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"the United States, in contrast, was like a city police force equipped only with high-powered rifles, but with no weapons to meet thugs jumping patrolmen at night with automatic pistols and blackjacks"

Only one major battle in which our Navy engaged during the war was decided by gunfire. Accurate gunfire, nevertheless, proved to be indispensable in World War II, both to repel air attack and for shore bombardment to cover an amphibious assault.

This ersatz infantry training too was a manifestation of how differently things were done in Second Army: the desired distant objective did not dictate the preparations. The object was total suppression of hostile resistance.

But the best laid plans of Great War tacticians ... hit the best snags. First, As usual the bad weather rendered the ambitious counter battery program myopious,

"If England slept, America not only slept but snored."

A simple, witty phrase. Yet underneath there is a sense of post facto bitterness towards tandem isolationism & neglect of military readiness, common among historians of WWII who lived through the conflict, which their modern counterparts cannot match from a distance of almost a century.

A fivefold creeping barrage would plaster the 1km deep zone of assault all day, hugging the foot soldiers advance by progressively slowing down to a standing pillar of fire in front of the day's final objective.

The infantry training over resembling terrain and around scale models instilled a large measure of conformism to match the close advance of the barrage.

By the end of the month Haig decided to go with a Big Push: Plumer's Second Army was to stretch out a helping hand at Gheluvelt. Plumer wanted to do it step by step: Nonne Boschen, Polygon Wood..using 5 divisions: 3 in X corps & 2 in Anzac corps, feat. the biggest baddest concentration of battering batteries ever seen in the West: 575 Heavies & 720 field guns in a 5km wide arc, for 3 times the density 31/7.

Here Prior is spot on. "These improvements did not adress the essence of his difficulties. 5th army was unable to supply fire of sufficient accuracy & density to carry troops through German defences at little cost, nor to maintain those that did get forward on their objectives in the face of unsuppressed artillery operating in conjunction with the counter-attack forces."

The first operation went stellar. 19/8 saw 3 dry days, just enough to firm up a few roads for tanks, Cambrai style, to lumber down a few 100 yards, to gulp up those fortified farms. It was the only dry road they would enjoy.

A few later failures-by-yard altered Haig to the tenacity of the German chessboard defence pattern, but he could not simply forward his guns through the muck, only more mop-up infantry

Sufficiently cowed (or embittered) by the failure of his grand opening, Gough decided to approach Passchendaele in 6 smaller steps. But his handling of "bite & hold" didn't go well.

Prior is unusually condemning about this phase: "what we are looking at are five piecemeal narrow front attacks of a sort that had been tried in 15 16 and early 17 with singular lack of succes".

August saw twice the normal amount of rain, without dry days, resulting in the haunting image of wounded slowly drowning in craters. A second heavy push against Gheluvelt Plateau on 16/8 achieved virtually nothing. Gough blamed his own infantry for bunching up forward. Haig did nothing to stop it: yet he carries the responsibility for the Go with [insufficient] guns and in such bad weather.

Was there any way to look positively on this day ?

It was a "good catch" two-thirds along the line, with a lower casualty-to-mile ratio than the infamous 1st of July 1916, but still, for all the metal thrown, again the cavalry command had not scored a rupture.

The right wing's abundant infantry allocation (II corps had 3 rather than 2 divisions) faced abundantly worse odds against a greater number of intact pill boxes and pre-registered German counter fire. Plumers' act of deception, meanwhile, distracted exactly ...nobody.

The center lost some ground to counter-attacks at the bayonet by unaffected counter infantry from Passchendaele village itself.

The German counterattack at Cambrai certainly triggered a lot of debate about non-intervention by heavy artillery under corps command to help beleaguered divisions. In light of what would happen in March, the 55th division on the demarcation line between III & VII corps was a likely victim of what according to Travers was a lenient attitude reminiscent of the Somme & Passendaele.

Herein lays the Crux of the "More Guns Solve Everything" philosophy. Were there ever enough to go round ? Artillery was anointed 1917 Queen of the Battlefield by the uselessness of infantry weapons and 120 underpowered Mark IV tanks in swamps.

Artillery commitment had to be total. The Field Artillery was made responsible for the first creeping barrage at two times the density of Arras & some wire-cutting as well.

Some debate contuined over the merits of a Focus on Gheluvelt, the hardest nut, or of spraying the whole 14km evenly over the week?

PRIOR offers further cryptic remarks on guns sitting idly on the Belgian coast & guns "wasted" by Plumer, who earlier was described as being short of'em to play Main Attacker as a deception.

As Major-General, Sir John Davidson on Haig's own staff pointed out that a shorter advance would make things easier for the infantry's relief and promote artillery saturation. Haig only made a "Somme-style" criticism about the bombardment.

PRIOR wrote this 3 year before his Somme study. What is this Somme style criticism exactly ?

"Both services acknowledged the stark necessity for strengthening the strategic interior quickly" in oktober 42 with Tarawa as perimeter outpost to be reinforced"

HE NEVER EXPLAINS :
" Best defensive engineering until iwo jima"

Kennedy ironically came to the House on his strong commitment against the alleged "Missile Gap" (a term coined during the 1958 election to criticize the Eisenhower administration's allegedly weak defense) only to be flustered in quick succession by the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall and Yuri Gagarin.

Sounds like he was ready for a showdown over Cuba.

The first day was supposed to carry 5km past Pickem up to Steenbeek (st. Juliaan) & past Broodseinde to Polygon Wood. It did NOT. While still an operation of a "bite and hold nature" & not as ambitious as Haig's Channel-sweeping, it nevertheless reads like an overly optimistic catalogue of the Passchendaele campaign's many bloody battle subdivisions.

Plumer could either mass his artillery for flank support or use it to fake being the main attacker. he choose Option two. But he didn't have enough guns to fake it. As usual, the real attacker had pooled extra from the neighbours.

WHAT HAS GOODREADS BEEN DRINKING ??

Because you are currently reading The Great War Generals On The Western Front, 1914-1918:

"Bring It On Home: Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin, and Beyond--The Story of Rock's Greatest Manager" by Mark Blake

Gough's plan, as any in this war, rested on 4 core elements: Duration of preliminary bombardment (9 days). Length of attack front (14 km). Support to secure the flanks of his 5th Army by French troops on his left & 2nd British Army on the right under Plumer.

The attack launched from beside Houthulst Forest southward to kleine Zillebeke road to take most of Gheluvelt Plateau in ambitious terms of penetration depth.

the Big Boom at Messines woke up Ludendorff, who dispatched Colonel von Lossburg to 4th Army to increase the number of defence lines from 3 to 5 to 7 on the Geluvelt plateau. A good month later, mid-july, he had a "forward battle zone" of breastworks & concrete MG posts. The word here was old-fashioned "inflexibility" [do other books say this?] until the counterattack could be launched from the rear.

Once the Ypres planning was shaped (not completely according to his suggestions) Rawlingson was sidelined to plan an amphibious attack from Nieuwpoort for after the prospective Ypres breakthrough, but a German pre-emptive attack at Lombardsijde forced him to sit & wait in an extra cramped salient on the IJzer.

Krutshev did intregate his nuclear arsenal into traditional sabre-rattling, as a bluff for peaceful coexistence, given the weakness of his strategic bomber/rocket force as shown by the 1956/60 U-2 flights.

"Eisenhower was at once the most subtle and brutal strategist of the cold war. He only prepared for an all-out nuclear war, not a limited nuclear or conventional conflict, because he knew that it was the most likely, in spite of Kissinger' s hope to give nukes a [defined] place in rational statecraft."

& 120mm cannon... there was much cross-weapon training for all infantry: among others Pioneer units (also from Navy) who "fought as hard as Germans" as well as naval heavy gunners & tankers. ...So yes, the Navy provided MOST of the hard eggs in the Gilberts basket to stop the Pacific perimeter from shrinking.

The Marines were up against their counterparts, the so-named "rikusentai" but few veterans of Wake Island & the Solomons campaign could warn'em about this high quality Imperial naval infantry. The original units were disbanded upon depletion, but their successors were consequently veteran-heavy. The defensive doctrine shift in 41-43 meant heavier firepower instead of riflemen mobility, with WWIesque 70mm howitser...

"All battles seem like chaos to the participants but crusader falls into the Oscar category" the Empire forces were pushed back to the Egypt frontier wire but Cairo knew it had won: Rommel shrank back to Tobruk, greatly weakened, then to Tripolitania, holding off pursuit with small rearguard counters. The British owed their victory to Rommel's mistakes, the weight of their material and superior logistics.

The plan for Operation Crusader: draw out Rommel with our own armor as bait, link ourinfantry up with Tobruk & encircle him. Parity of numbers & long supply lines dictated a dangerous parity. "Like penning a savage bull in a hencoop" (A.Moorehead) there was the risk of a piecemeal defeat through defence on interior lines, a German specialty.