Topic: Military History
Before proceeding to an analysis of the opening campaigns of the Great War, a few words about the opposing armies seem advisable.
The armies of the major belligerents were all organized in roughly the same manner. First came the numbered field armies, consisting of a variable number of corps. For instance, the German Army in the west was organized into seven field armies, each controlling two to four corps depending on the task allotted to them. The corps was the basic tactical formation; it consisted of two or three infantry divisions plus various corps troops. These latter usually included a medium artillery regiment, a cavalry regiment, a pioneer (combat engineer) battalion, and various supply columns. Cavalry corps were similar but substantially smaller.
Except for the British Army, infantry divisions were “square divisions,” so called because they embodied two brigades, each of two infantry regiments, each regiment with three battalions. The infantry divisions of the British Army, which did not recognize the regiment as a tactical echelon of command, were “triangular” with three brigades of four battalions each. The division artillery usually consisted of a brigade of two regiments with a total of eight to twelve batteries or 36 to 56 guns. Divisions also included a reconnaissance element—usually a horse cavalry squadron—and the divisions trains (supply and ammunition columns). Though a few motor vehicles were to be found, most transport was horse drawn. The total strength of a 1914 infantry division was 20,000 to 25,000 men, depending on nationality. Cavalry divisions had a similar organization but a much lower strength: usually 8,000-10,000 men and 12 to 24 guns.
The field armies of the belligerents embodied the divisions of the active army plus the first-line reserve divisions. The former, consisting of long-service professional soldiers and the current intake of conscripts, were maintained at full strength. The latter, maintained at cadre strength only, were brought up to war strength on mobilization by absorbing the most recently trained reservists. In most cases the first-line reserve divisions were slightly smaller than the active divisions, for example having less artillery.
Older reservists formed the second-line reserve units: territorial or Landwehr battalions and brigades for such duties as protecting lines of communication, guarding prisoners, garrisoning fortresses and the like. Usually they were armed with older weapons that had been superseded in the field army. In 1914, however, these territorials often found themselves pressed into service as combat troops.
Once again, the British Army was an exception to the rule described above. As a small all-volunteer force its reserve, consisting of men who’d completed their service with the colors, was only sufficient to bring the Regular Army (six infantry divisions and one cavalry division) up to war strength. The Territorial Army, somewhat analogous to the US National Guard, was a part-time volunteer force whose members in 1914 bore no obligation for foreign service, though the great majority did so volunteer.
The weapons in the hands of the soldiers of 1914 were few and basic: the pistol, the rifle and bayonet, the machine gun and, for cavalry, the saber and lance. Machine guns were usually grouped in regimental machine gun companies of 12-16 weapons. Division artillery consisted mostly of light field guns with a caliber of 75mm to 80mm. Only the German divisions possessed significant numbers of light 105mm field howitzers capable of high-trajectory fire. Medium and heavy field artillery, such as it was, was controlled by the corps and armies, the Germans being somewhat better off than the others in this category of weaponry. Large numbers of heavy guns and howitzers that were permanently installed in fortresses were hurriedly dismounted and pressed into field service in 1914 when the importance of heavy field artillery was realized.
The uniforms of the soldiers of 1914 present a varied picture. The British, the Russians and the Germans had already replaced the brightly colored uniforms of past times with khaki (for the first two) and gray-green (for the Germans) field uniforms. The Austro-Hungarian Army had done likewise, though its new blue-gray field uniform had been adopted with an eye to war on the mountainous frontier with Italy and proved rather too conspicuous for the Eastern Front. Only the French Army went to war in its traditional, highly visible, blue coats and madder-red trousers—not the least costly of the many mistakes it made in 1914. No army provided its soldiers with steel helmets.
Though such weapons were under development in the years leading up to 1914, no army as yet possessed the submachine guns, light machine guns, mortars, grenade launchers, etc. that would be in widespread use by 1918. Even so the firepower of an infantry battalion, particularly on defense, was orders of magnitude greater than that of its 1814 ancestor. Bolt-action magazine rifles like the British Short Magazine Lee Enfield (SMLE) were capable of delivering eight or ten aimed shots per minute with an effective range up to 1,000 yards. Supplemented by machine guns and supported by artillery, a 1914 infantry battalion in defensive positions was capable of stopping an attacking force many times its own size.
Most armies championed the tactical offensive, holding that a rapid, audacious attack could overcome any defense. Hence the emphasis, for example in the French Army, on the importance of high morale, an aggressive spirit and the bayonet. Small-unit tactics received little attention, professional soldiers believing that mass armies comprised of civilians in uniform would be incapable of executing complicated maneuvers. Here again the British Army was exceptional, consisting as it did of well-trained, long-service professionals with considerable experience of colonial war. Finally, the German Army had with its usual attention to detail equipped its troops with entrenching tools, a measure scorned by other armies.
Such, then, were the armies that marched to the sound of the guns of August 1914. What happened when they clashed remains to be told.
