The Great War (mod 1914)

The entry of Italy in the war and the inmediate attack against Trento also meant that the Anglo-French armies would have to resume their offensives. However, that also meant some kind of troubles between the French and the British generals. Basically, the problem was that Field Marshal Joffre had envisaged an all-out attack against the German lines in several places, trusting that the numbers and the heavy guns would do the tricks. Under pressure in several places at once, the Germans would not be able to send reinforcements to all the threatened places at once and would break somewhere. French, the British commander (1), was not too impressed by the plan, but, certainly, it was not of his generals' liking.

However, French was under pressure. At home, the public was astonished that so many casualties could have been suffered for so little gain and he had been attacked by Viscount St. Davids in the House of Lords. Thus Joffre’s decision to plan another offensive was therefore a godsend for the British Commander-in-Chief. At once, French offered his assistance to Joffre, who happily accepted. Until that point, French had insisted that the BEF should not attack until it was up to strength in 1916. Yet now he was willing to commit the BEF to another offensive, and this time, it was as much to secure his own position as Commander-in-Chief as it was to reach a military objective. French probably did believe that another offensive effort would be beneficial for the Allies, but the reward of a successful attack in coordination with the French was not lost on the Field Marshal – his ability as the BEF’s commander would be confirmed and doubts about his suitability would be dispersed. However, several of his top commanders, among them General Haig, were skeptical about that and stuck to the need of waiting until enough troops and guns were gathered. And that meant waiting until 1916.

French went ahead with his planning and it was necessary that Kitchener and Robertson's intervention to restore peace, at least for a time, in the high ranks of the BEF. Thus, as the IV Italian Corps under Cadoona would broke the Austrian front between Plezzo and Gorizia and would move against Laibach (present day Ljubljana, Slovenia), the Anglo-French forces would attack in Alsace, Artois and Champagne on May 28th, 1915. It was supposed that offensives were to relieve some of the pressure from the Eastern and Serbian fronts.

On the Isonzo, the initial advance was a successful one, with the overwhelmed Austrians dropping back to a more defensible position. The Italian troops crossed the river in spite of some problems - it was short of officers, of artillery and crucially, of mountain guns. By July 1st the advanced units of the IV Corps' entered in Laibach and then began the second phase of the First Battle of the Isonzo: the attack against Fiume. It lasted eighteen hours before the Italian commander, Major General Saporiti, concluded that the entrenched Austrian forces were too strong for his Alpini. Unwilling to concede defeat, Cadorna prepared a new attack, two weeks later: a main offensive against Fiume with a secondary operation against Insbruck to fix the Austro-Germana reserves.


The Second Battle of the Isonzo began in the customary tradition: with a long cannnonade -to the Italian standards, though. This time the crossing of the Isonzo was no problem for the Italian force, which stormed the weak Austrian force present there and raced towards Fiume. Thrilled by the success, Cadorna attempted then to turn the sideshow against Innsbruck in another success, but even he had to admit that the Austro-German Alpenkorps was too hard an enemy and the attack had to be called off. Futhermore, the Austrian commander of the sector, Archduke Eugen, was being reinforced by troops send from other quiet areas. The casualties went slightly over 20,000 for each side. For a while, the front was to remain quiet.


Meanwhile, in the Western Front...

(1) Ah, the unwanted pun...




@quaazi: Yes, the German submarine effort isn't being to impressive...

@Nathan Madien: ... but its long-lasting effects are going to be more severe.

@Enewald: I Would love to do that, but they, alàs, are on my side...

@Tommy4ever: Right now, not a single one. I've taken a look to the German OOB and I've been dismayed. They only have 3 Uboaten flotillas making ASW sweeps in the North Sea and the technology for convoy raiding is not to be studied unitl 1917... I've made my best to try to fix that, but...

Italy is attacking on her own, with some varying degree of success... Serbia is still alive and there should be no problem about that until late 1915...

Perhaps you should send some troops to Italy so you can make some offensives into the Balkans?

@quaazi: Italy doesn't need help right now, and I don't plan to do anything there unless hey got capporetorized ...

@El Pip: I can tell you something: in due time, they will follow good old traditions ang get bogged down in their own success and the Italian military leadership will prove so 'succesful' as their British counterparts.

@Nathan Madien: I won't allow them that, otherwise they would be right to the 1,500th Isonzo and quite happy about that.

@FlyingDutchie: Does this chapter answer your questions?

Disclaimer: one could blame Sigfried Sassoon or Paul Fussell for the dark humor that pervades, somehow, in this update. And you could be right.



For the first two months of the war, the handling of personal provided the main difficulty in the formation of the Kitchener armies, for men in such numbers and from such diverse backgrounds had never entered the wildest plans of the old army. Even when individual had been integrated and were where they were supposed to be, it might no be the end of the pain. The 2nd Dorset Yeonmary, for instance, began as infantry, then, after three weeks, were registered as cavalry at 48 hours' notice. Thereafter, they became bicycle troops (July 1916), cavalry (November 1916) before stabilizing as bicycle troops (September 1917) -we all know how useful bicicyles are in the muddy trenches orwhen charging against the enemy lines... A local historian commented, without a trace of humour, "they seem to have been able to do anything" (1).


Then the problem of personnel was replaced by that of the scarcity of materials, as it has been already mentioned in previous chapters. Food was another matter, and some soldiers had to buy it from their own pockets, and were driven at times to eat snails. This was solved by early 1915. Private Parker joined up in September 1914. His last piece of kit and his service rifle came only during January 1915. Even then there were problems had to solve. In the Suffolk regiment, Private Heath wrote of the taciturn peasants of remote villages turning up five minutes late for paraede because they had been shaving, of course. Even when army norms had been established sufficiently to make it clear that only the officers were the ones to do the thinking, there were those better educated who were disturbed by the humouous absurdity of all of it, as J. B. Priestely thought. Thus, in adittion to the Germans, the British army was busy fighthing with its own intellectuals!!!

The basic training course which provided the civilian with their military skills was, of course, more than absurd, but unreal. Otherwise, what could you expect of a course that was to make a soldier of a civilian in just ten weeks? The despised Territorials were of the opinion, in peace time, that while it took a year to make a gunner, twenty days sufficed for the primitive rifleman. As Private Noakes wrote: "with rifles we marched, counter-marched, wheeled right and left, inclined and formed squads and about turned until we were streaming sweat and week in the knees with exhaustion". While it will no escape to the reader the irony of being marched to the Moon and back and then sent to a front that moved at a snail's pace, one should keep in mind that the platoon training, which was the fundamental part of the course, entered the schedule in the tenth and final week.


Even the battle training made no sense. It was argued that Wellington's army would have felt at home in the drill camp, and it may be so. Battle training was based on tactical concepts obsolete even at the time of Boer war: the basic idea was to form lines of men, that would approach the enemy in leapfrog style, each line supporting the next with covering fire until a line was 200 yards from the enemy. Then would come the orgasm of the bayonet charge. "All ranks must be taught that the aim and object is to come to close quarters with the enemy as quickly as possible so as to be able to use the bayonet". Darn Germans and their Maschinengewehren! Another prove that you cannot fight against amateurs, if you ask me. I could go on an one, but it will suffice with stating that only 0,03 % of the wounds on the battlefield throughtout the war were inflicted by the bayonets. Obviously the German armies were not aware of the wisedom included within the pages of the British battle manual. As told above: amateurs, pah!

The British soldier of the 1914-18 period did lack a practical knowledge of map-reading, trench survival, the characters of particular weapons, what to do to avoid machine gun fire or deal with a pillbox. But they were able to obey all orders. Only when this was achieved they were considered "trained" ('tamed' could be more an appropiate word, I would rather think, sir). Bearing in mind the combat register of the "undisciplined" colonial troops one would think that could have been achieved if an alternative concept of training had been adopted in which regards battle motivation and army organization.

It was that kind of soldier that was thrown to the battlefield of Artois on May 28th, 1915. The Allied plan consisted of two main offensives, one in Artois and the other one in Champagne, like their previous effort, but with one slight variation: a diversive action in Alsace-Lorraine.


The attack in Artois was made by the British First Army under Sir Douglas Haig against the German salient in Lile, which was soon reinforced by the Second Army, under sir Henry Rawlinson; the Belgian army and the Canadian Expeditionary Force. The assault was planned along a three mile front, and would be the first British army night attack of the war. The attack was preceded by a 60 hour bombardment by 433 artillery pieces that fired about 100,000 shells. This bombardment failed to significantly damage the front line defenses of the German Sixth Army, but the initial advance made some progress in good weather conditions. However, further attacks achieved nothing but heavy losses. The German replied to any Allied attack with a deluge of artillery and machine fire. Worse still, on many parts of the front, the wire was left uncut, leaving Allied units pinned in front of the German defensive system to be subjected to torrential fire. In the end, after several weeks of useless probing attacks against the well entrenched German army, the offensive achieved nothing.


It was during this battle when a young subaltern, a Captain (Brevted Major) Bernard Law Montgomery was shot through the right lung by a sniper and was injured seriously enough for his grave to be dug in preparation for his death. This proved to be slightly premature. A Platoon sergeant came to assist him but was killed. He fell on Montgomery. The German sniper fired at him until sunset. The body of the sergeant protected Montgomery and took most of the enemy fire. Montgomery was hit once more though, in the knee. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for gallant leadership.


To the south, the French army fared no better. The French artillery fired a heavy bombardment for 3 days and then the advance began, and two miles were gained. The next day, however, reinforcements arrived for the Germans and the offensive was stalled due the German counterattacks. The French also kept attacking, hoping to find some weak spot, just to be gunned down by the massive defensive fire of the entrenched German Landsers. All in all, the two main offensives had caused 154,000 casualties -44,000 British, Commonwealth and Belgian plus 110,000 French- and achived nothing but paltry gains.


The irony was that, in Lorraine, the secondary attack was complete success. The weak German trenches were obliterated by the heavy bombardment and then the French soldiers just walked unscathed forwards. General von Francois's battered command had to withdraw in front of the decided attack by marshal de Castlenau's army. However, the lack of reserves made that the French forces had to entrench themselves in the few villages they had conquered as huge German reinforcements flooded the area. A few miles gained had costed 15,000 casualties in a battle that, by no means, had no strategic importance but was intended to drag some German reinforcements that, in fact, never moved to that threatened area.


Haig was furious. He had been against the offensive as the mining area were it was to take place was unsuitable for an offensive. French had agreed with him, in principle, and he argued to Foch that offensive operations should be postponed until 1916, when enough heavy guns could be concentrated for a truly decisive battle to be waged. Joffre raged and accused the British of cowardice and trying to unnecessarily burden the French Army and French had eventually agreed to make an effort somewhere on the western front. Haig insisted that an attack north of La Bassée was the only one that could entail significant success, and French was in agreement, but Foch interfered again, arguing that an attack so far north would not succeed in drawing away German reinforcements from the south, where the French were to launch their offensive. Eventually, French submitted (again), and led to the failure that has already been described.

Now Haig fumed about the "the old woman" that had "caved in” and ruined his offensive for a failed French attempt that was doomed from the start. Thus started the inner fighting in the top ranks of the BEF.



(1) Except fighting in France, as they moved to Ireland in early 1918 without even reaching the Continent.
(2) Actually, all this happened in 1914, at Mons, but I needed a spicy moment for this AAR. I'll make no further comment about our heroe and leave them to Monty's fan club I'll add this, only. He's alive and kicking. And yes, I know, I'm the most despicable and sadistic writtAR this south of the Thames River.

PS: This is not taken from the Battle of the Somme, but from some examples of the last battles of OTL 1915.

@Enewald: Were not for the unexpected victories at Trento and Ljubljana and the fact that the Italians had already won more that in the whole war, yes... fairly historical...

@quaazi: Melchiett, are you there?

@Tommy4ever: too well, if you ask me.

@Nathan Madien: They have the French... er... and the British! They have the British, yes...

@Enewald (2)- True.

@El Pip: We shall see. I can tell you something. Italy will receive what she deserves.

France too.

@FlyingDutchie: Italy advancing... a paradox that surprises me. And Russia still alive. Well, if she had falled by this stage, I would be totally pissed off. In due time, we shall see what the Czar is capable of...