called upon to conduct was challenged in 1963 by John Terraine, who
argued that Haig had recognised that, with approximately equal
opposing forces, and with no flanks to turn, there could be no easy
victory on the Wes tern Front.
23
While some military historians continue
to regard Haig as tactically conservative, others argue that he was not as
blind to technological innovatio n as his critics have suggested, even if he
was reluctant to accept that the circumstances of the Western Front
drastically limited the role of cavalry.
24
It would be easy to overlook the
fact that the BEF and its commander were moving along a learning
curve – that is, increasing efficiency by experience – when eng aged in a
novel form of warfare.
The British army had ample experience in the Boer War of how
accurate rifle fire could inflict heavy casualties and bring a frontal attac k
to a halt, and the Russo-Japanese War had confirmed that modern
artillery could be expected to be very effective against troops in the
open.
25
Even before war ceased to be mobile in 1914, troops would dig
impromptu fire pits. What was not anticipated was that the unprece-
dented size of the armies on the Western Front would make it possible
to build and defend continuous series of trenches from the Chann el to
the Swiss border, or that rifles would be supplemented by machine guns
in the ratio of 1 to every 20 infantry by 1918 compared with 1 to every
500 in 1914.
Successful attack in these conditions depended upon suppressing the
defenders’ fire, from artillery as well as machine guns, and required the
massing of large numbers of guns: 18-pounders to cut wire entangle-
ments, and howitzers and heavy guns to hit trenches and for counter-
battery work. Mortars, which were well adapted to trench warfare , were
23
John Terraine, Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier (London: Hutchinson, 1963),
pp. 481–2.
24
For Haig’s military conservatism, see Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British
Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare, 1900–1918 (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1987), chs. 4–7, and How the War Was Won: Command and
Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917–1918 (London: Routledge,
1992), esp. pp. 141, 179; Denis Winter, Haig’s Command: A Reassessment (London:
Viking, 1991), esp. pp. 162–6. For Haig’s willingness to exploit new weapons and
methods, see Michael Crawshaw, ‘The impact of technology on the BEF and its
commander’, in Brian Bond and Nigel Cave (eds.), Haig: A Reappraisal 70 Years On
(London: Leo Cooper, 1999), pp. 155–75, and Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory. The
First World War: Myths and Realities (London: Headline Book Publishing, 2001),
pp. 145–6, 261. For Haig’s belief in the value of cavalry in modern warfare, see The
Private Papers of Douglas Haig 1914–1919, ed. Robert Blake (London: Eyre and
Spottiswoode, 1952), pp. 147, 212, 226, and Sir Douglas Haig’s Despatches, ed.
J. H. Boraston (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1920), pp. 327–8.
25
Keith Neilson, ‘‘‘That dangerous and difficult enterprise’’: British military thinking and
the Russo-Japanese War’, War and Society, 9 (1991), 17–37.
The First World War 59