The 1st Australian Division in 1917: A Snapshot
Abstract
This paper addresses the three themes of tactics, training and technology on the Western Front during 1917 from the perspective of the 1st Australian Division. The introduction of the Lewis gun led to a process of innovation at the tactical level, producing changes in both tactics and training. Such changes were indicative of widespread adaptations that were occurring throughout the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in 1917.
Introduction
From the time of Napoleon the ‘division’ became a standard feature of most European military establishments as they harnessed the political and technological advances of the French and Industrial Revolutions to field larger and larger armies. By 1914, all European armies had adopted the division as the basic building block of their military forces. European armies were measured in the number of divisions, regular (or first-line) and reserve (or second-line), which they could put into the field on mobilisation. The measure of an army was in the number and quality of those divisions and the number of guns that supported them.
When the nations of Europe went to war in 1914 they mobilised their armies— France with sixty infantry and ten cavalry divisions; Germany in the west with seventy-eight infantry and ten cavalry divisions, tiny Belgium with six infantry and one cavalry division; and mighty Britain also with six infantry and a single cavalry division.1 These divisions were what historian Cyril Falls labelled the real ‘unit’ of the Great War.2
The 1st Australian Division was the senior of the five Australian infantry divisions on the Western Front in 1917. It suffered more casualties than any other Australian division and its units were awarded more battle honours and Victoria Crosses than any other Australian formation in the First World War. It was the premier division of the Australian Imperial Force.
The Making of the 1st Australian Division
On the outbreak of war the Australian Government offered Britain an infantry division and light horse brigade as its initial contribution to Imperial defence. Although there was no permanent divisional organisation in Australia, some pre-war planning had been undertaken and, in accordance with broad principles negotiated at a series of pre-war Imperial Conferences, Australia had agreed to the creation of an Imperial General Staff and the standardisation of its home forces on British models but without committing itself to establishing an expeditionary force for Britain’s use in wartime. The 1st Australian Division officially came into being on 15 August 1914 when the Governor General approved the raising of the AIF, with command of the force going to Brigadier William Throsby Bridges. He was the first Australian officer to be promoted to the rank of major general and the first Australian officer to command a division.
The 1st Division was raised in the remarkably short period of just six weeks. By the beginning of November, its 18 000 men, twenty-six medium machine-guns, thirty-six field guns, and nearly 5500 horses were aboard their transports waiting to sail for Britain. It was a remarkable achievement. It was however, a fragile organisation. The pressures of mobilisation and the decentralised manner in which it had been raised meant that training was rudimentary at best. Most infantry units had only managed to fire the recruit rifle practice, and only one of the Division’s artillery batteries appears to have fired a live-fire practice before leaving Australia. Less than 7 per cent of its men had seen previous active service and 35 per cent had never served in uniform.3 It was always the intention to complete divisional training overseas, but it would be difficult to reject Jeffrey Grey’s conclusion that ‘the 1st Division was probably the worst-trained formation ever sent from Australian shores.’4
In the shadows of the great pyramids, the 1st Division was for the first time fully assembled. The Division then reorganised its infantry battalions—bringing them into line with the new British four-company structure—and raced through company, battalion, brigade and divisional training in three months. It even managed some rudimentary mission-specific training for the forthcoming Gallipoli campaign.
The Division’s main manoeuvre elements—its infantry battalions—had very limited organic firepower. Nearly 70 per cent of the Division’s manpower was held in its battalions, but each of these contained only four machine-guns, with the rest of its firepower being generated by bolt-action rifles. Although the gunners made up the second-largest grouping within the Division, with 15 per cent of the manpower, their problem was the number and size of their guns. While British divisions in France contained roughly one gun for every 159 bayonets, the 1st Division had less than half this, with only one gun for every 336 bayonets. Compounding this problem was the ammunition shortage and the initial reliance on shrapnel shells, a round requiring considerable skill to employ and quite ineffective against entrenched troops. While the Division deployed with modern quick-firing eighteen-pounder guns, their relatively flat trajectory was a distinct disadvantage on the rugged ridges of the Peninsula. In fact the complete absence from the Division’s arsenal of any howitzers or heavy mortars to provide high-angle fire would mean that the Division could never provide sufficient fire to neutralise, much less destroy, the well dug-in Turkish soldiers.5 All of these factors ensured that the Division did not achieve its full potential at Gallipoli.
Following the withdrawal, the ‘old’ 1st Division was vivisected and reorganised. It lost half of its veterans to the two new AIF divisions, providing the majority of the new brigade and battalion commanders. The fire-support assets were overhauled and expanded. The divisional artillery was finally brought into line with the British establishment, doubling in size. Further firepower was added with the raising of divisional heavy and medium trench mortars, and each infantry brigade raised a light trench mortar and a medium machine-gun company. The infantry battalions received their first issues of the Lewis light machine-gun. The engineering capability was also expanded with a new pioneer battalion—the division’s ‘jack of all trades’. By the end of the process, however, less than half of the Division that sailed from Egypt were veterans, the majority being raw reinforcements.
In March 1916, after the division landed at Marseilles, its sun-burned diggers entrained and were shunted through the French countryside north of Paris and deposited in the Armentieres sector. This part of the British line was regarded as a ‘nursery’ sector for new divisions. Here the ‘new’ 1st Division was introduced to the realities of the Western Front and was issued with steel helmets, more Lewis light machine-guns, factory-produced grenades, light, medium and heavy trench mortars, 4.5-inch howitzers, and much of their worn-out heavy equipment and weapons were exchanged for newer items from the British depots. Officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers were also sent to attend British schools of instruction on many of the novelties to which the Division was being introduced.6
It was not until mid-July that the 1st Division moved south to launch the AIF’s first major and successful action on the Western Front. Operating as part of General Hubert Gough’s newly formed Reserve Army, the Division seized Pozieres in what was seen as a significant achievement. The Division’s performance was not flawless, however, and neighbouring British formations advised that there was a noticeable tendency for the Australians to pack their forward trenches resulting in unnecessary casualties. Undoubtedly this approach stemmed from the Division’s experience on Gallipoli. There the weaker Turkish artillery was not as dangerous as the German guns on the Western Front, and the closeness of the opposing lines required a high density of troops to ensure the line could be held. What it demonstrates is that the 1st Division, despite its Gallipoli credentials, still had much to learn about the conditions in France and the new foe. So why did the 1st Division succeed at Pozieres when earlier attacks had failed?
One Australian historian suggests that the key factor in the 1st Division’s Pozieres success was ‘the quality of the troops’. The Division was fresh, well-trained and experienced after its Gallipoli service.7 There may be something in the claim about the quality of the troops and the fact they were rested but, as for the others, these do not stand up to scrutiny. The Division had spent less than three months in Egypt following the withdrawal during which time it had undertaken some rudimentary training but it had been focused on the expansion and reorganisation of its new units. Training had to be rushed and was far from complete. In France, the three months spent in the north were occupied with administration, front-line acclimatisation and only limited collective training. The artillery was still extremely raw.8 As for the Gallipoli experience, the 1st Division never conducted a divisional attack during its time there— Pozieres was its first. In reality there were other, more subtle and telling factors at play and the first of these was the quality of its commander.
When Bridges was mortally wounded at Gallipoli, Lieutenant General William Birdwood, Commander AIF, selected an old Indian Army subordinate to take over the 1st Division. Harold Bridgwood Walker was a British regular and he would command the 1st Division for more than two and a half years. One of his officers recalled of him:
Colonel Walker was one of those ‘milestones’, which crop up from time to time in the history of most Regiments. He was an outstanding soldier, who brought his Battalion to the highest state of efficiency ... Colonel Walker was a wonderful trainer of troops. His exercises were well thought out and instructive. His criticisms concise and to the point. There was no time for boredom. He never fussed, but kept his Battalion on the tip of its shoes, eager, and active ... [and] when he left Wellington [India] I doubt if there was a better-found battalion in the British army. He was the ideal Commanding Officer, one whose steely eye and incisive manner caused him to be feared, yet deeply respected.9
Walker proved to be an astute and trusted leader, making no secret of his affection for his troops and this affection was reciprocated to an uncommon degree. One of his COs in 1917 described him thus:
Cool and courageous in action, possessing a military knowledge of the highest order, of distinctive attainments and striking personality. His motto ‘What we have we’ll hold’ was lived up to by the 1st Division, and there can be no doubt as to the personal influence he exerted.10
Walker is an example that the human dimension did count, even on the Western Front, and good General Officers Commanding (GOCs) made good divisions.11
The second factor that played a key role in the early success of the 1st Division was its ability to turn battlefield observations into lessons learnt. Even as it was arriving on the Somme, the divisional staff was seeking out lessons from the fighting the BEF had endured. On 14 July, just nine days before the 1st Division’s assault,
Thomas Blamey—the Division’s General Staff Officer Grade 1 (GSO1) and de facto chief of staff—issued General Staff Memorandum Number 54.12 This document recorded a series of lessons drawn from the recent fighting of the neighbouring 7th and 19th British Divisions. His choice of divisions is interesting. Gary Sheffield has suggested that these divisions were picked because of their relatively recent successes on the Somme.13 Following quickly on from Memorandum 54 came a series of other divisional documents summarising further observations from the recent fighting.14 Walker’s background as a British regular and Blamey’s pre-war training at Quetta would also have assisted this process.
The third key factor in the Division’s success was its own staff work. Good troops die just as easily as poor ones if they are mismanaged and, in France in 1916 and 1917, it was the mass of administrative and operational details that often made the difference between success and failure. Although Sheffield is rightly critical of Australian staff work on the Somme, especially in the 2nd Division, the standards set in the 1st Division by Blamey were not typical of the AIF or the BEF for this period. Not only did Blamey seek to incorporate recent lessons into the Division’s plan but he was also scrupulous in coordinating the staff to ensure that all possible measures were taken to assist the assaulting troops. When Blamey finished his two-year course at Quetta in 1913 he was granted a ‘B’ pass and was described by the Commandant in the following terms:
He came here uneducated (in a military sense) but all his work during his first year was characterised by a very genuine determination to overcome this defect. By the end of the first year he had succeeded beyond all expectations. During his second year his work has been well up to the standard of his Division both in quality and quantity. His views are sound and thoughtful and his judgement, in general, is good ... He has always had the courage of his opinions and, as he has advanced in general military knowledge, he has expressed his opinions with greater freedom ... A self reliant man who knows what he wants and means to get on ... If he is not gifted with a large amount of tact he is not, in any way, conspicuously devoid of that very necessary quality.15
His importance to Walker can be seen in the lengths to which Walker went to keep him. On two occasions in 1916 and 1917 Blamey left the staff to gain command experience at battalion and brigade level but on both occasions Walker insisted that he be returned because he was, in Walker’s estimation, just too valuable to the Division to be employed in a regimental command.16
In accordance with the doctrine of the day, the development of the Division’s plan was to be based on An ‘Appreciation of the Situation,’ which Walker and Blamey would conduct independently.17 Walker was expected to develop the concept for his attack, sketching an outline but including his key requirements such as the timing and direction of the attack and the support needed. It was Walker who decided that the 1st Division’s assault was to be launched from the south-east of the village and that the frontage allotted to the attack required two brigades. Charles Bean makes clear that Walker developed his plans in conjunction with Blamey.18 Blamey and the staff then filled in the details to produce the operational orders to meet Walker’s concept.
The other factor working in favour of the 1st Division was the strength of the supporting fire. The bombardment in support of its attack began on 19 July and included the heavy artillery of the Reserve Army and the artillery of X Corps. Among this support was the 45th Heavy Artillery Group, which included one of the two Australian siege batteries armed with 9.2-inch howitzers. There was also the 1st Division’s own trench mortars and its four brigades of field guns and howitzers, commanded by the talented Brigadier (later Lieutenant General Sir) Joseph Talbot Hobbs.19 It is worth noting that, for the first time, an early version of the creeping barrage was fired in support of the Division during its capture of Pozieres. This fire support was, according to Charles Bean, ‘famous even among the many famous bombardments on the Western Front’.20
After holding Pozieres through severe German shelling, the Division was withdrawn for a short rest. Two more tours on the Somme followed, with fruitless fighting around Mouquet Farm, before the division was withdrawn north to the relatively quiet sector of Ypres in Belgium Flanders. Later in the year the Division returned for the final phase of the Somme campaign as the offensive petered out in the mud and rain of a bitter winter. By the end of the year the 1st Division, along with the other Australian divisions, had earned a reputation as being ‘reliable’—perhaps the ultimate accolade from General Headquarters (GHQ).21
The 1st Division began New Year 1917 still holding the line in northern France. Towards the end of February it was involved in following up the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, but in March it was pulled out, rested and given three weeks in which to train. The focus of this training was the new platoon organisation that had just been promulgated in Stationary Service (SS) pamphlet Number 143—Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action.22
In April the Division was drawn back to the new front opposite the Hindenburg Line and involved in a series of sharp actions clearing a number of villages in the German outpost zone. In response, on 15 April the Germans launched a counterattack at Lagnicourt against a thinly held 1st Division line and, although part of its gun line was overrun, the counterattack was defeated. The Division’s second major action of 1917 was when it was sucked into the fighting around Bullecourt in May. On this occasion each of its infantry brigades rotated into the fight but operated under the control of the 2nd Australian Division.
Following Bullecourt, the 1st Division was given an extended four-month period of rest and training. During this time all units of the Division were retrained. Training proceeded steadily from platoon and company exercises to battalion, brigade and division. Demonstrations were also a frequent feature with the 1st Division’s artillery and trench mortars providing examples of barrages and aircraft of the 3rd Squadron, Royal Flying Corps assisted with air-ground contact training. By the end of this period, Charles Bean claims that the Australian divisions were probably at their zenith.23 At the end of July, the Division moved north to the rear areas of Belgium Flanders in preparation for its first operation in the Third Battle of Ypres, or what was to become known as the Battle of Passchendaele.24
The Battle of Menin Road was the first of these operations. For this attack the Division was only one of eleven British divisions attacking on a frontage of thirteen kilometres. At 05.40 am on 20 September, the lead troops of the Division stood up and advanced behind their barrage. The Division attacked on a frontage of 1000 metres with two brigades making the assault. The brigades were arrayed in depth, leap-frogging their battalions as they secured the three objective lines and biting 1500 metres out of the German defences. The Germans, held at bay by a standing barrage, were unable to counterattack. Although there was some German resistance, notably some of the machine-gun crews housed in concrete pillboxes, they were swiftly dealt with using the new platoon tactics.25
So what led to this signature success and how does it compare with Pozieres more than a year before? The first factor, and the first among several ‘equals’, is stability. The Division’s command structure had managed to remain relatively unchanged. Walker still headed the Division, becoming the longest serving AIF divisional commander, and Blamey was still his GSO1. The Division was also fortunate in that it had remained for this entire time part of the same corps—I ANZAC—under its old chief (William Birdwood) and his chief of staff (Cyril Brudenell White). This stability gave Walker and the 1st Division significant advantages over British formations that tended to be moved from one corps to the next.
The second factor for the success was, like Pozieres, the quality of the staff work. This extended from the headquarters of the Second Army, where General Hubert Plummer and his chief of staff Charles Harrington were meticulous in their preparations, and down to the divisional staff. For example, during the night of 19-20 September as the preliminary bombardment intensified, the Division’s two assault brigades moved forward. They did so along especially constructed tracks to their assembly positions. Each brigade followed a separate track that was sign-posted and guides were waiting at any points where it seemed the troops might take the wrong direction. The battalion forming-up areas were all taped out on the ground by their Intelligence Officers. Each soldier had a small colour paint patch on the rear rim of his helmet, denoting the objective line at which he was to hold.26
The third factor, and one linked closely to the quality of the staff, was the strength of the artillery support. To deal with the new German ‘zone’ defences, the ‘rolling’ or ‘creeping’ barrage, first trialled on the Somme in the previous year, had by now been perfected. No longer was the barrage just a single line of shells moving forward at the pace of the infantry. At Menin Road, the rolling barrage consisted of five successive lines of fire extending 900 metres deep. The first line was fired by the eighteen-pounders, the second by a combination of eighteen-pounders and 4.5-inch howitzers, and the furthest three by Vickers machine-guns, and the heavy guns of the corps and army artillery. From the beginning of the assault through to the anticipated defeat of any German counterattacks the I ANZAC barrage was to fire continuously for eight hours and eight minutes.27
The final factor in the Division’s success was the quality and training of the troops. The ‘new model’ Australian infantry had been trained to a high level in the summer months leading up to the offensive. Advancing in well-armed groups, with Lewis guns and rifle grenades, and closely supported by their own medium machine-guns and trench mortars, they were shepherded across no-man’s-land by a creeping barrage that protected them as they consolidated and dug-in on their objectives. While the 1st Division still suffered more than 2500 casualties, the diggers were left elated with their success while the effect on the Germans was crushing.
During the year the Division suffered a total of 9082 battle casualties, with 90 per cent of those falling in the four major engagements of Lagnicourt, Bullecourt, Menin Road and Brooseinde. About 65 per cent of those casualties fell on the Division’s infantry brigades. Although the Division still had an establishment strength of 18 000, as it had at Gallipoli, the AIF’s recruiting crisis ensured that it was never at full strength. Even in August, at a time when it was at its peak following an extended period of rest and training, it was still less than 15 000 strong. In many other ways it was also a fundamentally different organisation from the one that had stormed ashore on the rocky Gallipoli Peninsula.
New Weapons and Emerging Tactics
The story of the Lewis gun and the 1st Division is an ideal case study for examining the impact of technology on the development of tactics and training in the BEF in 1917. The Lewis light machine-gun (LMG) turned out to be the best weapon of its type fielded during the First World War and it would eventually provide the British infantry with their own intimate direct-fire support.28 The 1st Division was introduced to the Lewis gun in Egypt, following the withdrawal from Gallipoli, when each brigade formed a machinegun company by the relatively simple expedient of stripping the Vickers guns out of each of the battalions. These were replaced with a single battalion section of four LMGs.29
This additional firepower then drove internal changes within the battalion’s organisation and the way it fought. By late-July 1916, the battalion LMG Section had disappeared from the 1st Division to be replaced by six LMG detachments, each equipped with two guns. This allowed the guns to be dispersed to lower levels and each rifle company was now provided with a permanent two-gun detachment, with the remaining two detachments being held with battalion headquarters as the Commanding Officer’s reserve.30 By the end of the year enough LMGs had been issued so that each company now had on average four Lewis guns. With this change came the first permanent allocation of guns to platoons for both training and operations.31 This trend, however, was not consistent and there were considerable local variations even within Australian battalions.32
Although the BEF learned many lessons from the 1916 Somme fighting, it was, by the end of the year, in a state of low-level organisational chaos brought about by the plethora of new weapons and emerging tactics. What became clear in the review of the years’ fighting was that there was significant variation in the manner in which units and formations were organised, how they trained and how they fought. I ANZAC, after reviewing the way in which its divisions were conducting operations, issued its own guidance on how the battalions of the corps were in the future to be organised and trained.33 Of note is that this circular, General Staff Circular Number 33, stressed the role of the platoon as the basis of infantry minor tactics—but this learning process was still very uneven across the BEF.
Two weeks after I ANZAC published its revised tactical notes, the corps’ superior headquarters, the newly renamed Fifth Army, was expressing concerns at the slow progress that many of its formations were making. The GOC, Hubert Gough, called a conference for his senior commanders and staff and expressed his displeasure at the state of affairs:
I have asked you to meet here to-day because, as a result of inspecting the five divisions now out of the line and training, I have realized that the old principles of company and battalion organization are being neglected in a good many units, and therefore, that all training in these units is of little value and will not lead to the results necessary to ensure success in any attack ...
In some units not a single platoon was organized. Sections were broken up, section commanders did not know who were in the sections or that they were expected to command them, platoons did not have their bombers organized as a section under its own commander, bombers were scattered haphazard throughout sections., platoon commanders never exercise nor train their bombers, on drill and route marching parades as well as in billets section organization was entirely neglected and broken up...
Now as regards the organization of companies, I found that platoons were broken up on parade and that the temporary formations formed were not divided into sections and section commanders detailed. Again, company commanders did not make platoon commanders train platoons and did not supervise their training. Again, company commanders did not train or even exercise the Lewis gun detachments, nor did they train or exercise their bombers, or in some cases indeed ever see them. 34
Given the BEF’s propensity to constantly move divisions between corps, there appeared to be little hope of achieving any conformity until General Headquarters (GHQ) stepped in—this took until February of the following year.
In February 1917 GHQ issued its new ‘SS143’—Instructions for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action. This new doctrine called for a major restructure of the battalion and the reorganisation of the platoon, finally establishing the platoon as the basis of infantry operations. This was to be achieved by redistributing the company light machine-guns, bombers and rifle-grenadiers so that they were no longer to be regarded as specialist weapon systems but were now added to the growing inventory of the standard infantryman. From March 1917, each of the 1st Division’s infantry battalions was restructured to maintain its four companies but they would now have four platoons each organised identictally with a section of bombers, a LMG section, a section of riflemen, and a section of rifle-grenadiers. Throughout the BEF senior commanders all began talking about the platoon fighting its own battles. It was with this organisation that the Division fought on the Hindenburg outpost line, at Bullecourt and during Passchendaele.35
By the end of 1917 the BEF’s platoon organisation reached maturity and from then on it came to be seen as the basis of tactical manoeuvre for the infantry. Although this process had started even before the Lewis gun’s arrival, the issue of the LMG down to platoon level increased its firepower and stimulated the development of more sophisticated tactics. These changes, however, were more far-reaching than infantry minor tactics. Just as the introduction of the four-company battalion had shifted the power structures within the battalion, the introduction of the Lewis gun accelerated this process, driving more authority and responsibility to even lower levels. In 1914 the ‘platoon’ was a new, and in some quarters undesirable, development. By 1917 it was the basis of infantry tactics.
What is most remarkable about the Lewis gun is not so much its technology— after all machine-guns had been around for half a century—but it is more in the process of organisational development that it sparked. Initially introduced as a one-for-one replacement of the Vickers, its early employment was as a simple replacement and its control was kept centralised. But as more of these weapons became available their use became more widespread, leading to low-level experimentation occurring without any direction from GHQ or the War Office. Indeed the higher echelons of the BEF initially had little control or influence over these developments. Only when it was realised that these changes had led to irreversible alteration did GHQ seek to capture these developments and institutionalise them in doctrine. By 1917, experienced officers were for the first time (but not the last) reflecting that it was these developments that gave rise to the saying so often heard during the Great War, ‘This is a Platoon Commander’s War!’36
In 1916 and 1917 there were literally dozens of technologies that were being exploited and that were driving change. The use of the Lewis gun, as well as the hand grenade and rifle grenade played their part in the growth of the platoon, but within the division there were many others. Motorisation was gradually replacing horsepower and revolutionising battlefield logistics. The field artillery was becoming more accurate through the widespread use of field survey, calibration and meteorological data. The same guns were becoming more versatile through the use of different rounds and fuses to generate different battlefield effects. Although it was not until the spring of 1917 that a safe instantaneous fuse—the 106 fuse—was fielded, it joined a growing number of new types of artillery rounds—non-fatal gas in September 1916, smoke in November 1916 and lethal gas in May 1917. By combining different rounds, including shrapnel, high explosive, smoke and chemical, and varying the intensity of the bombardment, the gunners could mix and match the effects of their fire. This allowed different artillery tactics and techniques to be perfected, including wire-cutting, the creeping and box barrage, and most important—accurate predictive fire. These changes were underpinned by the emergence of radio and exploiting air power for close air support, artillery direction and aerial photography. Outside of the division the development of British flash-spotting and sound-ranging techniques allowed the BEF to gain the upper hand in the counter-battery battle. The tank was added to the combined-arms team. On the administrative front, enormous advances were made in the medical sciences preventing disease and preserving manpower. All of these played a part in what was nothing short of a revolution in military affairs.37
Conclusion
So what does this snapshot of the 1st Australian Division reveal about the role of technology, training and tactics on the Western Front in 1917? The first is that the BEF was wracked by several competing trends as it struggled to expand and master the challenges of trench warfare and the 1st Division experienced the full force of these trends. When the 1st Division landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula its combat power was generated primarily by the rifles of its infantrymen. Against a resolute defender, well dug-in, the result could only be bloody stalemate. In search of a solution, commanders were forced to centralise scarce resources to ensure better coordination but simultaneously it deprived units of their ability to generate firepower. Improvised expedients were tried but they failed because they could not tip the balance on their own in limited numbers. Until additional man-portable weapons could be developed and produced in sufficient quantity there was little the infantry could do for themselves. Rather, they had to rely on the artillery to shepherd them across no-man’s land.
The greatest initial tactical challenge the BEF faced was in its indirect fire support. Although the first response to the lack of firepower was to increase the divisional artillery establishment, it was soon realised that this response lacked flexibility. In the wake of the Battle of the Somme, GHQ assessed that too much of the BEF’s field artillery was held in the division. Experience had shown that attempting to mass guns for operations had ‘led to the divorce of the Divisional Artillery from its Division being the rule rather than the exception’. To overcome this GHQ decided to reduce and standardise the divisional artillery establishment and thereby create a number of independent artillery brigades. These Army brigades, along with the increasing number of medium and heavy artillery groups, could then be placed at the disposal of higher command and be deployed as needed without disrupting the internal economy of the divisions.38
Capitalising on the hard-learnt lessons of 1916, the more astute commanders of the BEF would in 1917 devise a solution to the deadlock on the Western Front. With massed guns, generally under the control of the corps and army artillery staff, and sustained by better logistics, the BEF would undertake limited ‘bite and hold’ attacks to seize sections of the German line and then smash any counterattacks under a deluge of shells. By Passchendaele the BEF’s progress toward the centralisation of its artillery reached its peak with most indirect fire support assets firmly under army and corps control.
Although the most dramatic and obvious changes in 1917 were in the artillery, there were equally important but quieter changes in the infantry. In 1914 the company was the tactical unit of the battalion, but as early as 1915 this began to change and by the August offensive on Gallipoli there emerged a platoon organisation that was as much tactical as it was administrative. The firepower that was being devolved to the junior infantry commander also led to the development of new low-level tactics based around the platoon. By 1917 the platoon reached maturity as a fighting organisation, becoming one of the key building blocks of the BEF’s new tactical doctrine. New infantry tactics combined with the additional and increasingly accurate and effective indirect firepower would eventually allow a return to manoeuvre on the battlefield. This certainly did not happen overnight, but by 1917 a combined-arms revolution was well underway and leading to what Jonathon Bailey has described as the birth of modern warfare.39
In the midst this bloody revolution in military affairs (RMA)—an RMA Williamson Murray considers to be the RMA of the twentieth century—the human element was crucial.40 Not so much the individual courage of the front-line digger, although that was of course still vital, but rather it was the intellectual and moral powers of commanders like Walker and his not so humble servant Blamey. Throughout the BEF, in dozens of divisions, like-minded professionals grappled with the implications of new technology, experimented with new tactics to exploit it and adapted the way they organised and trained their troops. It was not a neat process, but war is never neat and often bloody. It was a process of adaptation and improvisation that was characterised by competing trends—centralisation or decentralisation, concentration and diffusion, the specialist versus the generalist. By the end of 1917 they had ‘cracked the code’ and in the following year they would drive their opponents from the field.
Endnotes
1 Brigadier James E Edmonds (ed), History of the Great War: Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914 vol. I, Macmillan and Co, London, 1928, pp. 7, 15-16, 18, 432-3 and 438-9. For a brief history of the divisions raised by Britain during the Great War see Martin Middlebrook, Your Country Needs You: From Six to Sixty-Five Divisions, Sword and Pen Books, Barnsley, 2000.
2 Cyril Falls, War Books: An Annotated Bibliography of Books About the Great War, Greenhill Books, London, 1989, p. xiv.
3 Personnel statistics and training problems based on ‘Summary of Personnel Statistics’, attached to 1st Australian Division, ‘Division Orders, No. 43’, 27 January 1915, Australian War Memorial (AWM) 27, item 352/19; and David Horner, The Gunners: A History of the Australian Artillery, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1995, p. 81.
4 Jeffrey Grey, A Military History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, p. 94.
5 General Staff, Australia, War Establishments of 1st Australian Division and Subsequent Units Raised and Despatched for Active Service, Albert J Mullet, Melbourne, 1915, Appendix 1, p. 125.
6 Charles Edward Woodrow Bean, The History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918: The AIF in France 1916, 11th ed, vol. III, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1941, pp. 93-4. Hereafter referred to as Bean, AOH.
7 Peter Charlton, Australians on the Somme: Pozieres 1916, Methuen Haynes, North Ryde, NSW, 1986, p. 139.
8 David Coombes, The Lionheart: A Life of Lieutenant-General Sir Talbot Hobbs, Australian Military History Publications, Loftus, 2007, pp. 96-105.
9 Brigadier G Hyde-Harrson, DSO, quoted in Ralph May, Stuart Eastwood and Clive Elderton, Glory is No Compensation: The Border Regiment at Gallipoli, 1915, Silver Link Publishing, Kettering, 2003, pp. 12, 24.
10 Lieutenant Colonel EE Herrod (CO 7th Battalion AIF), quoted in Ron Austin, Gallipoli: An Australian Encyclopaedia on the 1915 Dardanelles Campaign, Slouch Hat Publications, McCrae, 2005, p. 251.
11 Bean, AOH, vol. III, pp. 468-9; AJ Sweeting, ‘Walker, Sir Harold Bridgwood’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 12, p. 359.
12 1st Australian Division, General Staff Memorandum No. 54, 14 July 1916, Australian War Memorial (AWM) 4, file 1/42/18 part 1.
13 Blamey’s role in seeking out lessons from British divisions is discussed in Gary D Sheffield, ‘The Australians at Pozieres’, in David French and Brian Holden Reid (eds), The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation, 1890-1939, Frank Cass, London, 2002, pp. 115-116.
14 1st Australian Division, General Staff Memorandum No. 56, 18 July 1916, AWM 4, file 1/42/18 part 1.
15 A ‘B’ pass was awarded to officers who were ‘up to the average of Staff College students who are likely to make satisfactory Staff officers’. Brigadier WP Braithwaite (Commandant Staff College, Quetta), copy of confidential Staff College, Quetta Final Report, 19 December 1913, AWM 182, item 1A.
16 AWM182, item 1A; and National Archives Australia (NAA): B883 series, file 2002/05080133.
17 Appreciation of a Situation, nd, AWM27, item 310/24.
18 Bean, AOH, vol. III, pp. 469, 532 and 533; Coombes, The Lionheart, p. 113.
19 For Hobbs’ part in the planning for the attack see Coombes, The Lionheart, pp. 113-28.
20 1st Australian Division, Divisional Order No. 31, 21 July 1916, AWM 4, file 1/42/18 part 1; and Bean, AOH, vol. III, pp. 491, 494 and 571 footnote (fn) 49.
21 Bean, AOH, vol. III, p. 889.
22 General Staff, War Office, Instruction for the Training of Platoons for Offensive Action (SS 143), Army Printing and Stationary Services, February 1917. This publication was published in February but first issued in March, with further copies following in April, and minor amendments being promulgated in April and June. BGGSI ANZAC, I ANZAC Memorandum 130/119 ‘Instructions for the training of platoons for offensive action 23 March 1917; BGGS I ANZAC, I ANZAC Memorandum G136/238 ‘Instructions for the training of platoons for offensive action’, 21 April 1917; and MGGS Third Army, Third Army Memorandum G58/154, 23 June 1917. All held on AWM 27, item 303/140.
23 Bean, AOH, vol. IV, p. 683.
24 Ibid, pp. 730-2.
25 Ibid, pp. 735-90.
26 1st Australian Division, Instruction No. 3 Issued Under Divisional Order No 31, 15 September 1917, AWM 4, file 1/42/32 part 1.
27 1st Australian Division, Divisional Order No. 31, 9 September 1917, AWM 4, file 1/42/32 part 1.
28 The Lewis gun was gas-operated, air-cooled, with a calibre of .303-inch, an effective range of 750 metres and weighed 11.8 kilograms. The infantry version had a forty-seven-round drum magazine. John Walter, Machine-guns of Two World Wars, Greenhill Books, London, 2005, p. 119.
29 Applin, Machine-Gun Tactics, pp. 196-7. The British began reorganising their four-gun battalion machine-gun sections into brigade companies in September 1915, but this change was not initiated in the AIF until after the withdrawal from Gallipoli. The original change was notified in Army Order No 414 of 22 October 1915.
30 Captain CCM Kennedy (for BGGS I ANZAC), I ANZAC CR 94/1/68 General Staff Circular No. 14 ‘Organization of Lewis Gun Detachments’, 31 July 1916, AWM 27, items 303/150 and 303/168.
31 CO 8th Battalion (AIF), 8th Battalion Memorandum ‘Re Attached. G/1209’ to HQ 2nd Infantry Brigade (AIF), 13 December 1916; and I ANZAC, I ANZAC G130/83 General Staff Circular No. 30 ‘Organisation, Training, and Fighting of Infantry Battalion, 16 December 1916. Both on AWM 27, item 303/150.
32 In the 18th Battalion (AIF), the CO recommended that, when the sixteen gun establishment had been met, each company would only receive three Lewis guns and that the remaining four were to be held in battalion reserve under the Lewis Gun Officer. CO 18th Battalion (AIF), Memorandum ‘Organisation of an Infantry Battalion to HQ 5th Infantry Brigade (AIF), 12 December 1916, AWM 27, item 304/46.
33 Brigadier CBB White (BGGS I ANZAC), I ANZAC General Staff Circular No. 33 ‘Organisation, Training, and Fighting of Infantry Battalion’, 16 December 1916, AWM 27, item 303/160.
34 GOC Fifth Army, Fifth Army GA68/0/29 ‘Precis of Remarks Made by the Army Commander at the Conference held on 27 December 1916, AWM 27, item 303/191.
35 Lieutenant Colonel TA Blamey, 1st Australian Division General Staff Memorandum ‘Reorganisation of an Infantry Battalion, 13 March 1917, AWM 27, items 303/147, 303/153 and 303/171; and BGGS I ANZAC, I ANZAC Memorandum G136/235 ‘Infantry Organisation, 25 March 1917. Both held on AWM 27, item 303/140.
36 Brigadier JMA Durrant, Leadership: Some aspects of the Psychology of Leadership more particularly as affecting the Regimental Officer and the Australian Soldier, LF Johnston, Canberra, nd, p. 5.
37 For a review of the many changes that were affecting various elements of the BEF see Paddy Griffiths (ed), British Fighting Methods in the Great War, Frank Cass, London, 1996; and Paddy Griffiths, Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack, 1916-18, Yale University Press, London, 1994.
38 After this proposed reorganisation, about one third of the British field artillery would be available to place under the command of the corps GOCRA. CGS GHQ BEF, GHQ BEF Memorandum OB/1866 to First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Armies, 16 November 1916, AWM 27, item 303/35 Part 2.
39 Jonathan Bailey, ‘The First World War and the birth of modern warfare’, in Macgregor Knox and Williamson Murray (eds), The dynamics of military revolution 1300-2050, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002, pp. 132-53.
40 Williamson Murray, ‘Thinking About Revolutions in Military Affairs’, Joint Forces Quarterly, Summer 1997, p. 72.
