Expeditionary force

“ In the first days and weeks of the war—during and after the marvellous precision and rapidity with which the Expeditionary Force was despatched to France—men poured in from all parts, from all businesses and occupations; rich and poor, north and south country men, English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh; men from the Dominions, who had flung themselves into the first home-coming steamer; men from India, and men from the uttermost parts of Africa and Asia who had begged or worked their way home. ”

“ CHAPTER II MAC EMBARKS FOR OVERSEAS Six weeks dragged slowly by. A few days after they came into camp, there were ten great transports ready to take overseas the Expeditionary Force of 8,500 men, horses, guns, limbers and stores, and always there had been orders to be ready for instant embarkation and that the probable date of departure was a week ahead. ”

“ In the event of invasion by Germany in great force, with a thoroughly equipped army provided with the full complement of field-guns, howitzers, and other necessary equipment, the first contingent of which expeditionary force might readily amount to 150,000 veterans of the late war, where should we stand? ”

“ For ingenuity and daring in attack, for skill and resource in extricating their men from positions where disaster seemed inevitable, their ability as regimental officers has only been equalled in this war by the experienced officers of the first Expeditionary Force. ”

“ For the moment an expeditionary force emerges from its own territorial waters—which may be any distance from a few miles up to many thousands of miles from the territorial waters of the adversary to be assailed—it must be prepared to defend itself, and naval force alone can afford it an adequate measure of defence. ”

“ Daily we make progress, and whenever the reinforcements close at hand begin to put in an appearance, the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force will press forward with a fresh impulse to [Pg 101] accomplish the greatest Imperial task ever entrusted to an army. ”

“ A splendid expeditionary force sails away; invades an Empire, storms the outworks and in doing so knocks itself to bits. Then a second expeditionary force is sent, but that would have been unnecessary had any sort of arrangement been thought out for promptly replacing first wastages in men and in shell. ”

“ Expeditionary Force could by itself cope with the admirably organized and enormous German Army, but it did point to the growing importance in these times of high morale and quality, and to the value that even a small force, if sufficiently long and closely trained, might prove to have, if placed in a proper position alongside the excellent soldiers of France. ”

“ Still one must acknowledge that (as will be pointed out further on) even some of our highest military authorities did not realize what an insignificant asset our splendid little Expeditionary Force would stand for in a great European war, nor to have grasped when the crash came that the matter of paramount importance in connection with the conduct of the struggle on land was the creation of a host of fighting men reaching such dimensions as to render it competent to play a really vital rôle in achieving victory for the Entente. ”

“ Meanwhile the debarkation of the balance of the expeditionary force, 3,500 strong, was being effected. The troops landed in light marching order, with two days' rations in their knapsacks, and accompanied by strong batteries of machine-guns. ”

“ Men, horses, guns, motors, ambulances: all the paraphernalia of modern war had for months crossed the Indian Ocean in a steady stream, without mishap and in perfect security under the convoy of our Navy, and to-day our Indian troops are making for themselves an imperishable record on the battlefields of France and Flanders. [Cheers.]
Then look at the great efforts of our self-governing Dominions. Two days before war was declared Canada offered an expeditionary force, and two days after the declaration of war I accepted it on behalf of the Government and the nation. ”

“ And in the event of war arising out of some uncontrollable popular impulse, a British Army of this size would have been enough, used with promptitude and under good leadership, to secure the defeat of the aggressor.
An Expeditionary Force of 320,000 men would mean fully trained reserves of something over 210,000 in order to make good the wastage of war during a campaign of six months. ”

“ Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. ”

“ The whole remainder of the Expeditionary Force, I presume, will lie out at sea till the coast is clear—should we succeed in clearing it, but it is very evident every man I have spoken to has practically no hope of ever returning. They expect our landing cutters to be well peppered with shot and shell, and in our practice to-day we had to appear with the straps of all our equipment outside our shoulder straps, and the ends of our belts free, ready to whip open and get rid of it at a moment's notice. ”

“ Adjutants, N.C.O.'s, all the experienced pilots in the Flying Corps, nearly all the qualified instructors in physical training, the vast majority of all the seasoned men in every branch of the Service—down, as I have said, to the Army cooks—departed overseas. At the very last moment an officer or two were shed from every battalion of the Expeditionary Force to train those left behind. ”

“ It was a very long time indeed before the British Army held any considerable portion of the fighting line in France, and instead of being on the seashore, in touch with the British Fleet and with easy access to England, the British Expeditionary Force was by French directions and because of French susceptibilities, stationed far away from the sea, and sandwiched between French troops. We have always been giving in to the susceptibilities of others and having none of our own! The whole war illustrates this statement. ”

“ At first only twenty thousand men were to go, but as seventy-five thousand had responded to the call and the eagerness of the boys to go had caused them to redouble their efforts to become efficient, the first expeditionary force was increased to thirty-three thousand men. ”

“ The war establishment, calculated on this basis for the purposes of the expeditionary force, required the services of three hundred and sixty-four trained pilots, of whom, it was suggested, one hundred and eighty-two should be officers, and one hundred and eighty-two non-commissioned officers. ”

“ The story of how this problem was faced and overcome, of how "Home Service" men became "Foreign Service" in a day, and our little army of 700,000, by a gigantic effort of British determination and Imperial good-will, was expanded into an army of millions--all this is a separate narrative, to be related elsewhere; but we cannot afford to overlook it as we follow the fortunes of the Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders. It is the military background of all their triumphs and vicissitudes, and had an effect upon the tone of the war almost from the first. ”

“ Now that a clear month has passed since the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force began its night and day fighting with the enemy, the General Commanding desires to explain to officers, non-commissioned officers and men the real significance of the calls made upon them to risk their lives, apparently for nothing better than to gain a few yards of uncultivated land. ”

“ Meanwhile the Government prepared actively for war in other ways. It assumed the control of the railways, vesting it in a Committee of General Managers under the Board of Trade; it took over the two Dreadnoughts completed and nearly completed in Great Britain for Turkey, and the two destroyer leaders building for Chile; Field-Marshal Sir John French was appointed Inspector-General of the Forces, and it was understood that he was to command the Expeditionary Force ”

“ Nevertheless, the French naval officers did succeed in conveying the greater part of the expeditionary army to a point at which disembarkation was practicable.
Now we have some lessons to learn from this. The advantages conferred by command of the sea must be utilised intelligently; and it was bad management which permitted an important anchorage to remain for more than a fortnight in the hands of an invading force. We need not impute to our neighbours a burning desire to invade us ”

“ Of course it has taken a tremendous force of workers to do all this, and it is going to take more and more and more as time goes on, and as more and more and more troops from the States keep pouring into the French seaports. The size of the plant, with the provisions for making it larger, prove, for one thing, that our Uncle Sam expects to send a lot more troops—and, what is more, intends to keep them well supplied with everything they need as long as they are here. ”

“ Whilst the expeditionary forces were not sufficiently large or in a condition to carry on a war à outrance successfully, to be immediately followed up by a military system of government, on the other hand, the feeble efforts displayed to conquer them served only to demonstrate the impotence of the Europeans. ”

“ They gathered around him as their leader. Finding his strength thus increasing, he formed a scheme of concentrating all the force that he could command, so as to organize a grand expedition to proceed to the southward, and endeavor to find some pleasant country which they could seize and settle upon, and make their own. The desperate adventurers around him were [Pg 20] ready enough to enter into this scheme. The fleet was refitted, provisioned, and equipped. The expedition was organized, arms and munitions of war provided, and when all was ready they set sail. ”

“ A state powerful both on land and sea, whose squadrons control the sea adjacent to the theater of operations, might well base an army of forty or fifty thousand men upon the coast, as its retreat by sea and its supplies could be well assured; but to establish a continental army of one hundred and fifty thousand men upon such a base, when opposed by a disciplined and nearly equal force, would be an act of madness. ”

“ George de Schweinitz, of Philadelphia, who has transplanted his whole sanitarium to France in order that no man of the Amexforce may be deprived of his sight where there is one chance in a million of saving it. With that in view, the chances of coming out of this mess with both eyes are exceptionally good. Statistics from both French and British armies show that of all the wounded they have had, only one man in 1,200 is blinded. If they had had the organization of the American medical force, the chance would probably have been reduced to one man in 2,500. ”

“ In the smaller operations of war temporary command of a particular area of water may suffice for the success of an expedition, or at least will permit the execution of the preliminary movements. When the main fleet of a country is at a distance—which it ought not to be except with the object of nearing the opposing fleet—a small hostile expedition may slip across, say the Channel, throw shells into a coast town or burn a fishing village, and get home again unmolested. ”

“ His knowledge in mechanics rendered him capable of building a ship from the keel: his skill in navigation, of conducting her to any part of the globe: and his courage, of defending her against any equal force. In the conduct of an expedition, he superintended all the details of the service, without being perplexed either with the variety or number of them. ”

“ The commander of the expedition will not be unmindful of the military advantages that flow from the infliction of as many casualties upon the enemy as is practicable with the small force that he commands and the evasive character of the enemy ”

“ We are told that there are millions of men, and that their tribute to their king is thirty millions or more.
71. The equipments necessary for this expedition are four or six thousand men, armed with lances and arquebuses, and the ships, artillery, and necessary munitions.
72. With two or three thousand men one can take whatever province he pleases, and through its ports and fleet render himself the most powerful on the sea. This will be very easy. In conquering one province, the conquest of all is made. ”

“ First, sir, in an armed expedition of any kind, there should always be secrecy of design, and also, of all preparation. Second: the force and the means employed should always be proportionate to the end to be achieved; (which is not our case here, else we had been in Madrid to-night and not fugitives in Lugo.) Third: there is requisite a complete knowledge of the country for which the expedition is destined; in that at least our brave Sir John Moore is unequalled. ”

“ As I explained to the House in the middle of June, the stronger our Army at home, the larger must the invading expedition be, and the larger the invading expedition, the less difficult will be the task of the Navy in detecting its assembly and in intercepting and destroying it in passage ”

“ From the foregoing remarks it will, I think, be evident that our policy was not only somewhat rash, but was not altogether straightforward. In the first place, we undertook the expedition with an inadequate force, chiefly comprised of native troops, raised on the spot, at a late season of the year, and without sufficient preparations as to supplies and transport; in the next, we attempted to march through a country inhabited by tribes with whom we had no cause of quarrel, and from whom we carefully concealed our intentions. ”