J. F. C. Fuller

“ As I neared Poelcappelle our guns started to fire: at once the Germans replied, pouring shells on and around the road, the flashes of the bursting shells were all round me. I cannot describe what it felt like, the nearest approach of a picture I can give is that it was like standing in the centre of the flame of a gigantic Primus stove. As I neared the derelict tanks, the scene became truly appalling: wounded men lay drowned in the mud, others were stumbling and falling through exhaustion, others crawled and rested themselves up against the dead to raise themselves a little above the slush. ”

“ In defence, as a mobile ‘pill-box,’ the possibilities of the tank are great—any man who has led infantry ‘over the top’ knows the demoralising and disorganising effect of the ‘surprise packet’ machine-gun nest—what more admirable type of nest can be devised? Continually changing position, hidden from enemy aircraft by smoke and the dust of battle, offering no target for aimed artillery fire. ”

“ So with the tank, it has come not only to stay but to revolutionise, and I for one, enthusiastic as I am, do not for a minute doubt that my wildest dreams about its future will not only be realised but surpassed, and that from its clumsy endeavours in the Great War will arise a completely new direction in the art of warfare itself. ”

“ In three years of fighting on this front, I have met no battalion commander to equal him in power of leadership, rapidity of decision in an emergency, and personal magnetism. I have met no man who would judge so justly what an infantry soldier can and cannot do.
“He considers the tanks invaluable if properly handled, either for the attack or in defence—but he realises, as I think we all do, that until Cambrai, the tactical knowledge shown in their employment was of the meanest order. ”

“ Considering the comparative weakness of the British Army, the time of the year, and the nature of the fighting, it had truly been a notable performance on the part of the English and the Dominion infantry, to have fought their way so far. To carry out a rapid pursuit was beyond their endeavours, for the German Army, though beaten, was not yet broken. For cavalry to do so was unthinkable, for the German rearguards possessed many thousands of machine guns, and as long as these weapons existed, pursuit, as cavalry dream it to be, is utterly impossible. ”

“ Though experience is the only true test of a system of tactics, the foundations of the tactics suitable to any particular weapon are not based on experiences, but on the limitations of the weapon, that is on its powers, and on the fundamental principles of war. Further than this, if the weapon concerned is to be employed in co-operation with other weapons, the powers of these other weapons must also be considered, so that all the weapons to be employed may, so to speak, like a puzzle, be fitted together during battle to form one united picture. ”

“ There is a well of this information yet untapped, not in staff offices, but in the minds of the platoon and company commanders who have fought in the first waves of the attack with the tank, who have seen the difficulties it has to overcome and how it has met them or failed, and why. Nothing has yet been produced in this war to equal the tank for doing by machinery what has hitherto been done by men; nothing so well fitted to economise our man-power and reduce the appalling wastage which has hitherto characterised our efforts in attack, and with gain instead of loss in efficiency. ”

“ With the trench came wire entanglements—the horror of the attack, and the trinity of trench, machine-gun, and wire, made the defence so strong that each offensive operation in turn was brought to a standstill. ”

“ Accepting that the main factor in future warfare will be the replacing of man-power by machine-power, the logical deduction is that the ideal army to aim at is one man, not a conscripted nation, not even a super-scientist, but one man who can press a button or pull a plug and so put into operation war-machines evolved by the best brains of the nation during peacetime. ”

“ As an infantry attack depends on the following principles—the objective, the offensive, security, mass, economy of force, surprise, movement, and co-operation—so does a tank attack. The tank must know what it is after, it must act vigorously, it must be protected by artillery just like infantry, it must attack in mass, that is in strength and numbers, but not, necessarily, all in one place; it must surprise the enemy, move as rapidly as it can, and work hand in glove with the other arms. ”

“ What success the Tank Detachment won during its two years in the East was due to the determination and fine fighting spirit displayed by its officers and men, who laboured under the greatest difficulties, not the least being the entire lack of knowledge displayed by the other arms in the limitations of tanks and their tactical employment. When all is said and done and every criticism rounded off, success with tanks in battle is as much a matter of co-operation, that is, unity of action of all arms combined, as it is of mechanical fitness. ”

“ Such was the German tactical policy: masses of men rather than efficiency of weapons, quantity of flesh rather than quality of steel.
The policy of drafting into first-line formations men who could only just carry a rifle began in 1915. Since this date it was the constant complaint of the German regimental officer that he was obliged “to carry” in his unit an ever-increasing number of useless men—men who, for physical or moral reasons, were unfit to fight, who never intended to fight, and who never did fight. ”

“ From a military point of view the penetration of a line of defence does not simply mean passing straight through it, but cutting it in half, and then by moving outwards as well as forwards to push back and envelop the flanks thus created and so widen the base of operation to admit the movement forwards of reserves and supplies, and the movement backwards of casualties and tired troops. ”

“ That war will be eliminated by weapons, not by words or treaties or leagues of nations; by weapons—319leagues of tanks, aeroplanes, and submarines—which will render opposition hopeless or retribution so terrible that nations will think not once or twice but many times before going to war. If the civilian population of a country know that should they demand war they may be killed in a few minutes by the tens of thousands, they will not only cease to demand it but see beforehand that they are well prepared by superiority of weapons to terrify their neighbours out of declaring war against them. ”

“ Where we have been so wrong and will continue to remain so wrong, unless we radically change our peace methods of warfare, is that we possess no process of producing great peace soldiers—scientists for war. We do not realise that an army is formed to prevent war, that it is composed of human points, that the good player will not lose many of these points, and that the bad player will go bankrupt. That the loss or gain depends on superiority of brains and of weapons and not necessarily superiority of rank and numbers of men. ”

“ They may also be blown up by mines or land-mines....”
“Since the chance of success of an attack by tanks lies almost entirely in its novelty, and in the element of surprise, it is obvious that no repetition of it will have the same opportunity of succeeding as the first unexpected effort. It follows, therefore, that these machines should not be used in driblets (for instance, as they may be produced) , but that the fact of their existence should be kept as secret as possible until the whole are ready to be launched, together with the infantry assault, in one great combined operation....” ”

“ To limit the evolution of weapons is therefore to limit the periods of peace. An Army cannot stand still, it must develop with the civilisation of which it forms part or become barbaric. To equip our Army to-day with bows and arrows would not reduce the frequency of war, it would actually increase it, for according to his tools, so is man himself, and as an Army is built up of men, if these men are armed with bows and arrows they will in nature closely approximate to the age which produced these weapons, the age which burnt Joan of Arc. ”

“ Equally so will the Army of to-day, if in equipment it be not allowed to keep pace with scientific progress, develop into a band of brigands, for in 2019 the rifle and gun of to-day, and the civilisation which produced them, will be as uncouth as the arquebus, the carronade, and the manners of the sixteenth century.
If a millennium is ever to be ushered in upon earth it will be accomplished through the development of brain-power and not through it becoming atrophied. ”

“ Depressing as this perpetual change often was, reorganisation is, nevertheless, an extremely healthy sign, for it shows that the Tank Corps, a young formation, was not afraid to grow, and that it refused to stand still; and, when all is said and done, should not every organisation be dynamic, should not it move with the times, expand, grow, and absorb difficulties rather than push them aside or ignore them? ”

“ This is the duty of the General and Administrative Staffs of an Army or Formation and usually entails an immense amount of careful work. The fact that success depends as much, if not more, on organisation (brain power) as on valour (nerve power) is not generally recognised, and many an officer and man in the firing line is, through ignorance of the causes and effects which are operating behind, only too prone to forget what the staff is doing, and, never more so, what the staff has done than after a really great victory has been gained. ”

“ As steam, applied as a motive force, in 150 years changed the world more than it had previously been changed since the days of palæolithic man, so, before the present century has run its course, may as great a change take place in the realms of war. The cause of both is the same: as the invention of the steam engine rendered obsolete to a high degree the hand-tool and replaced it by the machine-tool, so the application of petrol to the battlefield will force the hand-weapon out of existence and replace it by the machine-weapon. ”

“ We want thousands of tanks, both light and heavy, ranging from two miles to eight miles per hour, armed with 158M.G.s, armed with Stokes guns, unarmed and fast-travelling for transport of gun teams to emergency tactical positions, and lastly, a staff of trained minds to define the tactics of the tank—to refute criticism based on ignorance, to collect, classify and investigate all available information and suggestions, so that like an aeroplane—every ‘new edition’ of the tank is an improvement on the last. ”

“ As an applied science, war is half human, half mechanical; it is, therefore, pre-eminently a live or dynamic science, a science which must grow with human understanding itself, so that its means of action, materialised in the soldier, may not only keep level with progress but absorb it to its own particular ends. ”

“ In the early days of the war, forgetful of the lessons of South Africa, we put our senior officers in the forefront of the battle—of late, the pendulum has swung the other way—surely the employment of a tank for the purpose outlined would enable us now to strike the happy mean? ”

“ I, however, will scrap the respirator and place my men in gas-proof tanks, and whenever my indicator denotes impure air, the crews will batten down their hatches, their engines will be run off accumulators, and they themselves will live on oxygen or compressed air. I will apply to land-warfare naval methods undreamt of before, I will produce a land machine which will, so to speak, submerge itself when the gas cloud approaches, just as a submarine submerges in the sea when a destroyer draws near. ”

“ A FORECAST OF WHAT TANKS MAY DO
Accepting war as a science and an art, that it is founded on definite principles which are applied according to the conditions of the moment, we may scientifically reduce it to its component elements, which are: Men, weapons, and movement. A combination of these three is an army, a body of men which can fight and move.
Tactics, or the art of moving armed men on the battlefield, change directly in accordance with the nature of the weapons themselves and the mobility of the means of transport. ”

“ The true banisher of armour was gunpowder, for when once the thickest armour, which human energy would permit of being worn, could be penetrated, it became but an encumbrance to its wearer. Though gunpowder was introduced as a missile propellant on the battlefield as early as the twelfth century, it was not until the close of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries that its influence began to be felt, and it is interesting to note that directly it became apparent that the hand gun would beat armour carried by men, other means of carrying it were introduced. ”

“ The value of the work they accomplished was recognised by all the units with which they worked. The casualties they inflicted on the enemy were undoubtedly heavy; in most cases where they advanced the infantry attack succeeded, and the highest compliment which was paid to their efficiency came from the enemy himself, who took every possible step to counter their activity.
The operations showed that the training of all ranks had been carried out on sound and practical lines. The fighting spirit of the men was high, the tanks being fought with great gallantry. ”