German Influence on British Cavalry

by Erskine Childers

There must be two parties to every combat, and, unless there is perfect equilibrium in combat, one side or the other must definitely be playing an offensive rôle; and, even in equilibrium, both sides may be said to be as much in offence as in defence, whatever weapons they are using. The facts mainly illustrate the abstract principle. The Boers could not have taken guns and prisoners while acting on the defensive. Talana Hill, Nicholson's Nek, Spion Kop, Stormberg, Sannah's Post, Nooitgedacht, Zilikat's Nek, Bakenlaagte, were not defensive operations from the Boer point of view. Nor were Magersfontein, Colenso, Elandslaagte, Paardeberg defensive operations from the British point of view. Whether the rifles were in the hands of Infantry or mounted troops is immaterial. A rifle is a rifle, whoever holds it. It is just as absurd to say that the Boers who rode to and stormed on foot Helvetia and Dewetsdorp belonged to a defensive class of soldiers as it is to say that the Infantry who walked to and stormed Pieter's Hill belonged to a defensive class of soldiers. It is still more absurd to say that the Boers who charged home mounted at Sannah's Post, Vlakfontein, Bakenlaagte, Roodewal, Blood River Poort, and many other actions, and the British mounted riflemen who did similar things at Bothaville, were performing a defensive function, while the Cavalry who pursued at Elandslaagte were performing an offensive function. Take this action of Elandslaagte, the solitary genuine example of a successful charge with the arme blanche. By whom was the real offensive work done? By the Infantry and by the Imperial Light Horse acting dismounted, and by the Artillery. After hours of hard and bloody fighting, these men stormed the ridge and forced the Boers to retreat. In the act of retreat they were charged by the Cavalry, who had hitherto been spectators of the action.

It might be objected that I am taking a verbal advantage of Sir John French. He is guilty, it may be argued, only of the lesser fallacy—that of thinking that the rifle is a defensive weapon for mounted men as distinguished from Infantry. Not so. He perceives the logical peril of admitting that the rifle is an offensive weapon for any troops, and in another passage, when deprecating attacks on the "Cavalry spirit" (p. vii), makes use of the following words: "Were we to seek to endow Cavalry with the tenacity and stiffness of Infantry, or take from the mounted arm the mobility and the cult of the offensive which are the breath of its life, we should ruin not only the Cavalry, but the Army besides." (The italics are mine.) It may be pointed out that, but for their firearms and the mobility and offensive power derived from them, the Cavalry in South Africa would indeed have been "ruined" beyond hope of rehabilitation.

But let us look at the underlying principle expressed. Infantry are "stiff and tenacious" (that is, obviously, in defence). Cavalry have the "cult of the offensive." Those are the distinctive "spirits" of the two Arms. The bitter irony of it! Which Arm really displayed the most "offensive spirit" in South Africa? Study the lists of comparative casualties in the two Arms during that period of the war in which Infantry were mainly engaged. If at Talana, the Battle of Ladysmith, Colenso, Dronfield, Poplar Grove, Karee Siding, Sannah's Post, Zand River, Doornkop, or Diamond Hill, the Cavalry in their own sphere of work had shown the offensive power displayed by the Infantry in the battles on the Tugela, or in Methuen's campaign from Orange River to Magersfontein, or at Driefontein, Doornkop, Bergendal, and Diamond Hill, the war would have showed different results. There was no distinction in point of bravery between any branches of the Services. Fire-power and fire-efficiency were the tests, and lack of a good firearm and of fire-efficiency on only too many occasions fatally weakened the offensive spirit of the Cavalry.

And what of the "tenacity and stiffness" with which we must not "seek to endow" Cavalry? Ominous words, redolent of disaster! Have not they fully as much need of those qualities as Infantry? Imagine our Cavalry doing the work that the Boers had to do on so many score of occasions—to fight delaying rearguard actions against immensely superior numbers, with no reserves, and a heavy convoy to protect. We shall be fortunate if, through reliance on and skill in the use of the rifle, they display as much tenacity and stiffness as Botha's men at Pieter's Hill or Koch's men at Elandslaagte against forces four times their superior in strength, to say nothing of such incidents as Dronfield, where 150 Boers defied a whole division of Cavalry and several batteries; of Poplar Grove and Zand River, where small hostile groups virtually paralyzed whole brigades; or of Bergendal, where seventy-four men held up a whole army. There was nothing abnormal tactically or topographically about any of these incidents. Any function performed by the Boer mounted riflemen may be demanded from our Cavalry in any future war. Suppose them, for example, vested with the strictly normal duty of covering a retreat against a superior force of all arms; suppose a squadron, like the seventy-four Zarps at Bergendal, ordered to hold the cardinal hill of an extended position, and their leader replying: "This is not our business. We are an offensive Arm. We cannot entrench, and we have not the tenacity and stiffness of Infantry. Our business is to charge with the lance and sword." Would the General be well pleased?

The reader will ask for the key to this curious discrimination between the "spirits" of Cavalry and Infantry. It is this: The lance and sword, when pitted against the rifle, can, if they are used at all, only be used in offence. Men sitting on horseback, using steel weapons with a range of a couple of yards, plainly cannot defend themselves against riflemen. Even the Cavalry tacitly admit this principle, and if they accepted its logical consequence, a logical consequence completely confirmed by the facts of modern war, they would admit, too, that the sword and lance cannot be used for offence against riflemen in modern war. But they will not admit that. "Tant pis pour les faits," they say. "All modern war is abnormal. Our steel weapons dominate combat. Without them we are nothing."

In these circumstances they are forced to set up this strange theory—that Cavalry is a peculiarly "offensive" Arm, a theory which the reader will find expressed in all Cavalry writings. On the face of it the theory is meaningless. It is a mere verbal juggle, because, as I said before, there are two parties to every combat, and defence is the necessary and invariable counterpart of offence. All combatant soldiers, including Cavalry, carry firearms, and if Cavalry choose to use these firearms in offence, by hypothesis they will impose fire-action on the defence, whether the defence consists of Cavalry or any other class of troops. Conversely, if they use their rifles in defence, as by hypothesis they must, they will impose fire-action on the attacking force, be it Cavalry or any other Arm. In other words, the rifle governs combat. That is why the lance and sword disappeared in South Africa. Both in offence and defence the Boer riflemen forced the Cavalry to accept combat on terms of fire.

And what kind of Cavalry do our Cavalrymen count upon meeting in our next war? They count, incredible as it seems, upon meeting Cavalry not superior, but inferior, to the Boer mounted riflemen, inferior because, as I shall show from von Bernhardi, they defy science, shut their eyes to the great principle of the supremacy of fire, are prepared deliberately to abdicate their fire-power, and hope to engage, by mutual agreement, as it were, and on the understanding that suitable areas of level ground can be found, in contests of crude bodily weight.

And what of the action of Cavalry against other Arms? We know Sir John French's opinion about mounted riflemen. They will gallop for their lives "defenceless" at the approach of "good" Cavalry. But Infantry, riflemen without horses, who cannot gallop, but can only run? Their case, it would seem, must be still more desperate. They are not only defenceless, but destitute even of the means of flight. And yet even Sir John French credits them, if not with an offensive spirit, at least with "tenacity and stiffness," derived, of course, from their rifles. But their mounted comrades, armed with these same rifles, lack these soldierly qualities. We arrive thus at the conclusion that the horse, which one would naturally suppose to be a source of immensely enhanced mobility and power, is a positive source of danger to a rifleman unless he also carries a lance or sword.

Here is the reductio ad absurdum of the arme blanche theory, and I beg for the reader's particular attention to it. Of course, the conclusion is in reality too absurd; for Sir John French himself does not really believe that Infantry are a defensive Arm. In point of fact, no serious man believes that Infantry in modern war have anything whatever to fear from the lance and sword, and their training-book is written on that assumption. Nor does Sir John French really believe that Mounted Infantry are a defensive Arm who run from Cavalry; otherwise, he would never rest until he had secured the complete abolition of our Mounted Infantry, who are now, under his official sanction, designed to act, not only as divisional mounted troops against steel-armed Continental Cavalry, but to co-operate with, and in certain events take the place of, our own regular Cavalry in far wider functions, and are presumably not going to be whipped off the field at the distant glimpse of a lance or sword. And I may say here that the reader can obtain no better and more searching sidelight on the steel theory than by studying the Mounted Infantry Manual (1909) for the rules given about similar and analogous functions. Nor, if Sir John French went the whole length of the theory, would he, as Inspector-General, have permitted our Colonial mounted riflemen to think that they might be of some Imperial value in a future war. It is only in order to sustain his a priori case for the steel weapons that he finds himself forced into the logical impasses to which I have drawn attention.