The Battle of Neuve Chapelle - French Flanders [Paperback]

Although written primarly as a battlefield tour guide, this volume provides an excellent historical summary of the commanders and units involved, the plan and the events of the three-day battle.

This book should be read by people who are conditioned to believe that all First World War battles were mindless, pointless slaughters. In fact, the attack at Neuve Chapelle displayed a pattern that would be repeated again and again. The initial attack on the first day deployed 15 British battalions against only three German battalions on a thinly-held part of the German front. After a short 35 minute prepatory bombardment, the British quickly advanced across No Man's Land to seize Neuve Chapelle. Aside from some problems on the flanks, the bulk of the British force reached their first day objectives in less than one hour at light cost. Unfortunately, the British chain of command was slow to realize that they had in fact blown away the first German line of defense and they took many hours to commit reserve units to exploit the breach. It was a fatal delay. The Germans reinforced the crumbling front with several other units and even launched a desperate counterattack. Like stubborn donkeys, the British commanders continued to attack for one more day despite the loss of suprise and the new strength of the German position. Most of the 3,500 British deaths occurred in these last futile attacks. What this shows is that despite all the pontification by John Keegan et al about the tactical circumstances of the First World War, that it was possible to achieve modest success at light cost. The problem here was not that breaching the trench line was impossible with contemporary weapons or tactics - it wasn't - but that commanders were not satisfied with minor success, they kept gambling with their men's lives in hopes of the "big breakthrough". The final realization of how to take ground with properly coordinated infantry and artillery resulted in the French developing the "Methodical Battle" doctrine that they would take with them into the Second World War.

One odd ommission of this book is the prominent attention given to the German 6th Bavarian Reserve Division in blunting the British attack. The author fails to mention that Private Adolf Hitler was serving in this unit. Considering all the attention given to British rank-and-file who won awards (and one who was executed for desertion) in this battle, the author should have showcased at least a few individual German soldiers in the battle. Instead, he does not even mention the commanders of any of the German units. Too much British bias here.

The only failing of this book is a reluctance to analyze. When examining the causes of the failure of the offensive to break the German line, the author tends to drift between looking at faulty decisions made by individual commanders to the command & control problems inherent in a system with delayed communications. The author fails to realize that an obvious amateur mistake made in the plan was launching an attack with a corps boundary in the middle, which added two corps chain of commands and three division chain of commands to an attack of only 15 battalions! Simplicity, one of the principles of war, suggests that only one corps should have been used in the initial assault (i.e. the one Indian brigade should have been attached to 4th Corps). Also, the author fails to note the lack of any designated main effort and the linear-nature of the three objective lines, which promoted an "everybody must stay on line" mentality. This tendency for broad-front/no main objective would plague the BEF for years and appear with catastrophic results at the Somme in 1916.

The battle maps, photographs and vignettes are excellent.