Saturday May 18th, 1918
Stood to 4:30. Breakfast 6am. Two hours work 7am – 9am and night 5 to 7pm. Very hot indeed. Wrote home and got letter from home. Glad wife received one pound note and curios. Very glad.
Taking the Initiative
Yesterday’s post described one of the tenets of the British Army – that a superior officer should tell his subordinates ‘what’ should be done, but leave the ‘how’ to those closer to the ground and who understood the practicalities of the situation. This was felt to engender ‘initiative’. This is fine, until the situation arises where there is, in the subordinate’s opinion, no ‘how’ that would achieve the ‘what’. (Remember that pilots were not given parachutes in the early years of WWI because it might make them less committed …)
Captain Stewart recalls pushing back on an order to attack while he was serving on the Western Front. ‘I then sent a written message to the Colonel saying that I had been to our ‘post’, seen where the German ‘post’ was, and that in my opinion there was not the remotest chance of the required attack being successful; or some few words to that effect.’¹
He was then called to see the Colonel, ‘I told him that the Boche ‘post’ was in mud shell-holes the same as ours. The mud was about 6 to 12 inches deep, and that every movement in the mud could be heared a long distance on account of the squelching sound every time a step is taken. That from our ‘post’ to the Germans’ would take at least 5 or 10 minutes to traverse, and that as we tried to walk the Boche would simply lie down and pick us off at their leisure. ….
The Colonel, who understood, and had no more desire than I had to lose his men on damn fool stunts, quite agreed with me. He said that his orders were to make the attack; I must do my best; and made it must be, unless I received orders to the contrary. He then told me to go back and that he would see what he could do about it.’¹
And finally, ‘Before dusk I had a message through over the wire cancelling the order to attack.’
It is easy to imagine the stress that Captain Stewart would have been feeling throughout the day until the order to attack was revoked, especially as it continued to rain. This incident took place in August 1917 during the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) and Captain Stewart was by then a very seasoned officer, as presumably were his superiors. It is interesting to speculate if the outcome would have been the same in the early days of the war.
13th (Service) Battalion War Diary – 18th May 1918 – Sporan
Both sides were quiet on the whole. Patrols had nothing of interest to report. The Athletic Sports Meeting of the 22nd Division commenced at 14:30 hrs on a ground just south of Survey Hill. The night was quiet.
References & Further Reading
¹ ‘A Very Unimportant Officer’ by Captain Alexander Stewart & Cameron Stewart, Hodder & Stoughton, 2009, Kindle locn 2780