Means To An End

The fighting-man, at sea or on the land, is entitled not only to a worthwhile cause, but to an intelligent plan. Brains behind the brawn constitute a sine qua non of victory. But a plan, however perfectly devised, dies still-born unless its overriding purpose and the details of its intended execution can be made fully known to those whose business it will be to carry it to success. It is equally essential that its subsequent prosecution should be subject to control by the Commander and Staff responsible for the original conception.

This is, primarily, a matter of communications, of that technical system of transmitting orders which, in war, acts in much the same way as the human nerves which convey to the limbs the actions demanded of them by the brain.

In a social sense, so the proverb gives assurance, “evil communications corrupt good manners.” In warfare evil communications—i.e., inefficient communications—stultify the chance of victory and open the way to defeat. Moreover, their importance has been greatly enhanced by the monstrously swollen proportions that modern warfare has come to assume.

The tightly closed-up phalanx adopted by the early Greeks, Macedonians, Dardanians, and Romans lent itself to close control by the commander on the field of action and set the pattern for that intimate battle- direction by “the man on a horse” which persisted, with only trifling modification, until the days of Wellington and Waterloo. That was, incidentally, the last occasion on which rival Commanders-in-Chief got a clear glimpse of each other in action, personally directing the fortunes of the day right up behind their respective firing lines.

But while the direction of battle could be achieved by personal control and the transmission of a few verbal orders through the mouths of fleetly-mounted “gallopers,” the movement of troops in process of assembly or on the line of march demanded a somewhat more elaborate mechanism. Polybius (circa 205-123 B.C.) makes mention of military signalling with torches; while according to Agamemnon similar means announced the fall of Troy to the Greek blockading fleet.

So far as the Western world was concerned, visual signals undoubtedly preceded sound signals; but the exact reverse is true of the Eastern peoples. So early as 500 B.C. the Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu, laid it down that, “On the field of battle the spoken word does not carry far enough; hence it is necessary that you should make use of gongs and drums.” Drums and cymbals were employed both by Persians and Saracens as a means of transmitting battle orders; the trumpet being added later on the strength of its resonant and penetrating note.

For that matter, the original purpose of the military band was to signal the position of the rallying point to broken and scattered troops. For when the dust and smother of conflict had become so thick as to obscure the large silken flags upon which the rank and file were accustomed to reform their disordered array, it was the responsibility of the instrumentalists to “make a great noise and tumult of sounds” as an indication of the battle-standard’s whereabouts. This ancient tradition died so hard, indeed, that so late as 1655 we find Admiral Popham writing to Cromwell’s General-at-Sea, Robert Blake, for fleet trumpeters in general and for “a complete noise, trumpets, drums, clashpans [cymbals] and hautboys” for the flagship—not primarily for musical but rather for signalling purposes, as was well understood.

In the West the whole problem had its genesis in the introduction, as a propellent, of “that villaneous saltpetre . . . digg’d out of the bowels of the harmless earth,” whose discharge was accompanied by a literal “fog of war”¹ even more impenetrable than the whirling clouds of sand peculiar to the East. In consequence, visual signals gave place, in battle, to a variety of aural means of communicating orders. Even so, the progress of an engagement would frequently be halted through the sheer inability of the rival combatants to see their targets. In the 18th century ship of the line, for example, so heavy and opaque was the smoke billowing along the gun-deck that the gun-crews, unable to see beyond the muzzles of their pieces, had no option but to stand back from their weapons—spluttering, hawking, and spitting —until the smother had partially cleared. It was a moment, incidentally, when limes and oranges were avidly in demand, as the best means of clearing the throat of the acrid, choking powder fumes. On one occasion, during an encounter between Blake and the Dutch under Tromp, “the navy boatswains had the vanity to put up Dutch vanes, which in time of fight proved mischievous, several English ships of war firing at one another, when they could only see the vanes for smoke, taking them to be Dutch.”

Not that conditions were much better on land. For even so late as Waterloo one of the participants in the engagement was heard to sum up the day’s experiences in the following uncompromising terms: “I’m hanged if I know anything at all about the matter, for I was all day blinded by smoke, trodden in the mud, and galloped over by every scoundrel who had a horse; and that’s all I could see of it.”

In general terms, however, it seems clear that maritime signalling lagged behind even the primitive systems of inter-communication devised for use on land. It is on record, for example, that no attempt was made to control the development of events at the decisive battle of Actium, fought out in the September of 31 B.C.

The preconcerted plan was for the squadrons of Marc Antony’s Asiatic and Egyptian allies to follow him into action and intervene only after the heavy quinquaremes had put the van of the rival fleet, commanded by Octavian, decisively out of action. But Octavian, using the rams of his handier craft to sheer away the sweeps by which Marc Antony’s unwieldy vessels were propelled, succeeded in neutralizing the initial stroke, although not without loss. This was the moment for Marc Antony to signal crisp orders for the Egypto-Asian vessels to join promptly in the general melee, while the enemy fleet was scattered and incapable of speedily regaining formation. But no such signal was made, since no system for the transmission of instructions during battle had been devised.²

In effect, once the pre-encounter directive had been circulated, no means existed of issuing those fresh instructions rendered necessary by unforeseen developments in the course of the fight. Lacking the stimulus to dutifulness embodied in clear, imperative commands, Marc Antony’s Egypto-Asian allies took counsel of their fears and headed the flight across the Mediterranean which brought their defeated leader to disgrace and ultimate self-destruction.

If a peremptory signal had succeeded in bringing the very considerable force lying in the offing to Marc Antony’s reinforcement, the whole history of the world might well have taken an entirely different course.

Imperial Rome was the first great colonizer, garrisoning her far-flung dependencies with veterans who had once served in the crack Legions, and with auxilia recruited into the Roman service from among the native population. In England, as in some parts of Eastern Gaul, the butter was spread remarkably thin; and means had to be devised whereby the seat of government in Londinium (London) could be kept in touch with the local commands at Camalo- dunum (Colchester), Verulanium (St. Albans) and Eburachium (York). Uninterrupted contact with the last-named was essential, since Eburachium was the garrison town for “the Wall”—Hadrian’s famous wall, erected as a barrier to halt the raids of those turbulent cattle rustlers, the Piets and Scots.

Even with the straight road the Roman engineers had driven up hill and down dale, right across country from south to north, the hundred and ninety-four miles which separated Eburachium from Londinium took dangerously long to traverse in times of emergency. So a series of relay posts, carefully sighted on hill-tops, well within view of each other, were instituted and garrisoned along the entire length of the Great North Road. From these coigns of vantage highly burnished shields flashed visual messages in a code that must in many ways have resembled “Morse.” In favorable weather easily intelligible symbols enabled a military message to be passed on from the Wall to Rome in a little more than thirty hours, including transmission across the Channel.

This Roman method of signalling was, of course, an intelligent anticipation of the heliograph, the device which flashed a message by reflecting the sun’s rays from a mirror, so popular with 19th century armies. Given a clear atmosphere—such as was to be found on India’s North-West Frontier or on the high veldt in South Africa—and heliograph messages could easily be picked up at thirty miles’ distance.³

It is worthy of note that neither the ancient Britons nor the Pictish and Scottish clans resorted to smoke signals to anything like the same degree as the Redskins of North America and many other primitive peoples. Warning beacons were a feature of Hadrian’s Wall, however, and figured as part of the equipment of every hill-top relay station. They formed an item in the preparations for defense at the time when the Spanish Armada made its menacing appearance in the “chops of the Channel,” in July, 1588. Two hundred and sixteen years later, with Napoleon’s Armee d’Angleterre concentrated along the dunes from Calais to Mon- treuil, a chain of beacons “of a minimum of eight waggon loads of timber, with three to four barrels of tar,” was erected from Plymouth to the Scottish border, as night alarm signals. By day, the alert was to be given by smoke signals, contrived by firing wetted hay.

Needless to say the moment arrived when the inevitable nitwit raised a false alarm which set these impressive pyres ablaze throughout the length and breadth of the land; an event duly chronicled by James Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd-poet, in the rough and ready rhyme;

“Red glared the beacon on Pownell,
On Skiddaw there were three;
The bugle-horn on moor and fell
Was heard continually.”

In the outcome, the authorities decided that the only thing to do was to regard the whole episode in the light of a useful, if somewhat costly, rehearsal.⁴

Elementary as it was, the beacon had been accepted for centuries as the most serviceable alarm signal; the elaborate treatise on How to Make Signals by Fire, published by Giovanni Battista Porta in 1658, aroused a good deal more academic than practical interest.

An obstinate conservatism likewise characterized the Sea-Service when any attempt was made to improve upon the extremely limited use of lanterns for signalling purposes between' ships sailing in fleet formation.

William of Normandy, for example, assembling his fleet for the invasion of England, could devise no better means for its control than were afforded by a large gilded lanthorn hoisted at the masthead of the ship in which he himself designed to cross the Channel. Before leaving port orders were circulated that with nightfall all the other vessels were to “anchor about the light, and not to recommence their way till the beacon (lanthorn) at his topmast should be lighted as a signal, and the trumpet blown. In the outcome, William impatiently forged ahead of the rest of the fleet; which straggled in to the English shore piecemeal, with no orders other than the general instructions to achieve a footing ashore. Since the invaders encountered no opposition, the landing was successfully effected; a triumph of good fortune rather than the outcome of good management.

No improvement in the means of intercommunication and control can be said to have characterized the Crusader armadas that set out for the attempted redemption of the Holy Land. Richard Coeur de Lion led his convoy from Messina to Cyprus with nothing more by way of a night signal than a solitary lanthorn glimmering at his masthead “to set the course.”

For that matter, the squadrons with which Drake and Howard of Effingham harried and pounded Medina-Sidonia’s proud Armada were little better furnished with means of inter-communication by night or, for that matter, by day. Their vessels carried no definitive port and starboard lights, which added appreciably to the risks of collision. When the Spaniards sought the protection of Calais Roads and the English commanders resolved to attack them with fire-ships, plans for the maneuver were all concerted beforehand. Once the venture had been launched, it was completely out of control by the higher command and, truth to tell, created more panic than it wrought actual damage. For no trustworthy methods of night signalling were in existence, nor did it occur to anyone to try and improvise such a thing.

Spanish methods of inter-communication were equally rudimentary. With the Armada off the Lizard Point, a general signal for action stations was made from the flagship, the San Martin, by hoisting the sacred banner embroidered with the figures of the Savior and His Mother, and embellished with the pious exhortation, Exsurge, Deus, et vindica causam tuam. Gun signals and the visible example of San Martin sufficed to break off the costly first encounter and send the still formidable Armada scurrying up the Channel. Subsequently, a gun-shot signalled the order for the Spanish craft to slip their cables as the fire-ships bore down upon them, as they lay at anchor in Calais Roads.

But want of control, through lack of adequate means of passing orders, meant that the eight day running fight never amounted to a fleet action, but resolved itself into a series of scrimmages between small squadrons or even individual ships. As it transpired, this worked greatly to the advantage of the more nimble, better gunned English vessels; but the fact that they had the best of the luck in a scrambling, chaotic “free-for-all” should not be regarded as proof of their possession of a superior signalling system.

So far as “passive” signals were concerned, the Spaniards were, if anything, ahead of their contemporaries. A flag half way up the main mast, for example, called the Captains to the flagship; while if the Admiral’s ship showed a flag at the poop, every Captain hastened to send a boat for orders. When land was sighted its appearance was notified by a flag at the maintop. A strange ship was made known by a flag half way up the shrouds, and more than one strange sail by two flags hoisted vertically. A vessel in need of assistance fired three guns and sent a man to wave a flag in her top. A code of gun-shots and lanthorns rendered corresponding signals during darkness. It was only in battle-fighting that the Spaniards shared the want of a proper system of control common to all other navies.

Some idea of the dangers inherent in the situation which arose when a fleet broke formation and therefore ceased to be under even the delimited control the flagship could exercise under favorable conditions may be found in an entry in The Journal of a Naval Surgeon. The anonymous author, who was at sea during the middle years of the 18th century, writes of this particular incident:

“As our ship was very crank, we could not carry sail sufficient to keep up with the Admiral, and in the evening were generally two or three miles to the leeward; which one night nearly proved of very serious consequence. For having intelligence of a privateer of a French convoy he had seen in the morning, we made the proper night signals⁵ and immediately chased to leeward. The squadron instantly followed, and, the night being very dark, passed by us unperceived. The ship being all clear and ready for action, some ships were seen ahead of us, and were judged to be the French convoy, but unfortunately proved to be our own squadron. We fired two shots into the Torbay, who instantly made the night signal for a friend,⁶ but was not adverted to; and another ship with lights being then seen ahead, which was taken for the French Commodore, our broadside was reserved for him, when ranging alongside and hailing, was answered the Magnanimé;⁷ and Captain Gordon was ordered to come aboard the Admiral.”

So near had been disaster that, after duly castigating the peccant Captain Gordon, the Admiral arranged in future to “bear down in the evening, . . . and always join company before dark.”

Without an Aldis lamp flashing the Morse code or the aid of wireless telegraphy, it is easy to see how such a situation could arise once darkness had fallen. But control was little better in the daytime, as analysis of Admiral Mathews’ action against the French off Toulon in 1744—a typical sea encounter of the period—eloquently demonstrates.

At the outset of the affray the three British squadrons were not in one and the same straight line, as demanded by contemporary Fighting Instructions; the right wing being swung back several miles to the rearward of the Commander-in-Chief’s station. Anxious to attack in force and without delay, Mathews signalled his subordinate to bring up his squadron in alignment with the center and left,⁸ at the same time himself shortening sail in his own division, so as to “mark time,” as it were, while the order he had given was in process of completion. But the Vice-Admiral, although he perceived the signal and understood its official meaning, also observed that Mathews was taking in canvas. In the circumstances he was entirely at a loss to piece together these two manifestations and reconcile their disparate meaning. The enemy fleet was scurrying away, yet the Commander-in-Chief was decreasing the speed of his pursuit. The French were drawing off, yet the signal seemed to embody the bewildering paradox, “Join me quickly, but reduce your speed!”

In the upshot, the Vice-Admiral, abiding by the principle founded by the Elizabethan navy of “When in doubt, imitate the Commander-in-Chief,” shortened sail. In consequence the French had ample time to show their adversaries a clean pair of heels. But what in Mathews’ eyes was a circumspection that fell little short of faintheartedness was, in point of fact, nothing more than a misunderstanding born of the limitations, amounting to plain inadequacy, characterizing the prevailing means of inter-communication. Mathews—a man of sixty-seven, who had not been to sea between 1724 and 1742— was known to his Captains as a rigid disciplinarian and a fanatic stickler for forms. This fact goes some way towards explaining, even if it fails to extenuate, his subordinate’s fatal tendency to “play safe.”

A similar confusion over signals robbed Sir George Brydges Rodney of an outstanding chance of victory in his encounter with de Guichen in the West Indies, in April, 1780. With great patience, Rodney had maneuvered with the object of delivering a blow with all his force at the center of the hostile fleet. From the very outset, however, his rear division’s tardiness of response to his signals to close the enemy had been a cause of mounting anxiety. But with action about to be joined, it was plain that the Stirling Castle, leading the rear division, having fatally misinterpreted orders to close up before going into action, was turning to engage the enemy’s leading vessels, sailing on the opposite tack. Following hard astern, Sir Hyde Parker was steering the rest of the rear division straight for de Guichen’s van.

Rodney’s whole plan was ruined, for it was far too late to put things right by means of the indifferent system of communications at his disposal. His fleet was committed to a disjointed effort instead of the concentrated attack for which he had so laboriously prepared; and the outcome was an indeterminate “dog-fight” from which it was difficult to say who emerged with the advantage.

It is patent that at this period the range of “stylised” signals was so limited that a premium was put on misinterpretation.

For example, a blue flag at the mizzen-top together with a single gun-shot, by the 8th Article of the Fighting Instructions, implied an order for the ships on the larboard quarter to haul their wind on the larboard tack. But by the 9th Article the same combination was the signal for all the ships of the fleet to bring-to, with the larboard tacks on the board. In effect, precisely the same signal had to be read differently according to circumstances; and if the subordinate Officer failed to interpret the order as it had been intended—well, the prospect that confronted him was a “one gun salute”!

No greater subtlety or exactitude was exhibited by the navies of other nations. With the Dutch, for example, “the signal for fighting will be a red flag under the Prince’s, flying on the Admiral’s main-mast. When this is seen, everyone shall endeavour to do his utmost to do what he possibly can.” Such were Tromp’s orders to his Captains in May, 1652, on the eve of the First Dutch War; and they can scarcely be said to err on the side of detail.

Owing to the far larger arena in which naval engagements were fought, faultiness in inter-communication was far more conspicuous and disastrous in its consequences than in battles on the land. It was the introduction of propellents more powerful than gunpowder, plus the stupendous physical expansion of armies, which combined to thrust the Commander-in-Chief of an army further and further from the battlefield. Prior to these developments “the man on the horse” could still control the course of events by personal direction, through his “gallopers” and the sound signals employed by the respective fighting formations.

With the cavalry these were sounded off by trumpet; the following calls—-Italian in origin—being in general use: Butte Sella (Boot and saddle), Monte Cavallo (To horse and away), Tucquet (March—water), Auquet (Setting watch—tap-to), Alla Slandarda (Prepare to fire—fire—draw swords), Carga (Charge—retreat—rally). With the infantry the signals were given by drum beat; the dragoons, like the artillery, employed both trumpet and drum; the light infantry relying on the bugle-horn.

Towards the end of the 18th century each nation tended to evolve and standardize its own particular range of trumpet and bugle calls; those for the British services being amplified and regularized by the popular contemporary composer, Joseph Haydn.

But there were still veterans to recall the story of the officers in the outlying forts of besieged Tangier—under investment from 1661 to 1684—who had communicated with each other by means of “marine trumpets” (megaphones); deliberately “speaking Irish so that the English renegados in the Moorish ranks should not understand what passed.”⁹

A subsidiary means of circulating orders and transmitting “intelligence” was provided by the carrier pigeon, freely employed by both sides during the Marlborough campaigns. But this device, with the dawn of the 18th century, could hardly take rank as a novelty. For so early as the Crusades the “Old Man of the Mountain,” Sheik Sinan Rashideddin, Grand Prior of the Syrian Order of Assassins, had been kept fully informed of the course of events before Acre and during Richard Coeur de Lion’s march on Jerusalem, by a swarm of agents who forwarded their intelligence reports to their master’s stronghold of Massiet by pigeon post, and received their further orders by the same means.

Centuries later besieged Paris also subscribed to the belief that “that which hath wings shall tell the matter.” Carrier pigeons flew out of the city conveying as many as two hundred telegrams apiece. Photographed on a minute scale on the thinnest possible leaves of collodion, they were attached to the birds’ tails by pieces of waxed cotton.

Beleaguered Paris also made use of observation balloons for the direction of artillery fire—a device first employed at the battle of Fleurus in 1794, when the directive was passed down to the waiting gunners in a leather bag attached to a cord and pulley.

As a means of obtaining information upon which to base future orders, observation balloons had been freely used, of course, during the War Between the States. Professor Thaddeus Lowe devised a silken envelope that could be inflated with gas; and during a trial ascent over Virginia solemnly reported perceiving scattered Confederate camps “and a huge cloud of dust near Fairfax Courthouse.” Lowe did better when he made an ascent over Richmond, maintaining a steady stream of messages to General McClellan from a height well out of range of any weapon the Confederates could bring to bear. For all that, the volume of fire loosed off in his general direction was so heavy and sustained as to earn him the title of “the most shot at man in the war.”¹⁰

Poorer fortune attended General Fitz- John Porter’s attempt to make an aerial reconnaissance of Richmond and its environs; his balloon breaking free from its moorings to drift to and fro until its passenger, with cool courage, clambered up the rigging to open an escape valve. Eventually, he made a safe descent in the midst of his cheering troops; although it is questionable if the messages he sent or the information he acquired proved of any particular value.¹¹

Balloons continued as an auxiliary means of communication throughout the Franco- Prussian War, in the South African campaign, and in the Russo-Japanese conflict. They even made an obstinately courageous, if costly, appearance on the Western Front between 1914 and the early part of 1918.

Until well into the second half of the 18th century naval means of inter-communication showed little advance on those legislated for in the Fighting Instructions drawn up by James II of England, when Duke of York and head of the Restoration Admiralty.¹² A primitive system of flag signals constantly demonstrated the inadequacy which comes of want of flexibility. A red flag at the fore, for example, meant “Engage the enemy more closely”; a white flag with a red cross gave directions for a “General Chase”; a chessboard pattern in blue and yellow indicated “Discontinue the action.” There were a few other color combinations for such directives as “Form line of battle ahead at two cables’ length asunder”; “Close to one cable’s length”; “Form line on a bearing N. by N.W. and S. by S.E.,” or whatever bearing momentarily applied; with particular hoists of bunting for “Wear round,” “Close centre,” “Steer for your opposite number in the enemy fleet,” and so on.

But such signals were little more than hieroglyphics, hard and fast, over-exact, incapable of modification or adjustment.¹³ What was required was a language; not puzzles, but speech. That is how it was expressed by Admiral Richard Kempenfelt, the son of a Swedish military officer, who had early made his mark in the British Navy, and probably combined greater mental resources with more service experience than any of his contemporaries.¹⁴ His own plan was for a code based upon ten flags for the digits and a brief dictionary or phrase-book, in which the words were all numbered; with the alphabet also included in case something had, on occasion, to be spelled. With this code in operation, two flag hoists would give the Fleet a language of ninety-nine words. With three hoists they had at disposal a language of nine hundred and ninety-nine words. By this means ships would be able to speak to one another—and communicate with land signal stations—with almost the same clarity and precision as that enjoyed by individuals conversing ashore.

Despite its obvious practicability, Kempenfelt’s signal code—actually entitled A Primer of Speech for Fighting Ships, and first issued in 1782-—like all innovations, met with a good deal of obstruction from the more hidebound and reactionary among contemporary senior officers. But it was not long before its far-ranging usefulness was dramatically demonstrated.

Gibraltar had long been under siege, and a relief expedition, carrying desperately needed stores and reinforcements, was organized under Lord Howe—the “Black Dick” of the abortive negotiations in New York of 1776. With a very indifferent armament, Howe—the new Signal Book in his hand— so skilfully maneuvered his sluggish herd as to score a veritable triumph. “Flags ever a-flutter, ... he jockeyed the enemy by cunning out of the way, put himself between them and his merchantmen, shielded the convoy while they unloaded, evacuated the [Algeciras] Bay once more, flung the enemy a second time from his path, sheltered the empty merchantmen as, with task completed, they ran for home, and then turned with a sort of sigh of relief to the appetising task of thrashing the combined fleets of France and Spain at the battle of Cape Spartel.”¹⁵

Speedy, detailed, and easily comprehensible means of inter-communication had been the keystone of Howe’s success; and it is a tribute to the elderly seaman’s mental adaptability that he had more fully appreciated the potentialities of Kempenfelt’s novel system than many of his fellow Admirals, not to mention the majority of his subordinates.¹⁶

But the want of an equally effective system of night signalling served very largely to nullify the initial success achieved by Howe against the French in that encounter which has passed into history as “the Glorious 1st of June.” This engagement, which actually rumbled on for several days, ended with many vessels dismasted, both French and English. Five Gallic line-of- battleships, which had not earlier been secured, would certainly have fallen captive to Howe’s squadron had not nightfall enabled them to steal away, unmolested, under their spritsails. That they were enabled to make good their escape was attributed by Howe’s subordinate, Rear-Admiral Sturgis Jackson, to “the lack of means of making any but the most elementary evolutionary signals at night.” For much the same reason the vital grain convoy it had been Howe’s prime object to capture or destroy slipped away into the safety of harbor. The British Admiral had fought hard and well and scored a victory on points over the French. But the real substance of victory eluded him, mainly owing to an imperfect system of inter-fleet night communication.

Things were on a very different footing in day-time, of course; and by Nelson’s time everyone was so familiar with Kempenfelt’s “Primer” that when the little Admiral ordered his Signals’ Officer, Lieutenant Pasco, to hoist “Nelson confides [i.e. is confident] that every man will do his duty,” the substitution of “England expects” for the first two words enabled the hoist to be run up in a trice; “duty” being the only word it was necessary to spell out separately.¹⁷

Yet under conditions of fog the shipman was still forced to rely on such elementary means of warning as the beat of drum, the blare of a trumpet, the tolling of the ship’s bell, and the occasional discharge of a blank round from one of the guns.

It was the Napoleonic wars, however, which saw the perfection of the black and white shutter signalling device first conceived, in 1684, by Dr. Robert Nooke, and perfected by Lord George Murray. From the frame on the roof of the Admiralty building in London, by way of carefully sited hilltop relay posts, a message could be transmitted over the seventy miles between the metropolis and the naval base at Portsmouth well within the hour.

An adaptation of this device for fleet signalling was introduced into Nelson’s squadrons and played a useful part in the first stage of the Trafalgar battle.

The magnetic telegraph, first given practical application by Samuel Finlay Morse in 1832, and tentatively tried out in the War Between the States, speedily took priority over all other means of communication, greatly accelerating the speed with which orders could be transmitted. With the general adoption of the Morse alphabet, visual signalling in this code, with the aid of flags or heliograph by day and lamps by night, carried to its ultimate equation that system of “hand signs” evolved in embryo by the Marquess of Worcester in 1666.

Wireless telegraphy, the brain-child of Guglielmo Marconi, greatly extended the scope of communications, since by its help the Commander in action could maintain constant touch, not only with his fighting formations but with his home authorities. The advantage of this amplification of means to a given end are obvious; at first sight the drawbacks are not quite so apparent. Yet they indubitably exist.

First and foremost, the close touch that wireless telegraphy maintains between the home authorities and the individual actually engaged in directing warlike operations tends bodefully to cramp the initiative and bedevil the decisions of the man on the spot. (Fortunately for the destinies of England, both Waterloo and Trafalgar were lost and won before Whitehall was even aware that they had started!) In the Crimea Marshal Pelissier complained bitterly of the powers of interference conferred on Napoleon III by the submarine cable linking Paris with the theatre of operations; while even the undemonstrative Lord Raglan regarded the innovation with wary suspicion.

Wireless telegraphy being more ubiquitous even than the telegraph wire, there are not wanting those to affirm that its powers of interposition are so comprehensive and pervasive as frequently to constitute a positive menace. Such critics do not hesitate to insist that the British failure to cut off the German warships Goeben and Breslau in the autumn of 1914 can very largely be attributed to the stream of contradictory orders and directives emanating from the War Room at the Admiralty. Nor is this the only example of “confusion worse confounded” begotten of stultifying interference by higher authority that can readily be called to mind.

Apart from all else, wireless telegraphy has two outstanding handicaps. The first of these must be attributed to the fact that, the ether being common to all, and codes almost as easily broken¹⁸ as direction findings can be plotted, the ineludible imposition of long periods of “wireless silence” frequently renders the whole costly apparatus of no more value than a heap of scrap-iron. For even “scrambling” was not sufficient to prevent eavesdropping by the enemy during the war years of 1939-45. Owing to a miscalculation by the British and American Security services, Germans in a Channel Island listening-post succeeded in “unscrambling” many exchanges on the “P.E.” telephone passing between (among others) President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill.¹⁹

Secondly, the very ubiquity and elaboration of the means to an end tend to defeat the aim of ensuring the utmost celerity of transmission. It all looks so easy that a volume of traffic is invited which leads inevitably to congestion. When General Eisenhower first established S.H.A.E.F. at Granville, for example, intercommunication soon became hopelessly clogged. A “Most Immediate” signal despatched by the Supreme Commander to Field Marshal Montgomery on the evening of September 5, did not reach the latter’s Headquarters until breakfast time on the 7th. Even then a paragraph in the original text had been left out in transit, and was not transmitted for another two days. At this moment Hitler— for good or ill!—was in direct communication with Rundstedt and Model by teleprinter.

During the Arnhem venture, for a time the advance airborne troops were completely out of touch—bi-laterally as well as with their base—since their radio sets had been tuned to a powerful British station operating on the same frequency. Thus support could not be called for, nor information sent back that the air dropping grounds previously selected were already in the hands of the enemy. In short, defects in the communications system had as much to do with the failure of the gamble as any other contributory factor.

Equally, the general excellence of the German communications system suffered a bad breakdown during Rundstedt’s December offensive. According to R. E. Merriam, of the United States Army Historical Division, “Corps and higher commanders were unable to obtain sufficient information to put together the pieces of the puzzle.” For all that the Germans were ready to meet Patton’s IIIrd Army, having received warning of its deflection to the main scene of action, not through their normal channels of communication, but by monitoring the radio net which controlled the flow of American traffic.

In effect, too extensive and too casual a use of a communications system can be as confusing to subordinate commanders as it is revealing to the enemy. What is more, that preposterous situation is bound to arise when employment of the means of communication comes to be regarded as an end to itself rather than as the means to an end. The tendency to abuse facilities invariably outstrips their maximum load; for in all fighting formations will be found a plethora of busybodies all too fatally prone to rate their persona] importance by the amount of “paper” to which they sign their names. For that matter, the very ease with which a modern communications system can transmit orders and “intelligence” acts as a positive stimulant to over-direction and fussy interference from above. “Too many cooks spoil the broth”; and there is not so much safety in a multitude of counsellors as confusion.

If the local commander is up to his work—and if he is not he should immediately be replaced—a clear, concise, overall directive is all he requires. The details of its execution should be left to him to work out for himself. Otherwise a situation will arise such as prevailed when Hitler tried personally to control the activities of the Wehrmacht, down to companies and platoons and individual U-boats, from the remote fastness of his East Prussian Wolfsschanze. And we are all acquainted with the outcome of that departure into lambent lunacy.

In any case, it is salutary, if a little humbling, to reflect that no system of military communications the wit of man has yet devised can compare in effectiveness and security with the “bush telegraph,” the “grapevine,” and the traditional native war-drums!