Annual Booklist 2019 : Andy Grainger
Andy Grainger took a degree in History at the University of Reading in 1975. He has spent most of his working life collecting Inheritance Tax though latterly assisting owners of historic houses and works of art to give public access to them. He now consults for a major auction house. He served in the Royal Artillery (TA) during the Cold War and joined the British Commission for Military History in 1994, serving on the committee as Editor of Mars & Clio from 2004 to 2011. Andy returned to the General Committee of the BCMH in February 2014 and was elected Secretary General in February 2015.
It is a very difficult choice particularly as one’s tastes change over time. Nevertheless, having been a territorial gunner during the Cold War I thought I would offer a selection of books on artillery. During the 20th century artillery came to dominate land warfare not only technologically but also in terms of manpower yet artillery memoirs tend to be overshadowed by authors in the infantry, cavalry or in the air.
Very much not a memoir but the book which many years ago revealed to me that the First World War was the intellectual and technological dynamo of the twentieth century. Firepower, The British Army, Weapons and Theories of War 1904-1945 by Dominick Graham and Shelford Bidwell appeared way back in 1982 long before any talk about a Revolution in Military Affairs. Although the book concerns artillery weapons ie guns and projectiles it also discusses the relationship between the artillery and what gunners call the supported arms. The First World War was the crucible in which artillery techniques such as indirect fire became de rigueur but it was also the place where the arrangements for its command and control were formed. Bidwell and Graham, both eminent World War Two gunners explain this complex story, including airpower and naval gunfire in a highly readable style through World War Two and up into the early 1980’s when the Army enhanced its artillery capabilities for what became the final phase of the Cold War. There is a view that after Iraq and Afghanistan it needs urgently to do so again.
If many pre-1914 gunners were primarily concerned with leading their batteries in the manor of the King’s Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery with an emphasis on dash and turnout how did they adapt to the new war of static positions, camouflage and barrages? The answer is that for all their spit and polish on parade they were very well trained and though horse drawn the guns and shells themselves represented the scientific cutting edge of their society.
The Royal Artillery War Commemoration Book was published in 1920 and included contributions by a range of authors to illustrate the scope of artillery operations from 1914 to 1918 across the world. These included extracts from the Diary of the Master of Belhaven. A pre-war regular he wrote so vividly about his experiences as a battery officer at Loos, on the Somme, at Messines and 3rd Ypres into the Spring Offensive so that I looked out for a complete copy.
The view of the wartime subaltern may be found in Salute of Guns by Donald Boyd, 1930, Pen & Sword edition with a foreword by Michael Orr, 2012. None other than Robert Graves describes it as the book which deals ‘most faithfully with the most difficult of all its aspects – contemporary morale.’ Boyd was a journalist and so it is not surprising that he writes well. A feature of the book is that the personal relationships are more constrained – there are only five or six officers in a battery and their members tend to stay together for long periods. It is very different to the infantry battalion here the thirty or so officers will get together from time to time. In the words of his medical report Boyd has ‘never shirked his duties’ but he does suffer two nervous breakdowns. His memoir details the technical aspects of a gunner at war - activities at the OP, the wagon lines, re-ammunitioning at night, caring for the horses, liaising with the infantry, preparing and firing a barrage even under counter battery fire and so on but it is also about a man who literally sticks to his guns. Returning to the front just before the Third Battle of Ypres he writes that evening 'the only sure thing in my mind was that I could not turn back. There were three witnesses who made that impossible; the infantry in the line and the artillery behind, my family and friends'.
This might serve as an epitaph for millions of servicemen and women, whether they wrote about their experiences or that great majority who did not.
As for a book that has not been written. Maybe it has – but just how did Europe industrialise the production of guns and gunpowder in the sixteenth century. Sulphur, salpetre and charcoal – where did it all come from?