Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/February 2018/Op-ed


 * By Hawkeye7

In an Op-Ed last year, I wrote about the Australians in March 1917, and emphasised that there were negligible differences between the Australian divisions and the rest of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in terms of doctrine, equipment and organisation, nor were the divisions of the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) treated differently by the British high command. A year later, none of this was true.

The major change that occurred over the winter of 1917-18 was the reduction of British divisions from twelve infantry battalions apiece to just nine. Disbanding battalions was preferred to breaking up divisions, since the shortage of manpower was primarily in the infantry, and infantrymen did not require retraining before being posted to other infantry units. The change was in line with current military thought, which placed less emphasis on infantry and more on machine guns and artillery, and had already been carried out in the French and German armies. But when the German Army had reorganised on the nine-battalion basis, it had used the excess to create more divisions. In the British Army, the number of divisions remained the same. There was a belief in the British government that the nine-battalion division would prove as effective as the the twelve-battalion one, but this would not be borne out by subsequent events. Since regular army and and first line Territorial Force were not to be broken up, this not only resulted in cross-posting of individuals, but of whole battalions, resulting in some divisions being completely reorganised, and a great deal of disruption to training programmes and the preparation of defensive positions.

The divisions from Australia, New Zealand and Canada were not reduced to nine battalions, making the divisions from the Dominions larger, and markedly different in organisation from their British counterparts. The War Office urged the Australian government to reduce the AIF divisions for the sake of uniformity, but after consideration of the matter, the Australian Army decided to retain the twelve-battalion organisation for the time being, as it regarded it as tactically superior. The idea received considerable thought, because the fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres left the AIF divisions 18,000 men short. The AIF still relied on voluntary enlistments, and these were drying up by early 1918. Enlistments in Australia hit a low of 1,508 in March 1918, before bouncing back to 4,888 in May after the news of the German 1918 Spring Offensive was received. In the event, the recruiting situation in Australia in 1918 had little impact, because it took three months for reinforcements to be trained, and another couple of months in transit due to the long voyage from Australia. Over the winter of 1917-18, the Australian divisions still received more reinforcements than their British counterparts.

The notion of breaking up the 4th Division was seriously entertained, but General Sir William Birdwood persuaded BEF General Headquarters (GHQ) to consolidate the five AIF divisions into a single corps, with the 4th Division becoming a depot division, from which the others could draw reinforcements if necessary. This was something that the Canadian Corps had already done with the 5th Canadian Division. The proposal was accepted, and the Australian Corps was formed in November 1917. In the process, the two Australian siege artillery batteries were permanently assigned to the corps, as was No. 3 Squadron AFC. The remaining British Army officers in the Australian Corps were replaced with Australians as suitable posts were found for them. The only exceptions were five officers who had been on exchange with the Australian Army before the war, and had joined the AIF in Australia. The ultimate step was the replacement of Birdwood, by this time the only full general in France commanding a corps, with Lieutenant General John Monash on 31 May 1918. As it turned out, the winter of 1917-18 was not as severe as expected, and the divisions were all near full strength by March 1918, even the 4th, which received only its own personnel returning from hospitals. In fact it never operated as a depot division, and fears that a five-division corps would be unwieldy were not realised. Indeed, the Australian Corps would frequently be stronger still, with additional British or American divisions assigned to it.

The Australian Corps was used as a ready reserve in response to the German Spring Offensive, with divisions and brigades being rushed to threatened sectors of the front. When the BEF decided to increase the number of Lewis Guns in each division, the four Army commanders were asked to nominate divisions suitable for the immediate receipt of additional guns. All five Australian divisions were nominated. When Monash assumed command of the Australian Corps, it was holding the entire British Fourth Army front. The French Army, in coming to their rescue, lost 92,000 men, for a total of 395,000 allied casualties. The Germans lost 378,000 men, but the degree of disruption to the British Army was far greater than that of the much larger German Army. Nine of the BEF's 60 divisions were temporarily written off. Australian casualties between 21 March and 7 May were 15,083. Although light compared with British losses, this caused the 36th, 47th and 52nd Infantry Battalions to be disbanded, reducing the 9th, 12th and 13th Infantry Brigades to the three battalion establishment.

Monash looked at the situation differently. Could better use be made of the available manpower? With his chief of staff, Brigadier General Thomas Blamey, he systemically reconsidered the organisation of the infantry battalion, rebuilding it from the ground up, and came to the conclusion that its establishment of 38 officers and 976 other ranks could be reduced to 38 officers and 900 other ranks. Such a battalion would have a front line strength of 21 officers and 708 other ranks after the usual cadre was left behind. Monash believed that the fighting power of the infantry battalion was in its firepower, not its raw numbers. Taking a Lewis Gun as having the firepower of 80 rifles, the 16 Lewis gun sections in a battalion represented 1,280 rifle fire units, or 68% of the firepower of the battalion. Excluding the antiaircraft section and the administrative overhead, and assuming that everyone but the Lewis gunners and their assistants were carrying rifles, the rifle strength of the battalion with 708 other ranks was about 580. The extra 192 men to bring it up to 900 only increased the firepower by 10%, while increasing the number of soldiers subject to enemy fire by 27%. The problem that the AIF encountered with battalions smaller than 700 men was in the ability to carry sufficient ammunition, as a 15 man Lewis gun section carried 64 Lewis gun magazines but an 11 man minimum section, only 40. The new organisation went into effect in June. In his firepower philosophy, Monash differed strongly with the BEF's Director of Training, Lieutenant General Sir Ivor Maxse. Maxse had been a successful division commander, but his XVIII Corps was disbanded after being all but destroyed in the German Spring Offensive. He held that 900 strong battalion "fire units" were essential. Monash told him bluntly: "We can fight with less than 900 per battalion and have done so."

Another general with different ideas was the commander of the Canadian Corps, Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Currie. He did not have to worry about manpower, as the introduction of conscription in Canada in 1917 provided ample reinforcements. Instead of reducing the number of men in each battalion, he proposed increasing them. As a result, in the period after 21 March 1918, the average Canadian infantry battalion took more casualties (998) than the average Australian one (742), although neither would be as great as its British counterpart in the BEF (1,125). Currie was a good corps commander, one of the BEF's best, and he did produce some innovative tactics, such his his creation of the mobile machine gun corps, a motorised reserve of armoured cars under his personal control. The Australian and Canadian Corps fought side-by-side in the Battle of Amiens in August 1918, and Monash and Currie rated each other highly. Both had been part-time soldiers before the war, commanding brigades; but the Australian Army had conscription for domestic service, and an Australian brigade was full-sized. Both had been businessmen, but Monash was an engineer, whereas Currie sold real estate, and was nearly bankrupted by the 1913 crash in British Columbia.

Comparing the two corps, British observers tended to comment on the greater degree of individual initiative evident in the Australians. By August 1918, this was hard to miss. Individual diggers and small groups engaged in audacious stealth raids, which Monash incorporated into his operational art in a form called peaceful penetration. A series of stealth raids on 11 and 12 July by the 1st and 4th Battalions captured 1000 yd of the German line and took 120 prisoners and 11 machine guns at a cost of two Australians killed and two wounded. Nine German divisions had to be withdrawn from the Australian front to be rebuilt, reducing their reserve by nearly a third. Whereas the Canadians remained wedded to the concept of formal raids. Between May and August 1918, the 2nd Canadian Division conducted 27 formal raids that cost 2,767 killed and wounded.

According to Monash:"The true role of the infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, nor to wither away under merciless machine gun fire, nor to impale itself on hostile bayonets, nor to tear itself to pieces in hostile entanglements—(I am thinking of Pozieres and Stormy Trench and Bullecourt and other bloody fields)—but, on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of their obligation to fight their way forward; to march resolutely, regardless of the din and tumult of battle, to the appointed goal; and there to hold and defend the territory gained; and to gather in the forms of prisoners, guns and stores, the fruits of victory."