Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army's Art of Attack, 1916-18Historians have portrayed British participation in World War I as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, with untried new military technology, and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book a renowned military historian studies the evolution of British infantry tactics during the war and challenges this interpretation, showing that while the British army's plans and technologies failed persistently during the improvised first half of the war, the army gradually improved its technique, technology, and, eventually, its' self-assurance. By the time of its successful sustained offensive in the fall of 1918, says Paddy Griffith, the British army was demonstrating a battlefield skill and mobility that would rarely be surpassed even during World War II. Evaluating the great gap that exists between theory and practice, between textbook and bullet-swept mudfield, Griffith argues that many battles were carefully planned to exploit advanced tactics and to avoid casualties, but that breakthrough was simply impossible under the conditions of the time. According to Griffith, the British were already masters of "storm troop tactics" by the end of 1916, and in several important respects were further ahead than the Germans would be even in 1918. In fields such as the timing and orchestration of all-arms assaults, predicted artillery fire, "Commando-style" trench raiding, the use of light machine guns, or the barrage fire of heavy machine guns, the British led the world. Although British generals were not military geniuses, says Griffith, they should at least be credited for effectively inventing much of the twentieth-century's art of war. |
Contents
List of Figures and Tables Figures | 18 |
The nature of tactics | 20 |
Notional Comparison between the loss of trained tactical leaders and the need for them | 23 |
3 | 47 |
Variants of the wave attack by the 9th Division 191516 | 55 |
The Lessons of the Somme | 65 |
The importance of careful preparation | 74 |
Platoon tactics February 1917 | 78 |
Artillery | 135 |
British artillery weapons | 136 |
Total British shell production per month | 139 |
Proportion of shell types in selected creeping barrages | 141 |
Speed of creeping barrages in some 9th Division attacks | 144 |
Speed of some creeping barrages in the Hundred Days | 146 |
Expenditure of artillery ammunition by weeks | 148 |
Yards of front per gun on first days of battle | 150 |
vi | 84 |
Successive fragmentation of XVIII Corps in March 1918 | 91 |
Advances of the BEF in the Hundred Days 1918 | 94 |
the BEFs 1918 concept of a fluid infiltration attack | 97 |
65 | 99 |
The Search for New Weapons | 103 |
Approximate number of divisional battles 18 | 115 |
Automatic Weapons | 120 |
Organisation of motor machine gun brigades | 129 |
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Common terms and phrases
9th Division 9th Scottish American Civil War Amiens April Arras artillery assault attack August battalion batteries battlefield bayonet BEF's bombs brigade British Cambrai Canadian Carrington casualties cavalry Colonel creeping barrage defence Division Murray doctrine effective élite enemy enemy's example Farndale Fifth Army fighting fire firepower formerly GOC forward Foulkes Fourth Army front line German Gough gunners Haig Haig's high command History Hundred Days Ibid II Corps infantry Infantry Knew J. F. C. Fuller John Terraine July least less Lewis guns Lindsay papers Lloyd George London Machine Gun Corps Machine Gun file major manuals March Maxse papers Messines military mortars nevertheless Notes November October offensive officers operations organisation Passchendaele perhaps platoon Regiment rifle rifle-grenades rôle seemed shells signals soldiers Somme Somme battle staff Stokes Stormtroop success tactical tacticians Tank Corps Trench Warfare troops Vickers weapons Western Front XVIII Corps yards Ypres