Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/April 2017/Op-ed


 * By Hawkeye7



On 22 February 1917, the German Army on the Western Front did something the Allies had not expected: it began a general withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line. All four divisions of the I Anzac Corps – the 2nd, 1st, 5th and 4th – were in the line at the time. Patrols began reporting the German trenches opposite them were unoccupied, but divisions struggled to make sense of the reports coming in. The commanders of the 1st and 2nd Division commanders concluded that the Germans had evacuated a position known as the Maze, and ordered an attack on it; but they did not inform I Anzac Corps headquarters, which for its part might have told them that the 4th and 5th Divisions had also reported positions opposite them to be empty. Only when the British Fifth Army informed it that British V Corps had found the German positions in its sector abandoned did the penny drop. All four divisions were then ordered to advance, but by this time the Germans had been given 48 hours head start. After two years of unremitting trench warfare, the BEF was slow to adapt to changing circumstances.

At this stage of the war, there was little to differentiate the Australian divisions and the divisions of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). To be sure, there were differences in organisation of Australian units but, while numerous, they were quite minor, and not of tactical significance. Over the winter there had been organisational changes affecting the whole of the BEF. One was the creation of the I Anzac Corps School, which had been formed in November 1916 and taught courses on subjects like the bombing, the Lewis gun and signalling. This was not exceptional; every corps in the BEF had one like it but the I Anzac Corps School was more influential than most, because the Australian divisions were permanently assigned to I Anzac Corps. Even formations that were not part of the corps, like the 3rd Division (near Messines), the 6th Division (in England) and the Anzac Mounted Division (in Palestine) received material from it, as the I Anzac Corps commander, Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, was also the commander of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). In combination with the slower growth of the Australian Army compared to its British counterpart, the effect was a more uniform and reliable force. This could also facilitate the dissemination of Australian doctrine throughout the force, but as yet there was negligible difference between that of the Australian divisions and the rest of the BEF, which was based on the pre-war Field Service Regulations, a document that Major General William Bridges memorably described as being about as useful as the cuneiform inscription on a Babylonian brick.

Another important change that took effect across the whole of the BEF over the winter was that enough Lewis guns became available to increase their number in each infantry battalion from 12 to 16. This meant that a Lewis gun section could be part of each platoon. The platoon now became the primary tactical unit instead of the company. Each platoon now had a Lewis gun section, a bombing section, a rifle grenade section and a scouting section. The platoon now had more firepower than ever before, and because it could operate independently, the companies and battalions could be dispersed over a wider area. The new organisation would be tested in the advance to the Hindenburg Line. It also re-kindled Australian pre-war ideas about independence and initiative.

Ahead of, and immediately behind, the I Anzac Corps sector lay an area devastated by the the Battle of the Somme in 1916 that was little more than a muddy quagmire. Beyond that lay a zone through which the German Army was withdrawing. Here, villages had been burned, bridges and culverts demolished, and roads systematically blocked by rubble and fallen trees. Extensive use was made of booby traps. A delayed action mine in the Bapaume Town Hall took the lives of 24 Australians. Repairing the roads was an enormous undertaking, but until the roads and railways could be moved forward, frontline units could only be supplied by horse-drawn transport. The further the advance, the fewer the troops that could be supported. At one point the 54th Field Battery had a mule train of 140 mules.

The commander of the British Fourth Army, General Sir Henry Rawlinson, therefore decided to let the Germans go, maintaining contact with cavalry. The commander of the British Fifth Army (of which I Anzac Corps was a part), General Sir Hubert Gough, took a bolder approach, invoking something that had been discussed before the war but not practiced: all-arms formations of brigade size. These were called "advance guards", after the Field Service Regulations, but they differed from the concept as described therein, in that the main body was not following, instead being held back owing to the logistical difficulty of maintaining more troops in the forward area. The advance guards would therefore have to be boldly handled. An innovation was the attachment to each of a squadron of the Royal Flying Corps. Normally each corps had a squadron in support.

Although both of the Australian infantry brigades chosen, the 6th and 15th, were from Victoria, they were commanded by very different men. Brigadier General John Gellibrand came from a family long associated with Tasmania, where he had been born on 5 December 1872, but his widowed mother had taken the family to England, and later Germany, when he was a boy. He graduated from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, at the top of his class in 1893, and from was commissioned into the British Army. He served in the South African War, although he was only there for little over a month before being evacuated with typhoid, and graduated from the Staff College, Camberley, in 1908. In 1912 he had resigned his commission as a captain in the British Army and returned to Tasmania to grow apples. When war broke out in August 1914, he had volunteered his services. Staff college graduates were rare in Australia; only six Australian Army officers had graduated from the British Army's staff colleges at Camberley and Quetta. There were also four British Army staff college graduates on attachment. When the 1st Division was formed in August 1914, Bridges chose for his staff Majors Cecil Foott and Brudenell White and Captain Thomas Blamey, along with a British officer, Captain Duncan Glasfurd, and Gellibrand, who was commissioned as a captain in the AIF.

Gellibrand performed staff duties during the Gallipoli Campaign, but failed to impress Bridges, and requested a transfer to the 2nd Division after being superseded by Foott. He got along much better with its commander, Major General James Gordon Legge. In December 1915, shortly before the end of the campaign, Gellibrand assumed command of the 12th Infantry Battalion, the Tasmanian battalion if the 1st Division. In March 1916, Legge gave him command of the 6th Infantry Brigade. The timing was fortunate; on the Western Front BEF GHQ forbade staff college graduates being wasted in command roles. In January 1917, however, Legge was replaced by a British Army officer, Major General Nevill Smyth, with whom Gellibrand had a turbulent relationship.

The commander of the 15th Infantry Brigade was Brigadier General Harold Edward Elliott, known as "Pompey" after Fred (Pompey) Elliott, the famous Australian rules football player. Born on 19 June 1878, he had served in the ranks during the South African War, in which he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the second highest award for gallantry after the Victoria Cross, and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Border Scouts. After the war he completed his studies at the University of Melbourne, and became a solicitor. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Australian Army Reserve (then known as the Militia) in 1904, and was promoted to lieutenant in 1905, captain in 1909, major in 1911, and lieutenant colonel in 1913, commanding 58th Infantry Battalion (Essendon Rifles). In 1914, he was selected to command the 7th Infantry Battalion, which he led in the landing at Anzac, during which he was shot in the foot, and the Battle of Lone Pine in August. He became commander of the 15th Infantry Brigade when it was formed in Egypt in February 1916.

This was no pursuit of a defeated and demoralised enemy. The Germans were conducting a deliberate, fighting withdrawal. Each German division deployed a rear guard. Typically they had three detachments of 112 men, three platoons of 40 storm troopers, six mounted patrols of six men, twelve medium machine guns and six field guns. They had ample strength to take on one of Fifth Army's advance guards. German forces massing for an attack were usually spotted by the aircraft and engaged by artillery, which would fire on a pre-designated zone. It was found that the medium artillery—the 60-pounders and 6-inch howitzers—could keep up with the pace of the advance as easily as the 18-pounders, which Gough considered the outstanding tactical lesson of the campaign; Elliott's column also took on and defeated two German counterattacks on the town of Beaumetz on 23 and 24 March.

On the move, the Australian battalions deployed their companies in a diamond pattern, the platoons adopting the same pattern within their companies. The 15th Infantry Brigade improvised slings for the Lewis guns, allowing them to fired on the move from the hip. The German rear guards tended to hold strong points, leaving gaps between them. The Australians manoeuvred through the gaps and outflanked or enveloped the defenders. They found that the German rear guards did not like being cut off, and would often withdraw rather than allow themselves to be surrounded, but not always -- German morale was high and many German units were prepared to fight rather than withdraw. This was a personal vindication for Elliott. During field exercises in 1907 he had been taken to task for attempting a double envelopment by White, who argued that envelopment divided and weakened the attacking force. Elliott was so incensed that he not only kept White's handwritten note, but deposited it in the Australian War Memorial archives, where it can still be read a century later.

White, now a major general and the I Anzac Corps' chief of staff, wanted the advance guards to halt on predesignated lines each day, with the light horse patrolling forward. Gellibrand and Elliott did not do so, preferring to halt on positions of tactical significance. As a result, the Australian advance guards outpaced those of the British units on their flanks. The German withdrawal finished at the end of March, having reached the Hindenburg Line, but they still maintained outposts in front of it. These were systematically reduced by the Australians. None of these attacks utilised extensive artillery support, and some were successful without any at all, owing to the increased firepower of the infantry, coupled with individual initiative and good staff work. At Lagnicourt and Hermies, much of the garrison was enveloped and captured, but a costly, ill-planned and ill-executed attack on Noreuil caused Smyth and Birdwood to lose confidence in Gellibrand, although Gough considered it part of a risk that he had accepted.

The advance to the Hindenburg Line had lasting effects. For a month the front had suddenly opened up, forcing an abrupt switch from trench warfare to a form of semi-open warfare. Such a paradigm shift required the rapid adoption of new and unfamiliar tactics. Rising to the challenge taught valuable lessons that would be put to use in 1918. Also, for the first time in the history of the First AIF, an attack—on Hermies—actually went according to plan from start to finish. Gough signalled: "Throughout the advance since the end of February the enterprise, tactical skill and gallantry of the whole Anzac Corps has been remarkable and is deserving of the highest commendation."