Stealing a March Bullets, Boots and Bandages: How to Really Win at War

Our history has been shaped by centuries of war.

From the armies of the Romans to the modern, global conflicts of today.

I'm Saul David and I'm a military historian.

And what history tells us again and again is that

beyond the derring-do of military commanders, it's the nuts and bolts

of how you house and feed your army, how you move it,

and how you kit it ready for battle that's the real key to winning wars.

Today, military logistics dominates modern warfare,

with entire branches of specialists dedicated to feeding, moving

and kitting out frontline soldiers, ready for battle.

This is the story of how this elaborate high-tech world came to be,

because throughout history, the greatest challenges faced

by any military commander have remained the same.

If you don't keep your soldiers fed,

they'll never even make it to the battlefield.

Think about it this way, that you're slaughtering, for 80,000 men,

a minimum of 300 animals per day.

If you can't move your men and fast,

you'll never steal a march on the enemy.

The US General George C Marshall once described the jeep

as America's greatest contribution to modern warfare.

And don't forget, America invented the atomic bomb.

And any army that isn't equipped with the latest technology

has literally been cut to shreds.

Some of the greatest failures and victories in history

have come down to the detail of military logistics,

the real story of how wars are won and lost.

Of all the challenges faced by generals through history,

moving armies has been one of the greatest.

It's not just about individual battles,

but about long overseas campaigns.

And it's not only about shifting men,

but it's about keeping them fed and watered as they go.

The art of movement is one of the most complex and

vital that any commander must master if he's going to win.

This film is about how to steal a march and the kit generals have used

to transport troops to battle as effectively as possible,

how a light sprung cart helped the English outmanoeuvre the French...

This little model here represents a revolution in warfare.

..how Napoleon was brought to a devastating halt by making

a tiny but crucial mistake...

They wouldn't have got any grip going downhill any more than they would up.

..and how a simple fuel container and its vital contents

were at the heart of the fight for North Africa in World War II.

Because as all generals know, a key to winning any battle lies

in having the right kit, to be in the right place at the right time.

Unlike today, most armies through history didn't have

the benefit of modern transport kit.

Battles often followed gruelling marches.

A thousand years ago, a warrior such as the Anglo-Saxon King Harold

had to lead from the front.

In 1066, he was put to the test,

not only by William of Normandy,

but weeks earlier, when a huge Viking army attacked York.

I'm convinced that when Harold met William,

he was already a beaten man,

and the reason is because of what happened 20 miles to the east,

which is where I'm headed.

Hearing of the Viking invasion,

Harold marched thousands of men from London to Stamford Bridge,

180 miles in just four days, and ready to fight.

Weapons expert Andy Deane has studied

the kit the Anglo-Saxons carried.

Heavy mail shirt.

This weighs about 30lbs.

Thousands and thousands of interlinking rings.

Brilliant defence against slashing, cutting attacks.

Huge kite shields.

Now, this kite shield is going to be vital in your shield war.

It's a great piece of equipment.

You can carry it in a number of different ways,

or sling it over your shoulder to be able to travel with it.

And, of course, more weight but absolutely vital,

the famous Danish fighting axe,

for swinging and cutting, taking out poor old horses' legs,

but taking out any man that comes within reach.

Another three or four pounds in weight.

Then the weapon that so signifies the knight - his sword.

Double-edged cutting sword,

perfect for cutting and slashing, as well as thrusting.

You've got your Spangenhelm.

Solid plate to be able to deflect sword cuts,

so again, all of this stuff is vital

and yet when you weigh it up,

the three or four pounds of the helmet,

the mail protecting the neck,

the sword, the axe, the shield, the undergarments, the mail shirt,

it's 70 extra pounds in weight for one soldier.

Harold's men were made of stern stuff and,

barely pausing for breath, they caught the Vikings off guard

at Stamford Bridge and put them to the sword.

But Harold's army was battle-scarred and exhausted and,

just three days later, he receives the shocking news that

William, Duke of Normandy, has landed on the south coast,

the other end of the country, with 700 ships and 7,000 men.

With no time to recuperate, he gathers up his army

and heads for London.

But keeping his army together through another long, forced march

was beyond even Harold's ability as a leader.

Moving thousands of tired men southwards is going to be horrendous,

even at the best of times.

They had to follow the old roads and some of those Roman roads, over 1,000 years old,

so they're going to be in a fairly desperate state.

You just had these simple boots, hand-stitched with leather soles.

They're not very substantial.

And you're going knee-deep in the mud after 2,000 people

have already trod on the same path.

Not the knights necessarily.

They would have cracked on on their small, stout ponies,

trotting mile after mile after mile.

The problem comes with the retinue, the foot soldiers, the baggage train.

I mean, imagine carrying all this paraphernalia for war

through that mud and mire.

It's obvious they're going to get left behind.

So I think he did an astonishing job getting up there

to Stamford Bridge, but it was too much to try and hope

that he'd get it all back down south again in time.

Harold arrived here in London with a hopelessly depleted force.

So the story goes, even his mother advised him

to delay his showdown with William.

And she was right to do so because, though large,

William's force was many miles from home,

and with every day that passed, it became increasingly vulnerable.

At this point, Harold was definitely in the ascendancy.

All he had to do was sit tight,

pin William's army against the coast, starve it out and

use the time gained to increase the size of his own army.

But Harold wasn't a man to wait.

He'd used bold action to defeat the Vikings at Stamford Bridge.

Now, he could do the same with William.

It was a decision that would cost Harold his kingdom and his life.

In contrast to Harold's impetuosity,

the Bayeux tapestry reveals William's painstaking planning.

The building of a fleet,

the provision of special boats for horses,

even a flat-packed wooden castle,

pre-cut to be ready for immediate defence.

Of course, we now have the benefit of hindsight

and what we remember today is the battle,

the Normans feigning their retreat,

the Anglo-Saxons charging in disarray,

and Harold falling with an arrow in his eye.

But it wasn't that arrow that did for Harold or Anglo-Saxon England.

It was the route march, a tactical move without sufficient preparation,

ignoring the nuts and bolts of military logistics.

From the era of King Harold a thousand years ago,

right up to modern times, history has revealed that the

challenges of moving armies and keeping them fit to fight are critical.

But impatience to fight has caused many generals to overlook

some basic rules of kit and logistics.

History is littered with stories of gung-ho commanders who loved

nothing more than the cut and thrust of battle.

King Harold is just one of many and you can add to the list

General Custer, notorious for his last stand,

and that genius eccentric - George S Patton, of World War II fame.

Their style might have been eye-catching,

but it was also fantastically risky because in war,

where the stakes are high, the price of failure can be heavy.

The heroics of the Custers and Pattons make good stories, but

the really great leaders are those who are a little less hot-headed.

And it's the considered approach that more often leads to victory.

Look at this! Just look at the scale of this place.

It's quite incredible.

All this, and by this, I don't just mean this stunning 18th-century mansion,

but also 2,000 acres of parkland was the result of

a decisive logistical victory, a victory so important that this

place was bestowed by a grateful nation on the general in charge,

perhaps the greatest British general of all time,

the Duke of Marlborough.

In 1701, England went to war.

The fear was that France and Spain were about to unite under

a single monarch, creating a very unfriendly superpower.

The omens didn't look good.

England hadn't won a major victory on the Continent

for almost 300 years and the French army, in particular,

was considered to be utterly invincible.

They hadn't been defeated in a generation.

Marlborough knew that to have any chance of winning

what became known as the War of the Spanish Succession,

he had to get every single detail right.

The British Library holds original records which show

Marlborough's meticulous attention to his army's equipment.

This is one of Marlborough's actual letters

and it was to see artefacts like these,

to be able to touch them, that I became a historian in the first place.

I've studied Marlborough for many years and

to get inside his head, you need to read what he actually wrote,

because for Marlborough, writing a letter like this was as important

a preparation for war as sharpening swords and musket practice.

So what actually does it say?

Well, it was to his brother, General Charles Churchill,

who was commanding his infantry, and dated 8th June, 1704.

And in this letter, there's a particularly revealing section.

It says, "The foot may soon be in want of shoes.

"That they are to be had at Frankfurt at reasonable rates,

"and that the contractors will send them forward to Nuremberg."

So what does all this tell us about Marlborough the commander?

I mean, here was a man with all the cares of the world on his shoulders.

He was in daily communication with foreign rulers, diplomats

and other field commanders.

And yet he found the time to write about shoes.

Footwear was just one example

of Marlborough's concern for his men's kit.

He also embraced new technology and organisation,

to give his army the edge in moving and fighting.

Here, we have a uniform that would have been worn by

a soldier following the Duke of Marlborough.

By this time, armies had

increased greatly in size

and it was necessary

to organise them in a different way.

Marlborough's men were organised into regiments.

Each regiment had its own distinguishing features

and this uniform tells us several things about the man who would have worn it.

We can tell by the turnbacks here.

About ten regiments that followed the Duke had yellow facings.

One of them was that commanded by Colonel Lee that later became

the 33rd Regiment of Foot, the Duke of Wellington's regiment.

The lace here on the front tells us this man was not an officer.

He is of ordinary private soldier rank.

And a further clue is the fact that his cap is a grenadier cap.

By this time, again, the increasing size of armies has

led to increasing specialisation.

It has the stylised grenade,

indicating this soldier's status as a grenadier.

Grenadiers were specialist soldiers, trained in

the most modern technology of the day, to use the hand grenade.

The spherical grenade was hollow, containing explosives.

This would be lit and then cast towards the enemy.

As a sign of specialisation, he carried not only the grenade,

but the standard infantry weapon of the day,

what became known as the Brown Bess firelock.

This early pattern has the flintlock.

It has a sling, which shows the man's a grenadier. Only grenadiers wore slings.

It allowed them to sling the weapon over their shoulder while using the grenade.

And it was this weapon that enabled the regiments to function

in close order and inflict heavy casualties upon their opponents.

But Marlborough had yet one more piece of kit up his sleeve

that transformed the speed at which his army could move.

Come and have a look at this, because inside this room

are the famous Blenheim tapestries.

And the one most people come to see is this one, featuring the great man himself,

in red, on his charger, at the battle, taking the surrender from

the French commander Marshal Tallard, who's there doffing his hat.

That's the famous one,

but the one I really want to show you is over here.

And in particular, the detail in the centre,

this two-wheeled sprung cart.

Now, it doesn't seem much, does it?

But actually, it played a vital role in not only this campaign, but in others.

Now, this was a relatively recent invention,

introduced into the army by Marlborough himself.

It increased the speed of his supply train to 12 miles a day,

which was double that of his opponent.

Traditional wagons like these farm carts

were slow, heavy and cumbersome.

Marlborough wanted something lighter and more versatile.

Andy Robertshaw has studied one of the greatest

single innovations in military history.

It doesn't look very dramatic,

but it represents a revolution in the way that you conduct war.

The thing about it is that

it has an innovation.

The innovation are the springs.

Each side, front to back leaf springs, fastened to the axle.

And then, in the centre,

there's actually a spring that at the moment's not doing anything.

It's sat there in the very middle of the body,

resting when there's a load in it on the axle.

That means that the whole thing steadied front to back,

but also side to side.

The big advantage of the cart is simple.

Marlborough has something which means

he's not limited to the road network.

These things have to go on the roads,

and as they run down the roads, they churn them up, making

them almost impassable, making the army slower and slower and slower.

Marlborough can go off-road, and even off-road, these things can go across

ploughed fields relatively easily, which means that Marlborough's men

can go further and faster, and therefore, it gives him far more

opportunities to put distance between him and his enemies or,

if needs be, just to get round them,

to be able to outmanoeuvre them.

This little model here represents a revolution in warfare.

It demonstrates that now, you are able to be far more mobile,

to be able to not be tied to depots you've built up

before the campaign begins and, very importantly, when your men go

into battle, they're fit and healthy

and can out-fight their opponents.

It seems so simple, doesn't it?

But as well as his tactical nous, it was his ability to

move his army swiftly that was the key to his military success.

In the summer of 1704,

Marlborough marched south from Bedburg near Cologne,

drawing part of the French army from Holland.

The French followed on behind,

thinking he was planning to attack along the Moselle river.

Then they guessed Strasbourg.

But Marlborough continued south at speed,

finally joining Austrian forces.

Together, they destroyed an alliance of

French and Bavarian troops who were still working out how to react.

It was near the village of Blindheim,

immortalised in Britain as Blenheim.

Marlborough had scored a decisive victory.

The seemingly invincible French had been routed.

The key to his success was not his battlefield prowess,

but the fact that he was a great innovator,

and he redefined not how to fight, but how to move an army.

The Duke of Marlborough set the standard for the 18th-century

generals that were to follow.

But close attention to fine details of movement and kits became ever

more challenging as armies became more massive than ever before.

It's hard to imagine, let alone feel, the scale of

some of the great historic armies,

though history has a tendency to exaggerate their numbers.

But we're not talking about a few hundred.

We're not even talking about a few thousand.

We're talking about armies the size of modern cities.

We're talking about hundreds of thousands.

Whereas Marlborough led a force of 56,000 men,

by 1812, Napoleon's grand army stood at half a million.

It was an utterly devastating force.

Seeing himself as a spiritual

successor to Julius Caesar,

Napoleon styled his army

on that of ancient Rome.

Just like Caesar, he used an eagle standard,

carried into battle as a rallying point for troops.

This would've been presented to its commanding officer by Napoleon himself,

and it held huge symbolic value.

It's incredibly beautiful in design, quite heavy,

and the real significance of the eagle is that it embodied

the pride of the regiment, a regiment of, say, 2,000 men.

It would've been carried at the head of the regiment,

used as a rallying point.

It would have been fought over ferociously, both the enemy -

in particular, the British, trying to get their hands on it -

and the French, of course, trying to protect it.

Napoleon's vast army swept all before it.

But for all its size and power, even it was not invincible.

And its undoing came down to a failure in how it could move...

..a failure that involved one of the most humble pieces of kit,

its horses' shoes.

In June 1812, Napoleon attacked Russia

when France's former ally defied a ban on trading with Britain.

With half a million men, and a quarter of a million horses,

Napoleon planned on a quick and decisive victory,

but it didn't come.

Instead of taking on Napoleon's advancing army,

the Russians led him a dance, retreating east towards Smolensk.

Napoleon marched on towards the Russian capital,

his supply lines growing longer and his soldiers tiring.

The Russians finally stopped to fight

the weakened French at Borodino, before retreating once again.

On the 14th of September, they finally entered Moscow.

Napoleon assumed the Russians would sue for peace, so imagine

his horror when he discovered that the whole city had been abandoned.

Much worse was to come.

The locals had burnt Moscow to the ground and any supplies with it.

Napoleon found nothing but scorched earth

and the Russian winter was beginning to bite.

His army was only kitted for a summer campaign,

and that didn't just mean his soldiers, but his horses too.

Bernie Tidmarsh comes from a long line of farriers.

Now, the idea of this is to get a nice seat on the foot.

-You're almost burning in a little platform for it to sit on.

-Yes.

This is a summer shoe going on here.

For the winter shoe, like down there,

with hooks on the end to give them grip,

that shoe actually comes from the 18th century.

That would have been used in winter time to give them grip on icy ground.

OK, so it's sitting like this.

The hooks are going into the ground and, obviously,

they're allowing it to gain traction.

Yes.

So you've got Napoleon's army dragging all kinds of artillery,

carriages and wagons full of supplies,

and they're not wearing these shoes.

What would've happened?

They would have just fell down and probably went down underneath

whatever it was they were pulling.

They wouldn't have got any grip going downhill any more than they would up,

and that would have been even more dangerous,

because the vehicle they were towing would have come down on top of them.

So the end result is what for the horses?

Well, ultimately, death, isn't it?

Broken legs and mutilated limbs.

It might still have been a fiasco if he'd had shoes like these,

but by not having them, he made it absolutely certain.

Without adequate horse transport, 1,500 miles from home,

his army had no chance.

In the end, thanks to a brutal Russian winter,

Napoleon's grand army of half a million men had

dwindled in just a few months to a thin, staggering line.

Fewer than one in 20 of Napoleon's soldiers would see their homes again.

The British Army today employs kit to move its troops that's a far cry

from that used by King Harold, the Duke of Marlborough or Napoleon.

Long, grim route marches have been replaced by technology.

Extraordinary machines have replaced human muscle.

The C17 transport plane carries 134 soldiers,

flying up to 2,500 miles before refuelling.

All this technology is the culmination of a revolution

in military movement that first began 150 years ago,

in the midst of the Industrial Revolution.

And at the heart of it all was the train.

It was a Prussian military leader who first recognised that

trains could change wars.

This is Helmuth von Moltke.

To military historians like me,

he's one of the great commanders in history.

He wasn't a brilliant battlefield commander like a Julius Caesar

or an Alexander the Great.

Instead, his talents lay in meticulous planning.

He did most of his best work before a shot was even fired.

Moltke's particular genius was to recognise the opportunities

presented by this brand-new network of railways

that was spreading across Europe.

Moltke spent years poring over timetables and inventories

and studying lists of rolling stock, so that when war eventually

came with France, as it did in July 1870, his well-oiled machine

was ready to be put into action at the touch of a button.

From across Germany, soldiers were mobilised

and massed on the French border.

It was the first time trains had ever been used

with this level of planning.

In a masterpiece of military logistics,

Prussian troops arrived at border railway stations like this

one here in Landau in just a matter of days.

While France was still preparing her army,

Prussia had 85,000 men concentrated and ready for action.

It had taken less than three weeks.

And within months, the Prussians had defeated the French

and paved the way for the unification of Germany.

That's what a railway timetable could do for you.

But trains really came into their own in the next great

European conflict, World War I.

In Europe alone,

the amount of rail track tripled from 105,000 kilometres in 1870

to 300,000 by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

And this made possible the greatest mass mobilisation in history.

In September 1914, Germany invaded France with 1.5 million men,

the largest army ever deployed.

It marched through Belgium, skirting the French defences,

towards its target, Paris.

Within two weeks,

the Germans had advanced to within 23 miles of the French capital.

They were so close that the city's terrified inhabitants

could hear the sound of artillery.

In response, France had countered by mobilising an extraordinary

3.5 million men to defend their country and their homes.

And it used 7,000 trains to do this, many of them

taking soldiers from this station straight to the front.

The Gare de l'Est in Paris

is home to a vast painting that depicts this event.

It shows just one train out of 7,000.

There's one particularly moving, arresting scene right in the centre,

with a young poilu kissing his wife,

and holding onto her skirt is his son,

eyes looking up towards heaven, anxious for the fate of his father.

Many, many, many of the soldiers depicted in this chaotic

but moving scene would never have come back to France.

And because they'd come through this station, there was a famous saying.

French women, when asked what had happened to their sons, they said,

"Il a ete mange par la Gare de l'Est."

He was eaten by the East Station.

With massed reinforcements,

the advance was at last stopped at the Battle of the Marne...

..and a swift war became entrenched.

Moltke's clever use of the railways for military ends changed

the course of history.

Without it, there may have been no German unification

and no world conflicts in the 20th century.

But he'd also revolutionised the way military commanders

thought about moving their armies.

The train was the start of the idea that troops could be moved rapidly

across the globe in their tens and even hundreds of thousands.

World War II, Korea, Vietnam,

both Gulf Wars, Afghanistan,

it all started here with the train.

What started with railways in the 1870s was the idea that

technology could be used to move soldiers and their kit anywhere,

fast.

And through the course of the 20th century, this idea spread

far beyond the wildest dreams of the Prussian planner von Moltke.

Seas and skies, as well as land,

all became highways upon which

generals could move armies across the globe...

..employing ever more incredible pieces of kit.

But one thing hadn't changed.

Since antiquity, armies had relied on horses

to provide both speed and muscle.

Despite the mass movements of troops by train, the armies

of World War I still relied heavily on route marches and horsepower.

Between 1914 and 1918, a total of eight million horses and mules

were used to shift equipment and people.

More hay and oats were shipped from Britain to France than

even ammunition, over 6,000 tonnes a day in 1917.

Even in World War II, horses were still crucial.

In fact, Germany employed more horses

than it had in the First World War.

But for the first time, there was, at last,

an alternative to the flexibility of the horse.

Isn't it brilliant?

Until the jeep, the fastest way to cover rough ground was the horse,

as it had been since ancient times,

but this thing's in a different class.

And they can be used for anything - towing, cable-laying,

transporting casualties, and, with the right wheels,

they could even be used on railway tracks.

About one in five of all the wheeled vehicles built

in the US during World War II were jeeps.

That's well over half a million jeeps built in just four years,

from 1941 to 1945.

The US General George C Marshall once described the jeep as

America's greatest contribution to modern warfare.

And don't forget, America invented the atomic bomb.

Jeeps revolutionised the way troops could move.

But World War II also saw a much heavier beast,

the tank.

Tanks brought a new speed and manoeuvrability to the battlefield.

But it came at a price.

It was German engineers who first addressed

the importance of radio communication.

Blitzkrieg, lightning war, relied on rapid movement, which

itself depended on a level of coordination between all arms,

planes, artillery and tanks.

And that could only be provided by mobile radio hubs

and command vehicles.

Now, the only difference between this tank

and a standard Panzer I is the aerial,

for its radio communications, and this raised superstructure, inside

which it kept all its sophisticated radio communication equipment.

It would use this equipment on

a number of different frequencies,

not only to contact other armour,

but also artillery and planes,

so that the tank commander had

a very clear view of the battlefield

and was able to respond at a moment's notice

to reconnaissance reports.

But there was another problem.

It was no good being able to talk when you couldn't move.

And just like horses, tanks needed feeding.

Supplying petrol was vital.

And Germany invented a new piece of kit

the British called the jerry can.

It's made of pressed steel, strong and robust,

with lots of clever pieces of design.

This nozzle, meaning you don't need a funnel to pour it.

But perhaps the best innovation of all is these three handles.

If it's empty, a single man can carry it, using the centre one.

And if it's full of 20 litres of fuel, one man on each side.

You can easily move this around.

So that was the German version.

What did the British use to move their fuel in the Second World War?

They used this, nicknamed the flimsy,

and well nicknamed, because it was thin, easily punctured,

and if the fuel came out, it was a serious fire hazard.

This one, the German version, is the one that proved

its worth and is still used today.

But in the Second World War, fuel was critical to

one of the greatest conflicts of all, the battle for North Africa.

The war in North Africa was taking place over vast distances.

And the biggest problem for both sides was how to supply

their vehicles with enough fuel to keep them running.

This tank ahead of us is a Panzer Mark III and it would play an

absolutely key role in the outcome of the fighting in North Africa.

Its problem was its fuel consumption,

just 1.3 miles to the gallon.

Of course, the distances it had to cover in Africa were

absolutely huge, much more than Napoleon had to deal with in Russia.

And what all this added up to was an absolutely massive

demand for petrol.

By 1942, German tanks had pushed British forces back

to within 60 miles of Alexandria.

But Germany had a problem.

Its fuel had to be brought all the way from Italy, before being

transported across a blanket of open desert, vulnerable to RAF attack.

The British, by contrast, had access to the oilfields of the Middle East.

In the battle for North Africa, this difference became a critical factor.

For the swashbuckling German commander Erwin Rommel,

fuel wasn't exactly at the top of his agenda.

Rommel was more concerned with his grand plan for Africa than

the day-to-day logistics of fuel supply.

The scheme was to use his tank divisions to drive east and

take the strategically vital Suez Canal and the oilfields beyond.

All that stood in his way was the British Eighth Army,

based at the Egyptian town of El Alamein

and commanded by the recently appointed Bernard Montgomery.

Now, these were two very different generals, almost chalk and cheese.

On the one hand, you had Rommel, a tactically brilliant risk-taker

who left, on the whole, logistics to his subordinates.

And on the other hand, Montgomery - slow, cautious, methodical.

A man who, like Marlborough and Wellington before him,

knew the importance of preparation.

And I think you can guess where this is going because, by August 1942,

Rommel's supply lines stretched back over a thousand miles of desert.

And the problem he faced was that he had to

use up 50% of his petrol just moving his fuel and other supplies

up to the frontline, which left precious little for his tanks.

Montgomery, on the other hand, only needs to bring his supplies over

a couple of hundred miles of desert.

And yet he still has to repel repeated demands by Churchill

to attack before he is ready.

By late October 1942, he knew he had a huge advantage in men,

armour, and crucially, petrol.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Montgomery wins the battle of El Alamein and ultimately

wins North Africa.

Had the Germans succeeded in capturing

the Middle Eastern oilfields, the war could, some say would,

have taken a very different course.

World War II was the first conflict fought with massive transport kit,

right across the globe.

On land,

in the air,

and on the ocean.

But it wasn't all about machines of war.

British passenger ships, like the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth,

carried over a million American soldiers over to Europe.

But ships were also vulnerable.

In 1940, the troop ship Lancastria came under attack

and sank, with the loss of over 4,000 lives.

It was the biggest single disaster in British maritime history.

And ships had another disadvantage.

They needed ports in which to dock,

many of which were heavily fortified strategic linchpins.

But sometimes, by thinking really big,

a general can make a decisive move.

More soldiers have been defeated by nature than by any army,

but that can sometimes provide an opportunity for generals

trying to outwit each other.

The best, I think, always take the harder route, the difficult option,

because it's unexpected, because it's counterintuitive,

like Hannibal crossing the Alps.

One of the most audacious plans in the whole of military history,

perhaps the greatest military feat of all time,

didn't take place in the distant past, but less than 70 years ago.

D-Day, June 6th, 1944,

the greatest seaborne invasion in history.

More than 150,000 British, Canadian and American troops

landed on five beaches in Normandy.

But the landings were just the beginning.

Allied troops could only carry enough rations to last two days.

To push forward into France, a huge supply operation was needed,

and that required an incredible new piece of kit.

Outside the village of Garlieston, on the west coast of Scotland,

evidence remains of one of World War II's greatest inventions.

I suppose this is why they sited it here,

because it's very difficult to find.

Little piece down there.

Here's some more over here.

That's the chunk of it.

Here's the edge, here.

And it would have swept all the way down into the sea like this.

And this is the main bit,

reinforced concrete.

This, believe it or not, was actually a roadway.

It doesn't look like much now,

but it's extraordinary it's still here and in such obvious condition,

you know, almost looking like it would have done almost 65 years ago.

This, believe it or not, was one of the key elements of

the greatest logistical enterprises of the Second World War.

Hitler and his generals knew an invasion was coming,

but also that the Allies would need a harbour to land their supplies.

And all the harbours along the coast of France were

German-held and heavily fortified.

But Churchill had a plan.

If the Allies couldn't capture an enemy port,

they would have to bring one.

British military engineers worked for two years on

a secret project codenamed Mulberry.

Not far from the crumbling concrete roadway,

there are still remains of an innovation without which

the D-Day invasions might never have succeeded.

Oh, my God! There it is.

This most unlikely-looking shape is one of the key elements to

the success of D-Day.

This was a floating pontoon.

You've just got to multiply in your mind this one

floating pontoon by 150 times to get an idea of what

they were trying to do on D-Day,

and that is create a huge, artificial floating harbour.

They didn't have a harbour to use, so they took one with them,

and this was just one piece of the jigsaw.

We're talking a massive, massive, massive operation,

ten miles of roadways and ultimately, a port -

when it was all in place - the size of Dover.

The reason this pontoon was tested in this remote part of Scotland

was partly because the tides were similar to those of Normandy,

but more importantly, to keep the preparations from the Germans.

Mulberry was one of the most secret operations of the whole war.

In shipyards and factories around Britain, workers built

parts of the plan without ever knowing quite what they were making.

What emerged were 146 floating breakwaters

made from a staggering two million tonnes of steel and concrete,

designed to protect a series of floating quays and pontoon roadways.

Once the assault troops had cleared the beaches of German guns,

the components were towed across the Channel

and assembled on the Normandy coast.

Roy Walter is a local historian

who has studied how the Mulberry harbours were used.

Wow! That's pretty impressive.

This is it, model of an artificial harbour,

as it would have been off the coast of France, shortly after D-Day.

This is an artificial breakwater, which was the first thing to go in

to provide sheltered water for everything that came behind it.

This is the floating pier head and then, attached to that,

you've got this roadway that sits on top of these floating pontoons.

Ah! So now, I'm beginning to see what I was actually looking at.

I was just looking at one of these, obviously in deteriorated condition,

-but that is the pontoon, and there would have been many of them.

-Many.

There were 26 of these floating pier heads,

all along the D-Day beaches.

Mm-hm. It's astonishing, isn't it,

to think that they built this whole harbour in secrecy,

assembled it in practice so that it could work on the day, and then

towed it across, actually during the greatest invasion in history?

And built it under the noses of the Germans.

What's interesting about Churchill is, he's often thought of as

a maverick, particularly in military terms,

but this was clearly one maverick idea that worked.

It was a tremendously maverick idea, but he had the vision

to see it through, and the results speak for themselves.

Without these amazing floating harbours,

the invasion might well have foundered.

They were designed to last for nine weeks.

They actually survived for nine months, and over them

passed half a million men and half a million guns, trucks and tanks.

They were the difference between success and failure.

They were, quite simply,

the greatest engineering feat in military history.

Today, the ability to move armies has moved into

new realms of technology...

..as air transport has changed the geography of war forever.

The desert metropolis of Camp Bastion has an airport busier than

Stansted, handling up to 600 flights a day of troops and supplies.

And once on the ground,

convoys of armoured vehicles can stretch for miles across

the Afghan desert, carrying supplies to the forward operating bases.

But for all today's cutting-edge kit, when it comes to

the frontline itself, it's surprising how little has changed

since the days of Harold and his Anglo-Saxon army 1,000 years ago.

As a historian of war, I'm constantly struck by how armies face

the same challenges again and again.

The political circumstances change and technology changes,

but people don't.

They still need to be fed in the same way

and they still die in the same way.

And despite the jeeps and jets of modern warfare,

the ability to march quickly into battle is still a vital ingredient

of military success, as it had been in Marlborough's day.

When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in 1982,

British troops were sent across 8,000 miles of ocean to recapture them.

With helicopters lost to enemy action, the army went back to basics

and a new term became familiar back home - yomping,

commando slang for a long, fully-loaded route march.

British commandos undertook a three-week yomp across marsh

and heath, carrying backbreaking amounts of supplies and ammunition.

Major George Wiseman was one of a thousand soldiers

who undertook the epic march.

So what have you got here?

The average weight that marines in my commando unit were carrying

was about 120lbs, eight-and-a-half stone.

Given that my own bodyweight at that time, as a 17-year-old,

was only nine-and-a-half stone anyway,

a lot of young guys were almost carrying their own bodyweight.

That's extraordinary.

-So shall we go for it?

-Yep, let's go for it.

-Ooh!

-Now, straightaway, you can probably feel that biting into your

shoulders and the weight going straight through your spine

down to your feet.

-And this is, what, 45lbs?

-Yeah.

I've got double this to come!

Already, Saul, you're bent over.

Yeah, yeah. It seems to be the only way I can take this weight.

It's unbelievable, just gravity forcing me down to the ground,

and frankly, the expression packhorse comes to mind,

because that's surely what you are when you're lugging this!

It's an unbelievable weight.

The pack weighs eight-and-a-half stone.

George, I've just come a few hundred metres now

and I'm feeling pretty exhausted.

You had to cross the Falklands. How far, actually, did you go?

Well, my particular unit, 45 Commando,

yomped - they were the only unit, actually, to yomp -

from San Carlos all the way to Port Stanley,

which is approximately 110 kilometres.

We did that over about a two-and-a-half-week period.

That's a hell of an ordeal, isn't it? I mean, how tough was it?

Extremely.

I mean, we're walking across fairly benign ground at the moment.

But you can imagine with this weight on your back,

going up steep slopes, the boggy ground,

the tough grass which would twist your ankle.

You've got the added elements of an enemy that's out there,

trying to kill you, let's face it.

And finally, you know that there's going to be one hell of a battle

when you get to the end of this yomp as well.

And see how you're now allowing the blood to go back!

Just having a little break.

It's a few seconds of relief exactly as you've done there, Saul.

You've taken that weight just a little bit off your shoulders

to let the blood go back in, but I think if your physiotherapist saw you

at the moment, he'd probably be horrified,

with the weight that's going through the small of your back at the moment!

Just a short taste of a fully-loaded march makes me realise what it

must have been like to be one of Napoleon's grand army

struggling through the murderous Russian winter,

or one of King Harold's exhausted warriors marching south in 1066.

And just like them, the commandos of 1982 had a battle to fight

once they finally reached their destination.

It's extraordinary to think, George, isn't it,

at a time when the military had

the capability to fly jets, shoot missiles, tracked vehicles,

that this yomp across the island

really did make a difference in this battle?

That boots on the ground really changed the course of history.

I think that was, at the time,

recognised that the Argentinians had defended positions.

They were going to remain in those positions, so somebody,

at some stage, has to clear those positions.

And you're absolutely right, it boils down to the rifleman,

the single rifleman, that eventually has to do the face-to-face fighting.

Despite huge technological advances,

many of the challenges facing armies remain constant.

In the end, just as in the time of King Harold,

to win at war, you need soldiers on the ground.

It may be the ultra-modern spy drones that catch the eye,

but the fate of nations still often depends on nervous young men

carrying heavy packs, complaining, as ever, about their boots.

Next time, how to kit an army for battle.

Saul, what you're equipped with now

is the cutting edge in technology that is available today.

The new firearms that changed war forever.

This projectile was effective at 1,000 yards.

Why World War I was almost brought to a halt

when the ammunition began to run out.

This gun fires 600 rounds a minute.

That's ten a second.

And how changing weapons fuelled the technological arms race of today.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd