Author: Major General Vijay Pande, VSM (Retd)
(Views are personal. Information is from open sources)
“They were coming at Grenadier Romer at a steady trot, as determined a group as Romer thought he would ever encounter. Romer could see in a flash, by the way the men carried their weapons, by the look in their eyes and by the way their eyes darted around, all white behind the black masks, that they were highly trained killers who were determined to have their way that night. Who was he to argue with them? Romer turned and ran . . . shouting ..… ‘Paratroopers!’”
(An account of the Glider Landing of ‘D’ Company, 2nd Oxfordshire Light Infantry, British 6th Airborne Division on the European Continent, 6 June 1944, courtesy, Stephen E. Ambrose, “Pegasus Bridge”)
This audacious glider borne operation was launched by the British paratroopers of the 6th Airborne Division to capture a vital bridge over the Orne river in France in the early hours of 6 June 1944 as a prelude to the famous Allied forces’ landings on the beaches of Normandy on ‘D’ Day. The paratroopers were launched from Southern England and flew over the English Channel in gliders to land behind the German lines in northern France even as the main Allied forces prepared for the amphibious landings on the beaches. ‘D’ Company actually succeeded in achieving its objective with only four platoons out of the planned six as the remaining two had missed the landing area. But numbers did not matter at that time. What mattered was the complete surprise this small body of troops achieved against a much larger adversary who had been stunned by this sudden bolt from the blue. This operation marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany as Allied troops set foot on the European mainland as part of ‘Operation Overlord’. One year later, Germany was defeated, and the War came to an end.
A few years earlier, a force of approximately 500 German paratroopers assaulted the Belgian fortress at Eben Emael and nearby bridges on the Albert Canal which were held by more than twice this number of Belgian troops. The fortress was considered impregnable with shell proof bunkers and artillery emplacements. It was well defended as it stood on the gateway of the German advance through Belgium and the Low Countries. The German airborne assault forces were organised into task forces of approximately a hundred soldiers each, led by Lieutenants and seconded by Sergeants. These task forces landed silently near the objectives using gliders and swiftly brought the Belgian soldiers to their knees, capturing or killing most of them before they could even realise what had hit them. Again, numbers did not matter. It was a smaller force that had overwhelmed an adversary larger in numbers by achieving complete surprise.
During the Battle of Gazala in 1942, the Afrika Korps under the German Commander Erwin Rommel defeated a much larger Eighth Army of the Allies as he swept across the Sahara Desert in North Africa. The Allies under General Auchinleck were predictable in their approach and were no match to the wile and battlefield intuition of the redoubtable ‘Desert Fox’ who chose timing and surprise over numerical superiority to defeat his adversaries. In fact Rommel is known to have said to a captured British Army officer “What difference does it make if you have two tanks to my one, when you spread them out and let me smash them in detail?”
There are numerous such examples in the history of warfare wherein a small body of highly trained troops achieved gains out of proportion when they struck at a place and time where they were least expected. The adage “three men in the enemy’s rear are better than fifty in front” has been proven time and time again and shatters the comfort of superior numbers.
Planning parameters have been developed for calculating required ratios of attacking forces to those defending. Ratios of three to one and even nine to one are considered necessary to capture defended positions depending on the difficulties of terrain and climatic conditions. The relevance of force ratios is however, only upto a point and no more. Beyond that the imponderables take over. The American General Arthur Collins in his book “Common Sense Training” says he has rarely seen a company capture a hill with more than sixty percent of its strength.
The idea is not to discount the importance of numbers. Numbers are important to the military planner who must work out the correct allotment of forces and their employment. They are equally important to the logistician who must ensure that the forces are neither understocked nor overburdened. Numbers are also critical for the engineers who build bridges as well as roads and plan demolitions, as also to the signallers who setup the critical communications networks. Numbers no doubt are vital in the science of war planning.
The art of war, however, relies on much more than numbers. Leadership, morale, timing, intuition, surprise and deception and sometimes just sheer guts are some of the many unquantifiable factors that can tilt the scales irrespective of the strength of numbers. ‘Mother Luck’ or the ‘Hand of God’ also cannot be discounted in deciding the fate of many a battle. The battle of Chhamb in the 1971 Indo Pak war was one such bitterly fought contest wherein luck played a role. On 9 Dec 1971, just when the Pakistanis were planning to attack Pallanwala across the Manawar Tawi, the GOC of Pakistan’s attacking 23 Infantry Division, Maj Gen Iftikhar Khan Janjua, was killed in a helicopter crash on the frontline. This unexpected disruption in the command setup in the middle of the operations put unscheduled brakes on the Pakistani offensive which was already facing the heat of Indian resistance and tottering. The next man on the spot to take charge temporarily was Brig Kamal Matin who was unable to cope up with the sudden turn of events. Maj Gen Umar who was appointed the new GOC thereafter simply could not muster the resolve to fight on and called off the offensive.
Deception is another key factor in deciding the course of battles. It is indeed the primary weapon of warfare of all major armies and has been used in practically every successful military operation since the Trojan War to the present times. The Russians use the term “Maskirovka” (mask) to describe their doctrine of deception. The seventh century Chinese scholar Zhang Yu said, “although the root in the use of military force is based on benevolence and righteousness, for them to be victorious they must rely on deception”. Ruses, feints, misinformation, concealment and demonstrations are some of the preferred means of deception.
Military leaders must shun predictability in planning and constantly look for newer ways to keep the enemy off balance. Reinforcing the enemy’s perceptions, making the enemy believe what he would like to believe and not what he should be believing must be the start point of all military plans. A battle plan without a corresponding cover plan to mislead the enemy is no plan. The more unpredictable the plan, the better the chances of success. The lessons of Troy must not be forgotten.
“Great commanders have always had that indispensable element of legerdemain, an original and sinister touch, which leaves the enemy puzzled as well as beaten”
Winston Churchill