Tim Gale

It's really quite simple; if it relates to French tanks in the Great War and Tim Gale doesn't know it you probably don't have to either. What makes this monograph particularly useful is that Gale takes you incrementally through the major actions the "Artillerie Speciale" participated in (...the Nivelle Offensive to the Champagne) and explains what each battle meant to the force; the particular point being is that Gale is one of those authors who believes that the French military demonstrated much more flexibility than the conventional wisdom still holds, despite the long shadow cast by the events of 1940. Much of the credit for this goes to Gen. Jean-Baptiste Estienne, the creator of the force, who even before 1914 suspected that the era of simple direct-fire artillery was probably over and that mechanization might be the solution. The unfortunate thing is that the tanks were given to the French infantry arm after the war, as the wartime "AS" had a mixture of artillery, cavalry and infantry officers as cadre and one suspects that they would have continued the search for better combined-arms tactics. The only problem with this book is that the cover cost is rather rich, even as a paperback; this was an inter-library loan special for me.… (more)