Conan Doyle relates reasons for retreat of the British army
Conan Doyle relates reasons for retreat of the British army is an article written by Arthur Conan Doyle published in the Greensboro Daily News on 17 june 1918.
Conan Doyle relates reasons for retreat of the British army
Wants War Office to Remove Mischievous Legend
FIFTH ARMY BLAMELESS
Great Wave of Men and Mass of Guns Was Bound to Wash Something Away
COURAGEOUS IN RETREAT
Those Who Blame Do Injustice to Soldiers and National Reputation. German Casualties Will Reveal Where Real Disaster Lay.
(Special Cable to Greensboro News)
(Copyright. 1918, by Public Ledger company.)
London, June 15. — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle contributes to the Leading Standard the most connected story hitherto printed of the retreat of the fifth army at St. Quentin. The headline is "Retreat of the Fifth Army — Justice to General Gough's Troops — A Second Mons." As this was one of the most important battles of the whole war, leading as it did to the brigading of United States army troops with the French and British divisions, I send the article fully:
The war office would, in any opinion, be well advised if it were to publish a connected narrative of events of the British front from March 21 to April 1, of this year. By doing so it would remove the mischievous legend that a British army has been broken — an idea which is not only bad for our prestige abroad, but is pernicious to our young soldiers. It is not true save in the sense that when a division or three corps is turned on its flank some readjustment is needed to returns the line. The miracle is that under the most exacting circumstances conceivable the line was never broken. There was never a time when else Germans saw open country before them or could push on.
History will ask who is responsible for the fact that the British line was pushed back front St. Quentin to Albert those 10 days. It is a question which can already be answered with the greatest certainty. It was not the soldiers who faced odds of four to one in men and three to one in gums. It was not a politician who found, as Lloyd George said, that "Clemenceau was a difficult man to refuse," here are times when you cannot refuse. But it was not Clemenceau. It is true he asked us to take a risk. That risk materialized, but the whole warfare consists of taking risks and how often have the French taken risks for our sake. Think of them setting an army beside us on the Somme in 1916 at the very time Verdun was in the balance. We could not always play a game while they take sporting chances.
No, only those people blame who are idiots and traitors, who sat idle while a wave, of 1,000,000 men were rolling across Europe. Where that wave struck it was bound to wash something away. It swept the British line back 20 miles more, but in spite of every most desperate endeavor it was never able to break it; always some frayed, ragged line of indomitable men stood between them and their goal. When we get our true perspective of the retreat at St. Quentin it will rank with the retreat at Mons as one of the remarkable military feats of the war.
Enough has been made public to give the diligent collater sufficient material to form at judgment by which partially to reconstruct the operations. We know 11 divisions covered the enormous front of 70,000 yards, having three infantry and two cavalry divisions hi support. These 16 divisions were opposed by 50, 40, of which were of the line; the immediate reserves' disproportion was very much greater than this, as the attack was not equal along the whole line and the British right, south of the Oise, was not attacked at all, so the right hand division was largely unengaged. Thus the attack was overwhelming at certain points.
The weight of men and guns was sufficient probably to force the line in any case, but was greatly helped by a fog which lasted all through the critical hours and confined the vision of the defenders to a range of 50 yards. This put all the machine gun defenses out, and enabled the enemy to filter between and surround the outlining redoubts. These held out magnificently but the enemy simply masked them and pushed on into the battle line in spite of arduous labor. This was not continuous but was a chain of strong posts. We have no enslaved population who can construct huge works like the Hindenburg line.
Before evening the greet weight of the attack, boldly and skillfully pushed, had penetrated the line in three separate places, piercing it to such an extent that a readjustment had to be made to present a continuous front. Already under the imminent menace nearly all the British reserves had been used, whereas the allotted German reserves were known to be heavy and near.
Under such circumstances the question to be decided was whether the British army should hold its ground until such a date as adequate reserves could arrive, if such reserves were available to do so, at a line already shaken and which reserves were continually streaming through. There seemed only one possible policy, that was to fall back steadily fighting hard all the way, so as to diminish the distance which reinforcements would have to travel until an equilibrium as reached.
That retreat with such an army pressing it was a masterpiece of disciplined skill. Never had British soldiers been more tenacious. There were four corps engaged. If we take these corps from the north and call them A, D, C and D we can form some notion of the general situation. A being next to the third army fell back fighting hard down the general line at Gouzeaucourt to Peronne and eventually found itself quite broken, defending north of the Somme river and west of Peronne. B came back in the line of the Somme from Peronne to Ham. It collected to itself all sorts of small detachments and one relieving division, hardened as it went and finally stone walled in advance of the position we still occupy.
The South position was peculiar. It had been reciprocally arranged that we should send lateral help to the French or they to us if the lines were driven back to our corps. C and D, having fallen back, crossed the Somme at the Crozeat canal from Ham to La Fere and were accordingly reinforced by two divisions of French infantry and one of cavalry. In succeeding days as fresh French divisions came up, their general took over districts so that C and D became a part of the French army. The allies in this part of the field were pushed back still further than that to the north but there was no question of a break, and equilibrium was finally restored west of Montdidier.
Such in a few words is the sketch of what actually occurred. The evening of March 21 saw the British fifth army up in the air and in deadly peril from causes over which it had absolutely no control. The evening of March 28 found the same army, worn weary but reinforced and firm, strongly buttressed upon its supports, presenting an unbroken front to the Germans. When one knows these facts, when one reads references of the disaster at St. Quentin or the breaking of the fifth army one feels a serious injustice is done our soldiers and our national reputation. When the public comes to know the whole story in detail with its hairbreadth escapes, improvisations, and desperate rallies against monstrous odds with brigades which were smaller than battalion and divisions which were weaker than brigades, it will find there are few more honorable episodes of the war. When, if ever, we get through with the casualty returns of what the Germans lost that week we shall be better able to determine on which side the real disaster lay.
