Читать книгу The Rise of Rail-Power in War and Conquest, 1833-1914 - Edwin A. Pratt - Страница 8

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Curtailment of the efficiency of railways during war may be due to friend no less than to foe; and there have been occasions when, of the two, it is the friend who has caused the greater degree of trouble, hindrance and interruption.

These conditions have arisen mainly from three causes—(1) questions of control; (2) irregularities in the employment of railway material; and (3) absence or inadequacy of organisation for military rail-transport purposes.

When the use of railways becomes an essential factor in the conduct of war, it may appear only natural that the military authority charged with the duty of furthering or defending national interests should, through the Government concerned, have power to command the transport facilities of all railway lines the use of which may be necessary for the movement of troops or other military purposes.

Yet, while the soundness of the principle here involved is beyond dispute, there is much to be said as to the circumstances and conditions under which a military control of railways should be exercised.

It is, in the first place, especially necessary to bear in mind that the railway, as a means of transport, must needs be regarded from a point of view wholly different from that which would apply to ordinary roads. On the latter any sort of vehicle can be used, and there are, generally, alternative roads along which traffic can pass, in case of need. Railroads are not only available exclusively for vehicles constructed to run upon them, but the degree of their usefulness is limited by such considerations as the number of separate routes to a given destination; the important matters of detail as to whether the lines are single track or double track and whether they are on the level or have heavy gradients; the number of locomotives and the amount of rolling stock available; the extent of the station and siding accommodation; the provision or non-provision of adequate facilities for loading and unloading; and, in war time, the damage or destruction of a particular line or lines by the enemy. The amount of traffic it is possible to convey between certain points in a given time may thus be wholly controlled by the physical conditions of the railway concerned, and such conditions may be incapable of modification by the railway staffs, in case of a sudden emergency, however great their desire to do everything that is in their power.

In the next place, all these physical conditions may vary on different railway systems, and even on different sections of the same system. It does not, therefore, necessarily follow that military requirements which can be complied with on one line or in one district can be responded to as readily, if at all, under another and totally different set of conditions elsewhere; though it is conceivable that a military commander or officer who fails to realise this fact may, if he is left to deal direct with the railway people, become very angry indeed at non-compliance with his demands, and resent protests that what he asks for cannot be done at one place although it may have been done at another.

Then a railway must be regarded as a delicate piece of transportation machinery which can easily be thrown out of order, and is capable of being worked only by railwaymen as skilled in the knowledge of its mechanism, and as experienced in the details of its complicated operation, as military officers themselves are assumed to be in the technicalities of their own particular duties. The Chief Goods Manager of a leading line of railway who offered to take the place of a General at the seat of war would arouse much mirth in the Army at his own expense. It is, nevertheless, quite conceivable that the General would himself not be a complete success as a Chief Goods Manager. In the earliest days of railways it was assumed that the men best qualified both to manage them and to control the large staffs to be employed would be retired Army officers. This policy was, in fact, adopted for a time, though it was abandoned, after a fair trial, in favour of appointing as responsible railway officers men who had undergone training in the railway service, and were practically acquainted alike with its fundamental principles and its technical details.

In the operation of this delicate and complicated piece of machinery dislocation of traffic may result from a variety of causes, even when such operation is conducted by men of the greatest experience in railway working; but the risk, alike of blocks and interruptions and of accidents involving loss of life or destruction of valuable property must needs be materially increased if military commanders, or officers, themselves having no practical knowledge of railway working, and influenced only by an otherwise praiseworthy zeal for the interests of their own service, should have power either to force a responsible railwayman to do something which he, with his greater technical knowledge, knows to be impracticable, or to hamper and interfere with the working of the line at a time of exceptional strain on its resources.

Under, again, a misapprehension of the exact bearing of the principle of military control of railways for military operations in time of war, there was developed in various campaigns a tendency on the part of commanders and subordinate officers (1) to look upon railways and railwaymen as subject to their personal command, if not, even, to their own will, pleasure and convenience, so long as the war lasted; (2) to consider that every order they themselves gave should be at once carried out, regardless either of orders from other directions or of any question as to the possibility of complying therewith; and (3) to indulge in merciless denunciations, even if not in measures still more vigorous, when their orders have not been obeyed.

Apart from other considerations, all these things have a direct bearing on the efficiency of the railway itself as an instrument in the carrying on of warfare; and it is, therefore, a matter of essential importance to our present study to see how the difficulties in question had their rise, the development they have undergone, and the steps that have been taken to overcome or to guard against them.

It was once more in the American Civil War that the control problem first arose in a really acute degree.

The fundamental principle adopted for the operation of the railways taken possession of by the Federal Government for military purposes was that they should be conducted under orders issued by the Secretary of War or by Army commanders in or out of the field. It was for the Quartermaster's department to load all material upon the cars, to direct where such material should be taken, and to arrange for unloading and delivery; but because the Government had taken possession of the railways; because the Quartermaster's department was to discharge the duties mentioned; and because the railways were to be used during the war for the transport of troops and of Army supplies, therefore certain of the officers came to the conclusion that the whole operation of the particular lines in which they were concerned should be left either to themselves individually or to the Quartermaster's department.

Among those holding this view was General Pope, who, on taking over the command of the Rappahannock Division, on June 26, 1862, disregarded the position held by Herman Haupt as "Chief of Construction and Transportation" in that Division, gave him no instructions, and left him to conclude that the Army could get on very well without his assistance as a mere railwayman. Thereupon Haupt went home. Ten days afterwards he received from the Assistant-Secretary of War a telegram which said:—"Come back immediately. Cannot get on without you. Not a wheel moving." Haupt went back, and he found that, what with mismanagement of the lines and the attacks made on them by Confederates, not a wheel was, indeed, moving in the Division. His own position strengthened by his now being put in "exclusive charge of all the railways within the limits of the Army of Virginia," he was soon able to set the wheels running again; and from that time General Pope exercised a wise discretion in leaving the details of railway transportation to men who understood them.

Then there was a General Sturgis who, when Haupt called on him one day, received him with the intimation, "I have just sent a guard to your office to put you under arrest for disobedience of my orders in failing to transport my command." It was quite true. Haupt had failed to obey his orders. Sturgis wanted some special trains to convey 10,000 men, with horses and baggage, the short distance of eighteen miles. The railway was a single-track line; it had only a limited equipment of engines and cars; there was the prospect of further immediate requirements in other directions, and Haupt took the liberty of thinking that he had better keep his transportation for more pressing needs than a journey to a prospective battle-field only eighteen miles away—the more so as if the men were attacked whilst they were in the train they would be comparatively helpless, whereas if they were attacked when on the road—doing what amounted to no more than a single day's march—they would be ready for immediate defence. These considerations suggest that, of the two, the railwayman was a better strategist than the General.

Sturgis followed up his intimation to Haupt by taking military possession of the railway and issuing some orders which any one possessing the most elementary knowledge of railway operation would have known to be impracticable. Meanwhile Haupt appealed by telegraph to the Commander-in-Chief, who replied:—"No military officer has any authority to interfere with your control over railroad. Show this to General Sturgis, and, if he attempts to interfere, I will arrest him." Told what the Commander-in-Chief said in his message, Sturgis exclaimed, "He does, does he? Well, then, take your damned railroad!"

Haupt found it possible to put at the disposal of Sturgis, early the following morning, the transportation asked for; but at two o'clock in the afternoon the cars were still unoccupied. On the attention of Sturgis being called to this fact he replied that he had given his orders but they had been disobeyed. Thereupon the cars were withdrawn for service elsewhere—the more so since no other traffic could pass until they had been cleared out of the way. The net results of the General's interference was that traffic on the lines was deranged for twenty-four hours, and 10,000 men were prevented from taking part in an engagement, as they might have done had they gone by road.

Of the varied and almost unending irregularities which occurred in the working of the lines as military railways during the progress of the same war a few other examples may be given.

One prolific source of trouble was the detention or appropriation of trains by officers who did not think it necessary to communicate first with the Superintendent of the Line. A certain General who did inform the Superintendent when he wanted a train was, nevertheless, in the habit of keeping it waiting for several hours before he made his appearance, traffic being meanwhile suspended, in consequence.

Special consideration was even claimed for officers' wives, as well as for the officers themselves. On one occasion Haupt was much disturbed by the non-arrival of a train bringing supplies which were urgently wanted for a body of troops starting on a march, and he went along the line to see what had happened. Coming at last to the train, which had pulled up, he made inquiries of the engine-driver, who told him that he had received instructions to stop at a certain point so that an officer's wife, who was coming in the train to see her husband on the eve of an engagement, could go to a neighbouring town to look out for rooms for herself. At that moment the lady put in an appearance. She took her seat again and the train then proceeded; but her side-trip in search of rooms meant a delay of three hours alike for this one train and for three others following behind.

The impression seems to have prevailed, also, that officers were at liberty to make any use of the trains they pleased for the conveyance of their own belongings. To check the abuses thus developed, Haupt was compelled to issue, on June 25, 1862, the following notice:—

Assistant Quartermasters and Commissaries are positively forbidden to load on to cars on any of the Military Railroads of the Department of the Rappahannock any freights which are not strictly and properly included in Quarter and Commissary stores. They shall not load or permit to be loaded any articles for the private use of officers, or other persons, whatever their rank or position.

Officers, again, there were who, regardless of all traffic considerations, would order a train to pull up at any point they thought fit along the main line in order that they could examine the passes and permits of the passengers, instead of doing this at a terminal or other station. In still another instance a paymaster adopted as his office a box car standing on a main line. He placed in it a table, some chairs, a money-chest and his papers—finding it either more comfortable or more convenient than a house alongside—and proceeded with the transaction of all his Army business in the car. Invited to withdraw, on the ground that he was holding up the traffic, he refused to leave, and he persisted in his refusal until troops were called up to remove his things for him.

Defective arrangements in regard to the forwarding of supplies were another cause of traffic disorganisation. The railwayman made from time to time the most strenuous efforts in getting to the extreme front large consignments of articles either in excess of requirements or not wanted there at all. After blocking the line for some days, the still-loaded cars might be sent back again, no fewer than 142 of such cars being returned on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in the course of a single day. If the excessive supplies so sent were unloaded at the front, they might have to be loaded into the cars again when the Army moved; or, as was frequently the case in exposed positions, they might be seized or destroyed by the enemy. Under a well-organised system an adequate stock of supplies would, of course, have been kept in stores or on sidings at some point in the rear, only such quantities being forwarded to the advanced front as were really needed.

At the railway stations there were frequent disputes between the responsible officers as to which should have the first use of such troop trains as were available, and Haupt found it necessary to ask the Commander-in-Chief to delegate some one who would decide in what order the troops should be forwarded.

Much trouble arose because, in their anxiety to send off as many wounded as they could, medical officers detained their trains for such periods as dislocated the service, instead of despatching at schedule time the men they had ready, and then asking for an extra train for the remainder.

In other respects, also, the arrangements for the transport of the sick and wounded were defective. Telegraphing on this subject to the Assistant Secretary of War on August 22, 1862, Haupt said:—

I fear that I may be compelled to-night to do what may appear inhuman—turn out the sick in the street. Doctors will persist in sending sick, often without papers, to get them off their hands, and we cannot send forward the troops if we must run our trains to Washington with sick to stand for hours unloaded. My first care is to send forward troops, next forage and subsistence.

Still more serious were the irregularities due to delays in the unloading of trucks and the return of empties. The amount of rolling stock available was already inadequate to meet requirements; but the effect of the shortage was rendered still worse by reason of these delays, due, in part, to the too frequent insufficiency of the force available for unloading a train of supplies with the expedition that should have been shown, and in part to the retention of the cars for weeks together as storehouses; though the main cause, perhaps, was the inability of military men, inexperienced in railway working, to appreciate, as railwaymen would do, the need of getting the greatest possible use out of rolling stock in times of emergency, and not allowing it to stand idle longer than absolutely necessary.

How such delays interfered with the efficiency of the railways was indicated in one of Haupt's oft-repeated protests, in which he wrote:—

If all cars on their arrival at a depôt are immediately loaded or unloaded and returned, and trains are run to schedule, a single-track road, in good order and properly equipped, may supply an army of 200,000 men when, if these conditions are not complied with, the same road will not supply 30,000.

On July 9, 1863, he telegraphed to General M. C. Meigs:—

I am on my way to Gettysburg again. Find things in great confusion. Road blocked; cars not unloaded; stores ordered to Gettysburg—where they stand for a long time, completely preventing all movement there—ordered back without unloading; wounded lying for hours without ability to carry them off. All because the simple rule of promptly unloading and returning cars is violated.

As for the effect of all these conditions on the military situation as a whole, this is well shown in the following "Notice," which, replying to complaints that railwaymen had not treated the military officers with proper respect, Haupt addressed "To agents and other employés of the United States Military Railroad Department":—

While conscious of no disposition to shield the employés or agents of the Military Railroads from any censure or punishment that is really merited, justice to them requires me to state that, so far, examination has shown that complaints against them have been generally without proper foundation, and, when demands were not promptly complied with, the cause has been inability, arising from want of proper notice, and not indisposition.

Officers at posts entrusted with the performance of certain local duties, and anxious, as they generally are, to discharge them efficiently, are not always able, or disposed, to look beyond their own particular spheres. They expect demands on railway agents to be promptly complied with, without considering that similar demands, at the same time, in addition to the regular train service and routine duties, may come from Quartermasters, Commissaries, medical directors, surgeons, ordnance officers, the Commanding General, the War Department and from other sources. The Military Railroads have utterly failed to furnish transportation to even one-fifth of their capacity when managed without a strict conformity to schedule and established rules. Punctuality and discipline are even more important to the operation of a railroad than to the movement of an army; and they are vital in both.

It is doubtful if even the Confederate raiders and wreckers had, by their destructive tactics, diminished the efficiency of the Union railways to the extent of the four-fifths here attributed to the irregularities and shortcomings of the Federals themselves. The clearest proof was thus afforded that, if the new arm in warfare which rail-power represented was to accomplish all it was capable of doing, it would have to be saved from friends quite as much as from foes.

Haupt, as we have seen, suffered much from officers during the time he was connected with the Military Railroads in Virginia. He had the sympathetic support of the Commander-in-Chief, who telegraphed to him on one occasion (August 23, 1862), "No military officer will give any orders to your subordinates except through you, nor will any of them attempt to interfere with the running of trains"; and, also, of the Assistant Secretary of War, who sought to soothe him in a message which said:—"Be patient as possible with the Generals. Some of them will trouble you more than they will the enemy." But the abuses which arose were so serious that, in the interest of the military position itself, they called for a drastic remedy; and this was provided for by the issue of the following Order:—

War Department,

Adjutant-General's Office,

Washington,

November 10, 1862.

Special Order.

Commanding officers of troops along the United States Military Railroads will give all facilities to the officers of the road and the Quartermasters for loading and unloading cars so as to prevent any delay. On arrival at depôts, whether in the day or night, the cars will be instantly unloaded, and working parties will always be in readiness for that duty, and sufficient to unload the whole train at once.

Commanding officers will be charged with guarding the track, sidings, wood, water tanks, etc., within their several commands, and will be held responsible for the result.

Any military officer who shall neglect his duty in this respect will be reported by the Quartermasters and officers of the railroad, and his name will be stricken from the rolls of the Army.

Depôts will be established at suitable points under the direction of the Commanding General of the Army of the Potomac, and properly guarded.

No officer, whatever may be his rank, will interfere with the running of the cars, as directed by the superintendent of the road. Any one who so interferes will be dismissed from the service for disobedience of orders.

By order of the Secretary of War.

J. C. Kelton.

Commenting on this Order, General McCallum says in his report that it was issued "in consequence of several attempts having been made to operate railroads by Army or departmental commanders which had, without exception, proved signal failures, disorganising in tendency and destructive of all discipline"; and he proceeds:—

Having had a somewhat extensive railroad experience, both before and since the rebellion, I consider this Order of the Secretary of War to have been the very foundation of success; without it the whole railroad system, which had proved an important element in conducting military movements, would have been, not only a costly but ludicrous failure. The fact should be understood that the management of railroads is just as much a distinct profession as is that of the art of war, and should be so regarded.

In Europe, Germany and Austria-Hungary were the first countries to attempt to solve problems that seemed to go to the very foundations of the practical usefulness of rail-transport in war. Various exhaustive studies thereon were written by railway or military authorities, and it may be of interest here to refer, more especially, to the views expressed by an eminent German authority, Baron M. M. von Weber, in "Die Schulung der Eisenbahnen," published in 1870.[7]

Railway irregularities peculiar to war service were stated by this writer to be mainly of three kinds:—(i) Delays from unsatisfactory arrangements of the service and from the misemployment of rolling stock; (ii) temporary interruption of traffic owing to the crowding of transport masses at the stations or sidings; (iii) unsuitableness of the stations and conveyances for the required military services. The special reasons for the first of these causes he defined as (a) the absence of sufficient mutual comprehension between the military and the railway officials; (b) the strict limitation of the efficiency of individual railway authorities to their own lines only; (c) the ignorance of the entire staff of each line with regard to the details and service regulations of the neighbouring lines; and (d) the impracticability of employing certain modes of carrying on business beyond the circuit to which they belong. It should, however, be borne in mind that these criticisms of authorities and their staffs relate to the conditions of the German railway system in 1870, at which time, as told by H. Budde, in "Die französischen Eisenbahnen im Kriege 1870-71," there were in Germany fifteen separate Directions for State railways; five Directions of private railways operated by the State; and thirty-one Directions of private railways operated by companies—a total of fifty-one controlling bodies which, on an average, operated only 210 miles of line each.

On the general question von Weber observed:—

The value in practice of mutual intelligence between military and railway officials has hitherto been far too slightly regarded.

Demands for services from military authorities, impracticable from the very nature of railways in general or the nature of the existing lines in particular, have occasioned confusion and ill-will on the part of the railway authorities and conductors. On the other hand the latter have frequently declared services to be impracticable which were really not so.

All this has arisen because the two parties in the transaction have too little insight into the nature and mechanism of their respective callings, and regard their powers more as contradictory than co-operative, so that they do not, and cannot, work together.

If, on the contrary, the nature of the railway service, with its modifications due to differences in the nature of the ground, the locality, and the organisation of transport requirements, is apparent to the military officer, even in a general way; if he appreciates the fact that the same amount of transport must be differently performed when he passes from a level line to a mountain line, from a double line to a single line, from one where the signal and telegraph system are in use to one in which these organs of safety and intelligence are destroyed; if he can judge of the capability of stations, the length of track, and arrangements for the loading, ordering and passing of trains, etc., he will, with this knowledge, and his orders being framed in accordance with it, come much sooner and with greater facility to an understanding with the railway executives than if his commands had to be rectified by contradiction and assertion, frequently carried on under the influence of excited passions, or attempted to be enforced by violence.

The railway official, also, who has some acquaintance with military science, who understands from practical experience and inspection, not confined to his own line, the capabilities of lines and stations in a military point of view, will, at his first transaction with the military authorities, enter sooner into an understanding with them than if he were deficient in this knowledge, and will find himself in a position to co-operate, and not be coerced.

Here the suggestion seems to be that the individual Army officer and the individual railway executive, or railway official, should each become sufficiently acquainted with the technicalities of the other's business to be able to conduct their relations with mutual understanding. It would, however, be too much to expect that this plan could be carried out as regards either the military element in general or the railway element in general.

The real need of the situation was, rather, for some intermediary organisation which, including both elements, would provide the machinery for close co-operation between the Army on the one side and the railway on the other, guiding the Army as to the possibilities and limitations of the railway, and constituting the recognised and sole medium through which orders from the Army would be conveyed to the railway, no individual commander or officer having the right to give any direct order to the railway executives or staffs on his own responsibility, or to interfere in any way with the working of the railways, except in some such case of extreme emergency as an attack by the enemy on a railway station.

All these problems were to form the subject of much more controversy, together with much further practical experience, in various other countries—and notably in France during the war of 1870-71—before, as will be told in due course, they were solved by the adoption of elaborate systems of organisation designed to provide, as far as possible, for all contingencies.