The Leader's Personal Hazard In Wartime

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 169, 20 July 1942, Page 2

The Leader's Personal Hazard In Wartime

It could be said, I suppose, that as a rule the general stands in much less danger in battle than the private soldier. But the wound received by General Freyberg in the Libyan fighting is another of the casualties which seem to suggest that the risk for commanders of high rank has increased.

By Cyrano

If this is so it is because of two things—the greater fluidity of fighting compared with previous modern wars, and the development of the air arm. In the last war the trench dominated the battlefield, especially on the western front; advances were slow and shallow; and commanders could direct operations from some distance behind the lines in comparative safety. Caesar's Intervention In olden times a general was very close to his army. He was, indeed, in the battle line, and often in the forefront. He might lead an attack in person. Or if he stood a little apart, with his eye on the whole battle, he had to be ready to plunge into the fray and rally the line. Julius Caesar was perhaps never nearer a disastrous defeat than on that day in Gaul when the Nervii attacked his army as it was making camp. The attack was so unexpected that the men fought with their shields in their cases, without helmets, and in any company to which they happened to be near. "Caesar had everything to do at once," we are told. "Having given the necessary orders," he "went hither and thither, as chance directed, cheering the soldiers." Two legions, almost surrounded, were on the point of giving way. Caesar snatched a shield from a soldier and went into the fight. Calling the centurions by name, he restored order and reinspirited his men.

For centuries after the introduction of gunpowder, generals were still close up to the fighting line, and indeed in it. We find Napoleon in Italy, in his first campaign as a commander—the brilliance of which was perhaps not surpassed in any of his later achievements—behaving much as Caesar did. In the struggle for the bridge at Lodi, Napoleon directed operations in person, and by his conduct established that moral ascendancy over his soldiers which he never lost. Marlborough was nearly captured at Ramillies. His horse carried him out of a ring of French cavalrymen, but he was thrown when it jumped a ditch, and he had to run, encumbered by his jackboots, with the French in pursuit. When he mounted another horse, the officer holding his stirrup had his head taken off by a cannon ball. Craufurd, "brave and over-zealous," says a biographer, went into the breach at Ciudad Rodrigo with his Light Division, and received a mortal wound. At Waterloo most of Wellington's staff were killed or wounded. Kings in the Thick of It

There was the danger of the fall of a commander disheartening the troops, especially if the commander was the King. A well-known example is Harold at Hastings. That arrow made a vast amount of history. A commander, whether he was king or king's servant, had to balance this risk against the value of his own example. William 111. led his left wing across the river at the battle of the Boyne and, carrying his sword in his left hand because his right was stiff from a wound received the previous day, took his men to where the fight was thickest and decided the issue. He was implored "to return to some station from which he could give his orders without exposing a life so valuable to Europe," but he would not. That wound of William's illustrates very strikingly the difference between conditions now and in the days before weapons lengthened their range. When he reconnoitred the Irish position the day before the battle he was at times not much more than two hundred feet from the enemy. Then he sat down for breakfast in full view of the Irish. Naturally they sent for artillery, and a six-pound ball grazed William's shoulder. A few inches one way and the course of history might have been very different. In the last war, as I have said, the higher command was well behind the lines. This gave rise to Jokes. One concerned a negro in the American Army on the western front who lost his nerve and lit out for the rear. After a long run he was stopped by a general. "Good Lord, san," cried the soldier, "ah didn't know ah was as far back as that!" It has been said that if the high command had seen with its own eyes what the Passchendaele mud was like, that attack would not have been made, or, if begun, would not | have been pressed. This, however, was before the front had been stabilised. In the first battle of Ypres, when the last of the old regular army held the line against great odds, the headquarters of the first and second divisions were shelled. One general was badly wounded, another stunned, and six staff officers killed. A blow like this may well throw control into confusion. Equality at Sea Such a contingency may be more fatal at sea. The flagship is the brains of the line and a disaster there may alter the whole course of a battle. It did so in the RussoJapanese war, when in a situation not unfavourable to the Russians control was blotted out in a moment by two shells striking the Russian flagship. Everybody on the bridge or in the conning tower was killed or stunned and the steersman's body fell across the wheel and swung the ship out of the line in a circle, to the confusion of the fleet. Conditions at sea are very different from those on land. The company, fights in a confined space from which there is no escape and death to one may be death to all. The admiral is no more secure than the gunlayer. A hit in the vitals may send the whole racing fortress to destruction in a moment, with everybody in it. Cradock dlea with all his men at Coronel. Hood went down in the Invincible at Jutland. The great ship that bore his name and flew an admiral's flag disappeared in a flash in Greenland waters last year. Phillips lost his life in the Prince of Wales off Malaya. If generals as a class are in less danger than rank and file, remember the apprenticeship they have served. They have climbed the ladder by rubbing shoulders with death, and many of their comrades fell. No one knows how many possible Marlboroughs and Wellingtons were thus cut off.