Everybody will recall the ruin that overtook the French army in Russia in 1812 on account of untoward weather conditions, but it is less well known that Napoleon, with his usual sagacity, obtained from his scientific advisers a report on the Russian climate before he planned his campaign; that the winter set in much earlier than usual in that fatal year; and, most interesting of all, that it was actually a brief period of thawing weather, rather than the intense cold that preceded and followed it, which, by turning the roads into bogs and breaking up the ice in the Beresina, brought about the culminating disaster.
Another fateful spell of weather ushered in the battle of Waterloo. It is described in a well-known passage of “Les Misérables,” which contains enough truth mingled with hyperbole to be worth quoting:
“S’il n’avait pas plu dans la nuit du 17 au 18 janvier, 1815, l’avenir de l’Europe était changé. Quelques gouttes de plus ou de moins out fait pencher Napoléon. Pour que Waterloo fût la fin d’Austerlitz, la Providence n’a eu besoin que d’un peu de pluie, et un nuage traversant le ciel à contre-sens de la saison a suffi pour l’écroulement d’un monde.”
The rains and floods that led to the annihilation of the Roman legions under Varus in A. D. 9 and the great tempests that helped English seamen defeat the Spanish Armada furnish additional well-known examples of the immense importance of weather as a factor in warfare. We need not, however, look farther back than to the recent world conflict to find similar examples in profusion. Leaving out of consideration the indirect effects of the weather upon the progress of the war as exercised through its control of crops, transportation, and other features in the economic life of the belligerent and neutral nations, we need only examine war-time newspapers to see how the armies themselves were helped or harassed by meteorological conditions at every turn. The war was a great popular teacher of climatography, just as it was of geography. The drenching misery of Flemish winters, as formidable to the soldiers in the trenches as the bullets of the enemy, became as familiar to the present generation of Americans as did somewhat similar conditions in Virginia to Americans of the Civil War period.
The British campaigns in Mesopotamia were as much a conflict with climate as with human foes. Marches were made when the temperature stood at 110 degrees Fahrenheit and over. The temperature in the hospital tents is said to have reached 130 degrees. The disaster at Kut-el-Amara was due to the rains and floods that prevented reenforcements from reaching the beleaguered garrison. The failure of the Dardanelles expedition was partly due to the fact that the extreme dryness of the country was not realized—as it would have been if the War Office had called climatologists into council—and totally inadequate provision was made for the water supply.
The new engines of war brought forth by the recent struggle were peculiarly susceptible to the effects of weather. The larger guns and heavy motor trucks were difficult to move over muddy roads. The aircraft, though they managed to fly in all kinds of weather, suffered innumerable disasters for which atmospheric conditions—chiefly storms and fog—were responsible, and their operations were conspicuously affected by favorable and unfavorable winds. Shells were fired to unprecedented heights, and their trajectories were modified by unknown conditions in the upper air. Last but not least, the use of poisonous gases, especially in the period before gas clouds were largely replaced by gas shells, was dependent upon the occurrence of appropriate winds; and a slight miscalculation in this respect sometimes brought disaster to the troops using the gas.
It is not surprising that professional meteorologists played a part in the World War, but it is difficult to understand why meteorological units were not attached to all armies, at least when on active service, several decades before the year 1914. Meteorologists did, indeed, take a hand in one earlier conflict, but not as enrolled soldiers. During the Spanish-American War a special service was organized by the United States Weather Bureau to protect the American fleet in southern waters from unpleasant surprises in the shape of West India hurricanes. In the summer of 1898 a chain of observation stations was established by the Bureau around the Caribbean Sea. The service then inaugurated in consequence of the exigencies of war proved so valuable to shipping in time of peace that it has continued to operate, with some intermissions, down to the present day.
When the World War broke out, the only country that immediately put meteorologists, as such, into the field was Germany. The Germans were fortunate in having a far greater number of trained meteorologists at their disposal than had their enemies. There were chairs of meteorology in several German universities and high schools, and the numerous meteorological observatories and institutes of the Empire had provided occupation for a large amount of professional talent in this line. One of the first acts of the army that invaded Belgium was to establish an aerological service in that country.
The Entente countries were slow in adding meteorological units to their armies, but their civilian meteorological services were utilized to the utmost for military purposes from the beginning of the war. They at first worked under difficulties arising from the cessation of the customary weather reports from central Europe, but, to offset this disadvantage, the weather map was expanded in other directions, the number of daily hours of observation was increased, and eventually the forecasters in London and Paris acquired much better facilities for making their predictions than they had enjoyed in time of peace. The supply of weather information to the public was suspended, and great precautions were taken to prevent the reports of the Allied services from being utilized by the enemy. The German meteorologists were seriously hampered by the lack of reports from the westward. It has been asserted that such reports were sometimes obtained by radio from submarines stationed off the coast of Ireland, but such a service, if it existed, must have been fragmentary and unsatisfactory. That the Germans made many mistakes in their attempts to infer the atmospheric conditions over the British Isles from the limited weather map at their disposal is proved by the fact that their airships frequently crossed the Channel when, with an ampler knowledge of impending weather, they would certainly have remained at home. Several Zeppelins came to grief in the course of these ill-timed raids. One of the interesting routine duties of the British Meteorological Office during the war was to draw the weather map for a given moment as the Germans would probably draw it, with their curtailed set of telegraphic reports, and then predict the German prediction!
In the spring of 1915 a small meteorological section was organised in the British Army, and attached to the Royal Engineers. This force was afterward enlarged, and provided units for service on several battle fronts. The British also developed a naval meteorological service, which had existed in embryo before the war, and, eventually, a special meteorological service for the Royal Air Force. Analogous services were organized by the French and the Italians.