CHAPTER V.
THE MUNITIONS OF THE WAR.
The Shell shortage—When relief came—The dramatic Tanks—Bombs—Some ammunition figures—The ingenious inventor.
As soon as any subject is involved in political discussion the facts about it are apt to be distorted in the interests of some particular view. The "Shell shortage" in the early stages of the war has become in a sense a political issue; and that I do not intend to discuss. But some facts about munitions supply must be given—for that was the very pivot of the war—irrespective of what political case they help or harm.
The British Force at the outset of the war suffered from a shell and gun shortage as compared with its enemy, because it had been trained and equipped for a different type of warfare from that which actually came. It had very little high explosive shell, and what it had was rarely "high explosive" in the real sense of the term. The patient search for a foolproof fuse had been so successful that our H.E. shell was comparatively inoffensive when it reached the enemy's lines. It spluttered off rather than shattered off. All this was put right in time. But the difficulties which the Munitions Supply Department had to face at the outset were enormous. There were, considered in the lights of the needs of this war, practically no shells, no guns, and no machinery for making them. Essential material was lacking in many cases, and the only source of quick supply was Germany, which alone in the world had organised for war.
But all difficulties were overcome. How great the growth some comparative figures will show. The production of high explosive in 1914 was almost negligible. The year's supply would not keep the guns of 1918 going for a day. In 1915 we began to produce high explosive on a large scale, and in amounts which made the 1914 output seem contemptible, but still in quite inadequate quantities. In 1916 we had increased the 1915 amount sevenfold. In 1917 we had increased that 1916 amount fourfold. From March, 1915, to March, 1917, the increase was twenty-eight fold. Of machine-guns we made samples in 1914 and we began to manufacture quantities in 1915. In 1917 we made twenty times as many as in 1915. Of aeroplanes the figures mounted in steep flights. In 1916 we seemed to be producing vastly. In 1917 the rate of production for the first six months had increased fourfold as compared with the previous year, and another great acceleration was in progress.
In the end we were enormously superior to any other Army in the field in the matter of munitions. To the very day of the Armistice improvements in the quality and rate of productions were still going on in preparation for the Spring, 1919, campaign, which it was anticipated would end the war. The German threw up the sponge before then. If he had waited he would have been literally blown out of his trenches and his chief cities.
In one sense, of course, we never had enough, but if I were asked to name a date on which a serious shortage of munitions ceased I should say September 19th, 1915, on the eve of the battle of Loos. On that date, a year after Trench War began, word was passed around to the batteries of the British line in a phrase copied from the provision shops of London: "Ammunition is cheap to-day." Every gun-pit stocked up with shell. The gates of the dumps were opened and shell fairly poured out. Battery Commanders, who knew the days when one shell per gun per day was the limit allowed, saw with joy thousands of shells, and, as they began eagerly to fire them off, thousands more coming.
On the 23rd of September a regular bombardment of the whole German line facing the British line began. The artillery was undertaking the preliminary work of wire-cutting and parapet pounding. The 18-pounders with shrapnel, the howitzers with high explosive, started at dawn, and all through the day systematically smashed away at the German's defences. That went on for two more days. The fourth day we intensified our shell-fire. Along many sections of the Front the German wire was down, and the parapet of the German trench breached. The enemy increased his artillery fire, too, attacking our trenches and searching for our observing stations and batteries, but on the whole getting the worst of the artillery duel. On the morning of the 25th the final artillery duel began. It was the greatest artillery bombardment in history up to that date, though afterwards so eclipsed by the records of the Somme, the Ancre and of Messines as to be remembered as a mere splutter. But at the time it was vastly impressive.
The morning was dull but the flashes of guns were so continuous as to give a light which was almost unbroken. It flickered, but it never failed. The earth itself quivered and shook with the repeated shocks of the guns. The air became a tattered hunted thing, torn wisps of it blown hither and thither by the constant explosions.
The Battle of Loos did not give us the break-through we expected, but, in so far as my observation is worth anything, the reason was not lack of munitions. Loos showed that the task was a more complicated one than merely smashing down the front line of enemy trenches. "Trench War" was resumed, whilst the British Army prepared for the next phase opening in July, 1916, with the first Battle of the Somme. By then munitions supply had grown gigantically and in the mechanics of war we were far ahead of the Germans. This was not only in artillery but in infantry equipment and in our unique weapon the "Tank," which was the mechanical contrivance having the most decisive results on the issue of the war. These appeared in September, 1916, two years after "Trench War" had begun, and were ultimately destined to make that sort of war impossible, a task which the German poison gas had failed to accomplish.
As a race we are never consciously dramatic, or I would have imagined on that September 1916 morning that the arrival of the Tanks on the Somme front had been carefully timed and stage-managed. The morning was dull and misty. Over the seared and terrible land little wisps of fog rose and fell. All likeness to our gentle mother earth had been battered out of the fields, which were rubbish-heaps of churned-up débris of bodies, dust, weapons—hideously pock-marked by the eruption of the shells. Where had been villages were dirtier patches of desolation. Where had been woods, groups of splintered stumps. It was an abomination of desolation, like as when the earth was first formed out of the void. In the midst of this desolation out of the mist came, crawling uncouthly, the Tanks, like prehistoric saurians.
The German forces were obviously frightened by the Tanks, which climbed over their trenches, and impervious to rifle bullets, smashed up machine-gun emplacements and redoubts. But that Tank of 1916 was nothing like the perfected machine of 1918. Its rear steering wheel was a weak-spot liable to be shot away. Its pace was too slow for it to keep up with charging infantry. No real tactics had been evolved for its use.
But, such as it was, that Tank at first brought alarm to more than the enemy. In going to and from the battle front it "got the wind up" many a British dug-out. Here is an artillery officer's yarn of the first "Tank night":
"Our 'Mess' was a roofed-over shell-hole a mile or so in front of Martinpuich. The roof would keep out shrapnel bits but was no use against a direct hit from a shell. I was Orderly Dog for the night and it was my business to take action, when, outside, a strange spluttering, growling, scratching, spitting sound broke into the steady barking of the guns. It was like a thousand cats, a hundred dogs, and a sea-sick elephant or two scrambling and squabbling together in a dust-hole. I went to investigate. A Tank wandering home was within ten yards of our Mess, heading straight for it. With all the insouciance I could command at such a crisis I begged the Tank to stop; urged that our roof was designed to keep out splinters only and was neither shell-proof nor Tank-proof; pointed out that if it persisted in its course seven artillery officers, some of whom had wives and children, and all of whom had mothers, would be pulped. Then I became calmer and told the Tank that there was some wine in the Mess and even some whisky and soda, if the Tank would now stop and have a drink. Fortunately a Tank is a slow mover and my cooler arguments had effect by the time it had got within five yards of our roof-tree. Then it backed water and we were safe. The Tank is a noble animal, but it adds a little to the anxieties of life underground."
THE FOSSE
"The Tank" was the great mechanical find of the war, and it was an all-British find. High authority had many fine name-proposals for the useful monsters, but Tommy took the matter into his own hands and coined the word "Tank," and "Tank" it remained. Those who are interested in matters of language may note that the French do not use the word "Tank" but describe a "Tank" as a char d'assaut, which is accurate, but has a weak look. It is an illustration of their jealous and admirable care of their language. They will not allow foreign words to intrude if that can be avoided. We, on the other hand, are quite careless about our language. The orders of our Army in France were bespattered with French words and phrases for which there were quite good English equivalents. (Gare régulatrice for "distributing station" is one of the many scores of cases in point.) It is a pity that we are so careless in regard to our mother tongue. I made an effort once to persuade G.H.Q. that British Army orders and instructions should be put out in English without any foreign admixture, but met with little sympathy. The intrusion of French words was not so bad, but German words had an almost equal degree of hospitality.
But to return to our munitions. The hand bomb was a weapon which by 1914 we had allowed to fall out of use. The British Grenadiers no longer threw grenades. But Trench War brought back the bomb as a weapon, and our bomb was soon better than the German bomb. At the first Somme battle (1916) we showed a definite superiority in bomb supply and bomb use. This development was altogether in our favour. The bomb—beastly weapon as it is, and beastly as are the wounds it inflicts—lends its favour to the quicker brain, the prompter courage, the keener leadership. The football field and the cricket green both give a good foundation for the murderous art of bombing. As soon as we had the bombs our bombing superiority grew with every day.
An instance to illustrate bombing: For the taking of the village of Contalmaison (1916) a preliminary task was the capture of Horse Shoe trench. The attack on this was prospering when it was held up at a critical point by the unmasking of a German machine gun on our right flank. To the fire of this gun we were fully exposed, and its effect was murderous. A young cricketer rose to the occasion. Single-handed he rushed the gun with a bag of bombs, got to his distance and destroyed it with a couple of "hot returns from the outfield."
In using ammunition the B.E.F. put up some startling records. On August 8th, 1918, when our big final thrust began there were used 15,598 tons in a single day. On September 29th, 1918, there were used 23,706 tons. Here are some other big figures:
| Date. | Battle. | Amount. | ||
| 1/7/16 | Somme | 12,776 | tons | |
| 9/4/17 | Vimy | 24,706 | " | |
| 3/6/17 | Arras | 17,162 | " | |
| 7/6/17 | Messines | 20,638 | " | |
| 31/7/17 | Ypres | 22,193 | " | |
| 20/9/17} 21/9/17} | Polygon Wood | 42,156 | " |
In the depôts in France we kept a reserve of 258,000 tons of ammunition, and the issues in a normal month ran to about that figure though it varied a good deal month by month. Thus the average expenditure during the last months of 1918 was: May, 5,478 tons daily; June, 4,748 tons daily; July, 5,683 tons daily; August, 9,046 tons daily; September, 8,576 tons daily; October, 4,748 tons daily; November, 3,158 tons daily. On November 11th, the last day of the war, we used 233 tons of ammunition.
Different varieties of ammunition had widely different rates of use. The gigantic 15-inch howitzer on some days did not fire a single round. It was a "big day" when it fired fifty rounds. It was just as well that it was not a gun which indulged in thousands of rounds, for a ten-ton broad-gauge railway truck would only take twelve rounds for it. The 18-pounder field guns would shoot 100,000 rounds on a normal day, and on a heavy day would use 200,000 rounds. The cost of ammunition was, in a time of heavy fighting, up to £3,000,000 per day.
A heavy item in munitions was for defence against poison gas and for our own poison gas service. We entered with extreme reluctance into the ghastly business, but once we started we soon made the German sorry that he had brought that element into the war. Our gases were more potent and more plentiful than his. For lack of material he could not give his men perfect gas protectors, while to our men we could and did.
The last loathsome trick of the enemy in this direction was the introduction of mustard gas, a powerful corrosive which was discharged from shells. The use of mustard gas by the enemy raised a number of problems for Supplies as apart from the Medical Staffs. The disinfection with chloride of lime of ground contaminated with the gas, a prompt change of clothing and bath treatment for men affected, proved efficacious in dealing with mustard gas. There was, too, safety in protective overalls of oilskin. Mustard gas affected the Veterinary Service heavily, there being many casualties to horses and mules through passing over ground infected with the gas.
The inventive spirit was naturally strong in the Army, and some of the most useful of the new ideas in the way of munitions or equipment came from men in the Field. These ideas were tested in the Army workshops, and occasionally there was a certain amount of waste owing to the same idea, or nearly the same idea, being experimented with simultaneously in more than one Army. So an Army Order from Home recalled the King's Regulation that War Office approval must be obtained before experimental work was done in regard to any invention. But this, it was urged from G.H.Q., would act prejudicially to the interests of the Force in France, since many very useful inventions regarding stores and material had come from officers and men of the Force and it was not in the best interests of the public to put any obstacles in the way of future inventions. This was recognised, and a subsequent Army Order gave authority to the Commander-in-Chief of any Expeditionary Force to authorise trials of inventions; but precautions were taken in regard to duplication and overlapping.
There were not in the Field so many foolish inventors as at Home. No such merry idea came to G.H.Q. as that anti-submarine device with which the Admiralty was plagued—a liquid air shell which on being exploded anywhere in the vicinity of a submarine formed an extensive iceberg (through the lowering of the surrounding temperature by a release of the liquid air from pressure). On this iceberg the submarine would be brought to the surface. The next step would be easy: open with an oyster knife, sprinkle with pepper and salt and a dash of lemon juice, and serve.
The B.E.F. had never anything quite so naive as that. Its limit was the inventor who claimed to be able to project an X-ray from an electric battery so that it would kill anything within 1,000 yards. This invention would have been a great war-stopper. It would have been only necessary to set up a sufficient number of the projectors along our Front, switch on the current and march on to Berlin. It was offered at a time when inventions were rather the fashion, and it needed courage to scoff at even the most curious notion. So it actually got to the stage of a trial with a High Authority present. The inventor set up his projector; an animal was let loose within its deadly range and, surely enough, dropped dead. Unfortunately for the inventor a medical scoffer subjected the animal to a post mortem examination and found that it had evidently resolved on suicide, for it had taken a large dose of strychnine. This discouraged further trials of the X-ray device.
The inventor with a "wireless" device for exploding enemy magazines also cropped up. You projected a wireless ray and it blew up a dump. This invention could be very convincingly demonstrated within your own lines. All that was necessary was to provide in the dump a certain amount of loose explosive, a fulminate, and a receiver tuned to receive your wireless message. We were not on sufficiently good terms with the Germans to persuade them to arrange their ammunition depôts in this way for our convenience.
There was a close liaison kept up between the B.E.F. and the Ministry of Munitions. When Mr. Winston Churchill was Minister of Munitions he was over in France so frequently that a small château was kept up for him at G.H.Q. He was wont to come into the Officers' Club for his meals. There was always an air about him that he would have liked to be in the jack-boots of his famous ancestor and give the world a spectacle of another Marlborough winning victories in Flanders.