CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MOTOR LORRY THAT WAITED.
How a motor lorry waited at the Ecole Militaire to take away the maps to the Coast—The Motor Lorry Reserve—An "appreciation" of the position—Germany lost the War in the first three months—Some notes of German blunders.
One night in the Spring of 1918 a mysterious motor lorry drew up in the yard of the Ecole Militaire at Montreuil. Its driver reported and was ordered to stand by. He stood by all that night; and in the morning was relieved by another driver. But the empty lorry still waited. At night a relief driver came on duty. But the empty lorry still waited.
THE ÉCOLE MILITAIRE
Lorries in those days were precious. Because the German had seized many of our light railways, had put under his shell-fire our main front lateral line and had brought our whole railway system to a point perilously close to collapse, the fate of the British Army was to a great extent dependent on its motor lorries. By an intuitional stroke of genius, or of luck, the new Quartermaster-General had just brought to completion one of his "gyms"—the building up of a G.H.Q. reserve of motor lorries. There had been all kinds of explanations of that reserve—mostly of the humorous-malicious order. It had been said that they were intended to carry about the baggage of the G.H.Q. Generals; that the reserve had no other reason for being than to find a soft job for some potentate near to the golf links of the coast. But whether it was just a guess or a bit of far-seeing on the part of Sir Travers Clarke, that G.H.Q. Motor Lorry Reserve had been built up; and it was available to rush into the breach when the railways could not face the task of supply.
Very nobly the Motor Transport—including that reserve—did its duty. There were drivers who held the wheel for thirty-six hours at a stretch, and were lifted from their seats fainting or asleep; a few—who carried on until no longer able to see through their bloodshot and torturing eyes—ran their cars into trees or walls or ditches. There were many casualties, but the situation was saved.
It was just at this time, when a motor lorry was above rubies in value, that an entirely healthy, well-preserved example, with driver attached, was ordered to remain in the yard of the Ecole Militaire.
Everyone wanted to know the reason why. The position was then at its very worst, so the humourist who surmised that it was "waiting for the wine orders of the —— Mess," for once found his jape fall flat. The truth was for a long time known only to a select few. That motor lorry was told off to carry away the maps and important papers from Montreuil to the coast, since the evacuation of the town and of all France north of the Somme was possible at an hour's notice.
So critical was the position for some days that that motor lorry was never off duty night or day.
But G.H.Q. went about its work unperturbed to all outward seeming, and there was not a whisper of losing the war, not even from those who knew what would be the full consequences of evacuating Pas de Calais. One officer—he would not like his name to be published even now—spoke with the most frank recognition of facts and yet with a robust confidence that was distinctly comforting:
"If we go behind the Somme it will give the Germans the Coast from the Canche right up to the Scheldt for their submarines. That is the most serious factor. We won't leave them much in the way of harbour works, of course; but still they will be able in a year or two to restore things a bit."
"In a year or two? But will it last...?"
"Oh yes, you can give the war another ten years at least in that event. For there won't be any American Army to speak of; no port to land them or supply them from. Our British Army will have to come down in strength for the same reason. You can't keep a bigger army anywhere than you can keep supplied with food and shells. Look at the ports and the railways. There will be Havre, Brest, Cherbourg, Bordeaux as ports of supply and the railways from them as the channels of supply to the front line. No good talking of millions of Americans pouring in. They can't pour. Funnel's too narrow."
But there wasn't in that officer's mind a hint of the possibility of failure.
"It's only a question of organising to get at them. In time weight must tell. The Germans and their friends are, say, 140,000,000 in population. The allies who are in the war against them have 600,000,000 of population and another 400,000,000 of reserve population if Japan came in fully, and China, and Brazil. I count Russia on neither side, but she is still a liability more than an asset to the Germans. In money and resources the odds against them are even greater. I like to go back to the simple basis of arithmetic sometimes. Of course weight doesn't tell against skill. But now the skill is about even. The Germans had their one and only chance at the beginning, the very beginning, of the war; because they were ready and no one else was. They had to win by Christmas, 1914, or not to win at all."
He went on to sketch vividly the story of the war up to that date, the very nadir of our depression. He argued that the enemy had obviously committed some tremendous blunders. The Prussian military leaders had been very clever in securing spectacular victories (generally after a preliminary corruption of some weak section of their opponents) and thus the military position was not easy to see in its true proportion. But even a surface consideration must show that whilst Germany was always announcing victories, she was never really within sight of victory.
"In the first instance the Prussian Empire had made no sound reckoning of the forces she had to meet. That was the first elementary duty of the strategist. The man who goes out to fight ten thousand and finds he has to fight twenty thousand has blundered irreparably. In 1914 Prussia calculated that Great Britain would not participate in the war, and would consent not only to the destruction of France but to the betrayal of her obligations towards Belgium. The bewildered dismay with which Germany learned that Great Britain would not look upon the treaty with Belgium as a 'scrap of paper,' the wild hatred toward England which found one expression in the 'Hymn of Hate,' were the screams of a savage creature caught in a trap.
"She had then one slender chance, a rush attack on Paris. But the Battle of the Marne killed that chance. Then the only hope of saving Germany was to make peace. But she had made the ghastly blunder of the Belgian atrocities.
"When a man goes out to fight ten thousand and finds himself confronted by twenty thousand it is common prudence to strive to make the stakes as low as possible, the penalty of failure as small as possible. There was a chance that, if that policy had been followed, the war would have come to an end soon after the Battle of the Marne, an end not favourable to Prussian ideas of European domination, giving those ideas a severe check, but still not wrecking them irrevocably nor exacting a very heavy penalty. But the Prussian spirit added blunder to blunder. Having launched a hopeless war it set itself to give that war an 'unlimited' character. Instead of going through Belgium as a reluctant trespasser, the Prussian army trampled through as a ravaging devastator in full blast of frightfulness. By the time Prussia had fought and lost the Battle of the Marne she had steeled her enemies to an inflexible resolution against a compromise peace."
Prussia, he argued, thus early by two blunders of the first magnitude (1) entered into a campaign against an alliance which ultimately could command vastly superior forces, and (2) embittered the conditions of the campaign so that her withdrawal from it was made exceedingly difficult. Several blunders of a lesser order marked the first stages of the campaign. Belgium having been attacked and Liége taken, the Prussian army showed a strange hesitancy and lack of enterprise when faced by the little Belgian army on the line Haelen-Tirlemont-Namur. Precious days were lost in pottering. Whether it was expected that the Belgian nation would give way after one defeat, or it was thought that French and British armies had been pushed up into Belgium, the German millions were held up an unduly long time by the Belgian thousands.
At Mons the German Army neither crushed the French-British force nor pushed it back so quickly that the main deployment was harassed. Whether this failure of the German Army was due to its bad handling or to the excellent virtues of the French-British force, did not matter. But the Battle of Mons frustrated the only hope that was left to Germany at that time—a successful rush on Paris opening the way to a quick peace. It proved that there was no military genius at the head of the German invaders. Then the Army which had been delayed in Belgium was defeated on the Marne and had to fall back on the Aisne. The explanation for this given in some German quarters was that the Army had outstripped its big guns and ammunition supplies. That was as good as any other. No explanation would clear the Prussian Military Command from the stigma that it failed when there was that one remaining desperate chance of success.
And having failed on the Marne and retreated to the Aisne the German strategic plan lost all coherency. True, the war was lost so far as any hope of winning European dominancy was concerned. But there was still as a possible objective a peace which would secure Prussia something in return for the territory which she had overrun. Such a peace had been made difficult by the cold rage inspired by Prussian frightfulness. But it was the only possible aim left and, from a military point of view, it could only be pursued in one way, by a definite hammering at some vital point to secure a decisive result, with a defensive stand in other quarters. A defensive campaign in the East with a determined offensive in the West, or a defensive on the West with a resolute offensive on the East.
The Prussian vacillated between the two; his effort was always shuttlecocking East to West, West to East, getting a decisive result nowhere. Like a baited bull in the arena Prussia was constantly making sensational rushes here and there, gratified often by the sight of fleeing foes, but never breaking out of the arena of doom, and always losing blood.
"The first three months of the war," he concluded dogmatically, "were decisive. They do not redound to the military glory of Prussia. During those three months the disciplined and trained devotion of the German troops worked wonders in the battle line. But indecision at Headquarters prevented the proper concentration of their efforts. Prussia had failed to conquer Europe unprepared. She was afterwards face to face with the task of conquering Europe prepared; and her indecision increased. She was always looking for success in a new quarter and never finding it. Recklessness and vacillation and impatience are not sound military qualities, but they mark the whole military history of Germany since November, 1914. Recklessness of ultimate consequences was shown in such matters as the bringing of poison gas into use. Vacillation was shown by the effort which was organised to take the French Channel ports at all costs, and, failing, was diverted to the Eastern Front, and back again to this Front, and then again to the Balkan Front, and back to this Front and then to the Italian Front and finally back to this Front. Impatience was shown in the general failure to push any effort to its logical conclusion, and in details, such as the haste with which poison gas was put into use on a small and ineffectual scale instead of being kept in reserve for a great and possibly decisive effort."
"Take it year by year," this officer concluded, "it has been always the same. Germany has added always to the area of destruction. She has never got nearer to victory. It will be the same with this Push. If that motor lorry has to carry away the maps from Montreuil it may be another ten years before we beat the Germans, but we will beat them."
"But if France gives in?"
"France won't give in. Look at her now, ready to smash up all Pas de Calais—to blow up every harbour and canal and road. That does not look like giving in. Even if she were forced to it we could go back to our island and carry on the fight from there."
Then we talked of lighter things.
Going out from dinner my friend reverted to the war position.
"Anyhow that lorry is not going to take the maps. I bet you a cigar to nothing."
He was right. Going up to the map room on the Intelligence side we heard that our troops were holding in front of Amiens. We had actually passed the lowest point of our fortunes, and within a week the motor lorry had gone.
I asked one of the drivers detailed to it, who either did not know or wisely professed not to know what he had been kept in waiting for, what he thought about it all. He replied with that sound philosophy of the British soldier:
"It was a splendid 'mike,' Sir."
"Mike," it need hardly be explained, is a trade term in the Army for a soft job.