Читать книгу The Rise of Rail-Power in War and Conquest, 1833-1914 - Edwin A. Pratt - Страница 6

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One of the earliest and most obvious criticisms advanced against the use of railways in war was based on the vulnerability of the iron road. The destruction of a bridge, the tearing up of a few rails or the blocking of a tunnel would, it was argued, suffice to cause an interruption in the transport of troops or supplies which might be of serious consequence to the combatants prejudiced thereby, though of corresponding advantage to the other side. By means of such interruption the concentration of troops on the frontier might be delayed; an army might be divided into two or more parts, and exposed to the risk of defeat in detail; the arrival of reinforcements urgently wanted to meet a critical situation might be prevented until it was too late for them to afford the desired relief; a force advancing into an enemy's country might have its rail connection severed and be left to starve or to surrender at discretion; invaders would find that the force they were driving before them had taken the precaution to destroy their own railways as they retreated; or, alternatively, lines of railway constructed to the frontier, and depended upon to facilitate invasion of neighbouring territory, might—unless destroyed—be of material service to the enemy, should the latter become the invaders instead of the invaded.

While these and other possibilities—foreshadowed more especially in the controversies which the whole subject aroused in Germany in the 'Forties—were frankly admitted, it was argued that, however vulnerable railways might be as a line of communication, it should be quite possible either to defend them successfully or to carry out on them such speedy repairs or reconstruction as would, generally speaking, permit of an early resumption of traffic; though experience was to show that these safeguards could only be assured through a well-planned and thoroughly efficient organisation prepared to meet, with the utmost dispatch and the highest degree of efficiency, all the requirements in the way of railway repairs or railway rebuilding that were likely to arise.

The earliest instance of an attempt to delay the advance of an enemy by interrupting his rail communications was recorded in 1848, when the Venetians, threatened with bombardment by the Austrians, destroyed some of the arches in the railway viaduct connecting their island city with the mainland. Then in the Italian campaign of 1859 the allies and the Austrians both resorted to the expedient of destroying railway bridges or tearing up the railway lines; although the allies were able, in various instances, to repair so speedily the damage done by the Austrians that the lines were ready for use again by the time they were wanted.

It was the American Civil War that was to elevate railway destruction and restoration into a science and to see the establishment, in the interests of such science, of an organisation which was to become a model for European countries and influence the whole subsequent course of modern warfare.

The destruction of railways likely to be used by the North for its projected invasion of the Confederate States was, from the first, a leading feature in the strategy of the South. Expeditions were undertaken and raids were made with no other object than that of burning down bridges, tearing up and bending rails, making bonfires of sleepers, wrecking stations, rendering engines, trucks and carriages unserviceable, cutting off the water supply for locomotives, or in various other ways seeking to check the advance of the Northerners. Later on the Federals, in turn, became no less energetic in resorting to similar tactics in order either to prevent pursuit by the Confederates or to interrupt their communications.

For the carrying out of these destructive tactics use was generally made either of cavalry, accompanied by civilians, or of bodies of civilians only; but in some instances, when it was considered desirable to destroy lengths of track extending to twenty or thirty miles, or more, the Confederates put the whole of their available forces on to the work.

At the outset the methods of destruction were somewhat primitive; but they were improved upon as the result of practice and experiment.

Thus, in the first instance, timber bridges or viaducts were destroyed by collecting brushwood, placing this around the arches, pouring tar or petroleum upon the pile, and then setting fire to the whole. Afterwards the Federals made use of a "torpedo," eight inches long, and charged with gunpowder, which was inserted in a hole bored in the main timbers of the bridge and exploded with a fuse. It was claimed that with two or three men working at each span the largest timber bridge could be thrown down in a few minutes.

Then the method generally adopted at first for destroying a railway track was to tear up sleepers and rails, place the sleepers in a heap, put the rails cross-ways over them, set fire to the sleepers, and heat the rails until they either fell out of shape or could be twisted around a tree with the help of chains and horses. But this process was found to require too much time and labour, while the results were not always satisfactory, since rails only slightly bent could be restored to their original shape, and made ready for use again, in much less time than it had taken for the fire to heat and bend them. A Federal expert accordingly invented an ingenious contrivance, in the form of iron U-shaped "claws," which, being turned up and over at each extremity, were inserted underneath each end of a rail, on opposite sides, and operated, with the help of a long wooden lever and rope, by half a dozen men. In this way a rail could be torn from the sleepers and not only bent but given such a spiral or corkscrew twist, while still in the cold state, that it could not be used again until it had gone through the rolling mills. By the adoption of this method, 440 men could destroy one mile of track in an hour, or 2,200 men could, in the same time, destroy five miles.

The most effective method for rendering a locomotive unfit for service was found to be the firing of a cannon ball through the boiler. Carriages and wagons which might otherwise be used by the enemy, and could not be conveniently carried off, were easily destroyed by fire. In one period of six months the Federals disposed of 400 in this way. Stations, water-tanks, sleepers, fuel and telegraph poles were also destroyed or rendered useless by fire or otherwise.

In the first year of the war—1861—the Confederates gave the Federals a foretaste of much that was to come by destroying forty-eight locomotives on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and making a complete wreck of 100 miles of the North Missouri Railroad track and everything thereon.

Much more serious than this, however, from a strategical point of view, was the wholesale destruction carried out by the Confederates, in April, 1862, on the Fredericksburg Railway, connecting Richmond and Washington, the immediate result of the mischief done being to prevent an impending combination between the Federal armies of the Potomac and the Rappahannock, neither of which could act without the other, while neither could join the other unless it could make use of rail communication. There was much that required to be done, for the Confederates had carried out their work in a most thorough-going fashion. Several indispensable railway bridges had been destroyed; three miles of track had been torn up, the rails being carried south and the sleepers burned; and wharves and buildings had been burned or wrecked. The whole transportation service, in fact, had been reduced to a state of chaos.

At the urgent request of the Secretary of War, the work of restoration was undertaken by Mr. Herman Haupt, a railway engineer who had already distinguished himself more especially as a builder of bridges, and was now to establish a further record as the pioneer of those Construction Corps of which so much was to be heard later on in connection with railways and war.

In carrying out the necessary repairs the only help which Haupt could obtain, at first, was that of soldiers detailed from the Federal ranks. Many of these men were entirely unaccustomed to physical labour; others were sickly, inefficient, or unwilling to undertake what they did not regard as a soldier's duties, while the Army officers sent in a fresh lot daily until Haupt's remonstrances led to their allotting certain men to form a "Construction Corps." Other difficulties which presented themselves included an insufficient supply of tools, occasional scarcity of food, and several days of wet weather; yet the work advanced so rapidly that the Akakeek bridge, a single span of 120 ft., at an elevation of 30 ft., was rebuilt in about fifteen working hours; the Potomac Creek bridge, 414 ft. long with an elevation of 82 ft. above the water, and requiring the use of as much roughly-hewn timber as would have extended a total length of six and a half miles, if put end to end, was completed in nine days;[5] and the three miles of track were relaid in three days, included in the work done in that time being the preparation of more than 3,000 sleepers from lumber cut down for the purpose in woods a mile and a half distant from the track. General McDowell subsequently said, concerning the Potomac bridge:—

When it is considered that in the campaigns of Napoleon trestle bridges of more than one story, even of moderate height, were regarded as impracticable, and that, too, for common military roads, it is not difficult to understand why distinguished Europeans should express surprise at so bold a specimen of American military engineering. It is a structure which ignores all rules and precedents of military science as laid down in the books. It is constructed chiefly of round sticks cut from the woods, and not even divested of bark; the legs of the trestles are braced with round poles. It is in four stories—three of trestle and one of crib work.

While constructed in so apparently primitive a fashion, the bridge was, General McDowell further said, carrying every day from ten to twenty heavy railway trains in both directions, and had withstood several severe freshets and storms without injury.

Thus early, therefore, in the more active phases of the Civil War, evidence was being afforded that, although the railways on which so much depended might be readily destroyed, they could, also, be rapidly restored; and subsequent experience was to offer proofs still more remarkable in support of this fact.

On May 28, 1862, Haupt was appointed Chief of Construction and Transportation in the Department of the Rappahannock, with the rank of Colonel. He was raised to the rank of Brigadier-General in the following year, and did much excellent construction and other work for the Government, though mainly in Virginia, down to September, 1863. In his "Reminiscences" he relates that the supplies of repair or reconstruction materials, as kept on hand by the Federals, included the interchangeable parts of bridge trusses, in spans of 60 ft., and so prepared that, taken on flat cars, by ox-teams or otherwise, to the place where they were wanted, and hoisted into position by machinery arranged for the purpose, they could, without previous fitting, be put together with such rapidity that one of his foremen claimed to be able to build a bridge "about as fast as a dog could trot." When the Massaponix bridge, six miles from Fredericksburg, was burned down one Monday morning, a new one was put up in its place in half a day—a feat which, he says, led some of the onlookers to exclaim, "The Yankees can build bridges quicker than the Rebs can burn them down." In May, 1862, five bridges over Goose Creek which the "Rebs" had destroyed were reconstructed in a day and a half. In the following month five other bridges, each with a span of from 60 ft. to 120 ft., were renewed in one day. At the Battle of Gettysburg Lee's troops destroyed nineteen bridges on the Northern Central Railroad and did much havoc on the branch lines leading to Gettysburg; but the Construction Corps was hard at work on the repairs whilst the battle was still being waged, and rail communication with both Washington and Baltimore had been re-established by noon of the day after Lee's retreat.

In some instances railway bridges underwent repeated destruction and reconstruction. By June, 1863, the bridge over Bull Run, for instance, had been burned down and built up again no fewer than seven times. Many of the bridges, also, were swept away by floods, and this even for a second or a third time after they had been rebuilt. Precautions thus had to be taken against the destructive forces of Nature no less than against those of man.

Haupt's pioneer Construction Corps in Virginia was succeeded by the one set up on much broader lines by McCallum when, in February, 1864, he became General Manager of railways in the Military Division of the Mississippi. This corps eventually reached a total of 10,000 men.

"The design of the corps," wrote McCallum, in his final report, "was to combine a body of skilled workmen in each department of railroad construction and repairs, under competent engineers, supplied with abundant materials, tools and mechanical appliances." The corps was formed into divisions the number of which varied from time to time, in different districts, according to requirements. In the military division of the Mississippi the corps comprised six divisions, under the general charge of the chief engineer of the United States military railroads for that military division, and consisted at its maximum strength of nearly 5,000 men. In order to give the corps entire mobility, and to enable it to move independently and undertake work at widely different points, each of the six divisions was made a complete unit, under the command of a divisional engineer, and was, in turn, divided into sub-divisions or sections, with a supervisor in charge of each. The two largest and most important sub-divisions in any one division were those of the track-layers and the bridge-builders. A sub-division was, again, composed of gangs, each with a foreman, while the gangs were divided into squads, each with a sub-foreman.[6] Under this method of organisation it was possible to move either the entire division or any section thereof, with its tools, camp requirements and field transport, in any direction, wherever and whenever needed, and by any mode of conveyance—rail, road, with teams and wagons, or on foot.

To facilitate the operations of the corps, supplies of materials were kept at points along or within a short distance of the railway lines, where they would be comparatively safe and speedily procurable in case of necessity. At places where there was special need for taking precautionary measures, detachments of the corps were stationed in readiness for immediate action, while on important lines of railway Federals and Confederates alike had, at each end thereof, construction trains loaded with every possible requisite, the locomotives attached to them keeping their steam up in order that the trains could be started off instantly on the receipt of a telegram announcing a further interruption of traffic.

At Nashville and Chattanooga the Federals built extensive storehouses where they kept on hand supplies of materials for the prompt carrying out of railway repairs of every kind to any extent and in whatever direction.

On the Nashville and Chattanooga Railway itself the Construction Corps, from February, 1864, to the close of the war, relaid 115 miles of track, put in nineteen miles of new sidings, eight miles apart and each capable of holding from five to eight long freight trains, and erected forty-five new water tanks.

The reconstruction of this particular line was more especially needed in connection with General Sherman's campaign in Georgia and the Carolinas—a campaign which afforded the greatest and most direct evidence up to that time alike of the possibilities of rail-power in warfare, of the risks by which its use was attended, and of the success with which those risks could be overcome by means of efficient organisation.

In that struggle for Atlanta which preceded his still more famous march to the sea, Sherman had with him a force of 100,000 men, together with 23,000 animals. His base of supplies, when he approached Atlanta, was 360 miles distant, and the continuance of his communications with that base, not only for the procuring of food, clothing, fodder, ammunition and every other requisite, but for the transport to the rear of sick and wounded, refugees, freedmen and prisoners, depended on what he afterwards described as "a poorly-constructed single-track railroad" passing for 120 miles of its length through the country of an extremely active enemy. Yet Sherman is said to have made his advance in perfect confidence that, although subject to interruptions, the railway in his rear would be "all right"; and this confidence was fully warranted by the results accomplished.

Early in September, 1864, the Confederate General, Wheeler, destroyed seven miles of road between Nashville and Murfreesboro', on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railway, and in the following December Hood destroyed eight miles of track and 530 ft. of bridges between the same stations; yet the arrangements of the Federal Construction Corps allowed of the repairs being carried out with such promptness that in each instance the trains were running again in a few days.

The Confederate attacks on the Western and Atlantic Railway, running from Chattanooga at Atlanta, a distance of 136 miles, were more continuous and more severe than on any other line of railway during the war; but, thanks again to the speed with which the repair and reconstruction work was done, the delays occasioned were, as a rule, of only a few hours, or, at the most, a few days' duration. One especially remarkable feat accomplished on this line was the rebuilding, in four and a half days, of the Chattahochee bridge, near Atlanta—a structure 780 ft. long, and 92 ft. high. Hood, the Confederate General, thought still further to check Sherman's communications by passing round the Federal army and falling upon the railway in its rear. He succeeded in tearing up two lengths of track, one of ten miles, and another of twenty-five miles, in extent, and destroying 250 ft. of bridges; but once more the work of restoration was speedily carried out, McCallum saying in reference to it:—

Fortunately the detachments of the Construction Corps which escaped were so distributed that even before Hood had left the road two strong working parties were at work, one at each end of the break at Big Shanty, and this gap of ten miles was closed, and the force ready to move to the great break of twenty-five miles in length, north of Resaca, as soon as the enemy had left it. The destruction by Hood's army of our depôts of supplies compelled us to cut nearly all the cross-ties required to relay this track and to send a distance for rails. The cross-ties were cut near the line of the road and many of them carried by hand to the track, as the teams to be furnished for hauling them did not get to the work until it was nearly complete. The rails used on the southern end of the break had to be taken up and brought from the railroads south of Atlanta, and those for the northern end were mostly brought from Nashville, nearly 200 miles distant.

Notwithstanding all the disadvantages under which the labour was performed, this twenty-five miles of track was laid, and the trains were running over it in seven and a half days from the time the work was commenced.

Concluding, however, that it would be unwise to depend on the railway during his further march to the sea, Sherman collected at Atlanta, by means of the restored lines, the supplies he wanted for 600,000 men, sent to the rear all the men and material no longer required, and then, before starting for Savannah, destroyed sixty miles of track behind him in so effectual a manner that it would be impossible for the Confederates—especially in view of their own great lack, at this time, of rails, locomotives and rolling stock—to repair and utilise the lines again in any attempted pursuit. It was, in fact, as much to his advantage now to destroy the railways in his rear as it had previously been to repair and rebuild them.

All through Georgia, for the 300 miles from Atlanta to Savannah (where he was able to establish communications with the Federal fleet), Sherman continued the same tactics of railway destruction; and he resumed them when his army, now divided into three columns, turned northward to effect a junction with Grant at Richmond.

On this northward march, also, there was no need for Sherman to make a direct attack on Charleston. By destroying about sixty miles of track in and around Branchville—a village on the South Carolina Railroad which formed a junction where the line from Charleston branched off in the directions of Columbia and Augusta respectively—one of Sherman's columns severed Charleston from all its sources of supply in the interior, and left the garrison with no alternative but to surrender. Commenting on this event, Vigo-Rouissillon remarks, in his "Puissance Militaire des États-Unis d'Amérique":—

Ainsi il avait suffi de la destruction ou de la possession de quelques kilomètres de chemin de fer pour amener la chute de ce boulevard de l'insurrection, qui avait si longtemps résisté aux plus puissantes flottes du Nord. Exemple frappant du rôle reservé dans nos guerres modernes à ce precieux et fragile moyen de communication.

In the aggregate, Sherman's troops destroyed hundreds of miles of railway track in their progress through what had previously been regarded as a veritable stronghold of the enemy's country; though meanwhile the Construction Corps had repaired and reopened nearly 300 miles of railway in North Carolina and had built a wharf, covering an area of 54,000 square feet, at the ocean terminus of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad in order both to facilitate Sherman's progress northwards, by the time of his reaching the lines in question, and to enable him to obtain supplies from the fleet. The railways, in fact, contributed greatly to the brilliant success of Sherman's campaign, and hence, also, to the final triumph of the Federal cause.

The total length of track laid or relaid by the Federal Construction Corps during the continuance of the war was 641 miles, and the lineal feet of bridges built or rebuilt was equal to twenty-six miles. The net expenditure, in respect alike to construction and transportation, incurred by the department in charge of the railways during their control by the Government for military purposes was close on $30,000,000.

From this time the interruption of railway communication became a recognised phase of warfare all the world over; and, not only have numerous treatises been written on the subject in various languages, but the creation of special forces to deal alike with the destruction and the restoration of railways has become an important and indispensable feature of military organisation. These matters will be dealt with more fully in subsequent chapters; but it may be of interest if reference is made here to the experiences of Mexico, as further illustrating the universality of practices with which, in her case, at least, no effective measures had been taken to deal.

"How Mexican Rebels Destroy Railways and Bridges" was told by Mr. G. E. Weekes in the Scientific American for September 13, 1913, and the subject was further dealt with by Major Charles Hine in a paper on "War Time Railroading in Mexico," read by him before the St. Louis Railway Club, on October 10, 1913. The term "rebels" applies, of course, in Mexico to the party that is against the particular President who is in office for the time being; and in the revolutionary period lasting from 1910 to 1913 the "rebels" of the moment found plenty to do in the way of destroying railways not only, as in other countries, in order to retard the advance of their pursuers, but, also, to spite the national Government, who control about two-thirds of the stock in the railways of the Republic.

Altogether, the mischief done by one party or the other during the period in question included the destruction of many hundreds of miles of track; the burning or the dynamiting of hundreds of bridges, according as these had been built of timber or of steel; and the wrecking of many stations and over 50 per cent. of the rolling stock on the national lines.

Concerning the methods adopted in the carrying out of this work, Mr. Weekes, who had the opportunity of seeing track and bridge destruction in full progress, says:—

Up to the past six months track destruction had been accompanied either by the use of a wrecking crane, which lifted sections of rails and ties (sleepers) bodily and piled them up ready for burning, or by the slower process of the claw-bar, wrench and pick. But a Constitutionalist expert devised a new system.

A trench is dug between two ties, through which a heavy chain is passed around two opposite rails and made fast in the centre of the track. To this one end of a heavy steel cable is hooked, the other end being made fast to the coupling on the engine pilot. At the signal the engineman starts his locomotive slowly backward, and as they are huge 220-ton "consolidations," with 22-inch by 30-inch cylinders, one can easily imagine that something has to give. And it does! The rails are torn loose from the spikes that hold them to the ties and are dragged closely together in the centre of the road bed. The ties are loosened from the ballast and dragged into piles, while in many cases the rails are badly bent and twisted by the force applied. A gang of men follows the engine, piling ties on top of the line and leaving others beneath them. These are then saturated with oil and a match applied. In a short time the ties are consumed and the rails left lying on the ground twisted and contorted into all sorts of shapes and of no further use until after they have been re-rolled.

As for the bridges, those of timber were saturated with oil and burned, while in the case of steel bridges rows of holes were bored horizontally in the lower part of the piers and charged with dynamite, which was then exploded by means of fuses connected with batteries of the type used in Mexican coal mines.

Another favourite method adopted for interfering with transportation by rail was that of attacking a train, compelling it to stop, taking possession of the locomotive, and burning the cars.

There is no suggestion by either of the authorities mentioned above of any well-organised Construction Corps in Mexico repairing damage done on the railway almost as quickly as it could be effected by the destroyers. Mr. Weekes believed, rather, that it would take years to restore the roads to the condition they were in before the rebellion against President Diaz, and he further declared that it would cost the national lines of Mexico many millions of dollars to replace the destroyed rolling stock, bridges, stations, etc.