Fighting in woods and forests is a very special form of war. Avoided by military commanders unless such terrain is to their advantage, for soldiers forest battles are a chaotic mix of dread, determination, and, all too often, death. Adversaries remain in constant fear of concealed ambush, casualties usually must be abandoned, and prisoners who cannot be guarded are killed. Heightened fear can lead to excesses. Too often, armies have been badly prepared and trained for such warfare and have suffered severely for it. In Warfare in Woods and Forests, noted military historian Anthony Clayton describes major events in woods and forest warfare from the first century CE to the 21st. These events involve Roman soldiers in Germany 2,000 years ago; North Americans in 18th- and 19th-century conflicts; invaders of Russia in 1812 and 1941; British, French, and Americans in France in 1916 and 1918; Americans in the Hürtgen Forest in 1944; and modern-day Russian soldiers in Chechnya.
Fighting in woods and forests is a very special form of war. Avoided by military commanders unless such terrain is to their advantage, for soldiers forest battles are a chaotic mix of dread, determination, and, all too often, death. Adversaries remain in constant fear of concealed ambush, casualties usually must be abandoned, and prisoners who cannot be guarded are killed. Heightened fear can lead to excesses. Too often, armies have been badly prepared and trained for such warfare and have suffered severely for it. In Warfare in Woods and Forests, noted military historian Anthony Clayton describes major events in woods and forest warfare from the first century CE to the 21st. These events involve Roman soldiers in Germany 2,000 years ago; North Americans in 18th- and 19th-century conflicts; invaders of Russia in 1812 and 1941; British, French, and Americans in France in 1916 and 1918; Americans in the Hürtgen Forest in 1944; and modern-day Russian soldiers in Chechnya.
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Overview
Fighting in woods and forests is a very special form of war. Avoided by military commanders unless such terrain is to their advantage, for soldiers forest battles are a chaotic mix of dread, determination, and, all too often, death. Adversaries remain in constant fear of concealed ambush, casualties usually must be abandoned, and prisoners who cannot be guarded are killed. Heightened fear can lead to excesses. Too often, armies have been badly prepared and trained for such warfare and have suffered severely for it. In Warfare in Woods and Forests, noted military historian Anthony Clayton describes major events in woods and forest warfare from the first century CE to the 21st. These events involve Roman soldiers in Germany 2,000 years ago; North Americans in 18th- and 19th-century conflicts; invaders of Russia in 1812 and 1941; British, French, and Americans in France in 1916 and 1918; Americans in the Hürtgen Forest in 1944; and modern-day Russian soldiers in Chechnya.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253005533 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/07/2011 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 168 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Anthony Clayton is a retired official of the British Colonial Government of Kenya, former Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and former Associate Lecturer at the University of Surrey. He is author of 15 books including Paths of Glory: The French Army, 1914–1918; The British Officer: Leaders of the Army from 1660 to the Present; and Defeat: When Nations Lose a War.
Read an Excerpt
Warfare in Woods and Forests
By Anthony Clayton
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2012 Anthony ClaytonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-35688-8
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Army commanders at any level from general to lieutenant do not like woods or forests. No one knows for certain who or what may be concealed among the trees: ambushes, regiments preparing for a sudden flank attack, stay-behind special forces or other units tasked to strike at an advancing army's rear guard, lines of logistic support, or just simply concealed observation posts watching and reporting their adversary's movements from the forest's edge. Until very recently, inside a forest all the advantages have lain with the defender even if his force is much smaller, provided he has made a careful plan and pre-positioned and concealed his men. An attacker is likely to find it exceedingly difficult to reconnoiter, and later to retain control of his men, particularly if the forest has thick undergrowth; his attack will lose vital momentum. Perhaps as few as one hundred yards into a wood, soldiers may lose sight of one another and their officers, sometimes also losing their own sense of direction. Traditional fire and movement tactics become impossible to control and coordinate. When brought under fire soldiers will run for cover, no longer keeping in line. Some, in fright, may well decide not to advance any farther or to retreat to safety. Terrifying noise may prevent shouted or even bugle orders from being heard. Among trees, radio signals equipment may deaden or not function at all. Flat trajectory weapons fired by either side will be deflected, malfunction, or send splinters flying dangerously. If forests are large, maintaining basic food and water supplies for an attacking army can soon become a serious problem, especially in extreme cold or heat. Unless there are roads, tracks, or beaten paths, the use of wheeled vehicles from chariots to tanks is nearly always impossible in woods; horses may be of more use. Tracks can also be easily blocked. Most frightening of all is the sudden unnerving appearance of enemy soldiers from behind trees or from undergrowth inflicting heavy casualties, perhaps encircling small groups of attackers.
Thus, if circumstances permit, a wise commander will try to avoid being led into a forest battle. Alternatively, again if ground conditions are suitable, he may try to use the locations of woods or forests to maneuver his opponent's forces into fighting on more open ground of his own choice. A defender will do the same, and either side may consider other possible uses of woods or forests on the edges of the main battleground. Nevertheless, as this book shall establish, operations within big woods or forests from the age of spears, pikes, and lances to the age of helicopters and heat-detection equipment have been necessary. They form a particular and costly form of warfare meriting as much special study as urban or desert fighting. Only comparable in any way is jungle warfare, but even here there are differences to be noted shortly.
Last but by no means least, forests can provide timber for a whole variety of military purposes: forts and strong points, bridges, pit props to strengthen trench systems, and material for creating obstacles to prevent the movement of men, wagons, vehicles, and later tanks. Peculiar to forest warfare was the abatti, a barrier of tree trunks, pointed at their ends, facing an enemy.
The chapters that follow consider wood and forest battles both large and small in different periods over the last two thousand years in Europe and North America. Generally the smaller the wood, the easier the battle, and the larger the forest, the more difficult. In each age the fighting has taken three main forms: battles of formations or units within woods and forests, the much more common use of woods for the mounting of flank attacks or for refuge in adversity, and irregular or forest-based guerrilla operations. Where experience of forest fighting has led to theoretical writings or doctrines within the period covered by the chapter, these are summarized. For example, some academics, usually Marxist, have argued that guerrilla warfare demonstrates the essential union of front and rear. Forest warfare, however, has generally been treated by both theorists and peacetime staff officers and military planners as the ugly stepchild, with soldiers only rarely trained properly for it.
Further, until the mid-eighteenth century, with the exception of the citizen soldiers of Switzerland, armies were ill-equipped for forest warfare. Few commanders had any relevant experience. In addition, there was an absence of what is now called "topographical intelligence"; either nobody knew or thought to bother about collecting such information. Maps that showed useful details of roadways and villages would vaguely show forest areas colored green but with little or no detail. As late as the First and Second World Wars, prewar picture postcards were sometimes the only material available.
A wide variety of topographical factors, however, have greatly influenced all forest fighting. Among these factors has been the strategic or tactical importance of a particular forest or wood; its size, its shape, the age of its trees and their general condition, and undergrowth such as bracken; whether the area was on flat or hilly land or on solid, swampy, or rocky ground; whether the edges of the wooded area were neatly defined with open ground in front or whether there were spurs of trees or saplings running out into brushwood; the weather, the seasons, and the colors of the year (particularly affecting deciduous forests); the heights and thickness of the trees, big trees offering concealment for two or three defenders preparing an ambush; the forest's density effect on humidity and light or a forest gloom, and, in war, the ability to fire artillery shells effectively within the forest; any significant animal life; and, finally, the existence of possible passages through the forest, single- or double-track roads, paths, glades, rides, or clearings that could facilitate the movement of light artillery, cavalry, and later armor or infantry. In some cases, one or more local conditions could make a forest virtually impassable, even for a foot soldier; in others, known tracks and paths could suddenly become impassable following a heavy rainstorm—or a brokendown vehicle. Tanks and bulldozers can clear smaller trees, but a resulting foliage pileup may impede or block further progress. Maintaining supplies, food, fodder for horses or fuel for vehicles, and ammunition, as well as evacuating casualties and guarding any prisoners taken, quickly become acute problems. Few commanders will opt to add to these difficulties with the risk of a forest battle at night. All these factors had to be borne in mind by commanders leading an attack. A commander might have to commit many more men to clear a forest area than the defender had deployed—a calculation to be set against the overall correlation of forces in the area.
Many of these elements appear, of course, in jungle warfare, generally in magnified forms such as the conditions of a tropical climate, medical problems, the day-to-day health of the expatriate soldiers, and even greater logistic and supply problems. But overall the biggest difference remains the huge size of historic battle areas which may be almost nationwide, such as Burma, Malaya, and Indonesia, far larger than the biggest forest areas of Europe or even North America. These, paradoxically, provide an advantage to the attacker, as the defender is unsure of his opponent's plans and priorities—this in contrast to the defender's advantage in smaller-scale woods or forests. The difference, of course, is much less in jungle areas such as Vietnam, where conditions were at times comparable to those in Europe.
In certain campaigns armies that arrived on the scene of a forest operation created new units in the light of their experience, using knowledgeable foreign officers when necessary and available. These units then had to be equipped with special uniforms and weapons. At the end of the campaign, however, such units often found themselves absorbed into their nation's line infantry with little or no recognition of their earlier skills; the British King's Royal Rifle Corps, founded as the Royal American Regiment, and the Light Infantry battalions and regiments are examples. Weapons, communication, and supply facilities for forest warfare were also rarely maintained during peacetime, requiring a nation to improvise when it later became necessary. One notable exception to this was Finland's army in 1939. In contrast to this absence of prewar preparation and wartime improvisation and development is the growth of effective forest-based partisan warfare, the most striking example being the Soviet Union in its 1941–45 war. Yet modern, hightech land warfare developments post-1945 have almost certainly reduced many of the traditional advantages held by defenders against attackers unless the defenders' own forces have been equipped with equally modern counter-technology protection. The opposing technologies are summarized in chapter 9.
Finally, as readers shall soon come to see, the theoretical writing on forest warfare over time has sometimes developed into doctrine. The first genuinely clear analysis and instructions appeared in the eighteenth century, with others following in the nineteenth century. Yet, with regard to Europe and North America, little theoretical writing emerged in the twentieth century, primarily because the rapid advance of air and armor technology bypassed the need for theory, just as tanks and aircraft can sweep by or over wooded areas. Perhaps only the guerrilla and his opponent are now likely to wage war from woodland or forest.
CHAPTER 2Warfare before Firearms
TEUTOBURGER WALD
The first decade of the first millennium AD saw a violent forest battle that was to have great significance for Western Europe. In this battle, in a forest near Osnabrück in western Germany, an army of the Roman Empire planning to make the river Elbe, further east, an imperial boundary suffered a catastrophic defeat.
At this time, AD 9, the Roman garrison in western Germany consisted of five legions, each just under four thousand well-trained men supported by some ten thousand local auxiliaries, supply personnel, laborers, and camp followers of every kind. Each legion was composed of infantry cohorts of eighty men, and some also had a small number of horsemen. Each legion infantry man was armed with a short sword for stabbing, a dagger, and a javelin-throwing spear. For protection, he carried a large curved shield made of layers of wood covered in felt, with armor covering his body from the neck to just above the knees, and a helmet. This equipment, cumbersome and heavy, was designed for close-quarter fighting in open country; it was to prove a serious disadvantage in a forest.
In the summer of AD 9 three of the five legions under the command of Publius Quintilius Varus, an officer both inefficient and ineffective, had been asserting a Roman presence in the Minden area. Under cover of service with the auxiliaries was a German Cheruscan nobleman, Arminius, who, for both nationalist and personal reasons, was planning an uprising against the Romans. The three legions, the XVII, XVIII, and XIX, were planning to retire to winter quarters on the Lippe River when a small local uprising broke out near the Weser River. Arminius persuaded Varus to deal with the uprising by passing through the Teutoburger Wald, a rough terrain of ridges and defiles where the hills were covered with thick forest, mainly oak. Varus was warned against Arminius and advised to avoid the area, but he refused to alter his plans. Consequently he fell into a trap set by Arminius who knew the area well. Arminius led the march at the outset but soon defected, accompanied by many of the auxiliaries, to join the insurgents.
Varus had no concept of topographical intelligence, in this case a matter of leading the legions through dense forest along a steep narrow track in conditions made even worse by heavy rain, strong wind, and fallen trees. Arminius, who had rallied a very large number to his cause, perhaps as many as fifty thousand German tribesmen, fell first upon detachments sent out by Varus to deal with the uprising; these were massacred. He next attacked the main column, its movements carefully watched by men in the forest. The attack was launched from all sides—on the advance guard trying to prepare a road for the wagons, on the flank guards, and, finally, on the rear guard and those of the followers who had not defected or fled into the forest. The Romans, in reply, followed their standard operational procedure and hurriedly build an earthwork fort only to become surrounded.
Arminius, however, was well acquainted with Roman methods and, rather than mount a siege, he let them attempt, on the next day, to march out. Varus, who had been wounded, tried to lead the march but was met by a barrier of fallen trees, forcing the Romans back to their earthwork fort after suffering heavy casualties. The more mobile, fast-moving Germans simply threw crude darts and spears at the heavily encumbered legion infantrymen as they stumbled around. Heavy rainfall increased the weight of the felt on the Romans' shields. Arminius apparently also knew where to strike to cause the greatest confusion, namely, the boundary lines between the three legions and the horsemen. Wounded by spears and darts, the horses plunged back into the infantry throwing their riders. The Germans quickly took control at the fort, storming the trench and log defenses and cutting down the Roman soldiers with their broadswords. Varus ordered the legions to retreat, but, in the forest, the cohorts soon split up, the commanders having lost control in the broken ground and dense forest. Fighting became that of isolated groups struggling for their lives, as mass numbers of Germans emerged from the hills to attack with the utmost ferocity against which the terrified legion soldiers were powerless. Heavy shields and body armor could not protect the whole body against the hailstorm of German darts and spears. Varus himself committed suicide. An attempt by the remaining horsemen to escape was also halted, the horses losing their footing among the trees and stumps. The few survivors were enslaved or tortured, or both, and the officers were sacrificed to the gods. Rome lost at least seventeen thousand legion soldiers and auxiliaries in a battle they probably would have won had it been fought in open ground. The battle itself set the pattern—one of dread, determination, and death—for many forest battles to follow.
The certain result of this battle was that the Romans could no longer assert any lasting control of Germany across the Rhine, and they soon abandoned any efforts to do so. In Rome the aged Emperor Augustus was frequently heard to lament, "Vare, Vare, Redde legiones" ("Varus, Varus, give me back my legions"). The victory, later perceived by German nationalists as one of proto-nationalism, is celebrated in German history, with thousands of German boys over the centuries being named Hermann. The argument has also been advanced that the failure of the Romans to make Germany a Roman province set a precedent for the future. Germany was now destined to be different from the other post-1648 Westphalian nations, and it was thought that the Romans would have prevented the AngloSaxon migration to Britain. Nevertheless, Teutoburger Wald was sufficiently decisive without historical might-have-beens.
MONS GRAUPIUS
Rome learned two lessons from the Teutoburger wars. One was strategic: to base the expansion of the empire's frontiers on a profit or loss basis and not to overstretch. The other was the importance of selecting able generals. Tacitus describes the very competent Gnaius Julius Agricola before and during the battle of Mons Graupius in Scotland (the precise location is disputed) in AD 83. Addressing his soldiers before the battle, Agricola admitted that he lacked "exact local knowledge" but urged his two legions onward: "We have our hands and our swords in them and, with this, we have all that matters." After repelling Briton attacks on his legions and using his auxiliary infantry and cavalry, Agricola turned his attention on the Britons who had fled into the woods:
Agricola was everywhere at once. He ordered the cohorts to rally, discard their equipment, and ring the woods like hunters. Where the woods were dense, dismounted cavalry went in to scour them; where they were thinner, the cavalry did the work. But the Britons, when they saw our ranks steady and firm and the pursuit beginning again, simply turned and ran. They no longer kept any formation or any touch with one another but deliberately broke into small groups to reach their far and trackless retreats. Only night and exhaustion ended the pursuit. Of the enemy some 10,000 fell, on our side 360.
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Foreword by General Charles Guthrie, former Chief of Defence Staff (UK)
Preface
1. Introduction
2. Warfare before Firearms
3. Early Modern Warfare 1500-1713
4. The Eighteenth Century. New Irregular Challenges
5. 1815-1914 Towards Later Modern Warfare
6. The First World War 1914-1917
7. The First World War 1918
8. The Second World War 1939-1945
9. Post 1945 and Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index
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An important contribution to military history. It brings together and synthesizes in a concise and well-written text information from a very large array of sources. The book will be extremely valuable to military historians, professional soldiers, and others.