The Extent of Tactical Reform in the British Army 1

British generalship on the Western Front has often, and rightly, been criticised for major defects of both style and content. The remotely aloof style of command has been discussed too often to require any further elaboration here, ² apart perhaps from a plea to remember that battlefield communications were often very poor indeed, and ‘A General without a telephone was to all practical purposes impotent – a lay figure dressed in uniform, deprived of eyes, arms and ears’. ³ As for content, it is clear that many of the big operational decisions were ill-advised, such as Haig’s selection of the Ypres salient as the decisive battlefield for late 1917, or his unbounded faith in Fifth Army’s defensive resilience in early March 1918. At lower levels of command, there was a very wasteful tendency to demand that attacks should be launched before they had been properly prepared, or to insist that failed attacks should immediately be repeated. ⁴ It was only in 1918 that the lesson was fully learned that an attacker should bank his winnings after the first two or three days, and not continue gambling recklessly against a rapidly stiffening enemy defence. Even in the field of minor tactics, there were many mistakes that may be attributed directly to generals, and not to colonels or their subordinates. The blunders between infantry and tanks at the first battle of Bullecourt on 9–11 April 1917, for example, may fairly be laid at the door of the army commander, General Gough, rather than that of any of his subordinates. ⁵