27 Edwin A. Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power in War and Conquest, P. S. King & Son, 1915, p. 140.
28 Quoted in Westwood, Railways at War, p. 74.
29 It had four bureaux, a structure created by Napoleon I, which covered personnel, intelligence, operations and logistics.
30 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 81.
31 Ibid., p 74.
32 Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power, p. 142.
33 Ibid., p. 147.
34 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 89.
35 Luard, ‘Field railways and their general application to war’, 1874, p. 12.
36 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 66.
37 Ibid., p. 64.
38 Ibid., p 70.
39 Quoted in Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power, p. 150.
40 Ibid., p. 103.
41 Barbara W. Tuchman, 1914, Constable, 1962, p. 85.
42 With the possible exception of the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War of 1937 and in the Second World War.
43 Bond, War and Society in Europe, p. 15.
44 Mitchell, The Great Train Race, p. 82.
45 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 96.
46 Quoted in ibid., p 88.
47 From Once a Week, quoted in Westwood, Railways at War, p. 91.
48 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 88.
FIVE: The New Weapon of War
1 Now called Pleven.
2 Quoted in John Westwood, Railways at War, Osprey, 1980, p. 89.
3 Edwin A. Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power in War and Conquest, P. S. King & Son, 1915, p. 219.
4 Ibid., p. 220.
5 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 90.
6 This is the subject of some debate. The Moscow-St Petersburg railway employed George Washington Whistler as its chief engineer and he came from the American South, where the 5ft gauge was in common use. However, it seems very unlikely that defensive concepts against attack from the west would not have been in mind too.
7 Estimated at £9m, equivalent to perhaps £700m today.
8 He committed suicide as a result.
9 His reporting displeased Kitchener and led to an army ban on such a dual role in future wars.
10 It was first published as two much longer volumes but the shorter edition – with much of his criticism of the personalities involved excised as he was now a Member of Parliament – was issued in 1902 and is available as a reprint from NuVision Publications.
11 Winston Churchill, The River War, NuVision Publications, 2007, p. 125.
12 Ibid., p. 128.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., p. 129.
15 Ibid., p 135.
16 Ibid., p. 121.
17 See my previous book, Blood, Iron & Gold, Atlantic Books, 2009, for the story of the Cape to Cairo.
18 Technically it was the second Boer War, as explained below.
19 There were also three protectorates: Zululand (now part of South Africa), Swaziland and Bechuanaland (now mostly in Botswana).
20 Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power, p. 235.
21 Ernest F. Carter, Railways in Wartime, Frederick Muller, 1964, p. 66.
22 Winston Churchill, The Boer War, a book reprinted by Pimlico in 2002 from two volumes of his war reports published during the war, p. 24.
23 Ibid., p. 38.
24 Ibid., p. 47.
25 In typical Churchillian style, he later had the gall to write to the Boers seeking release from prison because he was a non-combatant, when only his forgetfulness had prevented him using a gun to kill one of his pursuers.
26 Stephen J. Zaloga, Armored Trains, Osprey, 2008, p. 8.
27 Quoted from Sir Percy Girouard, ‘History of the railways during the war in South Africa, 1899-1902, 1903’, in Westwood, Railways at War, p. 102.
28 Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power, p. 235.
29 Zaloga, Armored Trains, p. 8.
30 Felix Patrikeeff and Harold Shukman, Railways and the Russo-Japanese War: Transporting War, Routledge Military Studies, 2007, p. 4 (their italics).
31 Ibid., p. 24.
32 The same phenomenon as on motorways, where it has been found that ensuring all traffic travels at 55 mph provides for more cars than if the speed limit is 70 mph but results in much slowing down and acceleration.
33 Quoted in Patrikeeff and Shukman, Railways and the Russo-Japanese War, p. 51.
34 Ibid., p. 51.
35 Precisely thirty-six officers and 1,064 men.
36 Quoted in Westwood, Railways at War, p. 115.
37 Quoted in Patrikeeff and Shukman, Railways and the Russo-Japanese War, p. 93.
38 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 116.
39 Patrikeeff and Shukman, Railways and the Russo-Japanese War, p. 93.
40 Ibid., p. 97.
41 Now Shenyang.
42 The Russians probably had a few more.
43 Patrikeeff and Shukman, Railways and the Russo-Japanese War, p. 95.
44 Ibid., p. 96.
45 Ibid., p. 4.
SIX: The War the World Anticipated
1 Stephen Van Evera, ‘The cult of the offensive and the origins of the First World War’, in Michael Brown et al. (eds.), Offense, Defense and War, MIT Press, 2004, p. 69.
2 Ibid.
3 Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 112.
4 One of the recurring themes of my previous book, Blood, Iron & Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World, Atlantic Books, 2009.
5 Arthur P. Maloney, The Berlin-Baghdad Railway as a Cause of World War 1, Center for Naval Analyses, Professional Paper 401, January 1984.
6 Ibid.
7 F. Lee Benns, European History since 1870, Crofts, 1950, p. 78.
8 Morris Jastrow Jr, The War and the Bagdad Railway, J. B. Lippincott, 1917, p. 114.
9 Allan Mitchell, The Great Train Race: Railways and the Franco-German Rivalry, Berghahn Books, 2000, p. 122.
10 Ibid., p. 149.
11 Barbara W. Tuchman, August 1914, Constable, 1962, p. 36.
12 Though a few were allocated sixty.
13 Tuchman, August 1914, p. 85.
14 Ernest F. Carter, Railways in Wartime, Frederick Muller, 1964, p. 78.
15 Edwin A. Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power in War and Conquest, P. S. King & Son, 1915, p. 283.
16 Mitchell, The Great Train Race, p. 152.
17 Tuchman, August 1914, p. 50.
18 Ibid., p. 60.
19 Ibid., p. 72.
20 Van Evera, ‘The cult of the offensive’, p. 91.
21 J. A. B. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War 1, George Allen & Unwin, 1967, p. 18.
22 Pratt, The Rise of Rail Power, p. 193.
23 Quoted in Westwood, Railways at War, p. 125.
24 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 110.
25 His theory is set out in various of his writings, including his book How Wars Began, Hamish Hamilton, 1977, and The First World War: An Illustrated History, Hamish Hamilton, 1963.
26 Taylor, The First World War, p. 14.
27 Tuchman, August 1914, p. 84.
28 Taylor, The First World War, p. 16.
29 Tuchman, August 1914, p. 85.
30 Quoted in ibid.
31 Ibid., p. 32.
SEVEN: The Great Railway War on the Western Front
1 Allan Mitchell, The Great Train Race: Railways and the Franco-German Rivalry, Berghahn Books, 2000, p. 266.
2 John Westwood, Railways at War, Osprey, 1980, p. 133.
3 Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 129.
4 Ibid., p. 130.
5 They each carried five soldiers and made two round-trip journeys of about 120km each.
6 Barbara W. Tuchman, August 1914, Constable, 1962, p. 425.
7 A. J. P. Taylor, The First World War: An Illustrated History, Hamish Hamilton, 1963, p. 31.
8 Marc Ferro, The Great War 1914-1918, Routledge, 1973 (first published in French by Editions Gallimard, 1969
), p. 55.
9 Tuchman, August 1914, p. 336.
10 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 135.
11 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 134.
12 Taylor, The First World War, p. 37.
13 Ibid.
14 Tuchman, August 1914, p. 426.
15 Ibid.
16 Taylor, The First World War, p. 24.
17 These quotes are all from ibid.
18 Mitchell, The Great Train Race, p. 265.
19 While in peacetime French trains were generally faster than in Britain, in the war they travelled at between 10 and 25 mph.
20 J. A. B. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War 1, George Allen & Unwin, 1967, p. 35.
21 Colonel A. M. Heniker, History of the Great War: Transportation on the Western Front, Imperial War Museum, 1923, republished 1992, p. x.
22 Ibid., p. 39.
23 Ibid., p. xii.
24 Colonel Le Hénaff and Capitaine Henri Bornecque, Les Chemins de fer français et la guerre, Librairie Chapelot, 1922, p. 54.
25 Ibid., p. 63.
26 Heniker, History of the Great War, p. 42.
27 Edwin A. Pratt, British Railways and the Great War, Selwyn & Blount, 1921, p. 1.
28 Heniker, History of the Great War, p. 161.
29 Ibid., p. 162.
30 Keith Taylorson, Narrow Gauge at War 2, Plateway Press, 1996, p 2.
31 W. J. K. Davies, Light Railways of the First World War, David & Charles, 1967, p. 22.
32 Quoted in ibid., p. 62.
33 An account published in the Railway Gazette, 21 September 1920, quoted in Keith Taylorson, Narrow Gauge at War 2, Plateway Press, 1996, p. 24.
34 Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War 1, p. 116.
35 T. R. Heritage, The Light Track from Arras, first published 1931 and reprinted by Plateway Press, 1999, p. xv.
36 Ibid.
37 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 164.
38 Heritage, The Light Track from Arras, p. xv.
39 Taylor, The First World War, p. 94.
40 He was actually not made a maréchal until the end of the war but is best known with that title.
41 Taylor, The First World War, p. 93.
42 Accurate figures are impossible to ascertain because they were distorted for propaganda reasons and some estimates suggest there were as many as one million dead and wounded.
43 As explained in Chapter Two, these are crude paths built with logs crossways to the direction of travel and covered with sand.
44 Heniker, History of the Great War, p. 161.
45 Ibid., p. 161.
46 Quoted in Keith Grieves, Sir Eric Geddes: Business and Government in War and Peace, Manchester University Press, 1989, p. 32.
47 Ibid.
48 Technically, he was still Secretary of State for War until 6 December 1916.
49 Heniker, History of the Great War, p. xiii.
50 Davies, Light Railways of the First World War, p. 67.
51 Heniker, History of the Great War, p. xv.
EIGHT: Eastern Contrasts
1 A. J. P. Taylor, The First World War: An Illustrated History, Hamish Hamilton, 1963, p. 33.
2 John Westwood, Railways at War, Osprey, 1980, p. 133.
3 Taylor, The First World War, p. 33.
4 Quoted in Westwood, Railways at War, p. 148.
5 There are no accurate figures available but this is a commonly used estimate.
6 Taylor, The First World War, p. 95.
7 The name was changed at the beginning of the war, by the Tsar and not, as is often thought, by the Bolsheviks, because St Petersburg was deemed to sound too German.
8 It was actually November on the Gregorian calendar used in Russia at the time.
9 Stephen J. Zaloga, Armored Trains, Osprey, 2008, p. 11.
10 John Keegan, The First World War, Hutchinson, 1998, p. 410.
11 Zaloga, Armored Trains, p. 14.
12 Other prisoners of the Russians were being repatriated westwards.
13 Zaloga, Armored Trains, p. 11.
14 Ibid., p. 15.
15 Winston Churchill, The World Crisis: V: The Aftermath, Butterworth, 1929, p. 328.
16 Peter Fleming, The Fate of Admiral Kolchak, 1963, reprinted by Birlinn, 2001, p. 174.
17 Ibid., p. 170.
18 Some in the Foreign Office favoured the ibn Saud clan, who eventually were to rule Saudi Arabia.
19 From a military report quoted in James Nicholson, The Hejaz Railway, Stacey International, 2005, p. 92.
20 T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, originally published 1935, Wordsworth Classics, 1997, p. 371.
21 Quoted from a military report in Nicholson, The Hejaz Railway, p. 155.
22 Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, p. 517.
23 Nicholson, The Hejaz Railway, p. 124.
24 Ibid., p. 135.
25 Ibid.
26 Some reports suggest there were as many as three of these guns.
27 Quoted from the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift in J. A. B. Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War 1, George Allen & Unwin, 1967, p. 83.
28 Ibid.
29 From the Western Front Association website, www.westernfrontassociation.com
30 Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War 1, p. 88.
31 Ibid., p. 87.
32 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 171.
33 Quoted from a local newspaper report in Hamilton, Britain’s Railways in World War 1, p. 89.
34 Cited in my book Fire & Steam, Atlantic Books, 2007, p. 211.
35 Translated by Jim Ballantyne from S. Lacriteanu and I. Popescu, Historical Tractiunii Feroviare din Romania.
36 General James A. Van Fleet, Rail Transport and the Winning of Wars, Association of American Railroads, 1956, p. 18.
37 Keegan, The First World War, p. 433.
38 Taylor, The First World War, p. 220.
39 Colonel A. M. Heniker, History of the Great War: Transportation on the Western Front, Imperial War Museum, 1923, republished 1992, p. 432.
40 Ibid., p. 461.
41 Ibid., p. vii.
NINE: Here We Go Again
1 Alfred C. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-5, Chapel Hill, 1988, p. 35.
2 Martin van Creveld, Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton, Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 144.
3 Ibid., p. 143.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., p. 175.
6 Len Deighton, Blood, Tears and Folly: An Objective Look at World War II, Pimlico, 1995, p. 445.
7 Van Creveld, Supplying War, p. 155.
8 Ibid., p. 162.
9 Ibid., p. 175.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 174.
12 John Westwood, Railways at War, Osprey, 1980, p. 196.
13 Deighton, Blood, Tears and Folly, p. 471.
14 General James A. Van Fleet, Rail Transport and the Winning of Wars, Association of American Railroads, 1956, p. 18.
15 Quoted in ibid.
16 Quoted in Chadwick, Defence of Railways against an Attack, Imperial War Museum document, undated, p. 20.
17 Ibid.
18 Ernest F. Carter, Railways in Wartime, Frederick Muller, 1964, p. 191.
19 See my book The Subterranean Railway, Atlantic Books, 2004, for a detailed account of shelters in the war.
20 Chadwick, Defence of Railways, p. 43.
21 Neither Britain nor France made use of armoured trains in the Second World War, with the exception of a few deployed to protect Britain’s coasts.
22 Chadwick, Defence of Railways, p. 200.
23 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 131.
24 David Wragg, Wartime on the Railways, Sutton Publishing, 2006, p. 76.
25 A limited amount came from India, somewhat nearer.
26 Dr Robert Hardie, The Burma-Siam Railway, Quadrant Books, 1984, p. 101.
27 Carter, Railways in Wartime, p. 203.
28 John Thomas, Line of Communication: Railway to Victory in the
East, Locomotive Publishing Society, 1947, p. 3.
29 Ibid., p. 14.
30 Anthony Mains, Soldier with Railways, Picton Publishing, 1994, p. 79.
31 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 214.
32 Carter, Railways in Wartime, p. 166.
33 Van Fleet, Rail Transport and the Winning of Wars, p. 26.
34 Ibid., p. 30.
35 Report of the Railway Civil Defence Officers’ Mission to Germany and Belgium, November 1947, in the Imperial War Museum archives, p. 4.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., p 5.
40 Ibid.
41 Van Fleet, Rail Transport and the Winning of Wars, p. 37.
42 Daily Telegraph, 27 September 1944.
43 Jerusalem Post, 17 April 2008.
TEN: Blood on the Tracks
1 General James A. Van Fleet, Rail Transport and the Winning of Wars, Association of American Railroads, 1956, p. 1.
2 Lt Col. Michael A. Kirtland, ‘Planning Air Operations: Lessons from Operation Strangle in the Korean War’, Airpower Journal, Summer 1992.
3 The bombing was carried out exclusively by US forces.
4 Quoted in Kirtland, ‘Planning Air Operations’, Airpower Journal, Summer 1992.
5 Strangely, some US military sources give May 1951 as the start date but that may refer to the brief period during which it was targeted at roads rather than railways.
6 Van Fleet, Rail Transport and the Winning of Wars, p. 1.
7 Ibid., p. 4.
8 John Westwood, Railways at War, Osprey, 1980, p. 214.
9 Now Ho Chi Minh City.
10 These quotes are all taken from Paul Wohl, ‘Indochina’s Railroad War’, Railway Progress, February 1953, available at http://www.catskillarchive.com.
11 Ibid.
12 The Viet Minh were largely North Vietnamese while the Viet Cong were South Vietnamese who were Communist sympathizers.
13 Westwood, Railways at War, p. 218.
14 RIA Novosti, 11 March 2008.
15 Christian Wolmar, Blood, Iron & Gold: How Railways Transformed the World, Atlantic Books, 2009.
INDEX
Abdulhamid II, Sultan
Abdullah, Prince
Aberdeen, Lord
Abu Hamed
Abu Na’am
Abyssinia
Adams, W. Bridges
Addis Ababa
aerial bombardment
Afghan war
Africa
air transport
Aisne, river
Albany, New York
Engines of War Page 37