Download Comparing and contrasting the nature of Australian

Premier’s Visy Industries History Teacher Gallipoli
Scholarship
“Lions Led by Wombats?”
Comparing and contrasting the nature
of Australian military leadership at
Gallipoli in 1915 to that on the Western
Front in 1918. Did they learn their
lessons?
Philip Sheldrick
Robert Townson High School
Sponsored by
The Focus
This study tour was undertaken in order to assess changes in the nature of Australian
military leadership at Gallipoli in 1915 to that on the Western Front in 1918, a topic that is
at present neglected, but should be the subject of great debate in both NSW School
Certificate History and Higher School Certificate Modern History.
Douglas Haig was 'brilliant to the top of his Army boots' said David Lloyd George and his
view sums up the attitude of many people towards Haig and other British generals of
World War One. They were, supposedly, 'donkeys' moustachioed incompetents who sent
the 'lions' of the Infantry to their deaths in futile battles. Many popular books, films and
television programs echo this belief. The casualty list and the bloody stalemate of the
Western Front seem to add credence to this version of events. But other interpretations of
the work of British officers have emerged in recent years. Australian troops, while known
for their skill and spirit on the battlefields, also gained the reputation for not always being
deferential to their superiors whether Australian or another nationality. Much of their
dissatisfaction was probably due to the harsh living conditions they endured on the front
lines, while higher ranks often had more comfortable surroundings.
Many, like their British counterparts, lost faith in the high-command that led thousands to
their deaths:
I am fed up... With our dopes of Officers they are the biggest curs ... Some of them they get
decorations by getting men killed for nothing ... little wonder the men go mad at times.
Letter, Private Ronald Simpson, 29 July 1918.
So this study tour was an attempt to reassess the work of senior Australian officers in the
light of the re-interpretation of the actions of British officers that is presently taking place
in the United Kingdom. My tour gave me the opportunity to compare and contrast the
approach of the Australian Officer Corps at Gallipoli in 1915 with their approach, when
given a degree of autonomy, during the decisive battles of 1918. I have a great interest in
this military history debate for both personal and academic reasons. I was particularly
impressed, academically, at the groundbreaking work being done on First World War
leadership when I attended The Chief of Army's Military History Conference 1918
Defining Victory. I also had an even stronger personal interest in the debate about
leadership as my grandfather was a participant in these final campaigns and was gassed at
the battle of Mont St Quentin in 1918.
The Study Tour
I spent much of my study leave physically walking the open countryside of northern
France and Gallipoli, the battlefields and the monuments. The rest of the time was spent
in the archives of Canberra, Singapore, Berlin and London – especially the Imperial War
Museum in London.
In France, to my dismay, I found that I was investigating a war long forgotten by the
local population. Even though northern France was devestated by the Great War, those
living there now have let it go. The monuments are still there, beautifully cared for, and
so are English, Australian, New Zealand, American and Canadian tourists, but the local
population just doesn’t seem interested beyond the tourist income generated. On
enquiring at the Lille Tourist Office about any information or maps to nearby World
War One sites I was greeted with a well meaning laugh that said – why would anyone
bother? Very sad, because ironically the tourist office was located in the town’s massive
First World War Memorial.
On the Western Front, enormous battles damaged or destroyed cities, towns and
valuable agricultural and industrial land, which were all rebuilt and restored after the war.
The battlefields, cemeteries and memorials coexist with the urban or rural landscape and
lifestyle. A cemetery can be metres from a motorway, or just down the road from a busy
brick factory. There were times when I wasn’t quite brave enough to seek the enemy
strongpoint marked on my map because it was in the middle of a still very much in use
farm. But at Gallipoli there were no such distractions. I saw some other visitors at Anzac,
but, because it wasn’t yet Anzac Day, our small group had it all to ourselves. Other than
Anzac Day, the CWGC gardeners outnumber everyone else. Compared to the Western
Front battlefields, the compact size and precipitous nature of Anzac also came as a
shock. There aren't many signposts, but the one on the road near Gaba Tepe directed us
north along the coast to Anzac Cove and the Suvla plains beyond, and then inland along
Pine Ridge to Lone Pine, Quinn's Post, The Nek and Chunuk Bair.
We didn’t have much trouble finding most of the places we had heard about. But we
didn’t really understand Anzac until we got off the road. We followed the footsteps of
the first Australians ashore on 25 April, climbing Ari Burnu and Plugge's Plateau, and
walked as far up Shrapnel Gully as our bushcraft and stamina permitted. We saw the
remains of trenches on Russell's Top and Walker's Ridge, and struggling through the
scrub to Pope's Hill had a panoramic view of the Allied front line from The Nek down
to the 400 Plateau, and Bolton's Ridge and Gaba Tepe beyond. On the way up to
Chunuk Bair we passed Baby 700 and Battleship Hill, and the walk from Chunuk Bair
down Rhododendron and Cheshire Ridges to The Farm revealed the nightmare of
wooded slopes that challenged attackers and defenders in August 1915.
Except for the farmers and a few holiday cottages, Suvla was an isolated and lonely place.
We didn’t see any, but our guide warned of packs of dogs roaming here, and I suddenly
remembered just how far from home I really was. Kiretch Tepe was a difficult climb, and
Lala Baba an interesting drive along sandy tracks with a few creek crossings, really better
suited to four wheel drives. Most other parts of Suvla were easy to get around. But
between Anzac and Suvla, Taylor's Gap, the Aghyl Dere, Australia Valley, Damakjelik
Bair and Hill 60 it was not easy going. Monash's 4th Brigade traversed this wild country
by night, but even by day we were tripped and tangled and snagged by head-high scrub.
Helles was different again. This was rolling country, mainly farmland now, with some
houses and a few shops, and cars and schoolchildren and tractors and olive trees. It was
dry, but reminded me a little of the Somme around Pozières or le Hamel. It's easy to see
how V and W Beaches turned out to be such deathtraps, and Achi Baba's head and
shoulders overlook just about everything at the end of the peninsula. But even the
sunbleached severity of the French cemetery at Morto Bay couldn’t disguise the essential
homeliness and serenity of Helles.
We visited the two museums. The Gaba Tepe museum was formal, while the one in
Alcitepe was a community one, staffed by volunteers. Both had many of the touching
relics that are regularly uncovered in the fields. When we left the road just about
anywhere at Gallipoli, sooner or later we found human remains. We were told that the
forestry workers, in their cycle of planting pine seedlings then chopping them down
when they grow, never remove the bones, but instead sweep them into little bundles.
Somewhere, even today, someone probably still mourns the life that these little mounds
of bones that we regularly stumbled upon during our many walks.
A Brief Summary of the Research
There were four grades of general officers in the First AIF, these being from least to
most senior: Brigadier General, Major General, Lieutenant General and General. As with
all other officer ranks, they could be temporary or substantive, except for brigadier
general, which was always temporary. Temporary rank was generally granted while an
officer was serving in a particular capacity. When the job lapsed, the officer returned to
his substantive rank. This prevented an accumulation of officers at high grades without
posts for them. The rank of Brigadier General was unusual in that it was only held as a
temporary appointment in the AIF. Seniority was on the basis of the rank and date upon
which one had been promoted within the AIF. Where an officer had not been promoted
within the AIF, regular army officers carried their seniority according to their
appointment date within the AMF. Brevets were a kind of long term higher duties,
granting higher rank without pay or allowances, meaning that they could wear the badges
of the rank. Sometimes the government just used them as an excuse to avoid paying its
officers at the full rate. But nonetheless they were highly sought after by regular officers,
who felt that they gave them the inside track for substantive promotion to the rank.
There were some British and New Zealand officers on secondment in Australia before
the war who were granted AMF rank and seniority, but not always the same rank and
seniority as that of the army from which they came. Some of these officers joined the
AIF in Australia. The five that became general officers were: S. M. Anderson, C. S.
Davies, D. J. Glasfurd and E. G. Sinclair MacLagan of the British army and W. L. H.
Burgess of the New Zealand Staff Corps. Only one British officer joined the AIF
overseas: Lieutenant General W. R. Birdwood. There were 68 AIF generals in total: 1 full
general, 4 lieutenant generals, 12 major generals and 51 brigadier generals
The usual role of a lieutenant general was command of a corps. This was a huge
formation; the Australian Corps in France was normally fielding around 200 000 men in
1918. Corps became more important as the war went on. In 1914, corps were just a
grouping of divisions, and their only permanent units were a headquarters and a signal
company. By 1918, so-called corps troops (those troops allocated to the corps but not
one of its divisions) numbered over 50 000. Corps were the major tactical and
operational formation, but had no input into strategic matters. Under British doctrine,
corps was responsible for the administration of the area in which it operated and during
the war the responsibilities of a corps headquarters grew considerably but its logistical
"tail" remained smaller than its fighting "teeth" -- something by no means true of an
army, the next formation up. In addition to the commander, the corps headquarters also
had posts for five brigadier generals, for a chief of staff (BGGS), engineers,
administration, artillery (GOCRA) and heavy artillery (BGHA).A major general normally
commanded a division. A Great War division was a sizeable formation of 20 000 men
but they rarely operated alone. Instead they formed part of a corps. As the war went on,
the task of a division commander became more complex but also easier to perform, as
staffs, techniques and tactics were developed, and corps increasing took over more of the
load. Division Headquarters was a complex organisation.
When the AIF was formed in 1914, infantry and light horse brigade commanders and the
divisional artillery commander were graded as colonels. They were re-graded as brigadier
generals on 1 July 1915 in order to bring them into line with their British counterparts,
with seniority backdated to the date of their assumption of brigade command. This
affected (with seniority date) Colonels J. W. McCay (15 August 1914), J. J. T. Hobbs (15
August 1914),
E. G. Sinclair-MacLagan (15 August 1914), H. N. MacLaurin (15 August 1914), J.
Monash (15 September 1914), G. de L. Ryrie (19 September 1914), F. G. Hughes (17
October 1914) and H. G. Chauvel (10 December 1914). MacLaurin had already been
killed on 27 April 1915, and was promoted posthumously.
In essence, much of the warfare that these officers were engaged in at Gallipoli and on
the Western Front was essentially a form of siege warfare. The British and Australian
commanders sought a means of breaking through the static defences of the Turk and
German trenches, hoping that a decisive breach would result in a return to open warfare.
The Gallipoli attack and the early set-piece battles of the Western Front were doomed
attempts to achieve this decisive breakthrough. It was not until August 1918 that the
British and Australian officers reached a state of understanding of the nature of trench
warfare and had created a technical proficiency in successfully assaulting a trenchline.
The solution to this problem was the section rush. One section of a platoon could pour
fire on the German defenders to suppress the level of defensive fire while other sections
moved forward. These sections would then take a position and continue firing while
other sections moved forward leap-frogging other section. The critical factor in this tactic
was the use of the Lewis Gun, a portable light machine gun that could maintain a high
rate of suppressive fire in support of rifle fire. Grenades fired from rifles were also useful
in assaulting trenches. Once sections got within close range, the use of hand-thrown
Mills bombs, followed up by bayonet charges, often enabled a trench line to be taken.
Later the Germans developed defences in considerable depth, with the use of
“pillboxes”, concrete structures containing machine guns. Suppressing fire from a
section's rifle fire and light machine guns could enable men from another section to
creep close to neutralise pillboxes with grenades through the firing slit or back entrance.
This deceptively simple approach had many implications. Firstly, it had to be practised,
not only at a platoon level with its four sections, but also at company and battalion level.
This tactic placed a premium on the leadership at the platoon commander and noncommissioned officer level, as these men were the ones who would actually direct the
section rush during a battle. Thus the leadership and training necessary for these men,
and the trust that a battlefield commander had to have in his junior leadership, would
need time to evolve.
Historians such as Garry Sheffield, Robin Prior and Robin Neillands have been
examining the popular conception of “chateau generals”. These historians argue that
commanders such as Field Marshals Sir Julian Byng and Sir Herbert Plumer made
strenuous efforts to analyse the emerging nature of trench warfare and find ways to
overcome it. Working with Divisional Commanders such as Australia’s John Monash and
the Canadian Arthur Currie, these commanders sought ways to break the deadlock
through increasingly sophisticated fire artillery plans supporting more innovative infantry
techniques and, where possible, employing emerging military technology such as tanks
and aircraft. As historian Chris Pugsley has expressed it,
“Victory in battle depended on maintaining the balance between the artillery and its ability to
‘direct massive artillery' onto the enemy's position, suppressing enemy artillery fire while providing
artillery cover to enable infantry to advance, and the ability of trained infantry who because of their
‘strength, condition, training, morale or state of discipline' had the skills to fight their way forward
from bunker to bunker.”
The essential problem was that although these tactics could achieve a break-in to the
enemy line, they could not achieve a break through. To do so would have required the
immediate availability of forces (or a technology) to accomplish such a breakthrough.
This was not possible because the break-ins were often on a limited scale, and the
problem of battlefield communication meant that commanders could not be certain of
success in committing cavalry for the pursuit of a retreating enemy. Tanks were too slow
and unreliable. The reality was that any breakthroughs were limited to the pace of
infantry and the ability of artillery to support them. Aerial reconnaissance was helpful,
but the delay in passing messages to a commander meant that any opportunity for a
breakthrough might be lost. The potential for a breakthrough remained, but it was not
until late 1918 that the British were able to devise a multifaceted weapons system to
finally create a breakthrough.
Breaking through trench lines on the Western Front was by necessity a battle of tacticallevel, small-scale manoeuvre, but because it was not one of the sweeping breakthroughs
this manoeuvre has not been recognised for what it was. Whether this was clearly
understood at the time is a moot point. It is possible that Haig and his senior generals
did understand this, but that British politicians did not. In his book, The Great War
Generals on the Western Front, Robin Neillands argues that British senior commanders
understood that a significant advantage generally lay with the defenders, and that any
effort to defeat the Germans was always going to be costly in terms of men's lives.
However, he argues quite convincingly that they did as much as could be expected of any
general in the circumstances of the time to come up with ideas to achieve local victories.
A decisive breakthrough was never a realistic possibility, despite Haig's optimism.
Rawlinson's doctrine of “bite and hold” – effectively seize a small amount of territory,
hold it against the inevitable German counter-attacks and then seize some more territory
– was the only practical approach. The Australian Divisions were to become effective
exponents of Rawlinson's “bite and hold” strategy.
The German defeat in March-April 1918 had put them onto the defensive again, but the
huge losses of the offensive could not easily be remedied. War weariness and the erosive
impact of the Allied blockade of Germany had led to much domestic hardship. This
increased agitation from groups within Germany for an end to the war. All this impacted
on the ability of the Germans to resist the increasingly confident Allies, bolstered by the
arrival of American troops flooding into France. After their defeat the Germans retreated
to the Hindenburg line, a formidable series of trench lines. In August, the Allies launched
a series of attacks in what would become known as the "Hundred Days". This term
refers to the period when the Allies forced the Germans onto the defensive,
systematically forcing them back from one position to another, maintaining relentless
pressure by continually shifting the point of attack from one part of the German trench
line to another. The Germans could neither anticipate the exact position of the Allied
attacks nor prevent them from seizing a trench line once they did attack. The static siege
warfare of the previous four years had finally been broken, replaced by a more open
form or warfare that eventually forced the Germans to capitulate.
What had evolved within the Australian Divisions in particular, and in the British Army
in general, is what is known today as a weapons system. This is a planned systematic
coordination of different weapons of the military in order to achieve a military objective.
By 1918 Monash's had developed a weapons system, whereby the assault on an objective
was systematically planned, involving a coordinated approach between the artillery
(whose role might vary between an initial bombardment by heavy artillery to continuous
support by the lighter field artillery in assisting advancing infantry), the infantry
(employing a variety of infantry skills based around the “fire and manoeuvre” tactics),
and air power, both for observation of enemy moves and attack. The timing of attacks by
the different armies created uncertainty among the Germans about how best to employ
what reserves were left.
The result was a fluid series of attacks that not only systematically advanced but also kept
the Germans off-balance in attempting to anticipate the Allies' next move. The key to
this new weapons system was planning, logistics and skilled staff work by Australian
officers who along with their British, New Zealand and Canadian counterparts had
learned and evolved their tactics since the Gallipoli disaster of 1915. The Germans had
no answer to this weapons system. As the advances were made, they were exploited by
the Allies changing the focus of attack to another part of the Hindenburg Line. In this
way, momentum was maintained until the Germans were forced to seek an armistice.
The era of trench warfare was finished.
Bibliography
1. Macleod, J., Reconsidering Gallipoli, (Manchester University Press, Manchster, 2004).
2. Neillands, R., The Great War Generals at the Western Front 1914-1918, (Robinson,
London, 1999).
3. Pugsley, C., The ANZAC Experience – New Zealand, Australia & Empire in the First World
War, (Reed Military, Auckland, 2004).