December 2005

INVENTIONS

Asked to name wartime inventions you would, like me, probably list tanks and poison gas. We might add trench mortars and grenades although these were really developments of existing weapon types. In fact the Great War has been described as a war of invention and scientific skills, ingenuity and inventiveness played a very large part in meeting the challenge of war. So far as the BEF in France and Belgium was concerned an inventions committee was set up in June 1915 directed towards improving and standardising trench warfare weapons. At the same time a Royal Engineers Experimental Section was formed although it did not get an official establishment until just before the Armistice. It tested all sorts of items and liased with the Ministry of Munitions. According to the Official History, the ideas submitted by hopeful inventors which the Section had to consider included: a giant fire hose which would obliterate the enemy trenches; body armour or armour on wheels (mostly too heavy to be practical); a steel 'crocodile' guaranteed to find its way through barbed wire entanglements (it worked -but only on the parade ground); a kite to drop explosives; a chain shot to kill a dozen men at a time; a grapnel to be fired over the enemy wire and then hauled in (if the enemy permitted); a fan to repel gas; arrows with HE heads; a boomerang grenade to kill Germans behind traverses; dozens of percussion grenades mostly failing to explode; a box like a barrel organ which, when the handle was turned, projected a stream of disc grenades igniting them like matches by friction against a rough surface as they flew out; an acetylene gun; and a death ray (found to be a fake). In general, the historian remarks, the enthusiasm of inventors and their successes in demonstration behind the lines were far in excess of the effectiveness of their gadgets when tested in the face of the enemy

 

REST IN PEACE

byJ.P.Letrhbridge

E.S. Turner's book Dear Old Blighty is a normally very good and anecdotal account of life on the home front in First World War Britain. It was published by Michael Joseph, a London publisher, in 1980. Many of my BRUMRATION articles have been inspired by incidents mentioned in it. However before using it I have always checked against original sources. The following true tale will help show the wisdom of such an approach which applies to most information gained from books, including mine. In the book there is a chapter 'Living With Telegrams'. A passage states: 'Of nine Birmingham brothers called Restorick eight were killed in action and the ninth wounded all in different regiments; father and mother were dead but there were four sisters living.' This sounded like the basis for a good Stand To! article. I looked up Birmingham's roll of honour to discover that nobody with this name was listed. Neither was there anyone with this name listed on the CD Rom Soldiers died in the Great War although a Rifleman Frederick Restrick was listed. He was killed in action in October 1918 on the Weste'rn Front. I searched further and discovered that seventeen British soldier Raistricks were listed as having been killed during the First World War. Sixteen were Yorkshiremen and one came from the adjacent Nottinghamshire. Eleven were either bor, enlisted or resided in Bradford.

Aha! I thought! The family came from Bradford. Both Birmingham and Bradford are north of the Watford Gap and their names begin with B. Perhaps either E.S.Turner or an overworked London editor had got confused. A letter to the Bradford Telegraph asking for information got some interesting replies. Some of the Raistricks were indeed related but no one knew about such a loss from one family. I then wrote to the WFA's ever helpful Historical Information Officer, Ronald Clifton. He consulted the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Debt of Honour Register^ the First World War which is on their website. It lists twenty-three Raistricks. These are my seventeen plus two officers (both lieutenants), a Royal Marine, a sailor and I understand two soldiers who died in England. The list gives next of kin details for twelve Raistricks. Six of them gave parents and all were different. There are other lines of enquiry I can follow but they involve expenditure beyond my limited resources although I have not completely given up. Still what I have learnt is enough for a BRUMRATION article.

 

DRIBLET50RMASS? The controversy about what some regarded as the premature use of tanks in 1916 raged quite strongly in the aftermath of the war and can still be the subject of debate. Briefly, Swinton, who was largely responsible for the introduction of tanks, did not want them to be used in driblets but in mass. Haig instead used the limited number available in September 1916 in 'driblets^ by parcelling them out between several attacking formations. His critics say that he should have waited until he had much greater numbers available and then used them in one great mass when the surprise factor would have been decisive.

On the other hand, it is argued, that Haig would have been wrong not to have employed any casualty- reducing weapon to hand in such a desperate and costly struggle as the Somme. Moreover it would have been highly unlikely that secrecy could have been preserved for another eighteen months which was when enough tanks had become available to enable a mass attack to be made at Cambrai. Another point is that in 1916 the tanks were mechanically unreliable, easily put out of action and their crews inevitably inexperienced. These defects had largely been remedied by Cambrai - but only as the result of experience gained by the use of tanks in operations. As it was, the number of tanks still operational sharply reduced during that battle.

 Perhaps we can just add that the very slow speed of tanks, even in 1918, and the rate at which they were put out of action from one cause or another, meant that whilst they could break the enemy line, they could not exploit that breach in the manner of the armoured thrusts of the next conflict.

 

BOOK OF THE MONTH: The Great War Generals on the Western Front 1914-1918 by Robin Neillands. This is the most recent addition to the Branch Library and is an excellent look at the performances of some of the leading generals. It is not a history of the war on the Western Front although some significant battles are examined. Best to approach it with an open mind -Bob

 

Brum ration wishes you all a very merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bulletin of the Birmingham Branch of the WFA

Compiled by Bob Butcher