The Opinions of German and British Military Experts—The Old and New Methods of Transport and Supply—How Troops in the Field are Fed.
Although we, in Great Britain, have developed the industrial motor vehicle almost entirely with a view to the improvement of communications in time of peace, various circumstances, which will be referred to in more detail in a later chapter, have led other countries to fasten their attention more firmly on to the application of mechanical power to military needs. Very considerable sums of money have been expended during the past five or six years with this end in view, and such expenditure could only have been justified if a full study of the probable course of a great war under modern conditions had led to the conclusion that the motor is something more than an accessory and convenience, but is rather one of the prime essentials of success. In order to prove that this view is, in fact, held by those who have devoted their whole time to the study of modern warfare, one need go no further than the now famous or notorious book on Germany and the Next War by General F. von Bernhardi:
“In a future European war ‘masses’ will be employed to an extent unprecedented in any previous one. Weapons will be used whose deadliness will exceed all previous experience. More effective and varied means of communication will be available than were known in earlier wars. These three momentous factors will mark the war of the future.”
From this statement it is clear that, even if only improvement in means of communication is considered, the motor vehicle forms one of the three greatest factors in moulding the course of modern warfare. Railways have been available in many previous wars, and there can be no doubt that the reference to more effective and varied means of communication is occasioned almost entirely by the development of motor vehicles suitable for use in the transport and supply columns. Simultaneously, both of the other prime factors are affected by the introduction of motor vehicles. Road motors can assist materially in massing men rapidly at any desired point, and mechanical power is absolutely essential for the transport of guns of enormous calibre, the employment of which in the field is only in this way rendered possible.
Quoting again from the same authority we get an idea of the bearing of our subject upon a military theory now universally accepted as true.
“The commander who can carry out all operations quicker than the enemy, and can concentrate and employ greater masses in a narrow space than they can, will always be in a position to collect a numerically superior force in the decisive direction; if he controls the more effective troops he will gain decisive successes against one part of the hostile army, and will be able to exploit them against other divisions of it before the enemy can gain equivalent advantages in other parts of the field.... If the assailant can advance in the decisive direction with superior numbers, and can win the day, because the enemy cannot utilise his numerical superiority, there is a possibility of an ultimate victory over the arithmetically stronger army.”
Taking this statement in conjunction with the well-known German theory that safety only lies in offensive warfare, we realise immediately the incalculable importance of the introduction of any new system which will give to large bodies of men the powers of more free and more rapid movement. When armies are increased beyond certain numerical limits, it becomes absolutely necessary for them to depend upon supplies brought up regularly from the rear, and not upon the uncertainties of living upon the country.
“Improved means of communication facilitate the handling and feeding of large masses, but tie them down to railway systems and main roads, and must, if they fail or break down in the course of a campaign, aggravate the difficulties, because the troops were accustomed to their use, and the commanders counted upon them.”
We have here a complete recognition of two most important points. The first is, that the use of motors in the transport and supply columns, if successfully carried on, represents an enormous advantage, which may even allow ultimate victory to come to a numerically inferior army. In the second place, we have the acknowledgment that any breakdown in the service for which the motor vehicles are responsible, will be fatal to success.
A military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph has recently emphasised the same point. He has pointed out that hitherto the massing of an army of about a quarter of a million men has represented the probable limit of possibilities, and that even then such numbers could only be massed for a short period. The Russo-Japanese war, in which larger numbers were engaged, has by no means disproved this theory, since it partook of the nature of a siege rather than that of a field campaign. At the present moment, the enormous numbers dealt with envolve certain limitations in movement, the scope of which is dictated by the distribution of railways and of roads. Without motor transport, the rate of movement of huge armies would be necessarily very slow, the radius of action from railhead would be small, and the daily movement of the troops would be strictly circumscribed for more reasons than one. The effect of the introduction of motor transport is somewhat similar to that which would be obtained if the railway could, in a few hours, be extended in any direction along any made road for a distance of about forty or fifty miles. The delivery of supplies, as it were in retail, to the troops must still be carried out by horse transport, since motor lorries are not suitable for continuous use where made roads do not exist. The comparatively slow movement of horsed vehicles even now affects the rate of progress of an army. When huge bodies of men are in motion, the depth from the front to the rear of the army is very considerable, and at the end of the day the supplies have to be brought up from the rear to the front in time to enable the whole force to be fed.
PART OF BIG FLEET OF “ALBION” LORRIES PURCHASED BY THE BRITISH WAR OFFICE.
A GROUP OF BRITISH “BERNA” LORRIES TAKEN OVER BY THE WAR DEPARTMENT.
A FLEET OF “THORNYCROFT” LORRIES REQUISITIONED FOR SERVICE.
A FLEET OF “HALLFORD” LORRIES CALLED UP IMMEDIATELY ON THE OUTBREAK OF WAR.
The use of transport and supply motors does not amount merely to the employment of a large number of these machines for miscellaneous duties, but rather corresponds to bringing into existence a new link in the chain of the main system of supply. The existence of railways behind the army is assumed. At some safe point along the railway is formed the base, and from this base stores are brought up to a point known as “railhead,” This is the point where, for the time being, military rail traffic ceases. It is evident that railhead is a variable quantity, liable to move forward or backward from day to day. The main accumulation of stores is at the base, and the stock at railhead at any moment consists only of sufficient to meet one day’s requirements. Before the introduction of motor transport, the whole of the supplies from railhead had to be taken by horsed vehicle, and subsequently distributed in the same way among the troops. Under the new method, motor lorries carry the supplies up to a place called “re-filling point,” which is a movable point situated from day to day in the most convenient position possible to arrange, with a view to the distribution of supplies by horsed vehicle to the army.
In the old system, the transport vehicles worked in echelons. The first of these, with the baggage and supplies for a day, followed so closely behind the troops as to be able to join them every night. The next, half a day’s march behind, carried supplies sufficient to replenish the first column daily. Further back again were other echelons carrying on the same scheme. This meant that the whole of the roads for enormous distances behind the forces were encumbered by transport. Between railhead and the army there were many links involving endless possibilities of confusion, and consequently shortage in supplies. Moreover, food came up to the troops very slowly from the base, and it was impossible to supply a regular stock of fresh meat and bread.
The advantage of the new system is based on the speed capacity of the motor vehicle, a supplementary point being an enormous reduction in the length of a column carrying a given quantity of supplies. It is, however, the higher speed of the motor which has the greatest effect, since it enables many columns to be replaced by one. In the words of Colonel Paul: “One echelon of mechanical transport can do the work of five echelons of horse transport, and one column will suffice to connect the horse transport immediately behind the troops with the railway.”
The result is to facilitate operations of troops up to a distance from railhead represented by half of a full day’s work for the motors. The simplest way of appreciating the result obtained is to take an actual example. Under the new system, on, let us say, Tuesday evening, the soldier at the front is provided with a hot meal of fresh meat, cooked by the regimental travelling kitchens on the march. This food had been handed over to the kitchens on Monday evening by the distributing horsed vehicles, which had received it sometime during Monday at the re-filling point a few miles back from the motor supply column, which had left railhead perhaps 50 miles from the front in the small hours of Monday morning. Previously, the supplies had been brought down by rail from the base, and in this way the food which the soldiers are eating on Tuesday night, was probably to be found in the neighbourhood of the base on Sunday afternoon in the shape of live animals.
Working out the scheme from a rather different point of view, the soldier on the Tuesday night is in possession of Wednesday’s supply of bread and cheese, and an emergency ration of preserved meat in case of any delays or breakdown in the transport service. The horsed vehicles are at the time empty, and are returning to meet the motors at re-filling point. The motors by this time are back at railhead waiting for Wednesday’s supplies to be discharged from the railway trains. At about three o’clock on Wednesday morning the motors will be loaded and ready to start. Their speed capacity will enable them easily to catch up with the distributing horsed vehicles before the end of Wednesday’s march, and to tranship their supplies at re-filling point for distribution on Wednesday evening.
The whole system is, in reality, very simple, and it enables large armies in the field to be supplied daily with fresh meat and bread instead of being dependent on food brought up slowly and in many stages, and for that reason necessarily of a character less nutritious, and much more liable in the long run to cause illness among the men. At the same time, the big carrying capacity of the motor has served to clear the roads behind the army of an enormous block of vehicles essential in the past, but now no longer necessary. In connection with this point, Colonel R. H. Ewart, D.S.O., representing the Indian Office at the Imperial Motor Transport Conference of 1913, gave some very interesting figures, which may be quoted as an extreme case:
“Up to 1910 the reports show that there were nearly five-and-a-half million bullock carts in British India alone, and in all our wars up to date, we have had to mobilise a very large number of these carts for our line of communication work. We find that when moving in large bodies, the utmost speed we can rely upon is about one-and-a-half miles an hour. We have worked out that it takes six bullock carts to move in eighty days what one 2-ton lorry can transport in ten. The bullock carts take up twice the room on the road for a given load, and in the matter of establishment—a question which you will all realise in the time of war is a very serious one—it takes thirty-five men, drivers, artificers and supervisors to look after what one man could do with a lorry.”
From these figures it will be seen what an enormous saving is effected by the use of motors, even if we only take the point of view of the feeding, maintenance and payment of the men actually employed in the transport columns themselves.
The impossibility of imposing upon horsed vehicles the necessity for gaining fifty or even thirty miles in the course of a day, in order to catch up by the evening with an advancing army after leaving railhead in the morning, is perfectly obvious. The truth of the statement already made that the use of motors for transport and supply work is a necessity and not merely a convenience in modern warfare, is thus made clear, and under the circumstances, readers who are perhaps more attracted by the more showy, but less essential, uses of motors in war, will understand that a consideration of the subject of this book must necessarily be devoted very largely to the organisation and matériel of the supply columns.
The class of vehicle most commonly favoured for the work of feeding troops in the field is the 3-ton petrol lorry, capable of covering eighty or ninety miles in a day, and if need be of travelling under fairly favourable conditions at twenty miles an hour. Behind very mobile troops, such as cavalry, preference is sometimes given to lighter lorries rated to carry 30 cwt. or 2 tons, and capable of rather higher rates of speed and rather bigger daily mileages. Some European Powers favour for general work lorries carrying 4 or 5 tons, and in addition capable of drawing an extra 2 tons or so upon a trailer. In every case, the internal combustion vehicle is preferred on account of its independence upon frequent renewals of fuel and water supplies. However, steam tractors are often used for various classes of specially heavy work, as, for example, for drawing the travelling workshops which have to be established at the movable base of the supply columns at railhead.