The Road to a Revisionist Damascus

[Greenwoodman]

Second Arm's thoughts - your evidence is pulled together well, GAC.

[armourersergeant]

Some cofusion could be that Liddel Hart mistook the use of the word Army. If I recall Corps were called, at a time prior to WW1, Army corps. It may be that Carr, if it were he, was referring to a Corps Commander, if not then it had to be either Haig or Smith-Dorrien.

Corps candidates must have been

I Corps...Monro

II Corps..Fergusson

III Corps...Pulteney

IV Corps...Rawlinson

V Corps...Plumer

Cavalry Corps...Allenby

Indian Corps..Willcocks

The only other name to add to these would be French himself

Assuming that Carr was not lying it had to be one of these men. Step foward members of the jury. Not sure where I can go with this as I have no hard evidence, other then LH's assertion that it was Haig.

regards

Arm

[truthergw]

I enjoyed reading that contribution George. Were you kneedeep in books by the end?

If we assume that Carr was telling the truth, do we know what Smith-Dorrien's views on MGs were at this time? Could he have said it?

Once we start guessing at what somebody meant, the possibilities are endless. If not a Corps, could he have meant Brigadier or Divisional commander or.....We cannot start putting words into witnesses mouths. If that is what they said, than we must assume that they meant it.

[squirrel]

Thanks GAC for the quotes and the work in finding them - interesting stuff and puts a different slant entirely on Haig's opinions regarding the machine gun.

He was certainly keen on the tactical application.

[AndyHollinger]

This is the key.

Oh, that all personal prejudices and preconceptions could be abandoned at the classroom door.

seconded

Mick

Coming late to this hidden Haig party ... I am refreshed with the knowledge and tact. This is the forum I love. I think, though that one must realize what happened between 1914 and 1918 is not a fixed truth to OUR KNOWLEDGE ... because we can never, really, know exactly what happened - only use evidence to construct the best picture we can ... and then, because we are human, we try to enunciate "why" we always venture into opinion.

Haig, like Lee and Grant are giants of our times ... Men who lives were and are important to us as humans ... the more I know the more I realize just how fragile we are as humans, how limited our abilities really are and how much courage men who are charged with the making of history must have simply to wake in the morning.

[Crunchy]

I think, though that one must realize what happened between 1914 and 1918 is not a fixed truth to OUR KNOWLEDGE ... because we can never, really, know exactly what happened - only use evidence to construct the best picture we can ... and then, because we are human, we try to enunciate "why" we always venture into opinion.

the more I know the more I realize just how fragile we are as humans, how limited our abilities really are and how much courage men who are charged with the making of history must have simply to wake in the morning.

Well put Andy. It would do us all well to remember the points you have made when defending what we believe to be the "facts" or disputing another person's opinion.

History was not written in 1914 -18, the events on which later historical accounts were written occurred at that time. The historical accounts following these events can only try and re-construct those events or assume what may have been in the minds of the participants at the time in the light of the available material, which does not cover everything.

I am reminded of reading a view in an old historiography class at UWA. "History is an author's opinion of what they think occurred or what they wish their readers to believe occurred. It is littered not only with honest attempts at interpretation but also with unfounded assumptions, selective quotes, bias and misrepresentation of what actually occurred or was purported to have been said. For example, it has become fashionable in the last decade [referring to the 1960's] for historians to proclaim that the bayonet had become a redundant and outmoded weapon by the time of the American Civil War but that armies persisted in issuing them. The only source ever quoted to support this claim was one comment from one Civil War doctor who said he had treated only one or two bayonet wounds"

Cheers

Chris

[Crunchy]

GAC,

I third Arm and Greenwoodsman's comments. A well put together and thoughtful case.

Cheers

Chris

[Pete1052]

The records of the U.S. Army Medical Department during the Civil War record very few bayonet or blade wounds. The fact of the matter is that most guys run away when faced with fixed bayonets. There might have been a lot of bayonet attacks during the Civil War, but few men on the other side were willing to stand there and receive them. The bayonet lived on in military doctrine long after it had outlived its usefulness.

[SiegeGunner]

The fact of the matter is that most guys run away when faced with fixed bayonets. There might have been a lot of bayonet attacks during the Civil War, but few men on the other side were willing to stand there and receive them. The bayonet lived on in military doctrine long after it had outlived its usefullnesss.

So maybe the usefulness of the bayonet was that it inspired the opposition to run away ...

[Pete1052]

I think that changed once single-shot weapons were replaced by repeaters, and now the assault weapon type of firearms. Bayonet charges only work when the enemy is out or nearly out of ammunition. I will admit though that bayonets intimidate people a lot. One of my old units, the 7th Infantry Division, is known as as the "Bayonet Division" for a small unit action in the Korean War, but these days episodes like that are the exception rather than the rule.

[Ali Hollington]

Hi,

As mentioned above (post 56) it is almost always possible to find examples to prove your point-but- the bayonet is still being used fairly often. British (and I'm sure other) troops in Iraq and Afganistan have used them during operations to clear buildings/compounds and I believe on at least one occasion, a patrol of a Scottish regiment performed a "bayonet charge" due to running out of rounds.

Regards

Ali

[Crunchy]

Pete,

With respect, you've missed the point of the post. One single source does not make a general statement of fact in historiography.

Secondly, the bayonet has always been a psychological and secondary weapon for the infantryman, never a primary weapon. People who argue it had passed its day by the American Civil War fail to realise this aspect of the weapon. Its primary and most effective use is in close quarter battle once one has closed with the enemy and there are numerous examples during the Great War of good execution being done with the bayonet during trench fighting. Indeed the first Australian VC of both the Great War and the Second World War were earned through the effective use of the bayonet in trenches. As late as the Korean War, there are examples of Australian troops using the bayonet to good effect once they had closed with the enemy, 90 years after the American Civil War.

As late as Vietnam, a colleague of mine mounted a bayonet charge and the enemy withdrew in great haste. True, that was an isolated example and I agree that today there is little use for the weapon.

With respect

Chris

PS. During the Battle of FSB Coral in Vietnam the guns that had been over run by the NVA were recovered at the point of the bayonet by the gunners in a counter attack.

[squirrel]

Going well off topic with this but, remember all the stuff in the papers and on TV about the use by the British of bayonets in the Falklands 25 years ago?

And there was an incident in Iraq of a Corporal leading his men in a bayonet charge after their AFV came under attack. He was awarded a gallantry medal for this IIRC.

[George Armstrong Custer]

One single source does not make a general statement of fact in historiography.

Yes, that's a point well worth re-emphasising I think, Chris. You've set out the story of how received wisdom in the historiography on the demise of the bayonet can be traced back to a single flawed source. In much the same way Liddell Hart's unsubstantiated embellishment of a sentence in Baker Carr's memoirs got the ball rolling in the Great War historiography on the myth of Haig not grasping the battlefield potential of the machinegun.

It's not always possible to build up a body of corroborative evidence to make a case, of course, but when this can be done (as in the case of Haig's true attitude to machineguns), then the case subsequently made becomes much more impervious to criticism. It's no accident that emphasis on the importance of historiographical studies has increased markedly in degree courses over the past twenty years or so; as your reference to a historiography course at UWA eloquently sums up, a firm grasp of the means and reasons by which sources were selected and interpreted in the historiography of a subject being studied is vital in order to avoid repeating old calumnies.

regards,

George

[truthergw]

The cult of the bayonet or rather Rosalie, was alive and well in France prior to and into the Great War. More's the pity. Hundreds of thousands of poilus charged to their death, urged on by the teachings at military college of a General who became a Marshall and a name renowned world wide as a great soldier and the Generalissimo of the Western Front in the closing stages. Marechal Foch was the principal exponent of cran against material. That one did not need intelligence because if you charged with enough bravery the enemy's plans would be useless. I have yet to see a French or German or English book accusing the Marshal of being a bungler or butcher. Perhaps butchery, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As long as food is issued in tins, bayonets will be required.

[Pete1052]

The rifle my dad carried in combat in 1945 in Germany and Czechoslovakia was the U.S. Carbine, Caliber .30, M1. The carbine went through an evolutionary development, which is to say that when it went into production in 1942 the early ones lacked many of the features seen in later models. Postwar rebuilds at arsenals added many of the later features. Early M1 Carbines lacked a lug (or boss) to which a bayonet could be attached. My dad recalled that he had a bayonet but there was no way to attach it to the carbine. In 1945 the barrel band on the carbine was redesigned by U.S. Army Ordnance to include a bayonet lug, which is seen on most carbines today. The carbine was designed and produced to meet an urgent wartime need, so nice-to-have but non-essential features such as the ability to attach a bayonet were left until later. (And that was while a world war involving American troops was going on.) The SAS loved the carbines they were able to get their hands on during World War II and the Malaysia Emergency--it was a short and handy .30 caliber semi-automatic weapon with a 15-round magazine capacity.

I own an M1 Carbine that has all the early features--including no bayonet lug--appropriate for when it was made in November 1943 by Inland Division, General Motors Corporation. The Inland manufacturer codes on all of the parts indicate that it's the same gun that it was when it left the factory. Except for a tiny dent in the wood that I accidently put in it, it's a pristine gun in factory-new condition.

My main point is that in modern war the bayonet is not essential, but a good thing to have for emergencies.

[Paul Hederer]

This is an interesting thread to read through. It's great to see that people are aware and looking at history with their eyes open. Military history in particular suffers in that it's possible for some or many of the principles of a certain event to be killed during it, or before they have a chance to record any type of coherent record. War being war, it's also possible that the people involved may not even have the facilities (or desire) to record a contemporary account.

I sometimes think we can only get an impression of history to some degree. If someone writes that the third division was in so-and-so sector on this date, that's a bit different, but when we start to delve into motivations, character and personalities--wow look out!

Paul

[Al Parsons]

The fact of the matter is that most guys run away when faced with fixed bayonets.

Seems reasonable to me.

[truthergw]

Pete. A lot of what you say is true but men were trained to fight with the fixed bayonet in WW1. When they fixed bayonets and went over the top, it was not in the expectation that the enemy would run away or surrender, They expected and got, a fight. With bayonets. I also would call to mind the standard bombing party for clearing a trench, where a bomber was flanked by two sturdy bayonet men as his bodyguards. Supported with reserve throwers who passed bombs to the bomber, they were the men who cleared the trench and did it with the bayonet in a planned and methodical manner for which they were trained.

[Pete1052]

I hear what you're saying, Tom, but in 1942 the U.S. Army Ordnance Department thought it was a non-essential feature. They decided that bayonet-fighting was not an important thing. The point that I'll concede is that the M1 Carbine was never intended to be a front-line weapon to be issued to the infantry, it was for troops such as field artillery (like my dad) who don't ordinarily engage the enemy with small arms, much less close with and destroy them.

(I could write an essay about how the carbine was a victim of its own success; its widespread acceptance by troops led it to being used in roles for which it had never been intended. However that would be going off on a tangent.)

[bob lembke]

Regrettably I can't remember where I read it, but I have a strong memory, from UK/USA source(s), of two autopsy studies during WW I, one found that about 1.5% of the dead looked at died from edged weapons; the second, a study of 300,000 dead, found 0.5%. This supposedly was a Brit study, and their response supposedly was to intensify bayonet drill! Can anyone recall anything about these studies? Certainly any studies/figures from the US Civil War would be a silly thing on which to base WW I tactics. But if bayonet wounds were infrequent even then, that would be telling.

I have many anecdotes from my father about fighting as a storm trooper, with both the flame regiment, and with Storm Battlion Rohr, to which he was detailed to several times for flame support, and he never once mentioned anyone carrying a rifle. At one point in time I belive that about 1 in 10 of attacking formations carried a slung carbine; in an interesting inversion, the NCOs, as all of the other men were either grenadiers or served one of several crew-served weapons, and a rifle or carbine would just be in the way. However, if a position had been taken, it would be nice to have at least a few riflemen to hold the newly taken position. All the EM/OR carried a P 08.

I do remember my bayonet training in my reserve officer training, I was paired with a rather short, rotund fellow, an accountancy major, and I went at it with the suggested shouts, glares, all the mojo, and the poor fellow seemed to have almost soil his pants. He really panicked. And we had our scabbards on our bayonets!

Bob Lembke

[PhilB]

I also would call to mind the standard bombing party for clearing a trench, where a bomber was flanked by two sturdy bayonet men as his bodyguards.

Not just bodyguards, Tom. Their job was to follow quickly after the bomb detonation and to bayonet anybody who looked like a threat - in other words, anybody! It was explained to me by an ex-Accrington Pals bayonet man that the adrenaline is so high that you would bayonet a rat if it moved!

[John Gilinsky]

All of the above reminds me of basic military tactical doctrines as they evolve in conjunction with evolving weaponry. Massed artillery a Napoleonic tactic to clear away the enemy so that the infantry would have an easier time of gaining ground and pushing away enemy infantry was clearly tried throughout the war on all sides. Refined and modified yes but essentially due to the sheer scale (the shock of both depth, intensity and breadth of the fighting i.e. the massive fronts)of the fighting there were uh um...PROBLEMS. The bayonet a close combat infantry weapon was definitely used throughout the war whenever numbers of troops engaged one another in such things as trench raids or patrols from the opposite sides met one another inadvertently in no man's land. Casualty statistics notoriously inaccurate for most wars for most causes do NOT reveal the extent of the frequency of bayonet useage. Think of the massive lists of missing soldiers. We presume that most if not nearly all were shell casualties and statistically we may be right. However some of these missing soldiers must have been wounded seriously by bayonet in trenches or no man's land PRIMARILY as their cause who were simply neglected due to the nature of the combat and the operations at the time and bled to death, died due to shock, or were so hors de combat that due to their initial bayonet wound(s) that they became vulnerable to the MULTIPLE causes and frequencies of the opportunities of being REWOUNDED and thus overwhelmed (i.e. killed). The bayonet for much if not most of the fighting was carried due to the traditional elan of the 'offensive spirit' which some staff officers and some commanding generals believed could still win battles or at least parts of battles. A home front public also wanted to believe that their MAN would be the great hero capturing single handedly a trench of the enemy with a single revolver, rifle or BAYONET! We know that this war became farily quickly at least from January 1915 onwards an artillery battle but the sheer shock of massed artillery pummeling trenches of soldiers should not eclipse the frequent occasions of hand to hand combat. Let us also NOT forget the Eastern Front and other fronts where hand to hand combat and hence the clear potential for bayonet use would have increased significantly.

John

Toronto

[truthergw]

The Russian army I believe used permanently fixed bayonets?

You are right Phil. I was emphasising the fact that they were trained to fight with the bayonet not to shoot.

Pete, 1940 is a little out of our range but I can assure you that in '50s I was being trained with a bayonet which had no handle. It was purely for fixing on the end of a .303 and stabbing people. You could open tins with it but it was an awkward thing to use. You had to hit it with a rock. Later, I was issued with a new rifle (SLR) which had a bayonet with a handle. In late 40's the British forces used a spike bayonet on the .303. I've seen one but never used one.

[Pete1052]

I believe the No. 4 Enfield rifle had a spike bayonet. It wouldn't surprise me if its design was a wartime expedient to make it economical and easy to manufacture.

Edit: None of the Mosin-Nagant Russian rifles of the Great War that I've seen had a permanently fixed bayonet. There were many variants of that rifle, however, so it is possible that there may have been some like that. The U.S. manufacturers Remington and Westinghouse made many of them them under contract to the Tsarist government and they didn't have bayonets attached to them. The Remington and Westinghouse ones are often seen in the States because they were not delivered--after the Bolsheviks took over they stopped paying their bills.