Captain G.C. Wynne - Landrecies to Cambrai: Case Studies of German Offensive and Defensive Operations on the Western Front 1914-17

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Published by Helion & Company 2011

eBook edition 2012

Designed and typeset by Farr out Publications, Wokingham, Berkshire Cover designed by Farr out Publications, Wokingham, Berkshire Printed by Henry Ling Ltd, Dorchester, Dorset

Text and Maps Estate of G.C. Wynne

Introduction & Bibliography Duncan Rogers 2010

This newly-typeset edition Helion & Company Ltd 2010

ISBN 978 1 906033 76 7

eBook ISBN 9781907677915

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Landrecies to Cambrai represents a series of articles that ran in the Army Quarterly between January 1924 and April 1939. The author, Captain G.C. Wynne, was a Great War veteran, and thus had a working knowledge of the British Army during the conflict, as well as a thorough knowledge of the subsequent historiography of the conflict that was imparted from his work with the Historical Section of the Committee for Imperial Defence. With a fluency in German, he seems to have kept very much upto-date with the latest publications in that language; the interwar output of German unit histories and other materials was prodigious. Indeed, Wynne appears to have contributed numerous book reviews and notices of the latest Great War German literature to the Army Quarterly .

The original running order of the series was as follows:

The German defence during the Battle of the Somme July 1916 part 1

January 1924, pp 245259

The German defence during the Battle of the Somme July 1916 part 2

April 1924, pp 7285

The fight for Hill 70, 2526 September 1915

July 1924, pp 261273

Mametz Wood and Contalmaison, 9-10 July 1916

January 1925, pp 245259

Delville Wood, 14-19 July 1916

October 1925, pp 5869

The German defence of Bernafay and Trnes Woods, 2-14 July 1916 part 1

October 1926, pp 1932

The German defence of Bernafay and Trnes Woods, 2-14 July 1916 part 2

January 1927, pp 252260

The German attack at Vimy Ridge, May 1916

October 1928, pp 6677

Cambrai the action of the German 107th Division

July 1930, pp 286291

The Somme, 15 September 1916

July 1933, pp 300308

The capture of Thiepval, 26 September 1916

January 1934, pp 215224

In front of Beaumont-Hamel, 13 November 1916

April 1934, pp 2736

The night attack at Landrecies, 25 August 1914

July 1934, pp 247254

The fight for Zonnebeke, 26 September 1917

October 1934, pp 5462

The fight for Inverness Copse, 22-24 August 1917

January 1935, pp 297303

The Battle of Vimy Ridge, 9 April 1917

October 1936, pp 5157

Aubers Ridge, 9 May 1915

July 1938, pp 242248

Neuve Chapelle, 10-12 March 1915

October 1938, pp 3046

Battle of Arras, 9 April 1917

April 1939, pp 2947

The tenet of the articles is to compare and contrast British and German practices on the one hand, and perhaps more particularly to shed light on The Other Side of the Hill, which was the name for the series as it appeared in the Army Quarterly. As Wynne wrote in a footnote to his first article:

Mr. Croker, in his Correspondence and Diaries, relates that once when he and the Duke of Wellington were travelling on the north road they amused themselves by guessing what sort of country they would find on the other side of the hills they drove up, and, when I expressed surprise at some extraordinary good guesses he had made, he (the Duke) said, Why, I have spent all my life in trying to guess what was at the other side of the hill. We propose in a series of articles, of which this is the first to appear, to give our readers a description, from the enemy's point of view, of what was happening on the other side of the hill during some of the principal battles during the late war.

Wynne's comments about British tactics and training are frequently critical, particularly when discussing wider issues, such as the insistence of the use of what the Germans termed the Materialschlacht, with its use of massed bombardment. But, it is in the series' extensive use (and quotation) from German regimental histories wherein its chief use lies. Even now, this huge literature is frequently ignored. Yet with a high proportion of the original records destroyed during the Second World War, these books stand as a vital testament of the Imperial German Army's activities. This collection seeks to rescue some of this information from obscurity.

Drawing upon his articles for the Army Quarterly and further research Wynne wrote the classic, if controversial, If Germany Attacks in the late 1930s. It was prepared for publication in 1939, and a first printing was completed by Faber and Faber, only for this to fall foul of wartime sensitivities. The publishers declared that it would be inappropriate to issue the volume during the hostilities as the text was highly critical of the British command and would lead to discouragement and lack of confidence in the army authorities. Instead, a considerably watered-down edition was published, with offending passages in which Wynne criticised members of the British High Command excised or altered. The interested reader is urged to consult the unexpurgated edition published in 2008 by Tom Donovan Editions, including an important new introduction by Dr Robert T. Foley. Despite the excisions, the tenet of Wynne's arguments that the British had failed to learn lessons whilst the Germans were tactical innovators par excellence remained, even in the excised version. Thus, in a sense, the book is a clear successor to the articles presented herein.