The 14 to 18 war and how human nature wins

A happy new year to you all! It has been a busy twelve months for us but the Workshop has been peaceful - for a number of reasons. We are hoping that this time next year, Malcolm will be in there doing what he loves - creation. Alas, some of his suppliers have ceased trading and so the options for making a new batch of locomotives are limited, but there are still three possibles, the Wren (pictured - credit MD Wright) the Quarry Hunslet and the Baldwin Gas Mechanical.

And now to the title of this blog. This suggests that whatever is said or written, human nature goes its own sometimes contrary way even in wartime and under military discipline. The Mission Satement for both sides was 'Win at all costs!' but what happened on the Western front was more nuanced. From late 1914 to early summer 1918, the position for most of the combatants was effectively stalemate. Millions of troops from the Allied and Central Powers (mainly Germans) faced each other over a Front of around 500 miles/800 km. As the gentle reader knows from previous blogs, supplying them was only possible because of a network of 60cm/2’ gauge railways. The British were late into that game but within a couple of years were as railway-minded as anyone. Since 1888, their Allies, the French had a 60cm gauge railway that could cope with conditions in the field yet transport the thousands of tonnes of supplies required by a vast army. The illustration, courtesy of the family of Raymond Péchot, shows how a 36 tonne gun barrel could be transported on light prefabricated track. The secret is that the weight is supported by no less than 12 axles, reducing the force on the rail to a tolerable 3 tonnes. An inspired and industrious Artillery officer, Prosper Péchot, first designed the system and then master-minded its official adoption, a lengthy process.

The British were initially suspicious of such railways. Eventually they realised the potential of the system although it required a cognitive revolution by the ‘Top Brass’ and the civilian administration, another fascinating story.

There was a related ‘bottom-up’ revolution. Over the weary months, troops on both sides got to know each other, and the better they did, the more likely they were to co-operate in staying alive. This was a secret between them, known to junior officers but fortunately not to the generals or journalists who were led to see what they expected to see, eg trench raiding parties, roads covered with a torturous procession of small lorries toiling along the Voie Sacrée to Verdun etc. The real action was taking place elsewhere. The motor vehicles transporting token loads to Verdun and the gallant troops singing the Marseillaise were, almost if not completely, window-dressing. Under trench conditions, more effort was put into evading death. Ian Hay, the Britsh novelist, joined up in September 1914. He was promoted to that most difficult of roles, junior officer, by February 1916. At that point he wrote the following: ‘the winter of our discontent is past.(At least we hope so.) Comfortless months of training are over and we have grown from a fortuitous concourse of atoms to a cohesive group of fighting men. … active service is within measurable distance and the future beckons to us to step down into the area’ (the First Hundred Thousand Ch 12 p 114) His batch of warriors then waited for the First Half Million to be trained before they entered the field of battle. ‘Thereupon we shall break through the German line at an unexpected point and roll up the German Empire as if it were a carpet and sling it into some remote corner of Europe’ (op cit ch 13 p125) Up to that point, there was nothing in his sentiment to worry Top Brass or the Press. This beautiful illustration by Georges Michel, from the author's collection, shows a section of No-Man's-Land lit up tracer shells.

The Black and White Highlanders, the novelist’s fictitious name for the Argyll and Sutherlands, arrived at the Front of the Front on a bad night. Relieving parties were usually able to march up to the reserve trench and then proceed from there to the Front. That night all occasions conspired against them; they arrived late. The good news was that they missed most of the night’s many duties – transport of food, water and ammunition, evacuation of the wounded and burial of the dead. Their commissioned officers missed out on form-filling of reports and statistical returns to be passed on Battalion Headquarters. These in turn would be forwarded to ever-more heady Headquarters until they arrived at what Hay was pleased to call Olympus. The bad news was that the German artillery was active on the night they arrived. The euphemism was ‘distributing coal’ – a lot of ‘coal’ most enthusiastically distributed. They couldn’t use the communicating trenches but had to make their way through a maze of temporary, half-dug and semi-submerged scrapes in the ground. In order to progress half a mile, they wriggled and crawled about four(6.4 km). Dragging themselves along was one thing. In addition to himself each man also carried the equivalent of a second person – his kit. Let others sing of the glories of the full kit ordained to be carried into action, for ‘here my Muse her wing maun cower, sich flights are far beyond her power’. Let us just say that many items were obligatory but the individual could also bring any ’extra’ apart from ‘unsoldierly trinkets.’ They reached their destination wet and exhausted. This illustration, also by Georges Michel, author's collection, shows exhausted comrades bedding down in what is little more than a scrape in the earth, running water plentifully supplied.

After 24 hours, they began to get a feeling for trench life. It was once more dark but ‘there is an abundance of illumination; and by a pretty thought, each side illuminates the other.’ The Germans supplied star-shells, magnesium lights and searchlights and the British did their best to return the compliment. ‘The curious thing is that there is no firing.’ An informal truce exists ‘founded on the principle of live and let live. As long as each side is busy digging trenches and drawing rations, they won’t stop the other from doing the same. Thus neither side have to fight on an empty stomach’. If you look at the two Michel pictures, you will see that no-one is actually firing at the enemy. The agreement was not perfect. Some sentry, usually new to the Front, would imagine a phantom army approaching. 'His rifle fires, another replies and then both sides are at it. But after three minutes, as likely as not, the firing stops and shelf-stacking resumes.' (op cit ch 18 pp 186/7) Later in Chapter 18 of his book, Ian Hay describes the aubade which regularly accompanied the dawn. Was it mist or is it a gas attack? Probably just mist, but a god-send for the junior officer who had a report to fill in. Rather than leaving the paper blank, he could mention a suspected gas attack. On most mornings, there would, in fact, be a spontaneous ceasefire between dawn and nine while both sides broke their fast. Between nine and two, for German Top Brass were creatures of habit, their artillery would engage in sufficient shelling to impress the officers. They tended to aim for the trees. When the officers took their break for Mittagessen, there was a grateful pause when the rank and file could grab a much-needed forty winks. An eager general, an officious junior or a few ‘sooks’ among the private soldiers could have surprised the enemy, cut off his supplies and vastly increased the kill-rate. Here is a close-up of a Minnenwerfer, literally Mine-thrower, always available to the Germans but not in constant use. This picture, from author's collection, shows the very high angle of fire, ideal for sending the missile straight up, over the short distance of No-Man's-Land and then down on enemy heads.

The next illustration shows a gloomy German detail dragging the Minnenwerfer. The infantry disliked the artillery and no doubt the attitude was reciprocated. A parallel situation held good on the British side. A machine-gunner would sneak into a trench, fire off a few (thousand) rounds and then decamp, leaving the defenders to suffer the returning fire. The same would happen when a trench mortar was sent in. The missiles were fewer but larger and resented even more. If a ‘mortarer’ was seen approaching a section of trench, the Major was hastily woken. Such an officer was of sufficient seniority to order the fellow to remove himself and his contraption. The trench mortar officer would drift on, looking for another site in which to perform his unpopular entertainment. The Germans had their share of sooks and psychopaths and, as we have seen above, in the Minnenwerfer an even nastier toy. It was a tiresomely efficient short range missile launcher, ideal for getting a bomb over a trench parapet. It was possible to follow its leisurely parabola and inevitable fall somewhere near the observer. The spring controlling the percussion cap gave the bomb ten seconds to settle before initiating the explosion. As the bomb contained 15kg/over thirty pounds of high explosive, the damage within an open trench was considerable. There was a reply. ‘Minnie’ usually fired at 14:00 precisely. Any trench suspected of harbouring her was blasted with everything the British Army and Royal Flying Corps had to hand. It was important to do so at 13:55, or thereabouts - as long as it was before 14:00. One suspects that as well as being a creature of habit and discipline, the ordinary German had a sense of humour. He used the predictable habits of the British soldier to get back at unpopular officers. The illustration, author's collection, shows a gloomy detail of German infantry dragging the Minnenwerfer. It was light and easily transportable.

This mixture of peer pressure, common sense, empathy and restraint seems counterintuitive. It appears to go against human nature which allegedly informs us to hit back, and hit back harder - with corollaries such as pre-emptive action. Instead, the people facing each other across no-man’s-land had an elaborate system of coded messages of peace, slow to anger, quick to respond to efforts to de-escalate rather than to escalate a quarrel. If only the combatants of today remembered these hard-won lessons of 14-18. In the words of Philip Ball, these compacts between opposing sides ‘do not begin as a humanitarian agreement, quite the contrary. It is enforced by killing. Both sides realise that if they flout an unwritten agreement in order to gain an advantage, they would get as good as they gave.’ But the side which had been provoked was careful to restrict any damage. They would give the provoker a chance to back off to the status quo. (Critical Mass ch 17 page 520) Certain groups would do well to pay attention. It has to be said that the game of Tit for Tat is best played between the same sort of people. On the Western Front, both sides were a mixed bag of European males with a lot in common. If they didn’t actually empathise with the opposition, they knew enough to make a fair guess at what they were thinking. They didn’t even have to share a language to make unspoken agreements stick. What they did share was pretty well the same patch of mud. Robert Axelrod investigated the Titfer theory and demonstrated that a Tit For Tat strategy could work. Rather than dismissing an opponent as a consistent enemy, it encourages co-operation and discourages the pre-emptive strike. What’s good enough for vampire bats, sticklebacks and monkeys could well be good enough for us. We can hope. This picture, courtesy MD Wright, shows a Wrightscale model War Department Baldwin 4-6-0T

Robert Axelrod Evolution of Cooperation Basic Books New York 1984 The theory needed a fair bit of refining – sixteen years of it. Philip Ball: Critical Mass Ian Hay aka Major-General John Hay Beith: The First Hundred Thousand Richard Drew Publishing Glasgow 1985 Sarah Wright: Tracks to the Trenches Birse Press 1914 And here is a presrved WD Baldwin 4-6-0T, photo courtesy MD Wright