Experiences of a Dugout by C. E. Callwell

Author:C. E. Callwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: wwi, ww1, world war, trenches, true story, autobiography, front line
ISBN: 9781781664933
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX

OTHER SIDE-SHOWS

Three categories of side-shows - The Jackson Committee - The Admiralty's attitude - The Pacific, Duala, Tanga, Dar-es-Salaam, Oceania, the Wireless Stations - Kiao Chao - The Shatt-el-Arab - Egypt - Question whether the Australasian forces ought to have been kept for the East - The East African operations - Our lack of preparation for a campaign in this quarter - Something wrong - My own visit to Tanga and Dar-es-Salaam in 1908 - The bad start of the campaign - Question of utilizing South African troops to restore the situation - How this was managed - Reasons why this was a justifiable side-show - Mesopotamia - The War Office ought to have interfered - The question of an advance on Baghdad by General Townshend suddenly referred to the General Staff - Our mistake - The question of Egyptian defence in the latter part of 1915 - The Alexandretta project - A later Alexandretta project propounded by the War Cabinet in 1917 - Its absurdity - The amateur strategist on the war-path - The Palestine campaign of 1918 carried out almost entirely by troops not required on the Western Front, and therefore a legitimate side-show - The same principle to some extent holds good with regard to the conquest of Mesopotamia - The Downing Street project to substitute Sir W. Robertson for Sir C. Monro, a miss-fire.

"There must have been a baker's dozen of them," writes Lord Fisher in his Memories in reference to what he calls the "wild-cat expeditions" on which troops were engaged while he was First Sea Lord in 1914-15. There were a baker's dozen of them, and more, if the occupation by Australasian contingents of certain islands in the Indian Archipelago and the Pacific are included. But a correct appreciation of the merits and of the demerits of our numerous side-shows of those and later days is not covered by ejaculatory generalizations. Some of the very greatest of soldiers - Marlborough, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, and Wellington - all countenanced side-shows that were kept within limits.

The truth about side-shows is that they may be divided up roughly into three categories: (1) The necessary, (2) the excusable, (3) the unjustifiable and mischievous. But there is no sharp dividing-line between the three categories. Of those for which we made ourselves responsible in the Great War, the majority undoubtedly come within the first category. Most of the remainder may, upon the whole, be classed as excusable. Unfortunately the small number which come under the third heading were just those which absorbed the greatest military effort, and which were the only ones that really reckoned as vital factors in influencing the course of the conflict as a whole. Amongst the necessary and unavoidable side-shows were those which were undertaken, at all events in the first instance, in the interests of sea power. Amongst the side-shows which may be regarded as justifiable, although not unavoidable, may be mentioned the continuation of the Cameroons operations after the taking of Duala,

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