For Team and Country by Tim Tate

Author:Tim Tate [Tim Tate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784181468
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2014-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

MILITARY TACTICS

For a decade before 1914, Germany had developed a coherent, if somewhat rigid, strategy for fighting a modern war. The Schlieffen Plan was the result of determined military minds analysing battle plans and military formations with a clear idea of both what they wanted to achieve and how to do so.

By contrast, British military planning was at best ad hoc, at worst amateurish and out of date. Its chief strategy was to send 10 waves of men, lined up in extended order with 100 yards between each wave, into the teeth of enemy gunfire. The army expected units to advance as far as possible in line without opening fire, both to conceal their positions and conserve ammunition, then to attack in ever more waves, on the assumption that these would – eventually – overrun the enemy.

That this tactic mirrored almost exactly the way public school and university football teams approached their match-day planning was no coincidence. In August 1914, there were 28,060 officers in the British Army. Most came from families with long-standing military connections, the gentry or the peerage. To obtain a commission, a public school education was all but essential. In 1913, only 2 per cent of regular officers had been promoted from the ranks. As a result, most of the officer class who embarked on the great adventure (as they saw it) of war in 1914 had no experience of modern warfare. It was hardly surprising, then, that three day after war was declared the Army High Command issued stern instructions to its officers on the importance of sharpening their swords.

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