HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1969-11-27, Page 15THE PIWITHI
BY G. MacLEOD ROSS
It seems doubtful whether
the soul of Major General
Charles George Gordon, Royal
Engineers, Companion of the
Isk Bath, Mandarin of China, Pasha
of Turkey and finally Governor
General of the Sudan will ever
be 41owed to rest in peace, 'for
now yet another -book has been w
published to add to the many
already available, which seek to'
pin point the man. In the Royal
Engineer Mess at Chatham,
Kent, stands the Dragon Throne
he brought back from Peking,
plus the yellow robes of .a
Mandarin. Outside is a life size
statue: Gordon in fez, seated on
4, a camel. Only last month a
benefactor presented to the R.
"E. Museum "A message in
Arabic, written on silk, sent
secretly by Gordon to the Mudir
of Dongola." Near Aldershot the
Gordon Boys Home provides a
• further memorial. Yet this
perverse character shared with
Custer something of the
egomania displayed by Samson
when he pulled the temple down
about himself. Told to report
how to evacuate the garrison of
Khartum, he stayed. to try and
hold the Sudan and thus
sacrificed the lives of the
- garrison and of himself.
He suffered from a fanatical
belief in his own powers; a man
who felt himself capable of far
more than he understood; the
4 epitome of the Victorian
amateur. In the result, in this his
final mission, he undertook,
against orders and .without help;
to save Egypt and the British
interests there from the Mandi.
When atked by Wolseley, ' the
4 Commander in . Chief at the
Horse Guards, what.he would do
about the Sudan,. he replied:
"Send myself";, himself alone.
"When will you go?" "Tonight,"
and off off he went in the clothes he
stood up in, having first handed
Ir Wolseley a religious tract.
Opening his written orders. in
the train, they bade him "to
REPORT on the best way to
evacuate the Sudan and to
perform such other duties...as
may be communicated to you
by Sir Evelyn_: Baring," the
British Commissioner in Cairo.
Baring was perhaps twenty years
younger and a gunner. They had
met before and disliked one
another cordially, so it was not
surprising that when Baring was
cabled by the government that
Gunder his orders, he
repliedordon: was "A man who habitually
consults.the prophet Isaiah when
in difficulties is not apt to obey
the orders of anyone." In proof
of Baring's belief, Gordon wrote
out, in the train, a memo to the
• Government explaining what
ought to be done in the -Sudan.
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Then, having overruled his
orders, he continued to rush
across Europe, back to his
beloved Sudan, on a mission
which was dangerous, difficult
and probably impossible. "If
God goes with me, all must be
well."
In the year of Our Lord
1969, with two Wo7rld--Wars d-
numerous `brush wars' behind
us,- it will be hard for anyone
who missed the public
mafficking over the Boer War to
realize the hero worship which
followed Gordon on his way.
The English public swallowed at
face value the picture of Gordon
as the stainless Knight of the
19th Century. It continued to
worship this glorious. English
eccentric for his'incorruptibility,
his obstinacy, his fearlessness,
his defiance of every kind of
authority, his kindness, his truly
English devotion to every cause
but that of England, his cool -
cheek, his frightful temper, his
sheer impossibility. But this was
how Englishmen relished- their
heroes around A.D. 1884 and
even to this day.
Though 20 years Gordon's
junior, Kipling really epitomized
the genus which pervaded a
number of Sappers of the 19th.
century school when he wrote
them off as "Mad, married or
Methodist." Speaking
professionally, Gordon was too
much of a prima donna to have
been entrusted'with `orders,' still
less with' troops. He was a loner -
of the first order, but his breed,
the amateur, lived on into the
successive wars • of the 20th
century and beyond them, if in
somewhat different form.
1
Cd
'P^ ga"G`!!l^ OAF A.
fi
e military amateur
MODERN MILITARY '
AMATEURISM
1.
In his recent book, "Mission
to Khartum The Apotheosis of
General Gordon," John Marlowe
shows how the drama of Gordon
was . -pretty_ much what arises__
from the confrontation of an
inspired amateur and a caucus of
cautious professionals; in this
case politicians., such as.
Gladstone. But then the English
genius is notoriously
anti -professional, its affinity
being always for the amateur,
and how well this affinity has
survived since Gordon was
murdered in 1885!
To exemplify this amateurism
specifically to the British Army,
before and during World War 2,
you can divide it into two
distinct halves. There were the
men._ respobsible for using the
weapons and those responsible
for developing them. .If you
epitomize the former as the
General Staff, you have a cadre
drawn from all arms and selected
for staff college training, solely
in the art of war, i.e. the training
of troops, their movement and
supply, until they were
manoeuvred into.a position from
which to engage the enemy
forces. These troops had been
long enough armed with rifles,
bayonets (the modern version of
the pike), machine guns and
artillery pieces. Some of these
weapons had remained virtually
unchanged for years, for the
General Staff seldom gave them
a thought. Although all major
decisions were vested in the
military members of the Army
Council, all members of that
exclusive club - the Staff
College, it was the rare
exception for even one of the
four Army Councillors to have
received any engineering
education. As far as weapons old
or new were concerned, they
were amateurs, yet in their
hands reposed the yea or nay on
any new or improved weapon.
The only arm which trained a
proportion of its officers in
weapon development was the
Royal Artillery, and ,while these
technically trained officers could
originate an idea, it fell to the
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General Staff to..approve and to
vote the funds.
The Field . Gun is a good
example of how -the process
worked. From the 'end of World
War 1 to the opening of World
War ; 2, some 20 years elapsed.
World War 1 was fought with tire
18 -pounder gun and the 4.5 inch
howitzer." The --25•pouttde-
gun/howitzer took eleven years
and 2 months to appear ,in the
field.
Of this period; 7 years and
4 months were, consumed by the
General Staff "determining
policy."
The Sten gum's story has a,
more peculiar twist. In July
1940, long after war had started,
the General Staff asked the
Director of Artillery for a
"machine carbine," or what is
known pow as. a Tommy gun, or
Burp gun. The prototype of the
Sten was demonstrated to the
General Staff in January 1941,
but they were reluctanttorder
any. On June 9, 1941, Churchill
went to Shoeburyness to witness
an anti-tank gun shoot. The
Director of Artillery deliberately
demonstrated the Sten,
whereupon Churchill demanded
one for his personal use. Only
then did the General Staff order
a`quarter million of them, to 'be
increased later to 21/2 million.
The 6 -pounder anti-tank gun
was initiated by the Director of
Artillery from his meagre
experimental funds as soon as he
realized the Germans, having
captured the Matilda Tank at
Dunkirk ' mounting the
2 -pounder gun, would soon
produce a better gun. In this
instance a post war search of the
War Office files failed to disclose
any General Staff request for the
6 -pounder whatsoeverp
In the face of the foregoing
evidence It is not surprising that
the tank was nobody's baby., for
there was no cadre of engineers
to deVeiop it. Nothing -to parallel
the Artillery cadre. Actually in.
1930 . the Tank Design
Department at Woolwich
consisted of 3 officers, two of
whom were gunners. The War
Office branch in executive
charge of Armored Fighting
Vehicles was, at a crucial period,
1930 to 1936, headed by a
Colonel who, whenrequired to
write out a general specification
of the, characteristics required of
a new tank said: "I don't know
why I should be . expected to
write a specification. I never
asked to be appointed to this job
and- I _knownothing about -it" -
At this period the sole criterion
of a tank was its speed. When
the above mentioned colonel
found that 'his' tank only did
211/2 miles per hour on roads,
with the wind, whereas 25 to 30
had been . promised by the
contractors, he confessed he was
very depressed. • However he
related later, that when he got
home and found his son had
been invited to play cricket for
Cambridge University versus
Essex, he was much bucked up.
As my boss remarked when I
told' him of this revelation:
"And I suppose when A9,(tank)
proves a complete failure and
d 4 .
25,000 pounds have gone down
the drain, the situation will be
redeemed by P.... (the Colonel's:
son) getting his cricket blue,*' •l
This is the sort of background
information which never gets
into the official histories! On
March 11, 1944,, the Select
Committee uon National
Expenditure;- reporting--- - --on
wartime tank production (Cmd
6865) wrote: "No British tanks.
during 1943 have been
considered worthy of a place in
the main battles."
The moral of this story is that
a modern army must have
professional military engineers
on its Staff. You cannot call it a
general staff when it only covers
he art of warfare and ignores
the science of weaponry. It is
not `general' by any stretch of
the imagination. However the
`virus Victorian military
amateur' still holds sway on the .
staffs `of '-all Allied armies -
British, American and Canadian,
whereas the heyday of the
ignorantly omniscient amateur
continues. But the lesson has
Mill to be learnt that weapon
development is far too serious a
matter to be left to the General
Staff.
*1. Mission to Khartum. The
Apotheosis of General Gordon.
John Marlowe. (Victor Gallancz.
42/-)
*2. STEN was formed thus: S
for Shepherd, in charge of Small
Arms design. T for Turpin the
chief designer and EN for
Enfield where the work was
done.
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