced themselves, or been convinced by 'cher Henri' ­ Henry Wilson - that on the outbreak of war the British would rush to their aid with every means the nation and empire had available and put their troops under French command. The French were therefore considerably put out to discover in 1914 that this was not the case, and put this lack of instant support down to British perfidy.

  This ingrained belief that British resources were not automatically in the French gift was not because the French had not been told; time and again since the signing of the Entente Cordiale in 1904, British ministers had told French ministers that the Entente was not a military pact and should not be seen as one, but the French, aided and abetted by Henry Wilson, had ignored those facts they did not care to acknowledge.

  Five months into the war, however, it is at least arguable that the French had some right on their side. They were currently fielding the largest army and provided all the logistical elements, such as ports and railways, without which the BEF could not function. At this time it therefore made good sense to let the French call the tune, unless British interests were seen as fatally compromised or the slender BEF resources seemed likely to be squandered in some futile offensive.

  The snag was that, with the exception of a few battles, notably at Guise and on the Marne, most of the French battles had been both costly and futile and the British generals were therefore understandably wary of putting their men under French control. They preferred to wait, to occupy the line they now held and defer further action until the larger, volunteer, British armies were in the field. The snag with that argument was that these 'New Armies' would not take the field until 1916 and the French could not - and would not - wait that long.

  Granted, steps to create strong British and empire forces and get them ready for the fray were already well in hand. The Territorial Force, amounting to some fourteen divisions, had mustered, disposed of those legal restraints that kept territorials from deployment overseas and was now sending units to the front. Territorial Force units had already fought with distinction at First Ypres and were now coming out to France in battalions and brigades - the first territorial division would arrive in the spring of 1915.

  The empire was also rallying to the cause. An Indian corps was already in France, the Indian sepoys and Gurkha riflemen suffering terribly from the European winter, while the first Canadian division was already formed up for embarkation. Back in Britain, Lord Kitchener was mustering his New Armies from that early host of eager volunteers, but creating those assets would take time - and time was the problem. The French were already agitating for a renewal of the Western Front offensives in the spring of 1915 and demanding that the British Army, ready or not, should join them in the struggle.

  While these various steps towards more of those costly offensives were being taken in France, some minds in Britain were considering other options. Pressing forward with further offensives with inadequate amounts of artillery and plenty of frontal assaults was always likely to be costly until some way was found to breach the enemy wire and eliminate the plentiful German machine guns covering that wire. In December 1914 a proposal was already on the table for the creation of an armoured fighting vehicle, a tracked machine that could cross muddy ground, crush barbed wire, span trenches and be impervious to machine-gun fire; this machine - the tank - would be developed during 1915 and make its debut at Flers-Courcelette on the Somme in September 1916; developing a new weapon of war and fitting it into the army's order of battle takes time.

  If frontal attacks and prolonged offensives on the Western Front were the chosen French option, some means of defeating the trench, wire and machine-gun combination, something like the tank, would clearly be necessary, and the current assets, in men, heavy guns and high-explosive shells, would need to be greatly expanded. But were assaults on the Western Front really the only option available at the start of 1915?

  One man, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, thought not. Though its flanks rested on the Swiss frontier and the North Sea, Churchill believed that the Western Front could be outflanked by an attack on Turkey, a new enemy which had entered the war on the side of the Central Powers in October 1914. The way to attack Turkey, Churchill declared, was by a naval assault through the narrow waterway of the Dardanelles and so to Constantinople, the Bosporus, the Black Sea and Russia. This assault, if successful, would lead to the capture of Constantinople - now Istanbul - the rapid elimination of Turkey from the war, the acquisition of further allies from the currently neutral Balkan states and an ice-free, year-round route across the Black Sea through which the large, mobile but ill-equipped Russian armies could be supplied.

  The Russian armies certainly needed more arms; in early 1915 recruits in Petrograd were being trained with only one rifle for every three men and 2 million trained soldiers that could have been sent to the front were kept in their barracks as they were without rifles. As for artillery ammunition, the entire Russian arms industry could produce only 35,000 shells of all calibres in a month, when the armies could have expended that amount of ammunition in a day - had it been available. (4) A success in the Dardanelles would outflank the Western Front and enable military materiel to reach the Russian armies, which were currently in full retreat before the German and Austro-Hungarian armies. In early January Churchill asked the naval commanders in the Mediterranean and Aegean for an appreciation of a plan to force the Dardanelles by naval units alone - without any commitment by the army or any amphibious landing- an appreciation that would lead in April 1915 to the launching of the Gallipoli campaign ...and another disastrous failure.

  The Russians clearly had to be supported and kept from defeat. Should Russia capitulate, even more German divisions would be sent to the Western Front. Even the French saw the dangers there, though urging, inevitably, that the best way to keep more German divisions from heading to the Eastern Front was to engage the German armies with strong Franco-British offensives in the west.

  From this brief overview it will be seen that at the start of 1915 the Allied leaders, civil and military, were neither short of ideas nor unaware of the need for a strategic view of the war - and some new equipment. There is little evidence that any of them were 'donkeys'. What was lacking, in London and Paris and St Petersburg, was any organization capable of
undertaking such a strategic view or enforcing some unity of command. There was no Supreme Command, assessing political and military objectives and drawing up plans to implement an overall strategy for victory. The armies of the Entente powers - French, British, Russian and Belgian - were, in effect, fighting separate wars.

  To give just one example of such diverse aims, the state of affairs in the British cabinet at this time is described in the memoirs of General Sir William Robertson:

  ‘It thus came about by the end of 1914 that while the Secretary of State for War was aiming at decisive results on the Western Front, the First Lord of the Admiralty was advocating the seizure of the Dardanelles and Constantinople; the Secretary of State for India and the Indian government were conducting a campaign in Mesopotamia while the Secretary of State for the Colonies was concerned with operations in certain parts of Africa; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer was impressing on his colleagues the strategic advantages to be gained by transferring the main British military effort from the Western Front to the Balkans and Syria. A more deplorable state of affairs can surely never have existed in the conduct of any war.’ (5)

  This picture, while indeed deplorable, does not entirely describe the situation between the French and British commanders on the Western Front. When Field Marshal French took command of the BEF in August 1914, he had received a directive from Lord Kitchener, outlining his responsibilities and the position he should adopt in his relations with the French. This directive - see the Appendix - was, to put it mildly, somewhat ambiguous.

  Two points stand out. On the one hand, the field marshal was directed to work closely with the French commanders and meet their requests for cooperation with sympathy. On the other hand, he was to remember that his was an entirely separate command and he was in no circumstances to consider himself under the command of any other general - in other words of General Joffre, the French commander-in­chief. The first part of this directive provided useful ammunition to General Joffre and his close associate, General Ferdinand Foch; the second part they tried to ignore. The combination of these incompatible parts put a great strain on the BEF commander, Field Marshal French, who was not capable of absorbing much strain.

  Field Marshal Sir John French was sixty-two when he was selected to command the BEF in France. French had made his name as a cavalry brigade commander in the South African War, and it is more than possible that brigade command - or perhaps, to be charitable, divisional command - was about French's level. 'Over-promotion' is a constant trap for military talents and French's talents were to prove woefully inadequate during his time commanding the BEF. This fact was pointed out to anyone who would listen by the field marshal's most trusted subordinate, Lieutenant General Sir Douglas Haig.

  French had made one major political error in early 1914 when, with Henry Wilson, he became involved in the disputes that arose over the 'Curragh Incident', a small-scale mutiny among some cavalry officers stationed in Ireland and opposed to the notion that the army might be used to force the Ulster Protestants into a united, independent Ireland. French was forced to resign but was recalled to duty on the outbreak of war and given command of the BEF, where his numerous limitations were soon revealed.

  Most of French's failures arose from his character, which has been described as 'mercurial'. French was volatile, short tempered, very prone to mood swings, constantly changing his mind, always liable to agree with the last person he spoke to and putty in the hands of Henry Wilson and Ferdinand Foch - at least, as we shall see, until the advent of the battle of Loos.

  He could also bear a grudge. His vindictive pursuit and constant disparagement of his other principal subordinate in the BEF, General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, was shameful, quite uncalled for and a sore waste of everyone's time. This hatred of Smith-Dorrien dated back to 1907 when Smith-Dorrien followed French in command at Aldershot and promptly ordered the cavalry to stop dashing about on horseback with sword and lance and pay more attention to musketry and infantry tactics.

  French saw this not only as an open criticism of his own methods but as an attempt to turn his beloved cavalry regiments into mounted infantry. From that time on, his enmity for Smith-Dorrien knew no bounds. Criticizing Smith-Dorrien provided the field marshal with a useful diversion from more serious matters when Smith-Dorrien was sent out to command II Corps of the BEF.

  In his relations with General Joffre, Field Marshal French handled the situation fairly well, choosing to regard the French commander-in­chief as the 'Generalissimo' of the Allied armies in France, one whose instructions and requests - never orders - were to receive the most sympathetic British consideration at all times and be complied with where possible - unless the field marshal chose to dig in his heels and refuse.

  This compromise solution had already led to at least one difficult moment. In the days immediately before the battle of the Marne the field marshal had suddenly declared not only that the BEF would take no part in the forthcoming counter-attack but would actually withdraw from the Franco-British front to rest and re-equip beyond the Loire. It took the personal intervention of Lord Kitchener, who came to France and ordered French to keep the BEF in the line, to resolve that issue.

  General Joffre made his enduring reputation during the campaign of 1914. This culminated at the battle of the Marne in September 1914 when the French armies rallied and sent the German armies in full retreat back to the Aisne. During this time Joffre also displayed his other talent, as a great sacker of the slow or incompetent; in the first six weeks of the war he dismissed three army commanders, ten corps commanders and no fewer than thirty-eight divisional commanders for incompetence or because they broke down when confronted with the reality of war; one cannot help wonder how long Sir John French would have survived under Joffre's direct command.

  Joffre was, above all, phlegmatic, stubborn, imperturbable and not prone to panic however dire the circumstances. Whether his habitual calm was due to those personal assets or to an inability to grasp how serious the situation actually was is still debatable but, by staying calm when all about him was collapsing into chaos, Joffre saved the French armies from total defeat in 1914 and delivered the most significant victory of the war on the Marne.

  Even before the Marne, Joffre found reasons to doubt the resolve of the British, and these doubts continued. In October 1914, Field Marshal French suddenly announced that he intended to withdraw the BEF from their positions on the Aisne and take up a fresh line in the north, near Ypres and closer to the Channel ports. French intimated to Joffre that he would do this however much the French objected, and as a result no obstacles were put in his path. The BEF marched north in time to contest the German attack at Ypres during October and November, and the French began their years of struggle in Artois and along the Chenin des Danes in Champagne.

  This constant need to compromise did nothing towards creating the necessary unity of command, but Anglo-French relations were inhibited by many other factors. The first was the character of Field Marshal French. Sir John did not speak French and did not like the French. He owed his post-South African War promotions and his current command of the BEF to the seniority system and the even more obvious incompetence of his colleagues in South Africa. The list of French's shortcomings included an inability to curb the activities of his wily sub-chief of staff, Major General Henry Wilson, a man who was deeply devoted to Foch and more than willing to press French interests over British ones.

  Henry Wilson's influence on French is hard to underestimate - though even French saw through Wilson in the end. Wilson's most obvious characteristic was his Francophilia; to say that Wilson adored France and the French is to severely understate the case. Wilson's second characteristic, which he was at some pains to conceal, was his inbuilt passion for intrigue - or 'mischief', as he called it. Wilson was more of a politician than an army officer, never happier than when shuttling between the British headquarters (GHQ) and Joffre's headquarters at Chantilly (GQG) or dining with General Foch at Cassel or co
nspiring with his French counterpart, Colonel Victor Huguet, to bend the BEF and its commander to French designs.

  Since Wilson spoke fluent French and was known to be on intimate terms with the French General Staff, Sir John and most of the British staff, both those in France and those at the War Office, relied on Wilson for an overview of French intentions and to present British views and arguments to Joffre and Foch. The only man outside this loop was the War Secretary, Lord Kitchener, who also spoke fluent French and felt no need for the intervention of Henry Wilson, a man he publicly endured and privately despised.

  When this story opens in early 1915, Wilson was busily engaged in attempts to replace his immediate superior, Major General Sir Archibald Murray, as BEF chief of staff Obtaining this appointment would place Wilson in the position of puppet master to Sir John French, the more easily to manipulate his weak and indecisive commander. Unfortunately for Wilson, neither Kitchener nor the prime minister, Herbert Asquith, would hear of it - Asquith had not forgotten Wilson's intrigues during the Curragh Incident. Their rejection did not deter Wilson from continuing to press his appointment on Sir John. Writing in his diary in December 1914, Wilson records:

  ‘I told him that when he, Kitchener and Asquith thought they had solved the problem by allowing things to stay as they were, they made a great mistake. I analysed the objections to myself as C of S and pointed out that while Kitchener's were a matter of opinion, viz, personal dislike and belief that I was a rather mischievous fellow, Asquith's objections were political, because of Ulster and this war and that here there was a matter of principle. I said that in my judgement he must remove Murray. He must beat Asquith on the matter of principle and he must offer me the appointment.’ (6)

  In spite of support from Joffre and Foch, Wilson's demands got him nowhere. Murray duly went home but his replacement as chief of staff was Lieutenant General Sir William Robertson, formerly the BEF's quartermaster; Wilson was promoted to lieutenant general and after briefly commanding a corps was sent to Joffre's GQG as chief liaison officer.