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Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe. Adam Zamoyski
Читать онлайн.Название Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe
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isbn 9780007284009
Автор произведения Adam Zamoyski
Издательство HarperCollins
The artillery, which was equipped with everything from Canadian howitzers to Italian mountain-guns and antiquated French field pieces, also suffered from supply problems. Strong positions would fall silent at critical moments for lack of ammunition, and if a battery lost its guns it was unlikely to be issued with the same make, and this entailed retraining.
In this respect, the cavalry were the most fortunate. They carried French lances dating from the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and sabres from a multiplicity of sources, sometimes even the family home, but as long as the weapon was of good quality it could serve in any situation, and if not, a better one could be picked off the body of a slain Cossack.
The Red Army recycled the more up-to-date British and French arms captured from the Whites, but its basic weapon, the Lebel rifle, was of home production. Stocks had been inherited from the Imperial Army, and these were supplemented by a steady trickle from two factories. It was a straightforward, sturdy weapon ideally suited to the treatment it received. It was inaccurate, but this was of minor consequence, as the Russian soldier had little instruction in marksmanship, and anyway relied on the long bayonet which had been the staple weapon of Russian infantry for the best part of two centuries. The weapon that played the most important part in this kind of mobile warfare was the heavy machine gun. While the Poles were equipped with a variety of more or less sophisticated European models, the Maxim prevalent throughout the Red Army was almost unbreakable and could function on a minimum of care.
The Russians possessed as many aircraft as the Poles, if not more, but a shortage of pilots and ground crew, combined with the lack of reliable systems of supply and servicing, kept them on the ground. The Poles, on the other hand, were quick to become airborne, on a variety of old planes left behind by the Germans, as well as Breguet bombers purchased from France and Ballilas from Italy. There was no lack of pilots, as many Poles had served in the Austrian and German air forces in the Great War. These were joined in 1919 by a dozen American volunteer pilots, led by Major Cedric E. Fauntleroy and Captain Merian C. Cooper (who later turned to film-making and both co-directed and flew a plane in KingKong). They formed a squadron of their own named after the Polish American Revolutionary War hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko. But while planes exerted a powerful psychological influence, and were of enormous use for reconnaissance and to a lesser extent for liaison, they caused little actual damage to the enemy.
Of similarly limited value were the Renault tanks of the Polish army’s single armoured regiment. Built to operate over small distances and requiring frequent servicing, they proved a liability for the units they were attached to. The variety of armoured cars used by both sides — Austins, Fords and Renaults supplemented by home-made Polish Models And Russian Putilov Products — were of greater value, since they combined nearly as heavy firepower as the tanks with far greater mobility.
A useful improvised weapon was the armoured train — usually composed of an engine sandwiched between a couple of armoured railway carriages bristling with machine guns, a couple of trucks or platforms with heavy guns or even tanks on them, and platform cars carrying track-laying equipment. They would be operated by crews of anything up to 150 men, and could carry additional details as required.5
The only really successful combination of firepower with mobility was the Russian tachanka. This consisted of a heavy machine gun mounted on the back of a horse-drawn open buggy, with one man driving the horses and two manning the machine gun. It could gallop up to a line of enemy infantry, veer round to deliver withering fire at close range, and gallop away, still firing, the moment enemy cavalry or artillery threatened it. Although the Russian infantry made use of the tachanka, its prime function was as an adjunct to cavalry, and it helps to explain why and how cavalry emerged as an arm in its own right, and a crucial one, during this war.
The Red cavalry had been formed to fend off the Cossacks, who had joined White armies such as Denikin’s in large numbers, and it bore the marks of improvisation. There was nothing elitist or dashing about it: it was composed of renegade Cossacks, former cavalrymen of the Imperial Army and just about anyone who could sit a horse. Its turnout was even shabbier than that of the infantry, and its equipment haphazard. The men wore various items of Imperial Cavalry uniform, embellished at will by baggy red or yellow breeches, captured cartridge-cases and sword-belts, and a variety of headgear ranging from fur caps and Tatar bonnets to peaked or pointed Soviet caps and the odd French helmet taken from a dead White soldier — one witness noted a Russian cavalryman wearing a bowler hat. Some rode on fine Circassian saddles, others on an old rug or cushion. Their basic weapon was the sabre, but each man also carried a carbine of some kind, a revolver, a long knife and a whip, and every troop had a couple of tachankas in support.
The Red cavalry’s principal strength lay in its uncanny speed of movement and its savage reputation as a kind of latter-day Mongol horde. It marched not in disciplined columns but in loose order, giving the impression of vast numbers on the move, and since it lived off the land, it left behind it a desert, as well as a trail of blood. But the lack of evident discipline hid a kind of organic harmony which gave its movements cohesion and a strong tactical sense when it came to fight.
The Polish cavalry was entirely different in character. It was made up of well trained, mounted and equipped regiments which prided themselves on being elite formations. The numbers were small, no greater than 10,000 fighting men or ‘sabres’ at the beginning of 1920, as much because of a shortage of good horses as because of the belief widespread following the Great War that cavalry was out of date. But they made up for their small numbers by their skill, and their handling of the lance gave them an edge over the Red cavalrymen.
The cavalry of the respective sides encapsulated the fundamental characteristics of the two armies facing each other: the less numerous Poles relied on smaller, trained and equipped units operating according to established rules of war, the Russians on vast numbers of often entirely unsuitable men, equipped with whatever was at hand, on improvisation and on ignoring received methods in order to exploit any situation. ‘The Russian army is a horde,’ wrote the man who would lead it into Poland,‘and its strength lies in its being a horde.’ This would prove an advantage, given the terrain.6
The front across which the two armies faced each other at the beginning of 1920 was over a thousand kilometres long, but only about half of this could be used for military operations; the geographical configuration of the theatre was such that the range of possible manoeuvres was very limited.
The area is shaped like a triangle, with its western angle at Warsaw, and its other two at Smolensk and Kharkov. The northern edge is sealed by a swath of lakelands and forests along what were then the East Prussian, Lithuanian and Latvian borders. The southern side is defined by the Carpathian mountains and the river Dniester, which defined the Czecho-Slovak and Romanian borders. The eastern edge is open to Russia.
The centre of this triangle is taken up by another wedge, the great expanse of bogs, rivers and forests popularly known as the Pripet Marshes. This means that there are only two corridors along which all east-west movement must pass. The northern one bears the Warsaw-Grodno-Wilno-Smolensk-Moscow road, while the southern one runs from Lublin, through Równe and Zhitomir to Kiev.
Given this topography, it is evident that although it would be possible for one side or the other to press ahead along one of the corridors while remaining passive in the other, it would find its flank exposed if it advanced too far. If it advanced down both corridors, it would be in a problematic position when it passed the central obstacle. Russian armies moving westward down the two corridors would tend to converge and meet somewhere around Brzesc or Lublin, while Polish armies would radiate and move away from each other as they progressed eastwards. But the respective advantages and disadvantages of this situation were not what they seemed: the two Russian armies, based on Smolensk and Kharkov respectively, would have to keep operating independently even though their neighbouring units had come into physical contact on the ground. The Polish armies, on the other hand, while appearing to be more vulnerable as they moved eastwards, with a gap being created between them as they passed the Pripet,