Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918

by Sir C. E. Callwell

"Oh yes, sir. I told him first thing this morning."

"Did he pass no remarks as to your having started him off after this absurd hare of yours?"

"Well, you see, sir, he's an uncommonly busy man, and I didn't feel justified in wasting his time. So, after relieving his mind, I cleared out at once."

"And your professors?"

"Oh, those professor-men—it would never do to tell them, sir. They'd be perfectly miserable if they were deprived of the excitement of muddling about with their crucibles and blow-pipes and retorts and things. It would be cruelty to animals to enlighten them—it would indeed, sir; and I know that you would not wish me to do anything to discourage scientific investigation. Now, sir, may I go over to the Admiralty?" And off he went, with instructions to find out all that he could about these contrivances that he had heard about, and to do what he could to promote their production. A treasure: unconventional, resourceful, exceptionally well informed, determined; the man to get a thing done that one wanted done—even if he did at times get a thing done that one didn't particularly want done—and in some respects quite the best intelligence officer I have come across in a fairly wide experience. To-day "Z" commands the applause of listening senates in the purlieus of St. Stephen's and has given up to party what was meant for mankind; but although he is not Prime Minister yet, nor even a Secretary of State, that will come in due course.

It was in May 1915 that "Z" told me that the Admiralty were at work on some sort of land-ship, and set about finding out what was being done; he had previously been in communication with Colonel E. D. Swinton over at the front. Only in the latter part of 1919, when the question of claims in connection with the invention and the development of Tanks had been investigated by a Royal Commission, did I learn to my astonishment that this matter had been brought by Swinton before the War Office so early as the beginning of January 1915, and that his projects had then been "turned down" by a technical branch to which he had, unfortunately, referred them. It does not seem possible that the technical branch can have brought the question to the notice of the General Staff, or I must have heard of it. The value of some contrivance such as he was confident could be constructed was from the tactical point of view incontestable, and had been incontestable ever since trench warfare became the order of the day on the Western Front in the late autumn of 1914. But the idea of the land-ship appeared to be an idle dream, and there was perhaps some excuse for the General Staff in its not of its own accord pressing upon the technical people that something of the sort must be produced somehow. Knowledge that a thoroughly practical man possessed of engineering knowledge and distinguished for his prescience like Swinton was convinced that the thing was feasible, was just what was required to set the General Staff in motion.

Thanks to Swinton, and also to "Z," the General Staff did get into touch with the Admiralty in May, and then found that a good deal had already been done, owing to Mr. Churchill's imagination and foresight and to the energy and ingenuity with which the land-ship idea had been taken up at his instigation. But the War Office came badly out of the business, and the severe criticisms to which it has been exposed in connection with the subject are better deserved than a good many of the criticisms of which it has been the victim. The blunder was not perhaps so much the fault of individuals as of the system. The technical branches had not been put in their place before the war, they did not understand their position and did not realize that on broad questions of policy they were subject to the General Staff. It is worthy of note, incidentally, that Swinton never seems to have got much satisfaction with G.H.Q. in France until he brought his ideas direct before the General Staff out there on the 1st of June by submitting a memorandum to the Commander-in-Chief. It is to be hoped that the subserviency of all other branches to the General Staff in connection with matters of principle has been established once for all by this time; it was, I think, pretty well established by Sir W. Robertson when he became C.I.G.S. Should there ever be any doubt about the matter—well, remember the start of the Tanks!

One morning in January or February 1915, Lord K. sent for me to his room. It appeared that Lord Fisher had in mind a project of constructing a flotilla of lighters of special type, to be driven by motor power and designed for the express purpose of landing large bodies of troops rapidly on an enemy's coast. The First Sea Lord was anxious to discuss details with somebody from our side of Whitehall, and the Chief wished me to take the thing up, the whole business being of a most secret character. Lord Fisher, I gathered, contemplated descents upon German shores; Lord K. did not appear to take these very seriously, but he did foresee that a flotilla of the nature proposed might prove extremely useful in connection with possible future operations on the Flanders littoral. In any case, seeing that the Admiralty were prepared to undertake a construction job of this kind more or less in the interests of us soldiers, we ought to give the plan every encouragement.

Vague suggestions had reached me from across the road shortly before—I do not recollect exactly how they came to hand—to the effect that one ought to examine into the possibilities offered by military operations based on the German Baltic coast and against the Frisian Islands. Attacks upon these islands presented concrete problems; the question in their case had been already gone into carefully by other hands before the war, and schemes of this particular kind had not been found to offer much attraction when their details came to be considered. As for the Baltic coast, one was given nothing whatever to go upon—was groping in the dark. You wondered how it was proposed to obtain command of these protected waters, bearing in mind the nature of the approaches through defiles which happened to be in the main in neutral hands, but you realized that this was a naval question and therefore somebody else's job. Still, even given this command, what then? Investigations of the subject, based upon uncertain premises, did not lead to the conclusion that, beyond "containing" hostile forces which otherwise might be available for warfare in some other quarter, a landing in large force on these shores was likely to prove an effective operation of war; and it was bound to be an extremely hazardous one.

It has since transpired from Lord Fisher's volcanic Memories that the First Sea Lord had, with his "own hands alone to preserve secret all arrangements," prepared plans for depositing three "great armies" at different places in the Baltic, "two of them being feints that could be turned into reality." How the First Sea Lord could draw up plans of this kind that were capable of being put into effective execution without some military assistance I do not pretend to understand. A venture such as this does not begin and end with dumping down any sort of army you like at a spot on the enemy's shores where it happens to be practicable to disembark troops rapidly. Once landed, the army still has to go ahead and do its business, whatever this is, as a military undertaking, and it stands in need of some definite and practicable objective. The numbers of which it is to consist and its detailed organization have to be worked out in advance, with a clear idea of what service it is intended to perform and of the strength of the enemy forces which it is likely to encounter while carrying out its purpose. It has to be fed and has to be supplied with war material after it has been deposited on terra firma. Is it to take its transport with it, or will it pick this up on arrival? Even the constitution of the armada which is to convey it to its point of disembarkation by no means represents a purely naval problem. Until the sailors know what the composition of the military force in respect to men, animals, vehicles, etc., is to be, they cannot calculate what tonnage will be required, or decide how that tonnage is to be allotted for transporting the troops oversea. For a project of this kind to be worked out solely by naval experts would be no less ridiculous than for it to be worked out solely by military experts. Secrecy in a situation of this kind is no doubt imperative, but you must trust somebody or you will head straight for catastrophe.