september - october - Fort Sill

THE FIELD ARTILLERY JOURNAL
It was never grasped, so far as I am aware, that the point of penetration was
not to be sought at the point of attack, but between two converging points
of attack. It was never understood that if a line 400 miles long was to be
broken, the front of attack must be at least 100 miles, and that the decisive
attack should only be launched after the enemy's reserves have been
exhausted. It was not realized that troops did not exist in sufficient numbers
for such an extended attack, and even if they had they could not have been
supplied. Lastly, the obsession of method, of numbers and of brute force
prohibited surprise, the true forerunner of victory.
"The possibility of carrying out an effective dual attack of penetration
was, I maintain, a feasible operation in 1915, for though shell shortage
existed, trench systems were still shallow. With armies as then organized it
was, I maintain, more feasible to do so than with the armies which existed
in 1916, and most of 1917. It was not lack of fighting force which created
the stalemate, but the lack of knowing how to apply it correctly. Had this
not been so there would have been no need to have carried the war to
Gallipoli, to Mesopotani, to Palestine and Saloniki, all impossible decisive
theatres. Lack of military imagination dispersed our fighting force, at a
time when sanity demanded the concentration of every man and gun on the
Arras-Reims front.
"Later we come to Riga and Cambai, true battles of penetration
based on surprise. Do we find wisdom resulting from them? No, only
another obsession, namely penetration itself—the tool is mistaken for
the hand. If I am wrong, why then the gigantic single attacks of 1918?
The German offensives were single, one following the other and each
aimed at a weak point. The French and British attacks are single, the
value of salients is not understood, neither is the problem of supplying a
moving army understood. Yet lethal gas and the tank were weapons
preëminently suited to the dual attack, since gas could create defensive
flanks by rendering areas uncrossable, and tanks could form offensive
flanks and strike at the rear of the enemy, the enemy between the two
points attacked. Have we learnt this lesson yet? I much doubt it. Have
we learnt, that the decisive point of the attack is the rear of the enemy's
army and that to hit this rear we want two forces, just as a boxer wants
two fists * * *."
"Observation," by Colonel A. G. Arbuthnot, is a plea for more stress on
the provision and training of Terrestrial observers in the artillery. To quote the
author:—"Instances of the moral and material value of a man who could see at
a good observation post, I could give without number, but space forbids, and
I have only said what I have because I am conscious of a tendency in the air to
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