ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by ugly

I can only hope we have a 1938 crisis moment again but at least 2 years before we do need to fight!

That's easy, go for the old traditional plan but instead of the having BEF alongside the French we use the Germans?

Originally Posted by ugly

lets get this straight, no one hhhas slagged of the BEF, the lack of direction in everything always comes from above, how many times have we seen on these pages folk with actual experience of active service where the enemy is killing lots of us rather than five or six a year complain about inadequate training, not enough drilling on tactics and section and platoon level tactics. yes we seem to get it together in the field but this seems often to be in spite of our UK training regime rather than because of it.
The British Army of 1914 was a well disciplined force but it wasnt what we sent to France in the first tranche of the BEF. Bns were manned 50% by reservists, many werent fit enough and hadnt seen a rifle for 5 years. the conditions were not good for an army with 2 reconnaissance planes available at a time and little idea of how to work with their allies or even where they were in some cases.!

Concurr.

Its the tactics that were fatally flawed, not the PBI trying to impliment them.

Time after time reading the Regimental Diary its the same daftness of …
"Company 'x' under Capt so and so will advance to the crossroads/farm and hold', or even more stupidly, a company would form a skirmish line and lie down in an open field to await a german column equipped with artillery with the inevitable result noted in the diary the following day.
It's all very well extoling the 'Pluck of the men as they unleashed a furious volume of well aimed fire at the enemy'…*but troops lying down in a long line in an open field like they were shooting on the range at Bisley was a tactic for failure when the blokes coming down the road would reply with a hail of 75mm shrapnel shells.

There seemed to be absolutely no no concept of the need to use terrain as a defence, no grasp of using rivers and high ground as stop lines. The tactics of holding farms and crossroads and forming skirmish lines in open fields would have been very much to the heart of the Duke of Wellington, but were sadly misguided in a war of manouvere rather than set piece battles.

A very great part of the insanity of trench warfare that developed was down to our obsession with never giving up ground.
Stop the Germans and they would fall back to the nearest reverse slope behind them and dig in, and equally predictably, we would advance to the foot of the hill and dig in and spend the next few years being under constant defilade fire.

Oh earlier someone said the germans didnt follow their own tactics manuals. Its true they were taught that there is no set solution and that standard battle deployments from the march wont survive contact. In fact the local commanders up to Army level were encouraged to practise taking out key leaders during exercises even live fire ones and ncos were encouraged to take over.
The Germans also carried out serious defence training as their tactical sessions had concluded that taking an enemy position usually means consolidating and allowing the next wave through. Something we didnt rehearse at all till after Loos. They also worked out that everything under fire takes between 4 and 10 times longer than with blanks. That troops into the assault would drop packs but go forward with extra SAA and the reorg on the position would consolidate the equipment from those men lost.
Stuff we are still practising today.
The Germans were ready for war from the Rifleman up to the generals commanding divisions. Its above them at army level where tactics and plans werent followed that let us escape. We were lucky, the Germans were just victims of their own flexibility and desire to defeat the BEF.

Its always been the weakness if the Hun...

Tactically brilliant, but strategically inept.

Point is the BEF of 1914 did what they were supposed to do - had they been as poorly trained and wooly headed as some would have us believe they would have folded. The German Army, no matter how long they had trained and prepared, and in what innovative tactics (perhaps all the eye witness accounts I've read of Germans advancing across open ground as if on parade were lies and propaganda), led by superior Generals imbued with the plan of Schleifen, graced with the tenacity of Alexander, the wisdom of Sun Tzu and the philosophy of Clausewitz, were still held by that Contemptible Little Army - and Moltkes grave error!

Hold on Stonker - the elephant in the room was not the Balkans which had died down to a glowing ember, it was the very real prospect of an Irish Civil War determined along largely sectarian lines. The "Balkan Crisis" went from flash to bang in a very few days. The BEF was mobilised and first elements on the ground in no less than three days. Compare that to any other flash to bang, including AFG, IQ or the Gulf?

Originally Posted by Busterdog

Point is the BEF of 1914 did what they were supposed to do - had they been as poorly trained and wooly headed as some would have us believe they would have folded. The German Army, no matter how long they had trained and prepared, and in what innovative tactics (perhaps all the eye witness accounts I've read of Germans advancing across open ground as if on parade were lies and propaganda), led by superior Generals imbued with the plan of Schleifen, graced with the tenacity of Alexander, the wisdom of Sun Tzu and the philosophy of Clausewitz, were still held by that Contemptible Little Army - and Moltkes grave error!

I think the truth lies somewhere in between and which as it was such a close run thing, I too have read accounts where troops were left to fight as no one had thought about retiring and were completely wiped out as well. I also feel that the Germans had a better line on reporting after action so as lessons would be learnt. We rather seem to be more concerned with perpetuating myths than finding the truths.
We werent trained to fight a continental war its a simple truth. Since the modern army came about in the aftermath of end of empire and conscription we have always tried to train to fight the next war although time and time again peacetime constraints on training get waved under our noses rather than waived completely!
I will reserve judgement on the Germans performance until I have finished this book and 3 others part read. I have read plenty on our effort and luckily we had an Old Comtemptible in the Family, the wifes GF was a Bomb in the RFA and we have his dated Mons Star.
I dont think we fought badly as the BEF but had we been led better and had less committment to the supporting of Empire based troops then we would have had a much better start than what was after all a miracle for us to survive, regroup and counter attack successfully.
That said the Germans didnt have all the training they wanted, many reports indicate a lack of live ammunition in the run up to war. The kaiser himself started a fund for one of "His regiments" to ensure that they had plenty of ammunition for live firing training.
I dont doubt we had great marksmen, so did the Germans and they too were competitive about their shooting, the difference lies in the fact that as the Germans advanced in Bounds at the trail, there were units firing them into the target. Mutually supporting fire has always been a German practise since the Needle Rifle was invented.
The Germans also practised field firing with live ammunition and artillery. Did we?

When the next Military campaign renders us as being Incapable ... Just blame Philip Hammond, however by then he would have moved on to pastures new, as is usually the case with MP's