Re: Re Strategic Reserve.

[Roy Wilke <royboy@bit.dotnet.dotau>]

K.D.Balderson@lboro.ac.uk wrote:

> >Roy Wilke <royboy@bit.dotnet.dotau> wrote in message
> >37CC0689.B32BA1E8@bit.dotnet.dotau">news:37CC0689.B32BA1E8@bit.dotnet.dotau...
> >
> > But in the 1914-18 War, reliance on railways contributed greatly to the
> stagnation on the
> > Western Front.
>
>     Umm! what would you have the combatants rely on - remember horses
> provided much of the transport (and were used to a surprising extent in
> ww2, earlier years at least).

Hehe, I'm rather aware of that fact - my grandfather spent two years driving
horse-teams across the Somme's battlefields in 1917-1918.

What I was referring to was the recent BBC series "1914-19" (or something
similar) in which the comment was made that the armies thought that the
advent of railways to move large numbers of troops quickly would allow for a
rapidly-moving front (what we now call a "blitzkrieg").

However, they found the hard way that railway lines are vulnerable to
destruction through artillery bombardment, etc. - and this was one of the
causes for the stalemate which most of the Western Front was.

The Wehrmacht were a major user of horse transport through to 1944.


>
>     Some "expert" in military/transport stuff (forgot who) calculated
> that if the channel tunnel had existed in 1914 ww1 would have been
> ended decisively by about 1916 because British/French/whoever's main
> problem was getting supplies over the channel. If true you can speculate
> about ensuing history...
>
> --
> Cheers, Keith.