作者：Callwell, C. E. (Charles Edward), Sir
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Experiences of a Dug-out试读：
CHAPTER I
THE OUTBREAK OF WARUnfair disparagement of the War Office during the war — Difficulties under which it suffered owing to pre-war misconduct of the Government — The army prepared, the Government and the country unprepared — My visit to German districts on the Belgian and Luxemburg frontiers in June 1914 — The German railway preparations — The plan of the Great General Staff indicated by these — The Aldershot Command at exercise — I am summoned to London by General H. Wilson — Informed of contemplated appointment to be D.M.O. — The unsatisfactory organization of the Military Operations Directorate — An illustration of this from pre-war days — G.H.Q. rather a nuisance until they proceeded to France — The scare about a hostile maritime descent — Conference at the Admiralty — The depletion of my Directorate to build up G.H.Q. — Inconvenience of this in the case of the section dealing with special Intelligence services — An example of the trouble that arose at the very start — This points to a misunderstanding of the relative importance of the War Office and of G.H.Q. — Sir J. French's responsibility for this, Sir C. Douglas not really responsible — Colonel Dallas enumerates the great numerical resources of Germany — Lord Kitchener's immediate recognition of the realities of the situation — Sir J. French's suggestion that Lord Kitchener should be Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force indicated misconception of the position of affairs.
In a record of experiences during the Great War that were for the most part undergone within the War Office itself, it is impossible to overcome the temptation to draw attention at the start to the unreasonably disparaging attitude towards that institution which has been adopted so generally throughout the country. Nobody will contend that hideous blunders were not committed by some departments of the central administration of the Army in Whitehall during the progress of the struggle. It has to be admitted that considerable sums of money were from time to time wasted—it could hardly be otherwise in such strenuous times. A regrettable lack of foresight was undoubtedly displayed in some particulars. But tremendous difficulties, difficulties for the existence of which the military authorities were nowise to blame, had on the other hand to be overcome—and they were overcome. Nor can the War Office be robbed of its claim to have borne the chief share in performing what was the greatest miracle of all the miracles performed during the course of the contest. Within the space of less than two years the United Kingdom was, mainly by the exertions of the War Office, transformed into a Great Military Power. That achievement covers up many transgressions.
It has to be remembered that in this matter the detractors had it all their own way during the struggle. Anybody harbouring a grievance, real or imaginary, was at liberty to air his wrongs, whereas the mouths of soldiers in a position to reply had perforce to remain closed and have to a great extent still to remain closed. The disgruntled had the field pretty well to themselves. Ridiculous stories for which there was not one atom of foundation have gained currency, either because those who knew the truth were precluded by their official status from revealing the facts or because no one took the trouble to contradict the absurdities. Some of these yarns saw the light in the newspapers, and the credulity of the public in accepting everything that happens to appear in the Press is one of the curiosities of the age. Not, however, that many of the criticisms of which the War Office was the subject during the protracted broil were not fully warranted. Some of them were indeed most helpful. But others were based on a positively grovelling ignorance of the circumstances governing the subject at issue. Surely it is an odd thing that, whereas your layman will shy at committing himself in regard to legal problems, will not dream of debating medical questions, will shrink from expressing opinions on matters involving acquaintance with technical science, will even be somewhat guarded in his utterances concerning the organization and handling of fleets, everybody is eager to lay the law down respecting the conduct of war on land.
A reference has been made above to the extraordinary difficulties under which the War Office laboured during the war. The greatest of these, at all events during the early days, was the total misconception of the international situation of which H.M. Government had been guilty—or had apparently been guilty—during the years immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities. No intelligible and satisfactory explanation of this has ever been put forward. Their conduct in this connection had been the conduct of fools, or of knaves, or of liars. They had been acting as fools if they had failed to interpret auguries which presented no difficulty whatever to people of ordinary intelligence who took the trouble to watch events. They had been acting as knaves if they had been drawing their salaries and had not earned them by making themselves acquainted with facts which it was their bounden duty to know. They had been acting as liars if, when fully aware of the German preparations for aggressive war and of what these portended, they had deliberately deceived and hoodwinked the countrymen who trusted them. (Personally, I should be disposed to acquit them of having been fools or knaves—but I may be wrong.) Several Ministers had indeed deliberately stated in their places in Parliament that the nation's military arrangements were not framed to meet anything beyond the despatch to an oversea theatre of war of four out of the six divisions of our Expeditionary Force! One of the gang had even been unable "to conceive circumstances in which continental operations by our troops would not be a crime against the people of this country."
Much has been said and written since 1914 concerning the unpreparedness of the army for war. But the truth is that the army was not unprepared for that limited-liability, pill-to-stop-an-earthquake theory of making war which represented the programme of Mr. Asquith and his colleagues before the blow fell. Take it all round, the Expeditionary Force was as efficient as any allied or hostile army which took the field. It was almost as well prepared for the supreme test in respect to equipment as it was in respect to leadership and training. The country and the Government, not the army, were unprepared. There was little wrong with the military forces except that they represented merely a drop in the ocean, that they constituted no more than an advanced guard to legions which did not exist. Still one must acknowledge that (as will be pointed out further on) even some of our highest military authorities did not realize what an insignificant asset our splendid little Expeditionary Force would stand for in a great European war, nor to have grasped when the crash came that the matter of paramount importance in connection with the conduct of the struggle on land was the creation of a host of fighting men reaching such dimensions as to render it competent to play a really vital rôle in achieving victory for the Entente.
As it happened, I had proceeded as a private individual in the month of June 1914 to inspect the German railway developments directed towards the frontiers of Belgium and of Luxemburg. This was an illuminating, indeed an ominous, experience. Entering the Kaiser's dominions by the route from the town of Luxemburg to Trèves, one came of a sudden upon a colossal detraining station that was not quite completed, fulfilling no conceivable peaceful object and dumped down on the very frontier—anything more barefaced it would be difficult to conceive. Trèves itself, three or four miles on, constituted a vast railway centre, and three miles or so yet farther along there was its counterpart in another great railway centre where there was no town at all. You got Euston, Liverpool Street, and Waterloo—only the lines and sidings, of course—grown up like mushrooms in a non-populous and non-industrial region, and at the very gates of a little State of which Germany had guaranteed the neutrality.
Traversing the region to the north of the Moselle along the western German border-line, this proved to be a somewhat barren, partly woodland, partly moorland, tract, sparsely inhabited as Radnor and Strathspey; and yet this unproductive district had become a network of railway communications. Elaborate detraining stations were passed every few miles. One constantly came upon those costly overhead cross-over places, where one set of lines is carried right over the top of another set at a junction, so that continuous traffic going one way shall not be checked by traffic coming in from the side and proceeding in the opposite direction—a plan seldom adopted at our most important railway centres. On one stretch of perhaps half-a-dozen miles connecting two insignificant townships were to be seen eight lines running parallel to each other. Twopenny-halfpenny little trains doddered along, occasionally taking up or putting down a single passenger at some halting-place that was large enough to serve a Coventry or a Croydon. The slopes of the cuttings and sidings were destitute of herbage; the bricks of the culverts and bridges showed them by the colour to be brand-new; all this construction had taken place within the previous half-dozen years. Everything seemed to be absolutely ready except that one place on the Luxemburg frontier mentioned above, and that obviously could be completed in a few hours of smart work, if required.
One had heard a good deal about the Belgians having filled in a gap on their side of the frontier so as to join up Malmedy with their internal railway system, and thus to establish a fresh through-connection between the Rhineland and the Meuse, so I travelled along this on my way back. But it was unimpressive. The drop from the rolling uplands about the camp of Elsenborn down to Malmedy gave rise to very steep gradients on the German side, and the single line of rail was so dilapidated and was so badly laid that, as we ran down with steam off, it hardly seemed safe for a short train of about half-a-dozen coaches. That the Great General Staff had no intention of making this a main line of advance appeared to be pretty clear. They meant the hosts that they would dispose of when the moment came, to sweep round by communications lying farther to the north, starting from about Aix-la-Chapelle and heading for the gap south of the Dutch enclave about Maestricht. The impression acquired during this flying visit was that for all practical purposes the Germans had everything ready for an immediate invasion of Belgium and Luxemburg when the crisis arrived, that they were simply awaiting the fall of the flag, that when war came they meant to make their main advance through Belgium, going wide, and that pickelhaubes would be as the sands of the sea for number well beyond Liège within a very few days of the outbreak of hostilities. On getting home I compared notes with the Intelligence Section of the General Staff which was especially interested in these territories, but found little to tell them that they did not know already except with regard to a few very recently completed railway constructions. The General Staff hugged no illusions. They were not so silly as to suppose that the Teuton proposed to respect treaties in the event of the upheaval that was sure to come ere long.
Having a house at Fleet that summer, I cycled over to beyond Camberley one day, just at the stage when coming events were beginning to cast their shadows before after the Serajevo assassinations, to watch the Aldershot Command at work, and talked long with many members of the Command and with some of the Staff College personnel who had turned out to see the show. Some of them—e.g. Lieut.-Colonels W. Thwaites and J. T. Burnett-Stuart and Major (or was it Captain?) W. E. Ironside—were to go far within the next five years. But there were also others whom I met that day for the last time—Brigadier-General Neil Findlay, commanding the artillery, who had been in the same room with me at the "Shop," and Lieut.-Colonel Adrian Grant-Duff of the Black Watch, excusing his presence in the firing-line on the plea that he "really must see how his lads worked through the woodlands"; both had made the supreme sacrifice in France before the leaves were off the trees. How many are alive and unmaimed to-day of those fighting men of all ranks who buzzed about so cheerily amid the heather and the pine trees that afternoon, and who melted away so silently out of Aldershot a very few days later?
The clouds thereafter gathered thicker from day to day, and on Friday morning, the 31st of July, I received a letter from General Henry Wilson, sent on from my town address, asking me to come and breakfast with him on the following day. I was going down to Winchester to see the Home Counties (Territorial) Division complete a long march from the east on their way to Salisbury Plain, and it happened to be inconvenient to go up to town that night, so I wired to Wilson to say I would call at his house on the Sunday. On getting back, late, to Fleet I however found a peremptory summons from him saying I must come and see him next day, and I went up in the morning. One could not foresee that that breakfast in Draycott Place to which I had been bidden was to take rank as a historic meal. Mr. Maxse has told the story of it in the pages of the National Review, and of how the movement was there started by which the Unionist leaders were got together from various quarters to bring pressure on the Government not to leave France in the lurch, a movement which culminated in Mr. Bonar Law's famous letter to Mr. Asquith.
On meeting General Wilson at the War Office about noon he told me that I was to take his place as Director of Military Operations in case of mobilization, and he asked me to join as soon as possible. He further made me acquainted with the political situation, with the very unsatisfactory attitude which a proportion of the Cabinet were disposed to take up, and with the steps which Messrs. George Lloyd, Amery, Maxse, and others were taking to mobilize the Opposition leaders and to compel the Government to play the game. In the last conversation that I ever had with Lord Roberts, two or three days before the great Field-Marshal paid the visit to the Front which was so tragically cut short, he spoke enthusiastically of the services of Lloyd (now Sir George) on this occasion. In consequence of what I had learnt I joined at the War Office for duty on the Monday, although the arrangement was irregular and purely provisional for the moment, seeing that it had not yet been decided whether mobilization was to be ordained or not. But I found Wilson in much more buoyant mood after the week-end of anxiety, for he believed that Mr. Bonar Law's letter had proved the decisive factor. By this time we moreover knew that Germany had already violated the neutrality of Luxemburg and was threatening Belgium openly.
I ought to mention here that this appointment to the post of Director of Military Operations came as a complete surprise—my not having been warned well in advance had been due to an oversight; up to within a few months earlier, when I had ceased to belong to the Reserve of Officers, having passed the age-limit for colonels, my fate in the event of general mobilization was to have been something high up on the staff of the Home Defence Army. One could entertain no illusions. Heavy responsibilities were involved in taking up such an appointment on the eve of war. After five years of civil life it was a large order to find myself suddenly thrust into such a job and to be called upon to take up charge of a War Office Directorate which I knew was overloaded. Ever since 1904, ever since the date when this Directorate had been set up by the Esher Committee as one item in the reconstitution of the office as a whole and when my section of the old Intelligence Division had been absorbed into it, I had insisted that this composite branch was an overburdened and improperly constituted one.
For the Esher triumvirate had amalgamated "operations" and "intelligence," while they had deposited "home defence" in the Military Training Directorate. It was an absurd arrangement in peace-time, and one that was wholly unadapted to the conditions of a great war. Lord Esher and his colleagues would seem, however, to have been actuated by a fear lest the importance of home defence should overshadow that of preparation for oversea warfare if the two sets of duties were in one hand, and, inasmuch as they were making a start with the General Staff at Headquarters and bearing in mind former tendencies, they may have been right. They, moreover, hardly realized perhaps that intelligence must always be the handmaid of operations, and that it is in the interest of both that they should be kept quite distinct. It was natural that the first Chief of the General Staff to be appointed, Sir N. Lyttelton, should have hesitated to overset an organization which had been so recently laid down and which had been accepted by the Government as it stood, even if he recognized its unsuitability; but I have never been able to understand how his successors, Sir W. Nicholson and Sir J. French, failed to effect the rearrangement of duties which a sound system of administration imperatively called for. That my predecessors, Generals "Jimmy" Grierson, Spencer Ewart, and Henry Wilson, made no move in the matter is rendered the more intelligible to me by the fact that I took no steps in the matter myself, even when the need for a reorganization was driven home by the conditions brought about in the War Office during the early months of the Great War. Somehow one feels no irresistible impulse to abridge one's functions and to depreciate one's importance by one's own act, to lop off one's own members, so to speak. But when Sir W. Robertson turned up at the end of 1915 to become C.I.G.S. he straightway split my Directorate in two, and he thus put things at last on a proper footing.
The incongruity of the Esher organization had, it may be mentioned, been well illustrated by an episode that occurred very shortly after the reconstitution of the War Office had been carried into effect in the spring of 1904. Under the distribution of duties then laid down, my section of the Operations Directorate dealt inter alia, with questions of coast defence in connection with our stations abroad, while a section of the Military Training Directorate dealt inter alia with questions of coast defence in connection with our stations at home. It came about that the two sections issued instructions simultaneously about the same thing, and the instructions issued by the two sections were absolutely antagonistic. The consequence was that coast defence people at Malta came to be doing the thing one way, while those at Portsmouth came to be doing it exactly the opposite way, and that the War Office managed to give itself away and to expose itself to troublesome questionings. The blunder no doubt could be put down to lack of co-ordination; but the primary cause was the existence of a faulty organization under which two different branches at Headquarters were dealing with the one subject.
The earliest experiences in the War Office in August 1914 amounted, it must be confessed, almost to a nightmare. There were huge maps working on rollers in my spacious office, and in particular there was one of vast dimensions portraying what even then was coming to be called the Western Front. During the week or so that elapsed before G.H.Q. of the Expeditionary Force proceeded to the theatre of war, its cream thought fit to spend the hours of suspense in creeping on tiptoe in and out of my apartment, clambering on and off a table which fronted this portentous map, discussing strategical problems in blood-curdling whispers, and every now and then expressing an earnest hope that this sort of thing was not a nuisance. It was a most intolerable nuisance, but they were persons of light and leading who could not be addressed in appropriate terms. As hour to hour passed, and H.M. Government could not make up its mind to give the word "go" to the Expeditionary Force, G.H.Q.'s language grew stronger and stronger until the walls resounded with expletives. It was not easy to concentrate one's attention upon questions arising in the performance of novel duties in a time of grave emergency under such conditions, and it was a genuine relief when the party took itself off to France.
One was too busy to keep notes of what went on in those days and I am not sure of exact dates, but I think that it was on the 6th of August that a wire, which seemed on the face of it to be trustworthy, came to hand from a German port, to the effect that transports and troops were being collected there to convey a military force somewhither. This message caused the Government considerable concern and very nearly delayed the despatch of the Expeditionary Force across the Channel. One was too new to the business to take
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