Engines of War

by Christian Wolmar

  The problems caused by the change in gauge between Russia and Romania did not go unnoticed in European military circles either. Indeed, when the first Russian line was built in the 1830s, the Tsar had deliberately chosen the 5ft gauge for defensive reasons,6 knowing that it was different from the standard gauge being adopted throughout most of Europe. Russia had been more fearful of invasions, having only recently been attacked by Napoleon, than concerned about attacking its neighbours. The difference in gauge was, indeed, a useful asset as a defensive measure against invaders, as the Germans would find out in their invasion of Russia in 1941 (outlined in Chapter Nine), but the conflict with Turkey showed it was a hindrance when the Russians sought to use the railways to supply an offensive into neighbouring countries. Moreover, the extreme smallness of the gap – a mere 3½ inches – between the two gauges used by the Russians and Romanians did not make conversion any easier since it proved impossible to add another rail just inside an existing one as there was not enough space. Therefore changing the gauge either way – from smaller to larger or vice versa – involved dismantling and refixing a rail, a requirement which greatly delayed the Germans in their advances towards Leningrad and Moscow in the Second World War. For the Russians with their wider gauge, though, there was the added difficulty that while narrow-gauge rolling stock can, relatively easily, have its axles extended to allow running on the wider gauge (though this is difficult for steam locomotives), the reverse procedure is impossible. Moreover, the fact that structures such as platforms, telegraph poles, tunnels and bridges were designed only to accommodate the smaller Romanian trains meant rapid conversion of the line to 5ft was impossible and trans-shipment, which was slow and heavily dependent on manpower, was the only option.

  Outside Europe, there was in this period a succession of colonial wars which were, in various ways, to illustrate the importance of the railways as a weapon of warfare. Just before the Franco-Prussian War, there had been one of those small obscure wars in far-off places that were a recurring feature of British colonial rule. The Emperor of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia), Tewodros II, was a weak and indecisive character who had locked up the British Consul and various missionaries on a pretext. After the failure of various diplomatic initiatives, in 1868 Britain sent a massive army at huge expense7 to rescue the consul and, more importantly, restore honour. The Bombay Army, under the command of Sir Robert Napier, was selected for the expedition on the grounds that the troops would be used to the fearsome climate and conditions. This was imperial warfare on a large scale. Intent on not repeating the errors of the Crimean War, where too few troops had been despatched, the force numbered 15,000, with nearly twice as many camp followers and three times as many animals, including a force of forty-four elephants trained to haul the heavy guns. It was far more than was needed to defeat a weakened emperor who had already lost control of much of his country to rebellious forces and it created enormous logistical problems.

  The landing site was at Zoulla on the East African coast, a desolate and ramshackle place with little infrastructure, and this is where a railway played a small part in the outcome of the conflict with the construction of a line similar to the one in Balaklava to help unload the ships and bring supplies inland. Initially only a short tramway was envisaged, but soon plans were drawn up for an eleven-mile line from Zoulla to Koomayleh, where preparations for the arduous 300-mile expedition to attack Tewodros were under way. There was no question of building a railway all the way – as would happen later in Sudan – since the territory was mountainous and the expedition had the very limited goal of freeing the hostages and taking them back home, with no attempt at permanent occupation. Nevertheless, even this short stretch, the first line to be constructed by the Royal Engineers, required a great effort to build, and took six months to complete, far longer than envisaged. Neither the Royal Engineers, nor the Chinese workers who provided most of the labour, could be held responsible for the delay and the difficulties. Rather, it was the equipment sent from India which let them down as it was second-hand, purloined from a variety of railways on the sub-continent and incomplete, with, for example, no spikes to hold down the rails, which were themselves of variable quality and design. Even after the completion of the line, the Engineers were only able to bring four of the six locomotives provided into steam because of defects and the sixty wagons sent from India were old-fashioned and prone to break down. In any case, by the time the railway was completed, the troops had already defeated the emperor8 in the decisive battle of Magdala, had secured the release of the hostages at Addis Ababa and were on their way back. Nevertheless, at least the railway saved the troops from having to march the last few miles back to the docks after their victory.

  A couple of decades after this experience on the East African coast, the Royal Engineers enjoyed a much more productive time in neighbouring Sudan, where the highly ambitious military railway they built, in three stages, enabled the British to regain control over a rebellious land. Egypt had come early to railways, the first country in Africa to build them when a line between the capital, Cairo, and Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast was completed in 1856. There were immediate thoughts about extending the line through to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, but it was impossible to make progress because of the shortage of capital. However, in 1884 a start was made on a line at Wadi Haifa, the Nile port on the Egyptian-Sudanese border, by British and Egyptian soldiers and labourers, overseen by a company (about 250 men) of Royal Engineers, but work stopped when the 700 local labourers deserted. The idea was abandoned shortly after, with just fifty miles completed, when news reached Egypt of the fall of Khartoum and the death of General Gordon at the hands of the Mahdi rebels in January 1885. Work also stopped on a separate line which was being built simultaneously to link the Nile with the Red Sea at the port of Suakin. Again the Royal Engineers had been involved but attacks by Dervishes on the mostly Indian labour force led to the abandonment of the project after just twenty miles had been laid, despite the construction of fortified posts at regular intervals along it and the introduction of night patrols using a bulletproof train armed with a 20-pounder gun. Both these projects were overtly military in intent and it was hardly surprising that it was local hostility which halted their construction.

  A decade later, however, work restarted on the Sudan Military Railway from Wadi Haifa to Khartoum. Since Wadi Haifa could be reached by ships on the Nile from Luxor, the line was the last link in the line of communication between the two capitals, Cairo and Khartoum. However, this time the scale of ambition was far greater as not only was the line planned to be a military railway enabling the British to retake Sudan from the Mahdis, but it was also part of the ambitious Cape to Cairo project promoted by Cecil Rhodes to build a railway line across the whole continent. After much prevarication following the disaster of Gordon’s fall, Herbert (later Lord) Kitchener, then the commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Army, obtained permission from the British government to build the line in order to quell the Mahdi rebellion once and for all. The original fifty miles of railway had, by then, been completely wrecked but progress was impressive thanks to the leadership of a remarkable young Canadian military railway engineer, Lieutenant Edouard (Percy) Girouard, who would, too, play a major role on the railways in the Boer War and later use his railway expertise in the First World War.

  The plan this time was to build a line to Khartoum from the Sudanese frontier at Wadi Haifa on the Nile, which could be reached by ships from Luxor, in order to carry and supply the troops. Kitchener chose a route that went straight across the desert, rather than following the winding Nile valley, which would have involved linking navigable parts of the river with sections of railway. The railway was the mechanism through which the war was conducted. There are few stories of railway construction more beautifully and painstakingly described than Churchill’s account of the Sudan Military Railway in his book The River War, originally published in 1902, in which he stresses time and again that it was the railway which w
on the war. Churchill took part in the campaign against the Mahdis, in a rather bizarre role as both officer and war correspondent,9 and wrote eloquently about Kitchener’s plan:10 ‘No more important decision was ever taken by Sir Herbert Kitchener, whether in office or in action’ than this ‘“selection of line of advance”’.11 Girouard made up a huge list of requirements for what would become a 576-mile railway and travelled to London to buy the plant and rolling stock, while a workshop was set up at Wadi Haifa.

  This time the Royal Engineers, under Girouard, excelled themselves as they were put in charge of the disparate workforce, who ranged from Dervish prisoners to various tribesmen and a few former soldiers. Construction, which started on the first day of 1897, proceeded slowly at first because of the lack of equipment and the need to train the workforce in the skills of railway building, and by May only forty miles of track had been laid. Then, however, a military-style operation was put into effect with the aim of building at least a mile and a half (2,500 yards) per day, a target that at times was easily exceeded, with three miles being the record. It was perhaps typically British to fail to take advantage of the cooler weather in the winter and spring, but rather the main effort of railway building was concentrated in the summer months. The timing, however, was determined by political and military, rather than logistical, considerations as the goal of retaking Khartoum became a key imperial goal. Despite the torrid conditions and the fact that the supposedly ‘flat’ desert actually rose up to 1,600 feet and back down, construction proceeded remarkably smoothly. The routine to drive through what Churchill called ‘a smooth ocean of bright-coloured sand’ was simple but exhausting. The crucial innovation was a moveable ‘Railhead’, ‘a canvas town of 2,500 inhabitants, complete with station, stores, post-office, telegraph-office, and canteen, and only connected with the living world of men and ideas by two parallel iron streaks, three feet six inches apart [the cheaper Cape gauge had been chosen rather than the standard 4ft 8½in] growing dim and narrower in long perspective until they were twisted and blurred by the mirage and vanished in the indefinite distance’.12

  The ‘town’ had only three days’ reserve of water, and had the line been broken for a longer period, its population would have rapidly perished of thirst. They were kept alive by the two regular trains that arrived along those iron streaks every day and determined the routine of the construction. The first train would arrive at dawn and again Churchill describes it best: ‘Every morning in the remote nothingness there appeared a black speck growing larger and clearer until a whistle and a welcome clatter, amid the aching silence of ages, the “material” train arrived.’13 As well as water both for its own needs and for those of the workers, it carried 2,500 yards of rails, sleepers and other equipment. Then, a few hours later, at the height of the heat, which regularly reached 40°C, a second train would arrive with more rail and accessories but also, crucially for the morale of the white engineers, goodies such as jam, sausages, whisky, cigarettes and even newspapers, ‘which enable the Briton to conquer the world without discomfort’.14 The railway was laid with a Fordian division of labour, with separate teams preparing the ground, laying the rails and spiking them in.

  By 20 July 1897, 130 miles had been completed, a remarkable rate of progress, but then work had to be stopped through fear that the advancing railhead was coming within range of the enemy. Progress only resumed after the capture by the British of the next village, Abu Hamed, some hundred miles away on the banks of the Nile, which was reached by November. It was then discovered that the intelligence which had suggested that the river was navigable from there all the way upstream was mistaken and therefore work on the railway had to continue. The discovery of water at two points on the line speeded up progress and greatly lightened the load on the trains, which had to carry their own water for the locomotives, using up a significant part of their capacity.

  The line kept on advancing at a rapid pace until a year later, on 3 July 1898, it reached Atbara, giving the army, as Churchill puts it, the ability ‘to dominate the river and command the banks’ all the way to Khartoum. With the completion of the railway, ‘though the battle was not yet fought, the victory was won… It remained only to pluck the fruit in the most convenient hour, with the least trouble and at the smallest cost.’15 Indeed, new gunboats were ordered and broken up into sections that could be accommodated on the railway, rebuilt and relaunched on the navigable section of the Nile. Having overcome resistance and conquered the intermediate towns, the final battle took place at Omdurman, fifteen miles from Khartoum, where Churchill was proved correct: the might of the well-supplied British Army easily overcame the enemy despite being hugely outnumbered. The British lost just fifty men, compared with about 10,000 enemy casualties, and Gordon was richly avenged.

  It was, of course, not only the railway but the whole logistical operation which ensured victory. Churchill described what it took for one box of biscuits to reach the front line from Cairo, involving a dozen changes of mode, including camel as well as boat and train, to cover some 1,150 miles. He was full of admiration for the transport officers who maintained a regular supply of food, equipment and ammunition over this lengthy supply chain, and had a far better appreciation of the challenges and importance of logistics than many military leaders. In a long section in the book, he concludes that while bravery and discipline may often result in unexpected victories, ‘in savage warfare in a flat country the power of modern machinery is such that flesh and blood can scarcely prevail and the chances of battle are reduced to a minimum. Fighting the Dervishes was primarily a matter of transport. The Khalifa was conquered on the railway.’16

  At the other end of the putative but never completed Cape to Cairo,17 the railways were also about to play a major, if very different, part in a war. The Boer War18 was another eminently preventable clash which started off with patriotic cheers, and ended with much soul searching about the state of the British Empire. At the turn of the century, the current Republic of South Africa was divided into four territories: Natal and the Cape Colony, which were British colonies, and two Boer republics, the Transvaal and Orange Free State.19 To the north, Rhodes had created the British South Africa Company, which became Rhodesia. South Africa had been initially colonized by the Dutch and Germans, but the British arrived in the early nineteenth century and tensions between the two groups were at the root of the Boer wars. In the first Boer War, which was small and was little more than a few skirmishes ending in one major battle where the Boers triumphed during the winter of 1880-81, the Boers had established their right to autonomy in the Transvaal, but the British refused to accept that the Boer republics could be fully independent states. Prior to the second Boer War the discovery of great mineral wealth – especially gold – in the Transvaal, which was largely exploited by British capital, had exacerbated tensions and the large British mining companies were concerned that Boer intransigence might threaten their interests.

  The immediate casus belli was the British demand for voting rights for their citizens living in the Transvaal but the President, Paul Kruger, had prevaricated, postponing their eligibility for the franchise. A solution might have been found but for the bellicose nature of Sir Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner in South Africa, who effectively sabotaged the peace negotiations. In truth, though, the long-standing hostility between the two colonizing forces in the country had been bubbling away for many years and it would have taken a concerted peace initiative on both sides to have prevented a war. Britain had long sought the establishment of control over the two Dutch colonies and saw Boer intransigence over the franchise as an opportunity to unify the whole of South Africa under the British flag. In fact, preparations for war had started early in 1899 with measures such as the establishment of the Department of Military Railways and the construction of ambulance and armoured trains in the railway yards of both Natal and Cape Town.

  Girouard, now a major, was appointed as the head of the Department of Military Railways and, having
read the numerous reports on the performance of the railways in the Franco-Prussian War, he was aware that the Germans had gained an advantage by having a clear administrative structure in contrast to the French muddle. The old question arose: who should be in charge of the railways, the military or the railway managers? Girouard knew the answer. He was aware that, left to their own devices, military commanders would, for example, insist on having trains steamed up and ready ‘just in case’, or require wagons to be unloaded while still on the main line, blocking it for other traffic. The military, in other words, had to be trained to understand the scope and limitations of the railways, and could not be allowed to be their master. Girouard immediately appointed a group of officers who would act as liaison between the military and the railway authorities, and, as Pratt puts it, ‘protect the civil railway administration from interference by military commanders and commandants of posts’.20 At the station level, officers were appointed who would be the sole liaison between the railway administration, the stationmasters, and the military, in order to prevent senior army personnel commandeering trains for their own purposes.

  This structure was all the more important because the railways in South Africa were fairly basic affairs, all built to the narrow 3ft 6in Cape gauge and designed to accommodate light goods and passenger trains, rather than heavy military traffic. Moreover, the distances were huge. From Cape Town, the principal British base, to Pretoria, the Boer HQ which would be the ultimate objective, was over 1,000 miles and the roads were poor and unusable at times of heavy rain. A single-track railway line stretched from Cape Town on the southern coast through Kimberley and Bloemfontein through to Johannesburg and Pretoria, while a branch headed off from Mafeking towards Rhodesia. From Durban on the east coast there was another line through to Ladysmith which also eventually reached Johannesburg. These lines became the vital supply route for the Army as supplies to the forces at the front were sent from seaports, sometimes quite long distances, along the railway to a railhead and picked up by horse transport, and consequently the shape of the railway network in southern Africa determined the course of the war. For the British in particular – the Boers all had horses – the railway was the major means of transport for long distances, although there were times when the soldiers would march or ride while their supplies were taken by rail. It was inevitable, therefore, that the key battles took place in railway towns or in countryside easily accessible from the line. The British could only maintain their army using railway resupply and the various towns whose names reside in the memory through the prolonged sieges they suffered were important precisely because they were on the railway line. Many of the same cast of characters as in Sudan turned up in the Boer War: Churchill, Kitchener and Girouard, who was to prove to be a crucial figure, all played significant parts.