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Remembering and learning from the past: World War I and Iraq

By Jack Sturgess - posted Friday, 12 October 2007


Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana (1905).

The editorial columns in the Melbourne Argus of October 3, 1891 included the following comment: “We have yet to witness on European battlefields the momentous effects of the magazine rifle and smokeless powder. The magazine rifle, besides its greatly increased rapidity of fire, its long range and flatter trajectory, … will give additional advantage to the defence and create new difficulties for the attack.”

This opinion was based on the events of the American Civil War (1861-65), the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), and subsequent technical developments. The American Civil War had seen the introduction of pistols and rifles using the patented revolver mechanism of Samuel Colt that permitted repeating fire. It also saw the first effective machine guns, hand cranked Gatlings with six barrels. Basic rifling had been invented earlier, along with the minie principal to more effectively contain the gases generated by gunpowder when fired. The Franco Prussian War featured single-shot breech-loading rifles that were accurate over a long range.

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Other technical advances in the second half of the 19th century included:

  • brass cartridge cases, which allowed the detonator, propellant and projectile to be consolidated into a single, easy-to-load bullet;
  • nitro-cellulose, smokeless, powerful propellants generated higher muzzle velocities and easier-to-aim flatter trajectories;
  • metal jacketed projectiles prevented the lead slug deforming in the barrel due to the increased acceleration generated by the new propellants;
  • more effective rifling imparted controlled spin to the projectile to maintain accuracy;
  • safe and reliable bolt-action breeches and box magazines evolved, best typified by the British Lee Enfield .303 and the German Mauser 7.65 mm repeating rifles; and
  • automatic firing, notably by Maxim (British) and Spandau (German) machine guns.

The effectiveness of machine guns and accurate rifles against massed troops was demonstrated with devastating results in the British action against the Matabeles in 1894 and against the Khalifa Abdullah and his dervishes at Omdurman, near Khartoum, in 1898. Sir Henry Kitchener, at age 48, was commander of the British forces (mostly Egyptian mercenaries) at the latter encounter. Winston Churchill was also present in his cavalry unit, the 21st Lancers. In a morning, about 10,000 dervishes were slaughtered by machine guns (Maxims) and accurate rifle fire; losses for the British forces were some 400.

On the basis of this campaign, Churchill later wrote The River War in which he reported that as the mayhem subsided, Kitchener was heard to remark that “the enemy had been given a good dusting”.

Kitchener, now Lord, had a less agreeable opportunity to appreciate the effectiveness of the long range, accurate magazine rifle when he commanded the forces of the British Empire in the Anglo Boer War in South Africa in 1901-02. In the Canadian history of that war, published shortly after, the authors make this observation:

The long range of the magazine rifles in the Boer-Briton war has been a factor in all engagements, and the Boers have been the men who, at the opening of their campaign of aggressive resistance to the British, were educated to give the improved weapons the greatest possible scope and efficiency, while at the same time they neglected no reasonable device to take all the chances of safety.

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This scope and efficiency were demonstrated with deadly effect at Colenso (where 1,157 British soldiers were killed, and less than 50 Boers), and elsewhere.

South Africa dramatically demonstrated the superiority of bullet power over bayonet power, although the lesson was not generally recognised. European strategists were still overwhelmingly influenced by the Napoleonic theory of ceaselessly renewed frontal onslaughts, which had been effective against single shot, muzzle-loading smooth bored muskets.

In spite of the evidence that open order skirmishing lines got better and less costly results against modern weapons than massed close order bayonet attacks, the belief persisted that “morale” deteriorated when soldiers were separated into open order formation. This belief no doubt persisted most strongly among strategists who had not faced machine gun fire.

Kitchener and his generals were vigorously criticised by the British public for their performance in the South African conflict. In the latest history (1979) of the Boer War, Thomas Packenham wrote the following, referring to the younger generation of Kitchener’s officers, Byng, Robertson, Birdwood, Allenby, French and Haig:

The central tactical lesson of the Boer War eluded them; the reasons for those humiliating reverses were not the marksmanship of the Boers, nor their better guns and rifles, nor the crass stupidity of the British generals - all myths which the British people found it convenient to believe. It was that the smokeless, long range, high velocity small bore magazine bullet from rifle or machine gun, plus the trench, had decisively tilted the balance against attack and in favour of defence.

The world learnt this lesson the hard way, in the bloody stalemates of the Dardanelles (Gallipoli) and Flanders (includes Passchendaele, where 38,000 Australians were killed and wounded).

Kitchener was in command of the British forces in World War I until 1916. His subordinate, General Haig, is most remembered as the Butcher of the Somme, after a battle fought in France. In that battle German Spandau machine guns, secure in pillbox protection, and riflemen in trenches with accurate Mauser magazine rifles, were used to deadly effect against massed infantry in close order formation. In one day, mostly in the first hour, the British forces suffered 57,470 casualties of which 19,240 were deaths. Such numbers were not especially unusual on both sides.

It is easy to be sanctimonious when making judgments of past events. Still it is difficult to understand how so many trained and experienced people, who had observed the new weapons in the previous 50 years, could then be so wrong. No one with influence appears to have remembered the recent past; they were, as Santayana says, condemned to repeat it. History has condemned Kitchener and his generals for doing so.

In the case of Iraq, history offers several examples of insurgencies in the last century that are relevant “past”:

  • the Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, 1899-1902;
  • the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1955;
  • the Russian invasion of Hungary, 1956;
  • the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968;
  • the Vietnam wars of France, 1945-1954; and
  • the Vietnam wars of the US, 1961-1975.

In the Boer War the British forces, much stronger numerically than the Boers, were in danger of losing until Lord Kitchener perceived the necessity of separating the combatants from their supporters who supplied them with food, intelligence and fresh horses. To accomplish this, he established secure “concentration camps” to contain the Boer non-combatant communities; he also initiated a “scorched earth” policy to minimise the food supply of the guerillas and their horses. This policy was effective and won the war. (Distressingly some 20,000 Boers, mostly women and children, died of disease in the camps, earning for Kitchener the intense hatred of succeeding generations of Boers and Afrikaners).

In the Malayan Emergency, ethnic Chinese communist insurgents on the Malay Peninsula who had fought against the Japanese, at the end of that war continued to fight against the restoration of British colonial government. Given the Cold War dynamics underway at the time, this insurgency was contested by the British with the support of many of the ethnic Malays, who were promised eventual independence. Under the strategy devised by Lieutenant General Briggs the insurgents were separated from their communities that supplied them with food and intelligence. These non-combatants were re-settled in secured “New Villages”. British planes and ships prevented re-supply of weapons and ammunition to the insurgents by sea routes, and troops secured the narrow mountainous access from southern Thailand. Even with these tactics, it was still necessary to have a large numerical advantage (up to 50 to 1) to finally defeat the insurgents sheltering in the rugged and jungle-covered terrain.

The anti-communist uprisings in Hungary and Czechoslovakia were of a rather different nature, being spontaneous with apparently limited military preparation or planning. The Russians, with assistance from Warsaw Pact allies in the case of Czechoslovakia, quickly overwhelmed any resistance with little actual combat. About 2,500 Hungarians were killed and less than 100 Czechs. The Russians had an enormous strategic advantage, in that they could control all the borders. Both countries were 80 per cent bordered by other Warsaw Pact countries; the remaining sections were with Austria, which was no threat to the Russians. The number of invading troops (600,000 with 6,000 tanks) was proportionately much larger in Czechoslovakia, but the total number of people killed was much smaller; this result might be purely coincidental.

The French in Vietnam were not popular with an indigenous population restless after the defeat of the Japanese. It was not encouraged by any promises of independence. On the commencement of hostilities against nationalist/communist guerillas, the French were also not able to secure the rugged northern borders. This left the insurgents free to acquire arms and ammunition from ideological supporters China and Russia.

The Americans in Vietnam were determined to fight a conventional high-technology war and used air power extensively, often with little or no benefit. (If technology was effective against terrorism, Israel would have been at peace long ago.) Air power was unable to control the borders or the communist supply lines through nominally neutral Laos, where the Ho Chi Minh trail in that country continued to function effectively.

On the advice of British expert, Robert Thompson, a “strategic hamlet” program was introduced in 1963 which was intended to isolate the non-combatant community from the insurgents. It was unfortunately put under the control of South Vietnamese political appointees who followed their own separate agendas, not the least of which was corruption. The program failed. To compound the difficulties, the non-combatant population in South Vietnam was ethnically, religiously and politically divided, while the armies of the north were politically and nationalistically united and motivated.

In Iraq, the situation had ceased being a conventional war and had become an insurgency by late 2004. By then the majority of attacks from the numerous Islamic insurgent groups was largely aimed at the invading Americans. Given the length of the border, (approx 3,000km), the hostility of neighbours (Iran and Syria) and the number (25 million) of the religiously diverse population, a US army of about 150,000 is probably several multiples below what has historically been required to be effective. Experts used to consider a ratio of 10:1, counter-insurgency troops to insurgents, to be the minimum necessary for success. A Washington source in March 2007 estimated the number of Sunni insurgents at 70,000. Shia might be as many or more.

General David Petraeus, the latest US commander in Iraq recently appointed by President Bush, was the principal author of a new and widely acclaimed US Army counter-insurgency manual (Field Manual 3-24). After 242 pages, he concludes with Appendix G, “Learning Counterinsurgency”, (COIN in the army vernacular). It includes six principles; principles 2, 3 and 4 are as follows:

  • isolate the insurgents from their cause and their base;
  • secure the population under the rule of law;
  • generate intelligence from the population.

Lord Kitchener and Lieutenant General Briggs could have told him all that. Remember the past.

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About the Author

Jack Sturgess is a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy. He has worked in the mining industry for 40 years in six countries. He is a member of the State Library of Victoria Foundation and has an interest in history.

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