Lloyd George said, ‘There is no greater fatuity than a political judgement dressed in a military uniform.’20 One might well riposte that an equal fatuity is a military judgement dressed in a frock coat.
NOTES
1 Ian F.W. Beckett (ed.), The Army and the Curragh Incident 1914, Bodley Head, London, 1986.
2 See Brian Bond, ‘Liddell-Hart and the First World War’, in Brian Bond et al., Look to Your Front, Spellmount Publishers, Staplehurst, 1999, for an exposition of Liddell Hart’s views on the war and how he came to form them.
3 Quoted in Trevor Royle, Kitchener the Enigma, Michael Joseph, London, 1985.
4 Not a great deal has changed then, but in the absence of conscription the Territorial Army, the present successor to the Territorial Force, is probably the best sort of reserve we are likely to get. Today, professional military opinion is increasingly of the view that any idea of deploying the TA as formed combatant units should be abandoned, and that the TA should be converted into specialist units of people not needed in peacetime but essential in war, and a pool of individual reinforcements. Progress is slow owing to entrenched local interests – one TA infantry battalion, with around 500 men on its books, has no fewer than four honorary colonels, all influential civilians. Current concern (2002) about the terrorist threat may cause part of the TA to be used as a guard force.
5 Nancy Maurice (ed.), The Maurice Case, Leo Cooper, London, 1972.
6 David Lloyd George, My War Memoirs, Vol. I, Odhams Press, London, 1938, p. 451.
7 David R. Woodward (ed.), The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, Army Records Society, 1989, p. 199.
8 Robert Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1952, pp. 173–4.
9 For a full account of Geddes’ work with the BEF see Keith Grieves, ‘The Transportation Mission to GHQ, 1916’, in Brian Bond et al., Look to Your Front, Spellmount Publishers, Staplehurst, 1999.
10 Five ordinary divisions, one Jäger division and the Alpenkorps, which was equivalent to a division.
11 Woodward (ed.), The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir William Robertson, Army Records Society, 1989, pp. 168 and 171.
12 Robertson was wrong. Lloyd George remained as Prime Minister until 1922.
13 Ibid., p. 155.
14 Edward Roberts (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig, Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1952, p. 265.
15 Ibid., p. 274.
16 Ibid., p. 278.
17 Haig had wanted Butler as his Chief of the General Staff on taking command of the BEF in December 1915, but Butler was considered too junior, and Haig got Kiggell instead.
18 Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire in the Great War, War Office, London, 1922.
19 For a full account of the Maurice affair see Nancy Maurice (ed.), The Maurice Case, Leo Cooper, London, 1972.
20 Lloyd George, My War Memoirs, Vol. I, Odhams Press, London, 1938, p. 451.
12
EVEN MORE NEEDLESS SLAUGHTER
If most of the British public know only of the Somme when thinking about the Great War, then that portion that knows a little more will have heard of Passchendaele, where Butcher Haig, having learned nothing from the slaughter of the Somme in 1916, spent 1917 in again throwing the flower of British manhood against impregnable German wire and machine guns, through waist-deep mud, to no avail.
There was indeed a major British offensive in 1917, and it did kill a great many British and Empire soldiers, but the reasons for it have been forgotten or expunged. It is seen as a pointless battering against a brick wall, and even the name Passchendaele is misleading, for the attack and eventual capture of that village was but a part of the great offensive more properly known as the Third Battle of Ypres.
Haig had always considered that the British interest lay in Flanders, and he had been planning an offensive there since 1915. This was, however, still a coalition war, with the French as the leading Allied player. Although the British Prime Minister Lloyd George was in principle opposed to large-scale British attacks on the Western Front, he had been convinced by the loquacity of the new French Commander-in-Chief General Robert Nivelle, and both governments agreed to an Allied offensive in 1917 with the French army taking the lead. Nivelle, as we have seen, was relatively junior in the French military hierarchy. Born in 1856 and commissioned from the École Polytechnique into the artillery in 1878, he was a colonel commanding an artillery regiment in August 1914. In October 1914 he was promoted to général de brigade, and in February 1915 he was appointed to command a division. Further swift promotion followed: III Corps Commander at the end of 1915, Commander of the Second Army from April 1916 and finally Commander-in-Chief, succeeding Joffre in December 1916. His rise was nothing short of meteoric, but he was a very convincing fellow: the troops liked him and believed in him; he was politically astute, got on well with his own and Allied politicians, and was careful not to antagonise those generals over whose heads he had been elevated. Bullshit does not often baffle brains, but in Nivelle’s case, sadly, it did.
Had Nivelle launched an attack in February 1917, the originally agreed date, he might have had some success against the German salient that stuck out into Allied territory between Péronne and Soissons. As it was, Nivelle delayed the offensive until his new plans were ready; and when the Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line in February 1917, destroying the villages and poisoning the wells on the way, the salient was no more. Nivelle shifted the focus of his assault to the area of the River Aisne, and he now proposed to attack over a forty-mile front between Soissons and Reims. The main strike would be carried out by the Reserve Army Group (GAR) commanded by General Micheler and comprising the French Fifth Army (General Mazel), Sixth Army (General Mangin) and Tenth Army (General Duchêne). The Central Army Group (GAC – General Pétain), the Eastern Army Group (GAE – General de Castelnau) and the Northern Army Group (GAN – Desperate Frankie) would assist, and elements would also support a diversionary attack by the British in Artois and Picardy. Altogether sixty-eight French divisions would be involved, and on the main Aisne front forty-nine divisions of infantry, five cavalry divisions and 128 French tanks would cross the jump-off line at 0600 hours on 12 April 1917. They would be supported by 5,300 artillery pieces, 1,900 of them heavy guns, which would bombard the German lines from 2 April. The French would be attacking twenty-one German divisions in the line with another seventeen in reserve, and, Nivelle assured all who would listen, would break through and out within forty-eight hours.
There were a number of factors that, in the view of the British generals, militated against success. For a start the ground on which the German positions lay was very well suited for defence, and very difficult to attack. Much of the River Aisne is overlooked from the north by an escarpment, known as the Chemin des Dames after a road built along its edge to allow the daughters of the pre-Revolutionary French kings to ride from Soissons to Berry-au-Bac. Nivelle considered rightly that surprise was essential, but there was precious little of it. The movement of thousands of troops, the stockpiling of ammunition, the building of roads and light railways and the construction of jump-off trenches could hardly be concealed, and to cap it all a copy of the complete French plan for the attack was captured by the Germans in early April. The loss was only reported to Nivelle on the 7th, but he decided to go ahead anyway. Despite Haig’s doubts about the soundness of Nivelle’s plan, and especially about the French general’s optimism with regard to a speedy victory, the British had little choice but to go along with their allies. The role of the BEF would be subsidiary to begin with, involving a series of attacks from Arras designed to tie up German reserves. Once the Nivelle offensive had succeeded in breaking through the German defences, the French army would pursue while the British would break out of the Ypres salient, the Belgians would attack from Diksmuide, and a French corps would drive along the Belgian coast and take Ostend. It would be a great victory to end the war.
According to Nivelle’s plan the British were to move off on 8 April, while for the French Jour J would be 12 April.1 Weather and problems with the artillery bombardment necessitated delays, and the British eventually went into action on 9 April when the Canadian Corps stormed and took Vimy Ridge. The French GAR crossed their jump-off line at 0600 on 16 April. It was misty and overcast, and German machine guns sited on reverse slopes soon began to cut down the advancing French infantry, while counter-attacks drove them off many of the positions initially gained. Despite the fourteen-day artillery bombardment much of the German wire was uncut. North of the Aisne some progress was made, but on the right of the attack the troops were stopped on the Aisne–Marne Canal. The French tanks were of little help. They were too lightly armoured and could not cross major obstacles; and when they did score a success, the infantrymen were too exhausted to keep up with them. Of the 128 tanks involved, sixty-two were put out of action by enemy fire and eighteen broke down. By last light on 16 April no Frenchman was forward of a line that should have been taken by 0930 hours. Next day the French Sixth Army did manage to push the Germans out of the Braye-Condé-Laffaux triangle, back as far as the Hindenburg Line. On the same day a subsidiary attack by the French Fourth Army in Champagne, mounted at 0445 hours in driving rain and snow, made appreciable gains. By 20 April the French had taken 20,000 prisoners and captured 147 guns; they had cut the main Soissons–Reims railway line, taken the German second line south of Juvincourt, and were on some of the fortified hills in Champagne. But still there was no breakthrough, and no sign of one, and casualties were far higher than expected. The Germans were able to leapfrog their artillery guns back, and their reliance on reverse-slope defence made Nivelle’s much vaunted creeping-barrage tactics a hit-or-miss (too often miss) affair. The French medical system was totally unequal to the task it had been given, and lines of wounded lying out in the open waiting for treatment that came too late, or sometimes not at all, did not help morale.
By 25 April the attack had virtually stalled. Measured against the build-up it had been given, with Nivelle’s exaggerated promises of a quick breakthrough followed by a pursuit into Germany, it had been a disaster. French dead in those nine days numbered 15,589 with a further 20,000 reported missing, many of whom were in fact dead; total casualties, including those of two Russian brigades taking part under French command, were nearly 100,000. The offensive went on, but only limited attacks were sanctioned. Even so, things would get worse.
On 27 April the French government set up a Commission de l’Armée to investigate what had gone wrong. Nivelle blamed his subordinates, claiming that they had failed to understand his requirements for the artillery, and tried to sack General Mazel, commanding the Fifth Army. The Minister for War refused to allow it. Nivelle now turned his ire on Mangin, one of the better army commanders, and he was dismissed on 29 April. This was not enough to save Nivelle, and a change in the higher management of the war was demanded. Pétain was appointed Chief of the General Staff, a new post modelled on the British CIGS, the aim being for him to rein in Nivelle and provide the French government with an alternative source of military advice. Pétain was replaced as Commander of the GAC by General Fayolle, who had commanded the French troops during the Somme offensive of 1916. The Major General of the Army (equivalent to Chief of Staff of the field army) was also sacked. Nivelle could not, however, escape responsibility: he was the Commander-in-Chief, he had promised a lightning victory and he had to pay. He was eventually asked to resign on 10 May, but refused. He insisted that he had done nothing wrong; if the government wanted rid of him they could dismiss him, but he would not resign. On 15 May he relented and offered his resignation – by which date French casualties had risen to 271,000. Nivelle was rusticated to French North Africa, a military backwater, for the rest of the war and a court of inquiry later absolved him from culpability. He was replaced as Commander-in-Chief by General Pétain.
For many French soldiers in the ranks it was the final straw. Not only had the great offensive failed, but now the generals who had ordered and directed it were falling out amongst themselves. It was not so much the casualty rate, or the simple lack of success, that caused morale to tumble, but the dashing of great expectations. Almost immediately mutiny, the nightmare of generals in all armies everywhere, began to break out. The French commanders had long been concerned about anti-war propaganda amongst the troops. Men going on leave were waylaid at Paris railway stations and harangued by pacifists, who were reasonably restrained, and Communists and anarchists who were not. There were well-organised underground agencies that existed to help soldiers who wanted to desert. Tracts condemning the war circulated in the ranks, and the Interior Minister, Malvy, seemed powerless to prevent this subversion or to close down anti-war newspapers like the Communist Bonnet Rouge. It was a common article of belief that munitions workers at home were earning far more than the men in the trenches, and Annamese troops from Indo-China were widely believed to be stalking French cities and towns, coupling furiously with women whose husbands were away at the front. Many French soldiers readily believed such propaganda. As conscripts their pay was derisory, their rations bad and their welfare facilities almost nonexistent. In some units there had been no leave for twelve months, and for those fortunate few who did manage to obtain leave, arrangements to get them home were regarded by the French staff as a very low priority. The French army was far more egalitarian than the British, and was (almost) a meritocracy; but many British officers commented with surprise that while French officers led their men in action most gallantly, once the battle was over the officers decamped and left the men to their own devices. British officers had it drummed into them that the welfare of their men was one of their major responsibilities; they organised football matches, set up canteens, administered leave, laid on band concerts, ran theatricals, held gymkhanas and inspected the men’s billets and meals regularly. It has been suggested that it was the social difference between officer and soldier in the British army that allowed officers to be in close touch with their men’s off-duty activities without the risk of undue familiarity; a contrasting situation to that of the French, whose officers were far better educated professionally than were the British, but who came from the same social class as many of their men. Whatever the reasons, the French army was ripe for what happened.
In many ways it was rather a peculiar mutiny, and the French never used the word, preferring instead ‘mouvements collectifs d’indiscipline’ – but collective indiscipline is mutiny nonetheless. It began with refusals to parade, and disobeying orders to move from billets into the line. It was a
sullen, hangdog sort of affair, a far cry from the enthusiasm of the French Revolution: there was little cheering, no bands playing, precious few caps of liberty. Not many officers were ill-treated; a handful were shot, some were jeered at and stoned, and one general was tied up and forced into the firing line. It started in a small way, the first recorded instance being on 17 April when seventeen men deserted from the firing line. In the main, however, it began not at the front but behind the lines. On 29 April a battalion of the 20th Regiment of Infantry refused to parade, but there was no violence.2 Rumour abounded and refusals to go back to the firing line spread.
The 18th Regiment of Infantry had been relieved in the line on 8 May. This regiment had been badly knocked about in the fighting between 4 and 8 May and had lost twenty officers and 824 men killed, wounded and missing out of a strength of around 2,500. The regiment had just received 1,000 recruits to bring it up to strength, but there had not yet been time for them to settle in and become part of the team. The regiment’s major grievance was that there had not been enough leave. French soldiers were supposed to get seven days’ home leave every four months, but this was often cancelled owing to the exigencies of war or the inability of the staff to organise transport. On 27 May the 18th Infantry was warned for a return to the trenches. Already disgruntled about the lack of leave, poor billets and bad food, the men refused to parade. They milled about, firing their rifles in the air, singing the ‘Internationale’ and waving red flags. Some slashed the tyres of the lorries intended to take them back to the front. Officers who knew the men and who had shared their hardships tried to reason with the mutinous troops. By 2230 hours the 3rd Battalion had thought better of what they were doing and agreed to embus for the front. The 1st Battalion followed and only the 2nd Battalion refused to move. Next day, at 0500 hours, a contingent of gendarmes arrived at the camp.3 Twenty soldiers of the 2nd Battalion gave themselves up immediately, sixty refused absolutely while the remainder were confused and unsure what to do. The battalion agreed to move to La Fère-en-Tardenois, the nearest town, and set off surrounded by gendarmes, but still with their weapons and still firing them in the air. By 0730 hours fervour had evaporated and the battalion agreed to go up to the lines. The whole regiment, now reunited, fought well in the ensuing battles. Twelve ringleaders of the 18th Infantry were subsequently brought before courts martial. Five were sentenced to death, of whom three were actually shot; one was pardoned and one escaped from custody and was never seen again.
Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military) Page 39
