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Barmy armies]
There are the great battles we learn about at school – and then there's the Pastry War of 1839. Justin Pollard rewrites the history books
Thursday, 9 October 2008
As General Sherman was fond of saying, "War is hell" – and, as one of the originators of "total war", he did his best to prove it.
But war is also very confusing. Long after the event, it's easy for historians and old soldiers to write about it as though everything was planned and had purpose, but the simple truth is that a lot of it wasn't and didn't. War is a very haphazard business and no one involved has anywhere near as much influence over events as they might like to think.
The foggier parts of history's battlefields reveal the hubris, idiocy, panic and occasional astonishing good luck that actually often lie behind man's most dangerous profession.
This is not to say that soldiers are fools; far from it. Indeed, the smell of cordite and the sound of bullets overhead can undoubtedly concentrate the mind wonderfully. But war is, in its nature, arbitrary and hence – unlike, say, in accountancy – it's tricky to be sure exactly what's happening or quite what the result might be.
What I have tried to do is discover the truth behind military anecdotes and then, rather than simply quote them in old sources, retell them to show the range of baffling experience that is the life of the soldier and sailor.
The U-boat captain who scuttled his submarine
The call of nature is a fact of life that must be dealt with by the designer of every war vehicle that requires manning. On a ship, it's easy – there's always the sea. In a small plane, you might have to hold on but no flight can last more than a few hours.
A submarine is more problematic. Submarine crews might be submerged for days at a time and the crew will simply have to go to the lavatory. The solution hit upon by U-boat designers in the Second World War was the high-pressure submarine toilet, a fiendishly complicated device that directed waste from the toilet bowl through a series of chambers to an airlock where, with a puff of compressed air, it was expelled into the surrounding sea.
Using the toilet was complex and required special training. The operative had to remember the exact order in which to open and close various valves to ensure the waste went out and sea didn't come in.
So we come to 14 April 1945, aboard U-1206 as it cruised at a depth of 200ft some 10 miles off Peterhead in the North Sea. U-1206 had had an uneventful career since her launch in December 1943. She had not sunk or damaged a single ship, nor had she lost a single member of her crew – but Captain Karl-Adolph Schlitt was about to answer a call of nature.
What exactly happened when he finished and flushed is a matter of debate. There are two schools of thought. The first, as told to a German researcher by Capt Schlitt, was that the toilet malfunctioned. The second, more widely reported, had it that the bashful captain refused to call the crew member who had been trained in high-pressure toilet use and had a go at operating it himself. He got the order of valves wrong. The result, whether through misadventure or malfunction, was that Schlitt was showered with high-pressure sewage and sea water.
Pandemonium ensued. By the time the valves had been shut, sea water was draining through the lavatory compartment into the battery room below. When the water came into contact with the battery acid, it formed highly toxic chlorine gas. Schlitt was forced to give the order to surface to vent the sub.
At this point, you will remember that U-1206 was only 10 miles off Peterhead and, as it surfaced, it was almost immediately spotted by a British aircraft and bombed. Capt Schlitt, unable to escape, was forced to burn his orders and to scuttle his submarine, making his the only submarine ever to be sunk by its own toilet.
A case of seriously woolly thinking
There are many contingencies to be considered on the home front in any war where there is a threat of invasion. With the outbreak of the First World War, the British Home Command was forced to consider an eventuality that hadn't been thought likely since the days of Napoleon.
Committees were soon considering plans as diverse as the removal of road signs to baffle the invaders and the possibility of destroying all stocks of beer and spirits in pubs, presumably to prevent the despairing British from simply getting drunk – although it was pointed out that letting the enemy drink the beer might slow them down enough for British forces to regroup.
For one of the young officers, JFC Fuller – known as "Boney", who would go on to become a legend in the General Staff – a pressing concern was sheep. In the first winter of the war he had been asked to look into a particularly knotty problem – what to do with all the sheep in Sussex, Kent and Surrey in the event of invasion. It was probably not something that was bothering the sheep or even their shepherds, but Home Command was insistent that this valuable commodity of several million head of livestock shouldn't fall into enemy hands.
So Fuller was given the job of organising their evacuation. According to the plan, as soon as news reached the General Staff that an invasion was under way, all five million or so animals were immediately to be route-marched to Salisbury Plain. Fuller knew this to be an insane idea, but orders were orders and so he began drawing up sheep transport timetables.
It became obvious from these that the manoeuvre would involve blocking just about every road in southern England for days, a fact that he decided to mention to his superior. The sage-like general, however, taking the matter very seriously, simply agreed and said]The British army that stopped for tea
The First World War landings at Gallipoli were not quite the success the British had hoped for, due in part to an unfortunate moment to take tea.
The strategy for the 1915 assault was to force a landing on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Dardanelles, securing the coast so that the British Navy could move in and seize Constantinople. It had been thought possible to do this with sea power alone. This attack began on 19 February, with the main bombardment on 18 March. The plan went awry when minesweepers were driven back by artillery fire. The British fleet steamed into mine-infested waters, with predictable results, including the sinking of the battleships HMS Ocean and HMS Irresistible.
The Allied forces retired to think up a new course of action. Clearly a ground force would be needed, but Turkish troops were now flooding into the area. A further six-week delay while the British prepared plans for the landings gave the Ottomans plenty of time to reinforce.
In spite of this, the operation was ordered to go ahead. In charge was General Sir Ian Hamilton, who planned a main attack by Australian and New Zealand (Anzac) forces at Gaba Tepe, with a British attack at Cape Helles, plus two diversionary attacks by the French and the British.
There were a number of flaws in these tactics. First, Hamilton was denied the night-time landing he had asked for as the Navy said it would be too difficult. Second, he was having trouble maintaining contact with his own staff, in part because he had left his logistical brigade 700 miles away in Cairo, and in part because of his insistence on operating out of the flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth while his operations staff were on a separate transport ship. This made for rather chaotic communications.
The landings took place on 25 April and, for a while, success seemed possible, provided it came quickly. However, events soon began to take a turn for the worse. Many of the Anzac forces landed on the wrong beach and before they could reach their goal, the hill of Chunuk Bair, it was seized by Turks under the command of Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Ataturk, first President of Turkey). The British 29th Division successfully executed the diversionary Cape Helles landings but suffered terrible casualties.
However, at Y beach, an isolated spot, the 2,000-strong British force encountered only four enemy soldiers. The men scaled the cliff and saw the village of Krithia ahead of them – the vital strategic gain necessary to take the peninsula.
The problem was that no one had thought about the next move. General Hamilton was on his battleship, and most of the other commanders were rather busy fighting. So two officers reportedly walked into a near-deserted Krithia and looked round. They then returned to their men, sat them down and decided to let the unit have a cup of tea. During that tea break, the initiative was lost. The Turks rushed troops to the village. By mid-afternoon the British troops had been driven back to Y beach and were digging in for a bloody siege that would only end with their evacuation on 8 January 1916, eight months later. In that time, 100,000 soldiers on both sides would be killed and another 237,000 wounded.
How Lord Uxbridge's leg met a legendary end
Henry Paget, 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, has gone down in history as one of the most stiff-upper-lipped of all Englishmen. Being promoted by Wellington on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo to command the cavalry and horse artillery, he was intent on leading from the front.
This was inspiring, but dangerous. On 18 June 1815, Uxbridge led a spectacular cavalry charge against the 1 Corps d'Armée, followed by a series of light-cavalry charges, during which eight horses were shot from under him. Undeterred, he continued to wade into the battle until one of the last French artillery shots of the day struck him on the right leg. The cannon in question was loaded with grapeshot and the leg in question was completely shattered.
A lesser man might have let out a small squeal at this point, but not the Earl of Uxbridge. According to anecdote, Wellington was near by and Uxbridge, looking at the bloody remains of his leg, commented]The circular ship that didn't know if it was coming or going[/b]
From the first prehistoric dugouts to the latest nuclear aircraft-carriers, there have been many ship designs, but most conform to the basic plan of being longer than they are wide. This, after all, makes a vessel stable and easier to steer through water, something every good ship should be able to do.
But wasn't this just dogma? That at least is what Russian vice-admiral AA Popov thought. After all, a ship that was round would have less of a surface area needing armour plate and hence could be either faster or more heavily protected, as well as being more manoeuvrable and stable. This seemed to be just what Russia, which had recently lost a war against France and Britain, needed to protect the ports and river mouths of the Black Sea.
So, in 1873, work began in the Russian dockyards on the first of two circular, flat-bottomed ironclads. The ships, which were completely circular when viewed from the air, were driven by six engines, each powering one propeller, while the firepower came from a pair of 11in, rifled, breech-loading guns. The first such monstrous vessel was the 2,490-ton Novgorod. Three years later, the Kiev was laid down at Nikolaiev, although her name was soon changed to Rear-Admiral Popov in honour of its far-sighted originator.
What followed probably explains why you very rarely see circular ships today. For all the theory, in practice these popovkas, as they were affectionately known, turned out to be ridiculous. Their bulbous shape meant that, even with all six engines powering ahead, they were capable only of six to seven knots, slower than the current on the Dnieper river where they were tested, and where they were promptly swept out to sea. Being not only round but flat-bottomed as well, they proved remarkably difficult to keep on a steady course, and as they were borne away they spun round repeatedly, making the crews sick.
Then there was the problem with the guns. As the ships were round and the guns were not exactly central, when they were fired they made the whole ship rotate. This meant that the guns and gunners were no longer facing in the direction they were firing in, although they made for a very amusing revolving target.
Needless to say, the popovkas were never deployed in an open-sea battle, although to be fair that was never intended to be their role. As no one could really work out just what their role was, they ended their days as storeships on permanent anchorages, much to the relief of their crews.
[b]The pastry war]
Every war needs a casus belli to get it going. It might be a genuine threat, an invasion, or an attack on an ally. But there are occasions when a country would rather like to be at war as they have something the other country wants, or some unfinished business left over from the last war, while not really having a jolly good reason to start one. These wars require an excuse.
The most famous excuse is probably the War of Jenkins's Ear, allegedly started over the removal of an English captain's auditory organ by an overzealous Spanish customs officer, but actually an excuse for diving into a much larger spat known as the War of the Austrian Succession.
Then there is the Pastry War. Its origins lie in the chaotic birth of the Mexican republic and the ejection from office of the governor of the state of Mexico, Lorenzo de Zavala. He returned with General Santa Anna (of Alamo fame), reinstated himself and expelled the president. This led to rioting in Mexico City, in which a lot of foreign property was looted. However, with Zavala back in power, things eventually settled down.
Ten years later, a French pastry chef called Remontel suddenly remembered that his shop in Mexico City had been looted by Mexican soldiers in the disturbances and demanded compensation. His claim seemed a little late and was therefore ignored, so Remontel appealed to the King of France, Louis Philippe. It so happened that Mexico had defaulted on some large loans made by France, so suspicious souls might see a connection. France suddenly demanded a staggering 600,000 pesos in compensation for their aggrieved national. Considering that the average wage in the city was one peso a day, we can only imagine how much damage Monsieur Remontel was claiming had been done to his pastry shop. Either that or he sold very expensive pastries.
The Mexicans could be forgiven for being rather disconcerted by this, particularly when the French sent an ultimatum, threatening to blockade the country and seize its possessions if the irate pastry chef didn't get his money. Mexico refused to pay, so the French sent a fleet to blockade the Atlantic coast and capture the town of Veracruz, where most of the Mexican fleet was also seized.
In response, Mexico declared war on France and recalled Santa Anna to the fray. Skirmishes in and around the city continued until the British intervened politically. On 9 March 1839, France received a $600,000 indemnity, both nations agreed to grant the other "favoured trading" status, and the installations seized or destroyed by the French were restored. The exception was the Mexican fleet, which they managed to keep.
Barmy armies]
There are the great battles we learn about at school – and then there's the Pastry War of 1839. Justin Pollard rewrites the history books
Thursday, 9 October 2008
As General Sherman was fond of saying, "War is hell" – and, as one of the originators of "total war", he did his best to prove it.
But war is also very confusing. Long after the event, it's easy for historians and old soldiers to write about it as though everything was planned and had purpose, but the simple truth is that a lot of it wasn't and didn't. War is a very haphazard business and no one involved has anywhere near as much influence over events as they might like to think.
The foggier parts of history's battlefields reveal the hubris, idiocy, panic and occasional astonishing good luck that actually often lie behind man's most dangerous profession.
This is not to say that soldiers are fools; far from it. Indeed, the smell of cordite and the sound of bullets overhead can undoubtedly concentrate the mind wonderfully. But war is, in its nature, arbitrary and hence – unlike, say, in accountancy – it's tricky to be sure exactly what's happening or quite what the result might be.
What I have tried to do is discover the truth behind military anecdotes and then, rather than simply quote them in old sources, retell them to show the range of baffling experience that is the life of the soldier and sailor.
The U-boat captain who scuttled his submarine
The call of nature is a fact of life that must be dealt with by the designer of every war vehicle that requires manning. On a ship, it's easy – there's always the sea. In a small plane, you might have to hold on but no flight can last more than a few hours.
A submarine is more problematic. Submarine crews might be submerged for days at a time and the crew will simply have to go to the lavatory. The solution hit upon by U-boat designers in the Second World War was the high-pressure submarine toilet, a fiendishly complicated device that directed waste from the toilet bowl through a series of chambers to an airlock where, with a puff of compressed air, it was expelled into the surrounding sea.
Using the toilet was complex and required special training. The operative had to remember the exact order in which to open and close various valves to ensure the waste went out and sea didn't come in.
So we come to 14 April 1945, aboard U-1206 as it cruised at a depth of 200ft some 10 miles off Peterhead in the North Sea. U-1206 had had an uneventful career since her launch in December 1943. She had not sunk or damaged a single ship, nor had she lost a single member of her crew – but Captain Karl-Adolph Schlitt was about to answer a call of nature.
What exactly happened when he finished and flushed is a matter of debate. There are two schools of thought. The first, as told to a German researcher by Capt Schlitt, was that the toilet malfunctioned. The second, more widely reported, had it that the bashful captain refused to call the crew member who had been trained in high-pressure toilet use and had a go at operating it himself. He got the order of valves wrong. The result, whether through misadventure or malfunction, was that Schlitt was showered with high-pressure sewage and sea water.
Pandemonium ensued. By the time the valves had been shut, sea water was draining through the lavatory compartment into the battery room below. When the water came into contact with the battery acid, it formed highly toxic chlorine gas. Schlitt was forced to give the order to surface to vent the sub.
At this point, you will remember that U-1206 was only 10 miles off Peterhead and, as it surfaced, it was almost immediately spotted by a British aircraft and bombed. Capt Schlitt, unable to escape, was forced to burn his orders and to scuttle his submarine, making his the only submarine ever to be sunk by its own toilet.
A case of seriously woolly thinking
There are many contingencies to be considered on the home front in any war where there is a threat of invasion. With the outbreak of the First World War, the British Home Command was forced to consider an eventuality that hadn't been thought likely since the days of Napoleon.
Committees were soon considering plans as diverse as the removal of road signs to baffle the invaders and the possibility of destroying all stocks of beer and spirits in pubs, presumably to prevent the despairing British from simply getting drunk – although it was pointed out that letting the enemy drink the beer might slow them down enough for British forces to regroup.
For one of the young officers, JFC Fuller – known as "Boney", who would go on to become a legend in the General Staff – a pressing concern was sheep. In the first winter of the war he had been asked to look into a particularly knotty problem – what to do with all the sheep in Sussex, Kent and Surrey in the event of invasion. It was probably not something that was bothering the sheep or even their shepherds, but Home Command was insistent that this valuable commodity of several million head of livestock shouldn't fall into enemy hands.
So Fuller was given the job of organising their evacuation. According to the plan, as soon as news reached the General Staff that an invasion was under way, all five million or so animals were immediately to be route-marched to Salisbury Plain. Fuller knew this to be an insane idea, but orders were orders and so he began drawing up sheep transport timetables.
It became obvious from these that the manoeuvre would involve blocking just about every road in southern England for days, a fact that he decided to mention to his superior. The sage-like general, however, taking the matter very seriously, simply agreed and said]The British army that stopped for tea
The First World War landings at Gallipoli were not quite the success the British had hoped for, due in part to an unfortunate moment to take tea.
The strategy for the 1915 assault was to force a landing on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Dardanelles, securing the coast so that the British Navy could move in and seize Constantinople. It had been thought possible to do this with sea power alone. This attack began on 19 February, with the main bombardment on 18 March. The plan went awry when minesweepers were driven back by artillery fire. The British fleet steamed into mine-infested waters, with predictable results, including the sinking of the battleships HMS Ocean and HMS Irresistible.
The Allied forces retired to think up a new course of action. Clearly a ground force would be needed, but Turkish troops were now flooding into the area. A further six-week delay while the British prepared plans for the landings gave the Ottomans plenty of time to reinforce.
In spite of this, the operation was ordered to go ahead. In charge was General Sir Ian Hamilton, who planned a main attack by Australian and New Zealand (Anzac) forces at Gaba Tepe, with a British attack at Cape Helles, plus two diversionary attacks by the French and the British.
There were a number of flaws in these tactics. First, Hamilton was denied the night-time landing he had asked for as the Navy said it would be too difficult. Second, he was having trouble maintaining contact with his own staff, in part because he had left his logistical brigade 700 miles away in Cairo, and in part because of his insistence on operating out of the flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth while his operations staff were on a separate transport ship. This made for rather chaotic communications.
The landings took place on 25 April and, for a while, success seemed possible, provided it came quickly. However, events soon began to take a turn for the worse. Many of the Anzac forces landed on the wrong beach and before they could reach their goal, the hill of Chunuk Bair, it was seized by Turks under the command of Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Ataturk, first President of Turkey). The British 29th Division successfully executed the diversionary Cape Helles landings but suffered terrible casualties.
However, at Y beach, an isolated spot, the 2,000-strong British force encountered only four enemy soldiers. The men scaled the cliff and saw the village of Krithia ahead of them – the vital strategic gain necessary to take the peninsula.
The problem was that no one had thought about the next move. General Hamilton was on his battleship, and most of the other commanders were rather busy fighting. So two officers reportedly walked into a near-deserted Krithia and looked round. They then returned to their men, sat them down and decided to let the unit have a cup of tea. During that tea break, the initiative was lost. The Turks rushed troops to the village. By mid-afternoon the British troops had been driven back to Y beach and were digging in for a bloody siege that would only end with their evacuation on 8 January 1916, eight months later. In that time, 100,000 soldiers on both sides would be killed and another 237,000 wounded.
How Lord Uxbridge's leg met a legendary end
Henry Paget, 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, has gone down in history as one of the most stiff-upper-lipped of all Englishmen. Being promoted by Wellington on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo to command the cavalry and horse artillery, he was intent on leading from the front.
This was inspiring, but dangerous. On 18 June 1815, Uxbridge led a spectacular cavalry charge against the 1 Corps d'Armée, followed by a series of light-cavalry charges, during which eight horses were shot from under him. Undeterred, he continued to wade into the battle until one of the last French artillery shots of the day struck him on the right leg. The cannon in question was loaded with grapeshot and the leg in question was completely shattered.
A lesser man might have let out a small squeal at this point, but not the Earl of Uxbridge. According to anecdote, Wellington was near by and Uxbridge, looking at the bloody remains of his leg, commented]The circular ship that didn't know if it was coming or going[/b]
From the first prehistoric dugouts to the latest nuclear aircraft-carriers, there have been many ship designs, but most conform to the basic plan of being longer than they are wide. This, after all, makes a vessel stable and easier to steer through water, something every good ship should be able to do.
But wasn't this just dogma? That at least is what Russian vice-admiral AA Popov thought. After all, a ship that was round would have less of a surface area needing armour plate and hence could be either faster or more heavily protected, as well as being more manoeuvrable and stable. This seemed to be just what Russia, which had recently lost a war against France and Britain, needed to protect the ports and river mouths of the Black Sea.
So, in 1873, work began in the Russian dockyards on the first of two circular, flat-bottomed ironclads. The ships, which were completely circular when viewed from the air, were driven by six engines, each powering one propeller, while the firepower came from a pair of 11in, rifled, breech-loading guns. The first such monstrous vessel was the 2,490-ton Novgorod. Three years later, the Kiev was laid down at Nikolaiev, although her name was soon changed to Rear-Admiral Popov in honour of its far-sighted originator.
What followed probably explains why you very rarely see circular ships today. For all the theory, in practice these popovkas, as they were affectionately known, turned out to be ridiculous. Their bulbous shape meant that, even with all six engines powering ahead, they were capable only of six to seven knots, slower than the current on the Dnieper river where they were tested, and where they were promptly swept out to sea. Being not only round but flat-bottomed as well, they proved remarkably difficult to keep on a steady course, and as they were borne away they spun round repeatedly, making the crews sick.
Then there was the problem with the guns. As the ships were round and the guns were not exactly central, when they were fired they made the whole ship rotate. This meant that the guns and gunners were no longer facing in the direction they were firing in, although they made for a very amusing revolving target.
Needless to say, the popovkas were never deployed in an open-sea battle, although to be fair that was never intended to be their role. As no one could really work out just what their role was, they ended their days as storeships on permanent anchorages, much to the relief of their crews.
[b]The pastry war]
Every war needs a casus belli to get it going. It might be a genuine threat, an invasion, or an attack on an ally. But there are occasions when a country would rather like to be at war as they have something the other country wants, or some unfinished business left over from the last war, while not really having a jolly good reason to start one. These wars require an excuse.
The most famous excuse is probably the War of Jenkins's Ear, allegedly started over the removal of an English captain's auditory organ by an overzealous Spanish customs officer, but actually an excuse for diving into a much larger spat known as the War of the Austrian Succession.
Then there is the Pastry War. Its origins lie in the chaotic birth of the Mexican republic and the ejection from office of the governor of the state of Mexico, Lorenzo de Zavala. He returned with General Santa Anna (of Alamo fame), reinstated himself and expelled the president. This led to rioting in Mexico City, in which a lot of foreign property was looted. However, with Zavala back in power, things eventually settled down.
Ten years later, a French pastry chef called Remontel suddenly remembered that his shop in Mexico City had been looted by Mexican soldiers in the disturbances and demanded compensation. His claim seemed a little late and was therefore ignored, so Remontel appealed to the King of France, Louis Philippe. It so happened that Mexico had defaulted on some large loans made by France, so suspicious souls might see a connection. France suddenly demanded a staggering 600,000 pesos in compensation for their aggrieved national. Considering that the average wage in the city was one peso a day, we can only imagine how much damage Monsieur Remontel was claiming had been done to his pastry shop. Either that or he sold very expensive pastries.
The Mexicans could be forgiven for being rather disconcerted by this, particularly when the French sent an ultimatum, threatening to blockade the country and seize its possessions if the irate pastry chef didn't get his money. Mexico refused to pay, so the French sent a fleet to blockade the Atlantic coast and capture the town of Veracruz, where most of the Mexican fleet was also seized.
In response, Mexico declared war on France and recalled Santa Anna to the fray. Skirmishes in and around the city continued until the British intervened politically. On 9 March 1839, France received a $600,000 indemnity, both nations agreed to grant the other "favoured trading" status, and the installations seized or destroyed by the French were restored. The exception was the Mexican fleet, which they managed to keep.