Secret Warriors Page 18
One area in which technology, rather surprisingly, failed to improve the battlefield techniques of the Great War was army communications. Wireless radio had developed rapidly in the decade before the war but radios were too large and heavy to be portable. The Royal Navy used them extensively to keep ships at sea in touch with the Admiralty in London and to intercept the enemy’s radio signals. However, the army did not use radio to anything like the same extent. There was no demand on the front line for a lightweight, portable radio transmitter and receiver (this would have to wait until the development of the ‘walkie-talkie’ in the next war). As a consequence, commanders behind the lines were limited to traditional methods of receiving information about what was happening at the front.
Rockets, flares and flags could be used to send basic signals but their effectiveness was dependent on the weather or relied upon line of sight. Sometimes pigeons could carry a message to headquarters if wind and weather were right, while runners were given written notes and sent back from front trenches to battalion headquarters. But runners took time to get back through devastated trench positions and often the situation had changed by the time they arrived. Otherwise, front-line positions had to rely on telephone communication, and telephone lines were extremely vulnerable to shellfire and frequently were destroyed. On one single day during the Battle of Verdun, French engineers had to repair ninety miles of telephone cable destroyed during a German barrage. Sometimes it was the observers in the air who could provide the most reliable information as to what was happening on the ground, but here too the forwarding of detailed information to the field commander who needed it most could be a slow process.
As a consequence, the generals in command rarely had much idea of what was unfolding after the launch of an offensive. From the moment the troops went over the top and advanced into the smoke and shellfire of no man’s land they lost contact with their battalion headquarters, who rarely knew either their own troops’ location or that of the enemy. As Hew Strachan has observed, ‘As soon as the attackers left their own trenches they lost direct and real-time communication with their own command chain.’13 This affected almost every single offensive action on the Western Front. Generals were notoriously slow to send up reinforcements after the first waves of troops had broken through the enemy line. Likewise, they were equally slow to stop the futile repetition of a failed assault with the dreadful loss of life this often brought. Perhaps, in a war of new technologies, it was a result of their age and their lack of expectation of new technology. Maybe it was an acceptance that the ‘fog of war’ would always descend once an attack began and nothing could be done to clear it. And the army generals were a conservative bunch. By contrast with officials at the Admiralty, who tried to micro-manage the deployment of ships at sea hundreds of miles away, generals in both the Allied and enemy armies sat behind the lines viewing the strategic progress of a battle by following the action on maps, but were reluctant to get involved with tactical decision-making, which was delegated down the system.
For whatever reason, tens of thousands of lives were lost because of the failures of the command-and-control system, while the generals themselves acquired a reputation for aloofness, remoteness and shocking incompetence that has endured for a hundred years. Alan Clark in the early 1960s penned the phrase ‘lions led by donkeys’ to sum up the contrast between the obstinacy and weakness of the generals and the heroism of the men.14 This view has been much challenged by military historians in recent re-evaluations, but it is accurate to the extent that the ‘donkeys’ often gave up any attempt to control an assault from the moment it started. Communications technology failed the military command structure badly and once again the army was reluctant to look outside to deliver solutions.
The First World War is often described as an artillery war. By the end of it there was an artillery gun for every thirty yards of the Western Front from the Channel to the Swiss border, while a single gun might fire as many as 200 rounds in a twenty-four-hour period in a heavy engagement. During the Battle of the Somme each field artillery brigade required 24,000 rounds every week. It is estimated that as many as an incredible 1400 million shells were fired during the First World War by all nations and that shellfire caused approximately two out of three of all battle casualties.15 Entire battlefields were transformed into lifeless, eerie moonscapes. The range of explosives needed for all this destruction was therefore immense.
All the shells and bullets fired during the First World War required a combination of explosives to function. Most of these explosives had been developed in the hundred years prior to 1914, some even earlier; the war saw no significant new inventions or advances in the chemistry of explosives. But it did call for the production of explosive chemicals on a previously inconceivable scale. Moreover, each round fired during the war usually relied upon a set of explosions. First there was the propellant, often inside a cartridge, used to propel a bullet or shell down the barrel of the weapon. This would itself need a detonator to set it off. When a bullet hit its target it would usually cause damage simply by passing through it, or in the case of a solid object by penetrating it, but when an artillery shell found its target a set of further explosions took place. A detonator would explode, setting off the main explosive that would blow the forged steel of the shell casing into fragments, spreading its charge in the form of energy over the surrounding area. Michael Freemantle has noted that a single artillery round could involve up to eight separate explosions: a percussion cap explosive would set off the primer that would act as an ignition charge to explode the propellant, which would send the shell down the barrel and off towards its target; when the shell reached its target a detonator would set off a booster, which would ignite the fuse that set off the main explosive charge in the shell.16 Not all shells were so complex, but a wide variety were fired off in the war for many different purposes, including high explosive shells, shrapnel shells, incendiary shells, armour piercing shells, smoke shells, and many others. All of them relied upon different types of explosive.
Gunpowder had been around for at least a thousand years and by the twentieth century was known as a ‘low explosive’. The combustion of gunpowder, like most other explosives, led to the release of energy and the production of a variety of gases. Gunpowder in the First World War was used both as a propellant and, early in the war, in mining operations to blow up the enemy’s trenches. Its problem as a propellant was that it produced a lot of smoke, which would give away the position of the gunners. So the armies and navies of all sides preferred a smokeless propellant called cordite, which had been developed in the 1880s by British scientists.
Most explosives used during the war released far more energy than gunpowder and were therefore known as ‘high explosives’. The core element of many high explosives, nitroglycerine, was a highly unstable compound that detonated when jolted or heated. It was the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel who discovered how nitroglycerine could be turned into a useful explosive, patenting the result as dynamite in 1867. Dynamite was safe and easy to handle and could be set off with the use of a basic detonator. Eight years later he invented another compound of nitroglycerine, calling it gelignite, and in 1887 he developed a smokeless propellant, Ballisite. Nobel made a huge amount of money from his inventions and used his fortune to establish the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm that from 1901 has worked with the Swedish Academy of Sciences to award Nobel Prizes.
Another high explosive, trinitrotoluene – known as TNT – was invented in Germany in the 1860s. It became a staple of many artillery shells during the war, often in combination with a variety of other chemicals. TNT was made as a liquid; stable and relatively safe to handle, it could be poured into shells, although it needed a powerful detonator to explode. Ammonia or ammonium nitrate was yet another type of high explosive that formed the basis for many shells and was often added to TNT to create a new compound called amatol. As the supply of TNT could rarely keep up with the demand, amatol became increasingly common as the c
ore content of high explosive shells. Ammonal was another combination of ammonium nitrate, this time with aluminium, and was about three times more powerful than gunpowder. It became the explosive most commonly used in mines under enemy lines, notably, before the Battle of the Somme when the Allies dug a series of huge mines under the German lines, filling each one with up to twenty-four tons of ammonal. The explosions of these mines just before 7.30 a.m. on 1 July 1916 marked the opening of the battle. The huge explosions could be heard in southern England and the crater from one of them, 300 feet in diameter and 90 feet deep, is still there today.17
However, with the rapid development of its chemical industry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Germany was able to increase massively its production of explosives. By 1906 there were about 500 chemists working in industry in Britain by comparison to 4500 in Germany.18 German chemical giants like BASF, Bayer and Hoechst were forging ahead producing entirely new products. Germany’s technological superiority was symbolised by the Haber-Bosch process; introduced in 1913, this was enormously advanced for its day, working at pressures equivalent to about 200 atmospheres and operating at temperatures of 600 degrees Centigrade. The process produced ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen, providing from the beginning of the war an alternative way for German industry to manufacture explosives. From ammonia and its product nitric acid it was possible to manufacture a large range of high explosives, such as TNT. In 1913, Germany produced 8700 tons of ammonia through the Haber-Bosch process. By 1916, this had risen to almost 100,000 tons.19 As the British naval blockade on Germany tightened, denying the country access to a range of raw materials, the process of fixing nitric acid became the single most important source for the production of high explosives.
Britain and France, like many other countries, had imported most of their synthetic chemicals from Germany before the war. From 1914, Britain had to make its own dyes and chemicals, a task that presented a major challenge. Soon after the outbreak of war, a committee of industrial chemists was formed under the chairmanship of Professor John Haldane, the brother of the reforming Secretary of War, and in November, the War Office appointed Lord Moulton, a leading Fellow of the Royal Society, to be responsible for the supply of explosives. Moulton worked closely with the Research Department at the Woolwich Arsenal, where the small staff of eleven at the start of the war grew to more than 100 chemists and physicists; they included a group of female chemists taken on as ‘probationary assistant analysts’.20
The lack of chemists available to work in British industry became an issue of real concern during the war years. So many young scientists had enthusiastically joined up when war was declared to do their bit that by the end of 1915, the Royal Society suggested it might be necessary ‘to consider the methods of exempting persons from active service who are essential to the work of research in the laboratories of the country’.21 A month later the eminent men of science proposed drawing up a ‘census’ of every scientist in the country. They sent out a letter to universities and major research institutions asking for the name of everyone who had passed through ‘an Honours course in one of the scientific subjects (Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Engineering, Botany, Zoology, Geology, Physiology) or obtained a diploma in one of the technical subjects’. This would be the first national listing in British history of all the country’s key scientists. During the early months of 1916, when plans for national conscription of men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one were being drawn up, the Royal Society lobbied the government hard, arguing that chemists – like coal miners and munitions workers – should be regarded as an exempted profession and not drafted into the armed services. Some retired colonels who did not understand that Britain was fighting an industrial war believed that the war would be won at the front and not in the factories, and so thought anyone not in uniform was a shirker who should be sent off to fight in France. But the gentlemen of the Royal Society persisted. Moreover, realising that, unlike William Lawrence Bragg, many scientists were already in the army and navy wasting their time doing work that did not draw upon their scientific skills, they suggested sending to the War Office a list of all scientists in the army in order ‘to facilitate the more effective employment of such men’.22 The War Office’s response is not recorded.
In developing a native chemical industry, chemists in Britain had to look for new solutions to the challenge of manufacturing explosives in sufficient quantities to meet the demands of war. One of the solvents required in large quantities to manufacture cordite was acetone. Before the war, only small amounts of acetone had been needed, and it was manufactured by heating wood to produce what was known as wood vinegar. But it took about 100 tons of wood to produce a single ton of acetone and, like so many other essentials, supplies of wood were simply no longer available on the scale that was now needed. A chemist at Manchester University by the name of Chaim Weizmann came up with an alternative process of producing acetone by making use of bacteria he had discovered during the fermentation of maize and other starches.
A Russian Jew who had settled in Britain in 1904, Weizmann wrote to the War Office soon after the outbreak of war offering details of his new process, but he never received a reply. In 1915 he had more luck with the Admiralty when Winston Churchill, then still the First Lord, showed an interest. The Royal Navy relied on the use of cordite to fire the heavy guns on its ships; being smokeless, it did not give away their position to the enemy. Churchill set Weizmann a challenge to produce one ton of acetone through his new process. He achieved this at a trial in a gin factory in East London. Weizmann went on to take a sabbatical from Manchester in order to work for the Admiralty at a laboratory in London. He spent a year on the experimental production of a variety of new solvents and his invention was used at a factory in Poole that produced acetone by the fermentation of rice.
Weizmann was one of the many men of science who came forward, in his adopted country, to make his contribution to the war effort. But he had another interest; he was a leading Zionist who lobbied hard behind the scenes for political support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. In 1917 the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, issued the Declaration in his name that pledged Britain’s support for a Jewish homeland, and in the following year Weizmann was appointed as the leading figure on a government commission to Palestine. Weizmann later became the leader of the World Zionist Organisation and the first president of the state of Israel in 1948.
In addition to the gradual mobilisation of the scientific community, vast new munitions factories were built under the auspice of the Ministry of Munitions. The largest at Gretna in southern Scotland on the border with England, employed more than 16,000 workers and at its peak produced one thousand tons of cordite each week. Chemists were trained in industrial practices and sent out to run the new factories. Martin Lowry, a young chemist from Guy’s Hospital in London, took charge of a new Gun Ammunition Filling Department at the Ministry of Munitions; his task was to find new ways of producing TNT, as there was little experience of its manufacture in Britain. A government-financed company called British Dyes was set up to fill the gap left by the unavailability of German synthetic products. By the end of the war, thirty factories were producing nearly one thousand tons of TNT each week. Other factories produced the amatol which, combined with TNT, became the principal agent in millions of British shells.
The expansion of these new munitions factories was rapid and required a small army of workers to operate them. With so many men needed at the front, many of the recruits were young women who flocked in to take up the new jobs. Photographs show vast factory floors with rows of women pouring chemicals into shell casings. By the end of the war 947,000 women were working in munitions factories across Britain, becoming popularly known as ‘Munitionettes’. Many of them came from textile mills where women had traditionally been employed in factory work, but, to quote one report at the time, ‘they came also from Scottish fishing villages, from Irish bogs, and the workrooms and
villas of English provincial towns.’23 There was a crisis for the middle classes with the sudden lack of servants as so many women left domestic service to take up better-paid work in the factories.
The manufacture of munitions could bring a plethora of health risks. Women working with TNT often suffered from nausea, vomiting, headaches, tightness of the throat, rashes and blisters. Often their skin would turn yellow with poisoning from the chemicals they were handling; such women were referred to, one hopes sympathetically, as ‘canaries’. Lilian Miles witnessed her black hair turn green and later remembered, ‘you’d wash and wash and it didn’t make no difference … Your whole body was yellow.’24
Although the government laid down strict regulations for operating the new munitions factories, accidents inevitably occurred. On the afternoon of 2 April 1916, about 15 tons of TNT and 150 tons of ammonal blew up at the Explosive Loading Company factory at Faversham in Kent, killing over 100 people. The blast, which became known as ‘the Great Explosion’, could be heard as far away as Norwich. In January 1917 about fifty tons of TNT exploded at a factory in Silvertown on the Thames to the east of London. Seventy-three people were killed, hundreds injured and most of the factory was destroyed.25 However, despite the risks, women overall very much liked working in the factories; it brought them a level of pay, friendship and new opportunities that they would never otherwise have enjoyed. Looking at photographs of these ‘women at war’ recently, the American feminist Sandra Gilbert has observed that, liberated from parlours and petticoats alike, trousered “war girls” beam as they shovel coal, shoe horses, light fires, drive buses, chop down trees, make shells and dig graves.’26 The daughters of these Great War pioneers would find a similar opportunity for freedom when classed as ‘mobile women’ a generation later in the next war.