Now all roads lead to France and heavy is the tread
Of the living; but the dead returning lightly dance.
Edward Thomas, Roads

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Everyone's Plan for 1915: Let's Get the Hell Out of These Trenches, Part II—New Ideas That Backfired


Part II: Some New Ideas and Their Results


Docking of a French Troop Ship in Salonika (Greece) 1915

Take the War to the Balkans?

In both Paris and London, the same reflections were underway. There was total stalemate in the west and it was unlikely that the Germans could be beaten. So why not look for another theatre of operations in the Balkans, resume a mobile war and defeat the weaker force, namely Austria-Hungary so as to isolate Germany and then attack it on its southern flank? To do this, considerable forces would be needed, at least 500,000 troops in Greece, in Salonica, to go back up through Macedonia and join Serbia which was still holding out against Austria. Finally, together with the Russians, launch a major operation that would crush the Austro-Hungarian forces. On paper, the plan was perfect. Especially since it was as much political as military. Indeed, when the neutral Balkan states saw the likely defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they would no doubt want to join in the war to get their share of the spoils: Italy, which was eyeing up Trentino and Istria, Romania, who dreamed of seizing Transylvania, would no doubt join in and Bulgaria and Greece would almost certainly do the same. This idea was supported by Generals de Castelnau and Franchet d'Esperey in October 1914, but also by such politicians as Aristide Briand in France and David Lloyd George in Britain.

But here too there was opposition. . . and no small opposition either: Lord Kitchener, his Majesty's War Minister, after showing an interest in this project for an army of the Orient that could change the course of the war, changed his mind. There were already not enough men and equipment to supply the Western Front so he was not about to get involved in a distant and expensive Balkan adventure.

But it was Joseph Joffre, the French Generalissimo, who was the most hostile to the project. He, with his annoying habit of promising victory every three months, was sure he could beat the Germans in the spring and so he needed all the men and guns he could get.  And then, beating lowly Austria was a bad idea in his view: "It isn't Austria we have to beat, it's Germany", he cried on 8 January 1915.

The disastrous Dardanelles adventure [more below] had dire consequences: not only did it parasitise the army of the Orient project, which was to land in Greece and join the Serbian front, but it gave second thoughts to the neutral Balkan states. With the exception of Italy who decided to intervene—it signed the Alliance Treaty on 26 April, at a time when it was thought that there could be a victory in the Dardanelles—Greece and Romania who had been in favour were now suddenly cooling off and returning to a more prudent wait and see attitude. Bulgaria, which had been pro-German since the Balkan war of 1913 which gave Serbia an advantage at its expense, came out of its reserve when it saw that the French and English were unable to defeat the Ottomans. It then secretly joined the Central Powers during the summer, and on 5 October, entered the conflict by catching Serbia in a pincer move at a time when Serbia was struggling against a major Austro-German offensive. The Serbian army was beaten and forced to retreat through Albania and the country was fully handed over to the invaders.

At the same time, the governments forced high commands to create an army of the Orient to rescue the Serbs. When it landed in Salonica, in October, it was too late: Serbia was already collapsing. What a beautiful idea it was at the beginning of 1915, this idea of the army of the Orient but the delay in setting it up made it completely inoperative. At the end of the year, not only was Serbia wiped off the map but Romania and Greece shrunk back into neutrality while Bulgaria had fallen into the enemy camp: the procrastination by the Allies and their dramatic Dardanelles detour had handed over the Balkans to the Central Powers.


Deal with Russia First?


Austrian Infantry Marching Through a Polish Village


While Falkenhayn accepted the idea of a major 1915 offensive against Russia, he did not have any illusions about the outcome: he did not think Germany could floor the Russians but it could [possibly] inflict such losses on them that they would agree to sign a separate peace. In any case, there was no question of him strengthening the popularity of the Hindenburg-Ludendorff tandem so he entrusted the offensive to general Mackensen who also commanded the Austrian troops placed alongside the Germans.

During the entire month of April, troops were concentrated in the greatest secrecy along a line about 50 kilometres long and over 2,000 guns were put in place with no less than one million shells. Never had such a formidable battle been prepared. On 1 May, the bombardment pounded Russian positions all day long. It was an awesome deluge of fire. The next day, when the assault was ordered, the Russian lines collapsed and Russian soldiers surrendered in droves or ran away as fast as they could. With barely one rifle for every three soldiers, they had good reason to avoid combat! In one month, the Germans took 300,000 prisoners. And nothing seemed to be able to stop Mackensen's advance: the Russian steamroller was no more than a joke. On 4 August, Warsaw was invaded and all of Russian Poland fell into the hands of the Germans. But as they progressed, the Germans were stretching their supply lines while the Russians were tightening theirs.

The offensive ended in September: a lot more men and guns would be needed to march on Petrograd through the Baltic countries. Hindenburg and Ludendorff were crying out for these but Falkenhayn could not grant them their wishes given that the French were preparing a major attack in Champagne and he had to prepare "for a pretty bad time ahead." This was Germany's dilemma in 1915, forced to fight on two fronts and therefore never able to deal a decisive blow.


The Dardanelles? A False Good Idea

Ottoman Troops During the Gallipoli Campaign

On the French and English sides, given Joffre's and Kitchener's opposition, the [initial] idea of an army of the Orient that would fight in the Balkans stalled and got bogged down. Since the high commands were reluctant, the affair became essentially political. In February, both Governments agreed on the idea of creating a Franco-British expeditionary force intended to join the Serbian front but opposition again was too strong. With France invaded and the Germans barely more than 100 km from the capital, was this the right time to strip the trenches of men and try a wild shot on a front that was as remote as it was secondary? Would public opinion understand while the army remained on the defensive in the west and did nothing to repel the invader?

In addition, the Generalissimo was preparing a small offensive "from behind the faggots" that the Germans would remember. So he found the army of the Orient project completely useless if not totally ludicrous. "Why look elsewhere and so far away for what I will get in March 1915? I'm sure to break through and sent the Germans packing." 

It was in this stalemate situation that Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, i.e. the Minister of the Navy, presented his own project, a project that competed directly with that of the army of the Orient: force the Turkish Dardanelles Straits and the Bosphorus and seize Constantinople. Since only the Royal Navy was to be involved in this spectacular move and since Churchill was not asking for any additional guns or army regiments, his proposal gained unanimous favour. But the French did not believe it would work. Despite their doubts, they joined in on the operation because were it to be a success, the English must not be allowed to be sole masters of the situation in the Eastern Mediterranean and redraw the map of the Middle East for their own benefit.

On 18 March, a Franco-British armada thus arrived before the Dardanelles for an expedition they believed to be a foregone conclusion. Nothing went as planned. Overseen and equipped by the Germans, the Turks multiplied the batteries and threw drifting mines into the straits. The Allied fleet was unable to penetrate the Dardanelles. Humiliated, the English and French then had the idea of an amphibious operation and organised a landing on Gallipoli Peninsula on 25 April, with a force of colonial troops (one third of French forces were Senegalese and Australian and New Zealand troops formed the bulk of the British battalions). Since the Turks held the high ground, the operation turned into a bloody fiasco with the same trenches and same stalemate here as on the western front and thirst and mosquitoes thrown in for good measure. In the end, the operation turned out to be very costly in men and material (more than 500,000 troops had been committed to it) and all this with nothing to show for it. The only success of the Dardanelles campaign was the evacuation without losses in December 1915 and January 1916.


A Year of Needless Massacres

Eastern Front 1915:
A German Officer Examines Dead Russian Soldiers


If the Army of the Orient project was torpedoed, it was, as we have seen, because Joffre wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. For 1915, he sincerely believed in a breakthrough on the western front, like long needle spikes all along the front, operations with minor objectives or large ramming operations, in Artois and Champagne in the spring, in Champagne and Artois in autumn. As this was not actually happening and that men were dying by the tens of thousands, he justified his strategy by inventing the nibbling theory. In reality, this was the strategy of someone who did not have one and who did not know what to do. Nibbling the enemy's positions in fact meant perpetually attacking them in order to gain a moral ascendancy over the enemy and keep the troops sharp through these regular massacres that had no fundamental objective other than ensuring the men did not lapse into the comfort of staying on the defensive. In fact, the only effect of the nibbling strategy was to wear down the French army and not the Germans.

At the end of 1915, 320,000 soldiers had died for a gain of 3 km in Artois and 5 km in Champagne. Not exactly what you could call an overwhelming success... General Castelnau was right when he sadly observed that "our army has spent all of 1915 wearing its teeth down to the root against a wall." Lloyd George, an early supporter of the Army of the Orient plan was furious at the lack of ingenuity of military command which was always one step behind the enemy: "Too late in moving here. Too late in arriving there. Too late in coming to this decision, too late in starting with enterprises, too late in preparing." 


1916—Back to the West

Fortunately [?], Joffre had a plan for 1916. He now swore by coordinating the fronts and did not want to attempt anything until the Russian army has recovered and was in a position to resume the offensive, but he was giving much thought to a huge offensive for the following summer.

In the inter-allied conference at Chantilly, from 6 to 8 December, it was agreed that the French, British, Italians and Russians would attack together around the month of June 1916. A simultaneous operation that would prevent Germany from moving its reserves from one front to another and would result in its defeat. But June 1916 was a long way away and it was very unlikely that the Germans would be polite enough to sit around and wait six months for the Allies to get ready. On the contrary, having nothing to fear from Russia which was licking its wounds, Falkenhayn could safely prepare a deep punch into the western front. His sights were now firmly set on the Verdun salient.

Source: Chemins de Memorie

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Everyone's Plan for 1915: Let's Get the Hell Out of These Trenches, Part I—Re-evaluation


Early French Trench

By Jean-Yves Le Naour, Author of 1915. L'enlisement

Editor's Introduction:  This article from the French Ministère des Armées describes—from France's point of view—how the major powers' high commands responded to the imperative of breaking free of the trenches, and how a worse blood letting than the 1914 campaigns resulted. MH

Part I: Searching for Solutions

The hecatombs of 1914 surprised and took aback [all] senior army command[s]. Once the front got bogged down, trench warfare turned out to be just as deadly as mobile warfare and did not enable any of the belligerents to gain a decisive upper hand. So how could you do away with the trenches and win this war as quickly as possible? 

At the end of 1914, it was no exaggeration to say army command was in disarray. Six months earlier, in August 1914, they went into war full of confidence fully believing in the illusion of a short war and with their heads full of Napoleonic dreams. War was first and foremost a matter of courage, guts, momentum, it was an affair of horse flesh, cavalry charges with sabres out and furious onslaughts by infantry with their bayonets mounted. They were to become disillusioned very quickly and discover that this 19th century model belonged to the past.


Early German Trench


Right from the first clashes, the French understood that they had entered the industrial war era, an era of fire-power that made the canon the King of the war and forced the infantry to dig in if they were to withstand the shock without being wiped out. So between October and November, a trench line was formed over 700 km from the North Sea to Switzerland transforming the mobile war into a siege war.

The situation was virtually the same on the eastern front. Even though they were beaten in East Prussia by the Germans, the Russians caused great problems for the Austrian and Hungarian forces and pushed their troops right back to the Carpathians, but here again, the offensive stalled: the lack of ammunition, logistic shortages and the truce called by general winter blocked the situation until spring. So the question that was tormenting army command at the end of 1914 was: how to put an end to this trench warfare? How to overcome this stalemate? How to do away with the barbed wire, artillery barrages and the firing of machine guns that promise defeat to anyone crazy enough to attack? Both camps reflected on how to go beyond this new form of warfare that was still poorly understood, in the search for a new method or a new front that would unblock everything.


Early British Trench


With the experience of small or large scale offensives, that of the Germans on Calais for example, it soon transpired that defence was superior to offence. Even if you put in every resource you have, sacrificing thousands of men to take the enemy trench, they will just fall back to another second line trench a few hundred metres away and you have to repeat the whole operation again. Also, at the end of 1914, some generals and politicians came to understand that if massive and fruitless deaths were to be avoided in 1915, it was necessary to stand back and take a good look at the map of the war. Two considerations were driving these far-sighted individuals who observed the stalemate on the western front: resume the mobile war and since you cannot defeat the strongest, attack the weak.

This debate was the same in France, Great Britain and Germany. In Berlin, in fact, there was always a fear of fighting on two fronts—Russia and France—and so as not to split up its forces, the German army had designed the Schlieffen plan which was to quickly overrun France before turning back to fight against Russia, a war that would be longer since it was such a huge country. But The battle of the Marne scuppered this plan. Yes France had been invaded but it had held steady and the German army found itself in the situation it dreaded.

Source: Chemins de Memorie

Tomorrow in Part II Jean-Yves Le Naour examines the new strategies of the various combatants and their results

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

The Final Battle: Soldiers of the Western Front and the German Revolution of 1918


German Veterans Participating in Berlin Demonstration,
Late 1918

The Final Battle: Soldiers of the Western Front and the German Revolution of 1918

By Scott Stephenson

Cambridge 2010


In many ways the German soldiers who marched back from the Western Front at the end of World War I held the key to the future of the newly created republic that replaced the Kaiser's collapsed monarchy. To the radical Left, the orderly columns of front line troops appeared to be the forces of the counterrevolution while to the conservative elements of society they seemed to be the Fatherland's salvation. However in their efforts to get home as soon as possible, most soldiers were indifferent to the political struggles within the Reich, while the remnant that remained under arms proved powerless to defend the republic from its enemies. 

Author Scott Stephenson is associate professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command & General Staff College. This work won the 2010 Western Front Association Tomlinson Book for the best work of history in English on World War One. This well-crafted and thoroughly researched monograph is the first in many years to explore the return home of the defeated Imperial Army. It concerns chiefly the  choices made by frontline veterans impacting the German revolution from October to December 1918. While the upheavals of October and November 1918 had little effect—thanks to superior leadership from experienced  junior officers—on the discipline of approximately 1.5 million German frontline  troops in the West, support troops behind the lines, garrisons at home, and  battleship sailors were in full revolt providing the revolution with most of its energy. 


Order This Book HERE

As they marched home under command and fully armed, arriving frontline soldiers  played an important but now forgotten role in determining the course of the revolution and in the survival of the badly splintered Ebert government. In the  early stages of revolution beginning in November 1918, frontline veterans ensured the fall of the Kaiser, preserved the political influence of the officer caste, and created the basis for the "stab in the back" myth. By demobilizing themselves soon after arrival across the Rhine, they deprived the Ebert government of any support from the old army and paved the way for creation of the Freikorps made up of both veterans and underage youth, which fought in the ensuing civil upheaval and ultimately helped undermine the fledgling Weimar Republic.

Source: Adapted from a review by Leonard Shurtleff in Relevance, Fall 2011

Monday, February 10, 2025

The Philippines: Training Ground for the American Officer Corps


A roster of the high command in the American Army during World War I is a roster of the lieutenants who served in the Philippines at the turn of the century.

William T. Sexton, Soldiers in the Sun


General Pershing with Moro Tribesmen and Staff Officers
in the Philippines

The decade following the Spanish-American War gave the generation of American officers destined to serve in command positions during the Great War a remarkable number and variety of missions to perform. Of course, none of these challenges were comparable in scope to the fighting that would come on the Western Front, but they did allow these men to develop their capacity to grasp large, complicated, and  unusual military operations. Serving in deployments remote from the American heartland and with duties far beyond what individuals of their age and rank would normally face, they gained an awareness of the greater world and learned to bear the weight of great responsibility. Several of these missions stand out as particularly valuable seasoning experiences and by far the most important of these were the long-lasting actions known as the Philippine War and Insurrection, 1902–1913.

At the time of that armistice, veterans of the Philippines deployment were in command of almost all elements of the American Expeditionary Force. General Pershing, every field army and corps commander, the chiefs of the Intelligence, Supply, and Air Services, and both the AEF Headquarters and First Army chiefs of operations, were veterans of the Philippine war. 


Casualties from the First Battle of Bud Dajo, March 1906

There were two phases to the American military effort in the Philippines, the second much longer than the first. After defeating the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, Commodore Dewey encouraged and supported rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo and his force of 15,000 supporters to rise up against the Spanish colonial forces. Their efforts against the shaky Spaniards, who except in Manila were mostly widely dispersed and easy to pick off, succeeded, with the victors quickly declaring independence and establishing a constitution. The U.S., however, had meanwhile negotiated a purchase of the archipelago as part of the Treaty of Paris that ended the war. After prayerful reflection, President McKinley decided the Philippines were not to be granted independence. Aguinaldo and his supporters understandably rejected this decision and fighting ensued.

Soon American forces, some Army regulars and a larger contingent of volunteers, were fighting a brutal war for possession of the islands. The ensuing combat was vicious for the combatants and also took a cruel toll on Filipino civilians. After gaining victories in several conventional battles and securing Manila, the U.S. troops found they were now facing a guerilla war. It would eventually take a 74,000-man contingent and an intense campaign to gain control of the scattered battlefields. The war ended with the surrender of guerilla commander General Vincente Lukban in April 1902. In the three-year insurrection, 4,000 American and 20,000 Filipino soldiers and many thousands of Filipino civilians had perished. 


American Soldiers with Native Prisoners, Date Unknown

The need for a large deployment ended and most of the volunteers were sent home. The regular army then assumed almost full responsibility for security of the islands, with an occupying force that would average about 15,000 men for the next decade. The new American governors, though, had a lingering problem to deal with. In the southern islands, the Muslim Moro population was not interested in surrendering and continued to resist American rule in the Sulu region and on the Island of Mindanao until the eve of the Great War. It was in this second phase in the Philippines that almost all the future leadership of the AEF gained their most important command experience, and not unimportant, had the opportunity to prove themselves to the most influential American officer in the Philippines, the future commander of the American forces in the Great War—John J. Pershing. Pershing was the last military governor of the islands and established his credentials for high command by disarming the Moros and ending the guerilla campaign. 

But, of what possible relevance for fighting on the battlefields of Europe was this experience in the Philippines? One clue comes from Philippine veteran General George Marshall, writing about his experience in France in World War I: "[The Frenchman] feels the French method is the only method. We are adaptable, and it was this trait alone that made it possible for us to survive the difficulties of this period." An officer in the Philippines either adapted or failed. The need to adapt to local conditions, of course, was not unique to the Philippines. Since the Civil War, the regular U.S. Army had been involved primarily in unconventional warfare on the American prairie and in the Pacific and Caribbean deployments discussed above. But the Philippines offered such extremes of climate, geography, culture, religion, and local traditions that American soldiers must have thought they had left not their country but their planet. It was so shockingly different, the fighting so intense, and the adjustments required so demanding, that the Philippines served as a finishing school in adaptability for Army officers. To borrow the cliché, if you could succeed there you could succeed anywhere.


Moving a Gatling Gun Across a Destroyed Bridge

The regular army was in full charge during this second phase, which lasted 12 years. Since its professional cadre was still small, a very higher percentage of officers in the age group likely to be in command positions by 1917 and 1918—the mid- and junior-level officers—were rotated through the Philippine pressure cooker. Service in the Philippines gave these officers challenges and responsibilities beyond their years, providing outstanding preparation for command of larger formations. As U.S. Army counterinsurgency expert Frank Andrews recently wrote: 

American success [in the Philippines] ultimately depended on the men who implemented the counterinsurgency policies developed by the generals — the junior officers, or in some cases sergeants, who served as some of the 600 garrison commanders. These men were responsible not only for leading their soldiers in forays against the insurgents, but they were also charged with the establishment and supervision of the town government, schools, and local police force. In addition to preventing the townspeople from giving supplies or information to the guerrillas, the garrison commanders were responsible for protecting the town and his command against insurgent attacks. They also acted as the provost judge and performed all military staff duties, as well as the multitude of administrative tasks required by the army. 

Subtly, by the eve of America's entry into the Great War, the Army's officer corps had been divided. Those who had been found wanting in the Philippines saw their advancement in grade slowed. The successful were marked for higher posts if the Army ever needed to expand. These would form the command cadre of the AEF and in 1917 and 1918 would find themselves thrown into a modern and conventional land war with which they had absolutely no experience. On the Western Front they would apply the main lesson they had learned in the Philippines—the practice of learning and adjusting as the fighting went on. The differences in operational planning and combat efficiency between the AEF that fought at Cantigny, Château-Thierry, and Soissons in the summer and spring of 1918  and the AEF that launched the dramatic and decisive breakthrough, only five months later, on 1 November 1918 are staggering.

Source: Over the Top: Magazine of the World War I Centennial, May 2014

Saturday, February 8, 2025

The Saints Go Marching to War



Angel of Victory (based on St. Michael the Archangel)
U.S. St. Mihiel Cemetery

by Francis Barry Faulkner

St. Michael was considered the leader of the heavenly army, often depicted with a sword, symbolizing the fight against evil. Use of Christian saint and Virgin Mary imagery to inspire action and foster hope in war dates back centuries, though mass production and public consumption of such images began during the First World War. They  expressed patriotic and religious confidence in a righteous cause—as well as being useful tools for inspiring others to give in support of the effort. Most of the examples I've found, naturally, are from Catholic and Orthodox countries. This mosaic was created postwar at the American cemetery in France.



Our Lady of Antwerp

by Louis Raemaekers

An altar piece design with wounded virgin, and Antwerp being destroyed in background. "Here I and sorrows sit. This is my throne, bid Kings come worship it." Such seems to be an appropriate legend for Raemaekers's beautiful triptych which he has entitled "Our Lady of Antwerp." Full of compassion and sympathy for all the sufferings of her people, she sits with the cathedral outlined behind her, her heart pierced with many agonies. On the left is one of the many widows who have lost their all in this war. On the right is a soldier stricken to death, who has done his utmost service for his country and brings the record of his gallantry to the feet of Our Lady of Antwerp.



Virgin Mary with Polish Soldiers

by Wladyslaw "W. T." Benda

This was placed on a Certificate of Donation issued by the Polish National Department, Polish Central Relief Committee  It is depicting Polish soldiers marching into a fiery and smoke-filled battlefield near a church, with the Virgin Mary and Child Jesus appearing in the sky above. This work is bordered by a motif featuring hearts, flowers, and the Christian cross.  

Saints, particularly those with a militant penchant such as Joan of Arc, were also widely called upon by the nations at war for support and inspiration



Saint Joan of Arc Saved France

by Haskell Coffin

In this wartime poster supporting the U.S. savings stamp program, Joan of Arc is ready to fight, with her sword unsheathed and her face lifted upward in optimistic bravery. 



Go Away

Unknown Artist 

Black-and-white postcard in French of a scared German soldier dropping his weapon as he looks at Joan of Arc, in her armor with sword drawn and a saint's halo surrounding her head.



St. Therese of Lisieux (The Little Flower)

Visiting a Wounded Poilu

Unknown Artist 

There were, apparently, a number of illustrations produced with this theme. St. Thérèse was a French nun who died of tuberculosis at age 24 in 1897.  She left a beloved manuscript, The Story of a Soul, which which gained great popularity in France. Pope Pius X signed the decree for the opening of her process of canonization on 10 June 1914. She was the best-known religious figure to the generation of French soldiers who would fight in the trenches.

After  the First World War broke out, St. Thérèse over 40 French soldiers claimed she had appeared to them and comforted them on various battlefields in France. The soldiers said she spoke to them matter-of-factly, resolved their doubts, helped them overcome their temptations, and calmed their fears. Thousands of French soldiers carried her photo and invoked her as “my little sister of the trenches,” “the shield of soldiers,” “the angel of battles,” and “my dear little Captain.” A soldier wrote, “In fact, that gentle Saint will be the great heroine of this war.” Another commented, “I think of her whenever the cannons thunder.” Countless were the artillery pieces and planes named after her; whole regiments were consecrated to her. Medals of the saint given to the soldiers miraculously stopped rifle bullets like real shields, saving the lives of the soldiers who carried them (some of these medals, as well as letters from the men) are now preserved in the cloister in Lisieux). Thérèse was beatified in 1923 and canonized in 1925.


Sources:  "Religious Icons in Art and War"; The National World War I Museum; The Life of St. Therese of Lisieux Website



Friday, February 7, 2025

The Indian Army: Manpower Reserve of the British Empire, Part III—Aftermath of the Great War


King George V Inspecting Indian Troops
on the Western Front

During the First World War the strength of the Indian Army rose sixfold to over 1,400,000 men. By the end of the war 1,100,000 men had served overseas at a cost of 70,000 dead. India had contributed more men to the fighting than Canada and Australia combined. Eleven individuals of Indian ancestry earned the Victoria Cross during the struggle.

Besides the colossal manpower contribution, the British also raised money from India, as well as large supplies of food and ammunition, collected both by British taxation of Indians and from the nominally autonomous Princely States. In return, the British had insincerely promised to deliver progressive self-rule to India at the end of the war. Perhaps, had they kept that pledge, the sacrifices of India's First World War soldiers might have been seen in their homeland as a contribution to India's freedom.


Postwar: Guarding the Khyber Pass, 1919


But the British broke their word. Mahatma Gandhi, who returned to his homeland for good from South Africa in January 1915, supported the war, as he had supported the British in the Boer War. The great Nobel Prize-winning poet, Rabindranath Tagore, was somewhat more sardonic about nationalism. "We, the famished, ragged ragamuffins of the East are to win freedom for all humanity!" he wrote during the war. [Yet} We have no word for 'nation' in our language." During hostilities India was wracked by high taxation to support the war and the high inflation accompanying it, while the disruption of trade caused by the conflict led to widespread economic losses—all this while the country was also reeling from a raging influenza epidemic that took many lives. But nationalists widely understood from British statements that at the end of the war India would receive the Dominion Status hitherto reserved for the "White Commonwealth."

With British policy providing such a sour ending to the narrative of a war in which India had given its all and been spurned in return, Indian nationalists felt that the country had nothing to thank its soldiers for. They had merely gone abroad to serve their foreign masters. Losing your life or limb in a foreign war fought at the behest of your colonial rulers was an occupational hazard—it did not qualify to be hailed as a form of national service.


Indian Troops Responding to a Nationalist Protest, Bombay

An Indian independence movement came to a head after the war when the first series of non-violent campaigns of civil disobedience was launched by the Indian National Congress under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi—whose methods were inspired to a large extent by the philosophy and methods of Baba Ram Singh, a Sikh who led the Kuka Movement in Punjab in the 1870s. Gandhi's movement came to encompass people from across India and across all walks of life. These initial civil disobedience movements soon came to be the driving force that ultimately shaped the cultural, religious, and political unity of a then still dis-united nation. The sacrifices of the Great War and the intense disappointments that followed fueled this movement. Another World War would intervene, but eventually, India would become independent.

Sources: BBC; Wikipedia; CWGC

Read Part I, The Coming of War, HERE

Read Part II, Deployment,  HERE


Thursday, February 6, 2025

The Indian Army: Manpower Reserve of the British Empire, Part II—Deployment


The Indian Memorial at Neuve Chapelle,
Western Front

By Corey W. Reigel, PhD, West Liberty University

Deployment

By 1914 the Indian Army consisted of 129 battalions of infantry or pioneers, 39 cavalry regiments, and 12 mountain artillery batteries (155,423 combatants), plus extensive support units. By World War I these were organized into nine divisions and several independent brigades. Each division had three infantry brigades made of one British and three Indian battalions, and one cavalry brigade composed of one British and two Indian regiments. A separate source of soldiers was the Princely States, whose units formed the Imperial Service Brigades. In theory the 29 Princely States were independent, or at least autonomous, and thus could maintain their own units, under British supervision. In 1914 they contributed 14 battalions and 20 cavalry regiments (22,515 men). Also, in an emergency the European population of India formed the Auxiliary Force, 42 battalions, 11 regiments, (33,677 men) mostly with the intention that they would serve in South Asia.

When the Great War began, the Indian Army still was not ready. The quality of training varied greatly from one unit to the next, while the organization of the army into nine divisions was still new and poorly executed. The chain of command was poor since the Indian Office stood in between the Indian Army in the field and the War Office. The infantry had been armed with obsolete rifles, sufficient for India, but were only issued new Lee-Enfield rifles when they shipped out in the expeditions. Some units had no machine guns until they were deployed. The artillery, again adequate for India, was old ten-pounders, whose virtue was disassembly for easy mobility over difficult terrain. There was no heavy artillery or howitzers. Communications were obsolete and there was no mechanical transportation, only animals. In many respects, the Indian Army still was fit only as an Imperial Constabulary.

In the 19th century, the Indian Army was frequently used as the muscle behind imperial ambitions, as an emergency reaction force, providing reliable soldiers for service in difficult environments, with service in Africa, China, and elsewhere; thus World War I was largely a continuation of this policy. Indian soldiers fought in the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion in China. In Africa, they campaigned in Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia, while small numbers served in East Africa and supplemented the West African Field Force. One contingency had included possible deployment into Central Asia to counter the Russian threat, and when Germany's empire was created, the Indian Army added new plans.


On Multiple Fronts

Indian Troops on the Western Front

Four divisions (3rd Lahore, 7th Meerut, 1st and 2nd Cavalry, none from the Princely States) of Task Force A arrived at Marseilles, France, on 30 September 1914. During the volatile early battles and into 1915 these skilled and experienced soldiers helped stymie German flanking efforts in the famous "Race to the Sea." By October 1914 they were in combat at La Bassée and Ypres, but the cold, wet environment was more troublesome than German gunfire. In addition to frostbite, influenza, and pneumonia, an unexpected problem was mumps and measles, since they had no prior exposure. When British civilians learned of their suffering, vast quantities of clothing were sent and Indian hospitals in England received generous donations due to the popularity of a publicity campaign. Such admiration was earned in battles like Neuve Chapelle in March 1915 when the Indian Corps led the well-planned attack that ultimately failed strategically, after a successful opening attack.

Later, in September 1915, the Battle of Loos began when a large British mine was exploded under the German trenches followed by an artillery barrage and an infantry assault that included the Meerut (7th) Division attack. The assault, again at first was promising but then could not be exploited and failed.

Despite many acts of heroism, logistics compromised their fighting ability. The dietary and religious restrictions were so severe that even in base camps Force A required six different kitchens. Seemingly, even the slightest, unintentional action could contaminate a meal, in which case even severe hunger was preferable to death in an impure state but a full belly. In the front lines, food was even more difficult, since basic army rations of bully beef and biscuits were unacceptable. The prewar officers understood and observed these religious practices, but as they became casualties, their replacements were ignorant or insensitive and the system of race/caste segregated units broke down. The Western Front infantry units were transferred to Egypt in October 1915 and the cavalry units (renamed Force E) followed in March 1918.

Force B (8,000 men) contained both Imperial Service units from the Princely States and the 27th Brigade of the 9th Division, British Indian Army. While the latter again performed admirably, the former units behaved very badly at the 2-3 November 1914 attempted amphibious invasion at the port of Tanga. Similarly, when Force C (4,000 men) was hastily assembled to protect Kenya's border, they too had a few good units, but most of the Imperial Service units tarnished the reputation of all Indian soldiers. The humiliations of 1914 continued as the two task forces were merged and became the heart of the British military in East Africa during 1915. German raiding parties took advantage of Indian incompetence until early 1916, when reinforcements from many colonies in Africa and a general advance altered the situation. In late 1916, most Indian combat units were withdrawn from Africa due to illness and exhaustion. However, support units, virtually the only ones in the theater, remained until after the end of the war.


Indian Laborers Building a Rail Line in the Sinai


Force D began with a modest assignment that became one of the largest and most difficult theaters of the war and one of the worst events in India's military history, Mesopotamia, today's Iraq. The British prewar competition with German interests in the Persian Gulf grew sharper with the discovery of oil, and the relationship with the leaders of Kuwait led to the decision to protect British interests by occupying the oil refinery at Basra. What began with one brigade group arriving on 24 November 1914 was soon reinforced with two infantry divisions (the 6th Poona and the 12th Indian). In April 1915, a general offensive began up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers with the intention of capturing the fabled city of Baghdad. Despite extreme heat and humidity and clouds of aggressive flies, the advance was initially successful. In late November 1915, however, the advance stalled after the Battle of Ctesiphon, and rather than abandon all the captured land, the decision was made to hold the Tigris River town of Kut-el-Amara with an Indian garrison (mostly the 6th Poona Division) which was soon besieged. Kut was one of Britain's worst moments in the war. Despite attempts to break in, or out, the command was surrendered on 29 April 1916 after the soldiers had suffered horrible deprivations. It got much worse. The soldiers were forced on a death march of 500 miles from Samarrah to Aleppo in the worst summer heat. The prisoner-of-war camps were awful in the treatment of these soldiers, British as well as Indian. Of the 14,000 men who surrendered 4,000 died. Yet General Townshend and his officers were kept separate, in comfortable conditions, seemingly unaware of their men's misery. 

After the fall of Kut there was a pause as both sides rested and received reinforcements. Major General Maude renewed the offensive in December 1916 with six Indian divisions and one British—166,000 soldiers, two-thirds of them Indian. The force entered Baghdad on 11 March 1917. Later, many Indian units were transferred to Palestine.

Expedition Force F was composed of two recently created divisions (10th and 11th Indian) with some units from the Princely States, intended for France but suddenly redirected to the defense of the Suez Canal and all of Egypt after two Turkish Army attacks across the Sinai. These units later blended into the Sinai-Palestine campaign. Expedition Force E (the cavalry units in France) was redeployed to Palestine in March 1918, where regiments from the Princely States joined them. Other British and Indian divisions were reassigned to Palestine so that by the end of the war the Indians again were a large portion of the British Army forces. This included 30 Gurkhas on camels who assisted T.E. Lawrence of Arabia and Major F. G. Peake of the Egyptian Army.


Gurkhas in a Trench at Gallipoli

Force G was by contrast only a small percentage of the British units sent to Gallipoli. The 29th Brigade (one Sikh and three Gurkha battalions) was detached from the 10th Division in Egypt and saw extensive combat, especially around Gully Ravine in the Helles sector. They suffered horrible summer heat and winter blizzards without proper clothing. The Gallipoli Peninsula was completely evacuated by January 1916.

Beyond the expedition forces, one Indian division garrisoned Burma and a brigade was stationed in Aden, continuing colonial security. Other units remained in India for the essential role of colonial security against rebellion, but these forces were sometimes committed to other foreign deployments such as southern Persia in 1915 and Afghanistan. Also, one battalion of the 36th Sikhs (and the 2nd Battalion South Wales Borderers) joined in the Japanese attack on the German treaty port of Tsingtao, China, October–November 1914.

Much like before the war, Indian soldiers were often the majority of British units used in difficult theaters such as East Africa, Mesopotamia, and Palestine. Better the heat of deserts or jungles than the mud and cold of France and Flanders. This meant that the Indian Army was the primary weapon against the Ottoman Empire. Regarding the broad British war effort, the empire's Indian troops constituted a strategic manpower reserve. However, with the necessary continuation of prewar practices, there was an upper limit in the number of suitable recruits that could be provided based on the martial race theory of the British and the religious and racial beliefs of the people of South Asia.

Source: "The British Indian Army in World War I: A Strategic Manpower Reserve," by Corey W. Reigel, West Liberty University; originally presented in the Journal of the World War One Historical Association, 2012, Vol. 3.

Read Part I, The Coming of War, HERE

Read Part III, Aftermath,  HERE

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

The Indian Army: Manpower Reserve of the British Empire, Part I — Background and the Coming of the War


British India c.1914


Editor's Note: During the Great War, the Indian Army would grow by a factor of six and—as the main contributor of this article Professor Corel Reigel argues—would prove a strategic manpower reserve for the British Empire throughout the conflict. Professor Reigel provides the first two parts of this three part series. The final artice, which covers the late war experience and aftermath for the Indian Army draws on other sources.   MH


Redcoated Sepoys of the East India Company, 1804


By Corey W. Reigel, PhD, West Liberty University

Background

The Indian Army that would one day play a valuable role for the Allies in the First World War was started by the Honourable East India Company. It was raised as a small contingent under Robert Clive to oppose the Bengali rulers and the French in the struggle that ended with victory at Plassey in 1757. The East India Company had three “presidencies,” or branches, and each developed its own military force with detachments stationed in many locations around the country. As the Crown also had interests in India, there were also regular British units stationed in various spots from time to time. Following the suppression of the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, the Company's charter was revoked and the Crown assumed authority in India, including control of the Company's forces. The future Indian Army would be built around those soldiers who had stayed loyal during the mutiny. Also, more British soldiers were sent to India, and all operational formations thereafter included both Indian and British troops. By 1914 the total force based in India totaled 240,000 men, almost the size of the home-based British Army. During the Great War, the Indian Army would grow by a factor of six.


Regimental Colors, 52nd Sikhs at Kohat, 1905


The Coming of the Great War

For the Indian soldiers who saw service from Flanders to China, in Africa and the Middle East, it truly was a world war. In a war of attrition, they provided the Allied effort with a strategic reserve of manpower. One justification for empire was the additional strength it would contribute. With a population of 320 million, India (see map above) sent one million men in uniform to most theaters of operations with 74,187 military deaths. Race and recent experiences were the primary criteria for the recruitment of the Indian Army. Although the Indian Army made a significant contribution to the Allied war effort in World War I, it was still a small number of soldiers relative to the population base of the Indian sub-continent. Most Europeans believed in the martial race theory, that some men were genetically superior soldiers, most often recently conquered opponents, and thus one upper limit was created by the British. Indian culture also imposed restrictions based on caste and religion. Thus, despite the substantial population, the colony of India had only a finite manpower base from which to serve the British Empire.

Most educated Europeans believed in a pseudo-scientific martial race theory, which is dismissed today. Modern conflict, the Great War itself a perfect example, took millions of ordinary men and quickly turned them into soldiers and sailors, with a wide variety of skills and tasks as required by industrialized warfare. Yet in 1914, the Indian Army was still more like a traditional colonial military of the Victorian era and was poorly prepared for a modern enemy like the German Army in Europe. Bullets and artillery shrapnel did not show a preference for certain ethnicities, but colonial government did, and thus the martial race theory was at the center of British recruitment, and most other Europeans practiced essentially the same thing. A mix of ad hominem and recent events, the Martial Race theory held that of all the Indian people only a few were of martial quality based on breeding, caste, and environment. In 1914 this favored the Dogras, the Garhwalis, the Gurkhas, the Kumaonis, the Pathans, and the Sikhs. Each company, but preferably entire battalions or regiments, was composed exclusively of men from the same caste or ethnicity. These soldiers were then deployed in a different region of India, among a different religion or ethnicity, as an alien battalion, with few connections to the local people but loyal to the British, who also encouraged a separate identity. So an example of divide and conquer, divide and rule might be a battalion each of Gurkha and Sikh infantry located in a Hindu or Muslim region.


117th Mahrattas, NW Frontier, 1910


Beyond prejudice there was also a practical reason to limit military recruitment to only certain people—it was conducive to South Asian sensibilities. The Hindu divided into many castes that determined social behavior in an unchangeable status based on birth and occupation and ideas of purity and pollution. Some were of the military castes, and like their ancestors they were literally born soldiers. This determined social behavior such as marriage and inheritance, diet and meal sharing, death rituals, and occupations, and it was both fate and a duty to fulfill these roles. Such exclusivity influenced recruitment since the purity of food, or funerals, could only be achieved if preparation were by men of the same caste, hence the logic of segregated units. This also placed an upper limit on the number of those who could serve in uniform to only certain Hindu castes and a select few non-Hindu. As World War I dragged on, there was a clear need to expand recruitment, so in 1917 75 new castes or ethnicities were eligible for enlistment. The urgency of the war changed the "science"' of recruitment as expediency altered logical conclusions. In the African colonies, the Europeans mostly practiced the martial race theory but also opened recruitment as the war continued. 

By 1914 the Indian Army consisted of 129 battalions of infantry or pioneers, 39 cavalry regiments, and 12 mountain artillery batteries (155,423 combatants), plus extensive support units. By World War I these were organized into nine divisions and several independent brigades. Each division had three infantry brigades made of one British and three Indian battalions, and one cavalry brigade composed of one British and two Indian regiments. A separate source of soldiers was the Princely States, whose units formed the Imperial Service Brigades. In theory the 29 Princely States were independent, or at least autonomous, and thus could maintain their own units, under British supervision. In 1914 they contributed 14 battalions and 20 cavalry regiments (22,515 men). Also, in an emergency the European population of India formed the Auxiliary Force, 42 battalions, 11 regiments, (33,677 men) mostly with the intention that they would serve in South Asia.


Read Part II, The Coming of War, HERE

Read Part III, Aftermath,  HERE