Limitations of a military revolution
Extract from Vimy Ridge 1917: Byng's Canadians Triumph at Arras (Campaign 151)
The decades either side of World War I display some of the most alarming social and technological advances in human history. From the military perspective, the pace of this transition is truly remarkable. The senior commanders of the war started their professional careers in regiments that were virtually indistinguishable from those that fought in the Crimea. In the early 1880s, the British Army still used single-shot weapons and wore red tunics in the field. Tactical emphasis remained on moving from column into line. Breech-loading artillery was only just coming into service. By 1917 those same men were commanding formations that utilised combat and reconnaissance aircraft, aerial photography, massed quick-firing indirect artillery, chemical weapons, machine guns, tanks, motorized logistic assets, and reinforced concrete fortification. Their troops would have more in common with the experience of today's soldier than a man who fought in the Zulu War just 30 years previously. The pace at which these men had to assimilate change is unprecedented in military history. Their aptitude for meeting and managing that change has come to be the main criteria they are judged against.
The challenge was not just conceptual. Often they knew what was required but were unable to deliver it. World War I is unique in the singular disparity between weapons and communications technology. Only in the understanding of this challenge can the leadership of World War I commanders be appraised fairly.
Commanders can only influence events if informed of developments in time to react with their decisions. That is the essence of battlefield communication. Telegraph and field telephones enabled static positions to communicate (though the accompanying infrastructure was vulnerable) but radios were in their infancy and too cumbersome for battlefield use. Troops in the assault were forced to rely on runners, whistles, bugles and even carrier pigeons to convey their message. Once battle was joined, the field commander had no better means of influencing events than his Napoleonic or even medieval forebears. Moreover, unlike earlier wars, they could not see the battle unfolding with their own eyes.
Even in normal daily life, our reaction to the absence of communication is to make plans and stick to them. This is what a general in World War I was compelled to do – hence the rigidity so apparent in his approach. Nor was this limited to the senior level; battalion and brigade commanders faced the same difficulty. Hence we have the curious contradiction of a highly centralised planning process, normally at the corps or divisional level, decentralised down to the company or even platoon level once battle was joined.
Clearly, there is a degree to which this argument has been oversimplified. Of course brigade and battalion commanders were able to influence their own plans to a degree but one imposing characteristic of battles in this period was the interdependence of effort. This was a symptom of the desperate limitations placed on manoeuvre by the linear nature of the battlefield. Moreover, senior commanders, culturally averse to relinquishing all responsibility for an offensive, were often prescriptive beyond necessity.
Squeezed into predictable avenues of attack and unable to influence the battle decisively except by adept planning, the better commanders in World War I stood out by virtue of their ability to innovate and keep pace with technological changes.
© 2006 Osprey Publishing Ltd, Vimy Ridge 1917: Byng's Canadians Triumph at Arras (Campaign 151)
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