Concentration (military)

“ But, generally speaking, concentration can be practically effected by armies moving to the interior of the enemy's country from the territory they have to guard. By such movement, they interpose themselves between the enemy and the country to be guarded, thereby reducing the number necessary to guard important points, or at least occupy the attention of a part of the enemy's force, if no greater object is gained. ”

“ Under curtains of fire, with the concentration heavy at one point and weak at another, with machine gun or sniping fire developing in some areas, with the smoke and the noise, with trenches to cross, the business of keeping a wave of men in line of attack for a long distance—difficult enough in a manoeuver—was possible only when the initiative and an understanding of the necessities of the situation exist in the soldiers themselves. ”

“ As to the principles governing the formal arrangement of the troops in contradiction to all attempts to lay down stereotyped formations, all that can be said is that every strategical operation, if for no other reason than to allow of reconnaissance and secure safety, requires a certain extension in breadth; but the combat itself demands concentration. ”

“ Whoever undertakes to induce a soldier or conscriptee in the reserves to disobedience, opposition, or violence against a superior, or to desertion or illegal absence or otherwise to undermine the discipline of the German or an allied military force ”

“ The concentration camp covered an enormous area on the rolling hillsides above the Somme and presented an astounding spectacle of numbers of units from every arm of the Service—gunners, infantry, engineers—besides vast stores of materials of all kinds. The roar of the guns in the inferno of the battle line seemed to speak to the troops of the great and yet increasing power of the British Armies, and filled every heart with hope and confidence. ”

“ During the period of concentration, however, even if in movement, a modern army will necessarily be supplied in somewhat the same way as Napoleon’s. The billets will be allotted “without subsistence,” and the regimental reserve supplies will be called upon to ration their men, while all around the occupied towns and villages the supply officers and their mounted escorts will requisition food and vehicles to bring the food into the concentration area. ”

“ Swiftly and more swiftly, crowding squadron after squadron and battery on battery, horses plunging and caissons jolting, the remnants from the front surged through the gates, a chaos of cavalry and artillery struggling for the right of way. Close upon them stumbled the infantry; here a skeleton of a regiment marching with a desperate attempt at order, there a riotous mob of Mobiles crushing their way to the streets, then a turmoil of horsemen, cannon, troops without officers, officers without men, then again a line of ambulances, the wheels groaning under their heavy loads. ”

“ On paper it is indeed often possible, taking into consideration the supplies available in peace; but these calculations cannot hold good for a real theatre of war where concentration has claimed all available resources. ”

“ Having joined the partnership, the General Staff and High Command group planned and carried through manifold acts of aggression which turned Europe into a charnel house and caused the Armed Forces to be used for foul practices, foully executed, of terror, pillage, and wholesale slaughter. Let no one be heard to say that the military uniform shall be a cloak, or that they may find sanctuary by pleading membership in the profession to which their actions were a disgrace. ”

“ The penalties for noncompliance are high even in peace times. In the event of war or martial law they are absolutely stringent. The commandos are so placed that they could forward their drafts of men and material to their provincial concentration points at the quickest possible notice. These provincial concentration points, being railway centers, are so located that the masses of men and materials pouring in from all sides can be handled and sent in the wanted and needed direction without any congestion. How this is done I shall explain when I come to transportation. ”

“ It is probable that this concentration was ordered for the purpose of giving uniformity to the instruction of the men in their duties as foot and mounted soldiers, and that in war they were to be distributed to the different grand divisions of the army. It cannot be denied, however, that great advantages might result to the general who could rapidly move up ten thousand men on horseback to a decisive point and bring them into action as infantry. ”

“ I well recall my amazement, when watching a camel convoy more than a mile and a half long, escorted by half a battalion of infantry. I was informed that it contained only two days' supplies for one brigade. People talk lightly of moving columns hither and thither, as if they were mobile groups of men, who had only to march about the country and fight the enemy wherever found, and very few understand that an army is a ponderous mass which drags painfully after it a long chain of advanced depots, stages, rest camps, and communications, by which it is securely fastened to a stationary base. ”

“ The crowds who had been out to stare at the concentration camp, peopled with dark-faced thousands of men, women, and children, trailed in procession as near as they were allowed to approach the field guns placed on a bare, brown eminence whence their long noses pointed grimly across the river. There were six of these guns the day I saw them, all guns of Captain March's battery ”

“ The concentration and the strategic deployment are, of course, dependent upon the circumstances of each war, and the peace organization ceases to be applicable. But throughout a war the depots at home, the recruiting districts of second-line troops, and above all the various arsenals, manufactories and offices controlled by the war department are continually at work in maintaining the troops in the field at proper strength and effectiveness. ”

“ Mail, military, aerial and railway services are assigned. The commissary lines are laid and transportation provided for. With marvelous efficiency the full fighting strength, in front and rear, is made ready and co-ordinated.
The psychological effect of mobilization is tremendous. In every household home-ties are broken. The fields are stripped of men. Industry stops. Artillery rolls through the streets, bands play. An atmosphere of apprehension settles down on the country. ”

“ And the exploits of small bodies of men, of infantry squads, of machine-gun crews will live for a little while only when veterans of the war exchange confidences over a backyard fence in days of peace and when they fight their battles over again, tracing with their pipe shanks on their hands the lines of trench taken and held, the redoubt lost, the ground on which the hand-to-hand conflict took place and all other various little doings which were part and parcel of the greater battle. ”

“ To originate armies out of the mass of a population unused to the stern discipline of the camp—to create the munitions of war out of literally nothing—to form soldiers out of a population brave indeed, but undisciplined and impatient of restraint—this is a task quite as difficult as to lead them to victory after they have been once organized. ”

“ Perhaps some day a student of psychology will be able to explain the mental processes of guards-men who left the trenches, threw away their rifles into rye fields, plundered the depots at the base of clothing, sugar and chocolate, emptied loaded trucks of munitions so that they might load them with tinned food. ”

“ When time is not pressing, the regulations prescribe a concentration for action and, simultaneously therewith, such a grouping of the principal units (if possible out of range of the effective fire of hostile guns, and well concealed) that the attacking troops need move only straight to the front. ”

“ In the barracks, the factories, on the street-corners, endless soldier speakers, all clamouring for an end to the war, declaring that if the Government did not make an energetic effort to get peace, the army would leave the trenches and go home.
The spokesman for the Eighth Army:
“We are weak, we have only a few men left in each company. They must give us food and boots and reinforcements, or soon there will be left only empty trenches. Peace or supplies... either let the Government end the war or support the Army...” ”

“ Then we observed the signs of a disastrous repulse of the attack—disordered swarms of men coming out of the woods, first thin and scattered, then larger disbanded squads, some at a full run, others at a hurried walk; then shattered companies, or battalions, or skeleton regiments crowding around their colors and maintaining something like organization; and, finally, still larger bodies retreating in better order, and higher officers surrounded by their staffs, struggling to steady the retreat and to rally the straggling men. ”

“ Each robs it of hundreds of thousands of men needed in the trenches, of the transports required to carry those men, of war-ships to convoy them, of hospital ships to mend them, of medical men, medical stores, aeroplanes, motor-trucks, ambulances, machine-guns, field-guns, siege-guns, and millions upon millions of rounds of ammunition. ”

“ And there, covering the space almost from curb to curb, a squadron of regular cavalry came sweeping down the avenue, the guidons fluttering over the uniforms of dusty blue, the drab campaign hats shading the stern, soldierly faces, the grim cartridge-belts bulging with copper and lead, the ugly little brown barkers of carbines and revolvers peeping from their holsters. Troop after troop, they swung steadily by, the guns of a light battery following close at their heels. "No power on earth!" ”

“ Far behind the front line trenches the ramifications of the services extend; for though a brigade may be holding a frontage of a couple of thousand yards, its section runs back through miles of land crowded with reserves, with light and heavy artillery, with transport services, hospitals and depots, and all the paraphernalia of modern war. ”

“ Now that we had become a brigade of artillery without guns, a British non-fighting unit struggling to get out of the way of a manœuvring French army, our one great hope was that Corps would send us right back to a depot where we could refit ourselves with fresh guns and reinforcements, to some spot where we need not be wondering every five minutes whether the enemy was at our heels. Men who have fought four days and nights on end feel like that when the strain of actual battle ceases. ”

“ Instead of our batteries cutting to pieces the Rebel Infantry regiment, the Rebel Infantry regiment has mowed down the gallant artillerists of our batteries. Hardly a man of them escapes. Death and destruction reap a wondrous and instant harvest. Wounded, dying, or dead, lie the brave cannoniers at their guns, officers and men alike hors du combat, while wounded horses gallop wildly back, with bounding caissons, down the gentle declivity, carrying disorder, and further danger, in their mad flight. ”

“ They were the direct answer to those thousand and one questions that we, the civilians shut up in the army zone, tortured by fear and anguish, asked ourselves and asked each other a hundred times a day. ”

“ And amid all the flow of troops and guns, the pitching of camps, the laying of field telegraphs, shifting of hospitals and hangars, bringing up of munitions and supplies, there is an air of calm over the whole scene that would astonish those who see the offensive only as it is concentrated in a newspaper sheet. ”

“ There is no time to bother with civilians during an offensive, and, if a retreat is likely, no commander wishes to have country described which may presently be in the hands of the enemy. Hidden batteries in action, reserves moving up, wounded coming back, fliers, trenches quiet for the moment—this is about as close to actual fighting as the outsider, under ordinary circumstances, can expect to get on any front. ”

“ Soldiers and ambulances, wagons and cattle, gunners lacking their guns, companies out of regiments, squads out of companies, panic-struck and flying units, shouting officers brandishing swords, horsemen, colour-bearers without colours, others with colours desperately saved, musicians, sutlers, camp followers, ordnance wagons with tearing, maddened horses, soldiers and soldiers and soldiers—down, back to the centre at Chancellorsville, roared the blue wave, torn, churned to foam, lashed and shattered, broken against a stone wall—back on the centre roared and fell the flanked right! ”

“ But I had formed the theory that the true rôle of the Infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, nor to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, nor to impale itself on hostile bayonets, nor to tear itself to pieces in hostile entanglements— (I am thinking of Pozières and Stormy Trench and Bullecourt, and other bloody fields) —but, on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible ”

“ There were drills, marching and battalion maneuvers by day, such [Pg 245] recreation in the evenings as camp life could afford, sound sleeping on beds of straw at night, and always, from the distance, sometimes loud and continuous, sometimes faint and occasional, the thunder of the guns. And always, too, along the muddy high-road at the foot of the slope, a never-ending procession of provision and munition trains laboring toward the front, and the human wreckage of the firing line, and troops released from the trenches, passing painfully to the rear. ”