British sentry at the Battle of the Somme
July 1916 |
Although firearms technology and the
conscript army dramatically changed the nature of
warfare, most armies were completely unaware of the implications of these changes and
unprepared for their consequences. At the
start of World War I, most armies prepared
for a brief war whose strategy and tactics would have been familiar to Napoleon.
However, as war broke out, German and Allied (mostly French and British) forces soon
learned that with modern weapons even a shallow scrape in the soil could be defended by
a handful of infantry. To attack frontally was to court crippling losses, so an
outflanking operation was essential.
Trenches as a new war strategy
After the Battle of the Aisne in September, 1914,
an extended series of attempted outflankings, and matching extensions to the fortified
defensive lines, soon saw the celebrated "race to the sea" - the German and Allied
armies dug what was essentially a single pair of trenches from the Swiss border in the
south to the North Sea coast of Belgium. Trench warfare prevailed on the Western Front
from 16. September 1914 until the Germans launched their "Spring Offensive", Operation
Michael, on 21. March 1918.
On the Western Front, the small, improvised trenches of the first few months rapidly
grew deeper and more complex, gradually becoming vast areas of
interlocking defensive works.
The space between the opposing trenches was referred to as "no man's land" and
varied in distance depending on the battlefield. On the Western Front it was typically
between 100 and 300 yards, though only 30 yards on Vimy Ridge.
After the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg line in March 1917 it stretched to over
a kilometre in places. At the infamous "Quinn's Post" in the cramped confines of the
Anzac battlefield at Gallipoli, the opposing trenches were only 15 metres apart and a
bombing war was waged there incessantly.
On the Eastern Front and in the Middle-East,
the areas to be covered were so vast, and
the distances from the factories that supplied
shells, bullets, concrete and barbed wire
so great, that trench warfare in the European style often did not eventuate.
Defensive system
British communication trench
Somme, 1916 |
Early in the war the British defensive doctrine suggested a main trench system of three
parallel lines with each line connected by communications trenches. The point at which
a communications trench intersected the front trench was of critical importance and was
usually heavily fortified. The front trench was lightly garrisoned and typically only
occupied in force during "stand to" at dawn and dusk.
Between 70 and 100 yards behind
the front trench was located the support (or "travel") trench to which the garrison
would retreat when the front trench was bombarded. Between 300 and 500 yards further
to the rear was located the third reserve trench where the reserve troops could amass
for a counter-attack, if the front trenches were captured.
This defensive layout was
soon rendered obsolete as the power of the artillery grew. However, in certain sectors
of the front, the support trench was maintained as a decoy to attract the enemy
bombardment away from the front and reserve lines. Fires were lit in the support line
to make it appear inhabited and any damage due to shellfire was immediately repaired.
Temporary trenches were also built. When a major attack was planned, assembly trenches
would be dug near the front trench. These were used to provide a sheltered place for
the waves of attacking troops who would follow the first waves leaving from the front
trench. "Saps" were temporary, unmanned, often dead-end, utility trenches dug out into
no man's land. They fulfilled a variety of purposes such as connecting the front trench
to a listening post close to the enemy wire or providing an advanced "jumping-off" line
for a surprise attack.
Development of trench systems
When one side's front line bulged towards the opposition, a "salient" was formed. The
concave trench line facing the salient was called a "re-entrant". Large salients were
perilous for their occupants because they could be assailed from three sides.
Aerial view of opposing trench lines |
Behind the front system of trenches there were usually at least two more partially
prepared trench systems, kilometres to the rear, ready to be occupied in the event of a
retreat. The Germans often prepared multiple redundant trench systems; in 1916 their
Somme front featured two complete trench systems, one kilometre apart, with a third
partially complete system a further kilometre behind.
This duplication made a decisive
break-through virtually impossible. In the event that a section of the first trench
system was captured, a "switch" trench would be dug to connect the second trench
system to the still-held section of the first.
The Germans made something of a science out of designing and constructing defensive
works. They used reinforced concrete to construct deep, shell-proof, ventilated dugouts
as well as strategic strongpoints. They were more willing than their opponents to make
a strategic withdrawal to a superior, prepared defensive position. They were also the
first to apply the concept "defence in depth" where the front line zone was hundreds
of yards deep and contained a series of redoubts rather than a continuous trench.
Each redoubt could provide supporting fire to its neighbours and while the attackers
had freedom of movement between the redoubts they would be subjected to withering
enfilade fire. The British eventually adopted a similar approach but it was incompletely
implemented when the Germans launched the 1918 "Spring Offensive" and proved
disastrously ineffective.
Trench construction
British infantry trench construction diagram, 1914 |
Trenches were never straight but were dug in a square-toothed pattern that broke the
line into bays connected by traverses. This meant that a soldier could never see more
than 10 metres or so along the trench, consequently the entire trench could not be
enfiladed if the enemy gained access at one point or if a bomb or shell landed in the
trench, the shrapnel could not travel far.
The side of the trench facing the enemy was
called the parapet and had a fire step. The rear of the trench was called the parados.
The parados protected the soldier's back from shrapnel from shells falling behind the
trench. If the enemy captured the trench then the parados would become their "parapet".
The sides of the trench were revetted with sandbags, wooden frames and wire mesh. The
floor of the trench was usually covered by wooden duckboards.
Dugouts of varying degrees of luxury would be built in the rear of the support trench.
British dugouts were usually 8 to 16 feet deep, whereas German dugouts were typically
much deeper, usually a minimum of 12 feet deep and sometimes dug 3 stories down with
concrete staircases to reach the upper levels.
Australian periscope rifle, Gallipoli 1915 |
To allow a soldier to see out of the trench without exposing his head, a loophole would
be built into the parapet. A loophole might simply be a gap in the sandbags or it might
be fitted with a steel plate. German snipers used armor-piercing bullets that allowed
them to penetrate loopholes.
The other means to see over the parapet was the trench
periscope - in its simplest form, just a stick with two angled pieces of mirror at the
top and bottom. In the Anzac trenches at Gallipoli, where the Turks held the high ground,
the periscope rifle was developed to enable the Australians and New Zealanders to snipe
at the enemy without exposing themselves over the parapet.
Digging trenches
There were three standard ways to dig a trench: entrenching, sapping and tunnelling.
Entrenching, where a man would stand on the surface and dig downwards, was most
efficient as it allowed a digging party to dig the length of the trench simultaneously.
However, entrenching left the diggers exposed above ground and hence could only be
carried out when free of observation such as in a rear area or at night.
Sapping involved extending the trench by digging away at the end face. The
diggers were not exposed but only one or two men could work on the trench at a time.
Tunnelling was
like sapping except that a "roof" of soil was left in place while the trench line was
established then removed when the trench was ready to be occupied. The guidelines for
British trench construction stated that it would take 450 men 6 hours (at night) to
complete 250 metres of a front line trench system. Thereafter the trench would require
constant maintenance to prevent deterioration caused by weather or shelling.
The battlefield of Flanders, which saw some of the worst fighting, presented numerous
problems for the
practice of trench warfare,
especially for the British, who were often
compelled to occupy the low ground. In most places, the water table was only a metre or
so below the surface, meaning that any trench dug in the ground would quickly flood.
Breastwork "trench," Armentières, 1916 |
Consequently, many "trenches" in Flanders were actually above ground and contructed from
massive breastworks of sandbags (actually filled with clay). Initially, both the parapet
and parados of the trench were built in this way, but a later technique was to dispense
with the parados for much of the trench line, thus exposing the rear of the trench to
fire from the reserve line in case the front was breached.
Trench geography
The confined, static and subterranean nature of trench warfare resulted in it developing
its own peculiar form of geography. In the forward zone, the conventional transport
infrastructure of roads and rail were replaced by the network of trenches and light
tramways. The critical advantage that could be gained by holding the high ground meant
that minor hills and ridges gained enormous significance.
Many slight hills and valleys
were so subtle as to have been nameless until the front line encroached upon them. Some
hills were named for their height, such as Hill 60. A farmhouse, windmill, quarry or
copse of trees would become the focus of a determined struggle simply because it was the
largest identifiable feature. However, it would not take the artillery long to obliterate
it, so that thereafter it became just a name on a map.
Battlefield features could be given a descriptive name ("Polygon Wood" near Ypres or
"Lone Pine"), a whimsical name ("Sausage Valley" and "Mash Valley" on the Somme), a unit
name ("Inniskilling Inch" at Helles named for the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers) or the
name of a soldier ("Monash Valley" at Anzac named after General John Monash). Prefixing
a feature with "Dead Man's" was also popular for obvious reasons, such as "Dead Man's
Road" leading in to Pozières, "Dead Man's Ridge" at Anzac or "Le Mort Homme" at Verdun.
Trench naming
There were numerous trench networks named "The Chessboard" or "The Gridiron" due to the
pattern they described. For the Australians at Mouquet Farm, the advances were so short
and the terrain so featureless that they were reduced to naming their objectives as
"points" on the map, such as "Point 81" and "Point 55".
The trenches of the enemy, which would become objectives in an attack, needed to be named
as well. Many were named for some observed event such as "German Officers' Trench" at
Anzac (where a couple of German officers were sighted) or "Ration Trench" on the Somme
(where German ration-carrying parties were sighted). The British gave an alcoholic
flavour to the German trenches in front of Ginchy; "Beer Trench", "Bitter Trench", "Hop
Trench", "Ale Alley" and "Pilsen Trench". Other objectives were named according to their
role in the trench system such as the "Switch Trench" and "Intermediate Trench" on the
Somme.
Some sections of the British trench system read like a Monopoly board, with names such
as "Park Lane" and "Bond Street". British regular divisions habitually named their
trenches after units, which resulted in names such as "Munster Alley" (Royal Munster
Fusiliers), "Black Watch Alley" (Black Watch Regiment) and "Border Barricade" (Border
Regiment). The Anzacs tended to name features after soldiers ("Plugge's Plateau",
"Walker's Ridge", "Quinn's Post", "Johnston's Jolly", "Russell's Top", "Brind's Road"
and so forth).
Please see some Banknotes from WW1
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