An article that appeared in Military Affairs, Vol. 46, Pages 190-193 (1982) and assessed by JSTOR in 2008. by Dominick Graham, University of New Brunswick. In his 'Reformation of War, J.F.C. Fuller remarked that the number of machine guns in a British Division was the same in 1914 as it had been before the South African War although, in the meantime, machine guns had been so effective in the Russo - Japanese war of 1904-5. "By 1918" he wrote, "fearful cost in life had compelled the number of automatic weapons to be increased from twenty-four to over five hundred. Accepting this number as necessary, why was the 1914 equiment the same as 1899?, the answer is that it had become tradition that the number of machine guns in a battalion should be two; just as in the fourteenth century it was tradition that no gentleman could fight save on horseback." Since Fuller wrote in 1923, his explanation has been generally accepted. Are we to conclude, then, that the British were fools to go to war with only two machine guns in each battalion? Evidence of a sort, that the British Army was reactionary on this score has been offered by those who have quoted Sir Douglas Haig's alleged views on the subject. "The machine gun" he is supposed to have written in a minute to the War Council on 15th April 1915, "is a much over rated weapon and two per battalion is more than sufficient." If such an opinion were expressed by an Army Commander as late as 1915, it surely follows that "it must have been military policy and not limited appropriations which determined the number of machine guns authorized" in 1914. Brigadier-General C. Baker-Carr, who was intimately involved in establishing Machine Gun Battalions and the Machine Gun Corps during the war, saw "the delay in modifying the doctrine to fit the requirements of the new weapons 'as the fault of the system'."
"The ststem" like "Tradition" is a convenient crutch for those who can find no other explanation for what they may consider to be obtuse behaviour. My purpose here is to cast some light on the obtuse behaviour of the British Army towards machine guns before 1914. I shall show that there were other reasons besides "the system" and "tradition" why they only had two of them in each battalion. The story in the war years is another matter. There Baker-Carr's criticism of staff procedures is warranted. The general reader needs to be reminded of two points about the innovation of equipment in general and informed of a third about the adoption of new machine guns before 1914 in particular. Firstly administrators do not usually know when war will break out far enough in advance to ensure that all their equipment is new and of the latest technology when the first shots are fired. Obsolescent equipment may remain is service in peacetime until a rival arny re-equips, making what was obsolescent actually obsolete, or an international crisis signals the moment to replace it. Until that moment an order of priority decides which arm of the service is most in need of new weapons and which shall wait until later. In peacetime, there is bound to be a line of suppliants waiting for equipment. In the British Army, in the period to which Fuller referred, it was the artillery that was re-equipped between 1904, when the quick firing 18 pounder field gun was selected for the infantry divisions, and 1910, when the 4.5-inch field howitzer went into service beside it. Not until 1911 was it the infantry's turn. Between that year and 1914 the infantry received a new machine-gun, new ammunition, and a modified rifle. The second point is that tactics and equipment innovation are independent. In other words, tactical doctrine depends on the equipment that is in service, not on that which is projected. Re-equipment though, is usually determined by the factors above, not by the urging of the tacticians whose arguements politicians usually ignore. Tactical innovation follows rather than leads equipment innovation. The pace of change is retarded because equipment and tactics both need to be simple and soldier-proof. What is new is usually neither. Furthemore, in peacetime, fieldtrials tend to be more rigourous than in war, when any weapon is better than none and armies are less reluctant to adopt weapons which are not entirely reliable. We have to conclude, then, that in peacetime the forces of inertia are often stronger than those of innovation. The reasons should be borne in miond when the particular case of machine gun innovation before 1914 is examined. The third point, which cxoncerns the particular case of automatic weapons before 1914, is that the heavy machine gun must be distinguished from the light weapon and the automatic rifle. The light machine gun entered the British service for the first time in early 1915, but introducing it and giving it a role distinct from the heavy Maxim was envisaged before the war. In fact the respective roles of the heavy and light weapons diverged increasingly from 1915, and it is misguided to lump them together as Fuller and others have done. In fact the scales that Fuller ought to have quoited for 1st January 1918, before divisions had been reduced from twelve to nine battalions, are 64 heavy weapons companies and 192 light, Lewis, guns in the rifle companies of the battalions. Therefore the chief wartime innovation was the light weapon. Remarkably, when Captain Basil Liddell Hart (later Sir Basil Liddell Hart) lectured to the Staff College on infantry tactics in 1932, Major-General John Dill, the commander (later Field Marshall Sir John Dill, C.I.G.S. in 1940), rapped him gently over the knuckles for not grasping the fact that by January 1918, German Infantry tactics were based on the light rather than the heavy weapon, being their response to the more fluid tactical conditions that developed on the Western Front in late 1917.
Significantly, the light weapon has been mentioned seldom in literature about the pre-war machine gun, because it was not in service, perhaps, and because the trials and tactical dicussions about it have been overlooked by historians. It is of interest to note that Baker-Carr's complaint against the General Staff in the war during the establishment of the Machine Gun Corps was largely due to the latter's reluctance to allow the heavy weapons a seperate place on the battlefield midway between the artillery and the light machine guns of the infantry battalions. Machine gunners wanted a new corps to be established to manage it, under neither infantry or artillery control. The staff, in opposing this step, obstructed the development of machine gun tactics. When the British 4.5-inch howitzer went into service in 1910, the infantry had received no new weapons since the South African War. However, it main weaknesses in South Africa, namely poor fire control, rotten marksmanship, and inferior field craft, had been corrected. In Manchuria, British observers claculated that the Russians and Japanese fired 20,000 rounds of small arms ammunition ti inflict one casualty. That statistic encouraged the British to emphasize marksmanship, and by 1910, rigourous individual training and rifle competitions had made the British Infantry pre-eminent with the rifle. Already, in the years 1908-09, the School of Musketry, at Hythe, had tested automatic weapons and rifles against a variety of targets, and had compared their fire effectiveness and also the effectiveness of rifle marskmanship with first class and second class rifle shots. Two of its conclusions were that the volume of fire rather than its accuracy and the fire power of units in the attack rather than in defence then needed more attention. Yet his audience treated the findings of the school as controversial when Major N. R. McMahon, recently the chief instructor at the School, presented them to the General Staff annual conference in January 1910.
McMahon reported that marksmen, necessarily a minority in a battalion, were relatively less important in a fire-fight than the majority of average shots who were able to obtain a hit somewhere o a man-sized target at 400 yards or less and also to maintain a high rate of fire. In one trial, 100 elite marksmen (thats is competition winners) had been quickly silenced by 150 second class shots. This finding had been responsible for setting the rapid rate of fire at twelve to fifteen rounds a minute when most armies expected only eight. Fire at the higher rate was less accurate, of course, but it was more destructive. In the trials, when the enemy advanced in short rushes at about 400 yards, barely 4% of the rounds were hits. But as the 565 defending riflemen in the trial had discharged thirty rounds a piece in three minutes, they had inflicted 23% casualties. McMahon suggested that the fetish for competitions and extreme accuracy had been taken too fr and that more attention should be paid to increasing the volume of fire from a unit. McMahon's observations about machine guns were more radical. The maxim had been in service since 1893, and by 1910 it was obsolescent. Not only was it too heavy to hump about in the field, but most of the weapons in the battalions were worn out. A replacement, the new Vickers-Maxim, was 20 pounds lighter. It had been tested and had been offered to the army by the firm in 1909. McMahon recommended that it be adopted. His main point, though, was that offensive rather than defensive fire-power needed to be increased. Even the new Vickers was too heavy to give close support to assaulting companies. On the other hand, in defence, a couple of old maxims had shown themselves capable of inflicting 60% casualties in one minute against a battalion advancing steadily in three waves from about 600 yards with the usual two paces between each man. Of course, advances were normally by bounds from one fire position to another, and, close to the objectives, by rushes. Therefore, casualties might not be as catastrophic as 60% if tactical common sense prevailed. But common sense also suggested that handier automatic weapons should accompany the assaulting companies to provide them with covering fire and to neutralize the defending machine guns. Rifle fire from men moving in the leading wave was effective at short range, but the solution that the school recommended was the provision of a proportion of automatic rifles and light machine guns in the leading waves of the assault. Automatic rifles, McMahon pointed out, were already in service in the Mexican army and were being tested by the Japanese.
McMahon's proposal would have helped to solve the problem, often discussed at conferences, and in articles, of how to measure and maintain fire superiority. There was a rule of thumb that one rifle per yard in the firing line was needed to ensure fire superiority before an attack. But men so densely packed were vulnerable to artillery fire particularly. McMahon's automatics would have enabled fire to be generated from only 10% of the usual number of riflemen alone. If fire bases were manned by fewer men, more "bayonets" would be available for the assault. And there was another point. Fire with simultaneous movement had been stressed in manuals for years, but it had always been difficult to put into practice. The distinctive "voice" of a firing light machine gun in battle would be an unmistakable signal to infantry sections that the moment had come to advance. Light machine guns were relatively easy to control and more effective against compact targets than rifles. They could generate supporting fire more effectively than riflemen who could be scattered over the battlefield in hastily chosen fire positions. McMahon suggested that simple and effectiove fire tactics, suitable for soldiers in wartime who could come straight from civil life , could be adopted with the light machine gun. He proposed a scale of at least six and preferably eight weapons per battalion, representing one weapon for each of the then eight companies in the 1910 establishment.
The Staff Officers whom McMahon addressed in 1910 saw him as a representative of a school of thought with many adherents, which was, nevertheless, not orthodox. Its views were summed up by the opinion, derived from the experience of Manchuria, that it was "madness to send human beings (however willing) to walk against metal pumped against them from rifles," let alone machine guns. The time had come for other methods in the attack. In future, manoeuvre, digging, and intense rifle fire, machine gun, and artillery fire would win fights. "Fire must be beaten down with fire." In contrast, the general staff had recently expressed a different view in modification to its doctrine on the meaning of fire superiority. The relevant section of Infantry Training now read, "fire superiority makes the decision possible" instead of "the decision obtained by fire." McMahon appeared to be favouring the original interpretation. The Staff's reason for making the change was that tactical movement on exercises had become sluggish because the infantry were "playing at long bowls with the enemy" and trying to shoot him out of his positions instead of closing with him. Consequently McMahon's message was taken by some of his audience to be a simple plea for fire volume at the price of fire accuracy and to encourage the kind of random firing that they had experienced in South Africa and Manchuria. His message about achieving fire effectiveness through the extreme accuracy of automatic weapons and their ability to concentrate fire was less absorbed by such people. McMahon's appeal for light automatics as a fire supplement in the attack included this passage:- "There is another reason why the adoption of this principle may be urged, viz. forthcoming developments in connection with automatic weapons. We all have it in our minds that before long an automatic rifle may be in use by all nations. Every nation has been trying to put off the date of its adoption. It was thought that the French would be the first to be obliged to adopt one, owing to the defects of the Lebel rifle, but, as it chances, the introduction of the pointed bullet and the new ammunition has thrown the onus upon us, and we have got to lead the way. This is a matter in which we shall get no guidance from abroad. No one abroad can teach us anything about it; we must solve the problem of automatic weapons and show the way to the rest of Europe."
McMahon was referring to the shortcomings of the British rifle which had been overtaken by the more powerful propellant and pointed, instead of ogival, bullet, of the German Mauser and French Lebel rifles. Both had a flatter trajectory and longer range than the British Lee Enfield. Action on the points raised by McMahon at the staff conference of January 1910 was begun by General Staff in March 1911. The Chief if The Imperial General Staff (CIGS), General Sir William Nicholson, wrote a minute to the Mater General of the Ordnance (NGO), asking him to explain why the British rifle and machine gun were inferior. It is probable that he had been prompted to act by the crisis then brewing with Germany over Morocco and that what followed in the Summer and Fall of 1911 was due to the general belief that war with Germany was imminent. Nicholson was perfectly aware of the School of Musketry's case for new machine guns and an improved rifle, that the Germans, themselves, were considering whether to buy the Vickers and that each of their light infantry (Jaeger) battalions, which supported cavalry divisions, were shortly to be provided with six machine guns instead of the usual two. Therefore, the purpose of his note to the MGO may be taken to have been to elicit a written report for the benefit of the Secretary for War, Lord Haldane. The MGO replied that existing Maxims had been is service since before the South African War, that they were worn out, and that 100 were unserviceable in battalions at the last orcnance inspections. None had been built since 1904. However, he had refused to buy the new Vickers in 1910 because trials for a new .276-inch rifle were in course. This new rifle would be introduced into the Regular Army in 1913, if the trials proved satisfactory. The re-equipment of the Indian Army and the Territorial Force would be completed in 1916. The new weapon used a notro-cellulose propellant in its cartridge which gave the bullet a higher muzzle velocity than that of the .311-inch Mauser. Its lighter ammunition made the new rifle superior to that of any army. Unfortunately, the trials had run into a sang: the chamber was liable to overheat at high rates of fire, and the cartridge became difficult to extract. His point was that until a decision was made about the calibre of the rifle with which the army would be equipped, the choice of new automatics had to be deferred. Obviously it was essential for rifles and automatics to have common ammunition.
In July 1911, although the trials of the .276-inch rifle continued, it was decided to provide the current Lee Enfield with new ammunition and new sights to make its performance comparable with its rivals. In August, at the height of the Morocco crisis, a program for issuing the modified rifle to the regular army was expedited at the expense of the war reserves, and in early 1913 it was being received by battalions. The Territorials and the Indian Army were not tohave theirs until 1915. When relations with Germany improved in 1912, the Army Council agreed not to incur the expense of paying overtime to the work force in the Royal Ordnance Factories that built the rifles. Consequently, when war broke out rifles were scarce, and the Territorials and the Kitchener Armies had to make do with obselescent and drill purpose rifles, for the Lee Enfield was difficult to mass produce. Territorial battalions which fought at the First Battle of Ypres in the Autumn of 1914 were equipped with the old Mark 1 Lee Metford. They complained that defective magazines made their rifles useless for rapid fire. The .276 rifle was used ventually for sniping and named the P14. But McMahon's idea of an automatic rifle and the general introduction of the smaller calibre was shelved. It was killed by the Belgian FN, although it was widely considered superior. The decision to adopt the Lee Enfield cleared the way for the Vickers heavy machine gun. The cavalry, which needed a lighter weapon than the old Maxim the most, received it in 1912. Later it was issued to the infantry as production allowed. Unfortunately the production line at Vickers was not extended although, in 1913, it was quite clear that the Germans were increasing the number of machine guns in their infantry battalions from two to six. But the Treasury would not allow the War Office to offer Vickers a production guarantee. Consequently, the demand for Vickers was not satisfied for the first 18 months of the war. Trials for a light machine gun and for automatic rifles were underway by August 1910, a committee for the purpose having being created in 1909. Although the final adoption of a weapon would have depended on the calibre question, in fact, an acceptable weapon of even .303-inch calibre had been found by December 1913. It is true that a Lewis gun had been fired from the floor of an aircraft in 1912, and its mechanical performance had been satisfactory. However, the Lewis was not considered likely to perform satisfactorily in the mud and sand of active service. They did so quickly enough when war broke out while the Germans continued to rely on heavy machine guns in 1915.
It is often said that at Mons, it was supposedly the high rate of fire of the BEF that stopped the German advance. There is probably a degree of myth here; apparently the Germans thought the British had far more machine guns than they did, but it has not been possible to find a direct quote to this effect. But it would seem that the British Army by then valued high rate of fire over accuracy, but the regular soldiers of the BEF were able to fire faster than the "New Army" of volunteers and conscripts were able to later in the war.
This case of the innovation of infantry weapons is part of a larger subject. For more than half a century writers have searched for reasons why European Armies should have slaughtered each other for four years on the Western Front. They have concluded, inter alia, that the officer corps at the time were defective, not only in Britain but in France and Germany too. Fuller and Liddell Hart have been followed by a majority which has condemned British Military Officers for ignoring forecasts that a war of attrition was impending on the Continent. Like Fuller they have seized on the neglect of machine weapons as an example of the reactionary attitude of officers to modern war. Sir James Edmonds, the official narrator of the British Army campaign histories, the last volume of which was completed in 1948, had to defend the officer corps from those who claimed that it had been incompetent both in preparing for war and conducting it. As a general staff officer he himself had been active before the war in the debates over weapons an tactics, being present at staff conferences for 1909 to 1914, and he had observed the battles themselves from GHQ in France. He might have been a reliable witness. Yet he was guilty of spreading disinformation on the subject. For instance, he wrote the following note in the official history: "The rpid fire of the British infantry was introduced as a substitute for additional machine guns that were refused to it. In 1909 the School of Musketry urged that each battalion should have six guns instead of two: the suggestion was declined for financial reasons, and subsequent reductions in the Army Estimates and Vote made any such addition impossible. It was therefore decided to increase the rate of fire of each rifle by the specail training of the men." In Edmond's papers there is a curious letter from Sir Richard Acland, an official in the Finance Branch of the War Office before 1914, in which Acland claims that he offered Sir William Nicholson more machine guns but was rebuffed. The impropriety of a civil servant making such an offer seems to have escaped the writer, who, no doubt, resented the charge, made by many officers besides Edmond's, that the Treasury was at fault. For many officers felt bitter that the excellent little British Army of 1914 was placed at a disadvantage when positional war began, and most blamed the politicians and the Treasury for it. And yet with his correspondence and table talk with Liddell Hart, mainly in the thirties, Edmond's provided some of the material which Liddell Hart used in his counter attack on the officer corps: for instance, he passed on anecdotes about Hag in which he questioned that officer's competence and intelligence. Thus he offered David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill for their books in which they charged the soldiers rather than the politicians with incompetence.
The following is an extract from an article by Sir Michael Howard, former Regius Professor of History at Oxford. Basically he says that before 1914, Generals, and probably also the ordinary soldiers, were very well aware of the scale of casualties likely in a modern war: For this was the final assumption shared by soldiers throughout Europe; that in any future war, armies would have to endure very heavy losses indeed. The German army, for one, had never forgotten the price it paid for its victories in 1870, when the French had been armed with breech-loading rifles that, in comparison with the weapons now available, were primitive. Since then the effects of every new weapon had been studied with meticulous care, and no professional soldier was under any illusions about the damage that would be caused—not simply by machine guns (which were in fact seen as ideal weapons of a mobile offensive) but by magazine-loading rifles and by quick-firing artillery hurling shrapnel at infantry in the open and high explosives against trenches. Their effects had been studied through controlled experiment and also in action, in the South African and Russo-Japanese Wars. The conclusion generally drawn was that in the future, infantry would be able to advance only in open formations, making use of all available cover, under the protection of concentrated artillery fire. But whatever precautions they took, sooner or later troops would have to charge with the bayonet across open ground, and they must then be prepared to take very heavy losses. This had happened in Manchuria, where the Japanese were generally seen as owing their success not simply to their professional skills but to their contempt for death. European social Darwinians gravely propounded the terrible paradox that a nation's fitness to survive depended on the readiness of its individual members to die. Avoidance of casualties was seen as no part of the general's trade, and willingness to accept them was regarded as a necessity for commander and commanded alike. Into the literature of prewar Europe crept a term that was to become the terrible leitmotiv of the coming conflict: "sacrifice" - more particularly, "the supreme sacrifice."
