Trench+Warfare

= ﻿ Welcome to the Trench Warfare Page by Ema Marter and Kelsey Van Etten! =

__**TRENCH WARFARE:**__ Succeeding the launch of World War 1, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, the German Army created the Western Front. The Western Front was a term used to label the land located between controlled territory by both the Germans and the Allies. The German Army was settled towards the East, while the Allies to the West. Both sides began to dig lines of fortified trenches extended from the North Sea to Switzerland. Soldiers were first ordered to dig trenches for temporary shelter from enemy gunfire, but the trenches also became a place of residence for soldiers during the war. Writer Robert Graves remembered hearing a fellow officer talk about his life in the trenches:

"When I came out here first, all we did in trenches was to paddle about like ducks and use our rifles. We didn't think of them as places to live in...Now we work here all the time, not only for safety, but for health. Night and day." Troops slept, ate, and fought within and alongside these ditches. It was a simple idea but was extremely effective in removing men from the line of fire and both armies started to develop war tactics to cohere with their new system.



At the end of 1914, trenches in Western Europe extended more than 475 miles from the North Sea to the Alps. The first trenches were little more than fox holes dug for cover from enemy fire. The trenches connecting the foxholes were dug, and the lines deepened so a man could walk upright without exposing himself to enemy fire. The Allied generals felt that making the trenches too secure would lead to complacency among the troops and sap their will to attack. The German general Falkenhayn decided to reinforce the trenches to make them permanent structures. A British soldier once said, “The whole conduct of our trench warfare seemed to be that we were not stopping in the trenches for long, but were tarrying a while on the way to Berlin. The result, in the long term, meant that we lived a mean and impoverished sort of existence in lousy scratch holes.” The trenches were normally seven to eight feet deep and about six feet wide, but they varied greatly. The front wall of a trench is called the parapet and the back wall is called the parados. Sandbags, logs, or bundles of twigs were used to support the trench walls. The soldiers used coverings of branches and cloth over head to prevent enemy snipers from seeing the men in the trenches. Some coverings were also made of wood planks or metal in an attempt to protect the occupants from shrapnel or shell fire. In marsh areas it was impossible to dig deep enough to conceal a soldier fully. So the trenches were built with sandbags from the ground up and stood as tall as eight to ten feet high. They were sometimes up to eight feet thick in order to withstand machine gun fire. The parados had to be high enough to protect men in the trenches from the shells exploding behind them.
 * __BUILDING THE TRENCHES:__**

__German Trenches__ The Germans were considered the best at trench building. They had deep concrete bunkers, steel forts, lines of three-a depth several miles underground. They believed in “defense in depth.” The Germans also often chose higher ground for their trenches. They used hills for protection. The Germans were willing to fall back a few hundred yards to build trenches while the French and British were under strict orders not to give up land. In 1916 British soldiers were finally provided shell-proof shelters.

__Wires__ Barbed wire was used to prevent the enemy from moving in to attack when the soldiers were least expecting it. Barbed wire is cheap to manufacture, lightweight and transparent in rolls, quick to set up, and difficult to be removed by enemies. Night patrols were sent out to repair wires or to cut others wire by crawling across no-man’s land. Writer Siegfried Sassoon remembered how hard it was to cut the wire:

"When I started I soon discovered that cutting tangles of barbed wire in the dark in a desperate hurry is a job that needs ingenuity...More than once we were driven in by shells...Two men were wounded and some others were reluctant to resume work. In the first greying of dawn only three of us were still a it... We had been working three and a half hours, but the hedge hadn't suffered much damage." Another infantry officer recalls his experience with barbed wire:

"Barbed wire terrified and obsessed the infantryman. All his daring and courage came to nought when he ran against an incompletely destroyed network. He knew he would get caught and lacerated in its entangled mess."



With Trench Warfare, each opposing side of the army was stalemated. It seemed impossible for either side to pursue further action against the competing army. This was both a pro and con of the trenches. While the war seemed to slow and it was harder for soldiers to attack, the warfare seemed to be more isolated. The war was kept in this specific line of fire more than that of a mobile war. The destruction that would have otherwise ensued across Europe, was partially avoided. Another advantage was that soldiers had the means for shelter and the opportunity for new war technology/tactics. However, there were many disadvantages as well. The atmosphere and environment within the trenches was filthy and cramped which resulted in bad health, physically and mentally. Soldiers were at the risk of becoming sitting ducks during attack. If the enemy reached the parapet, men were at great risk of getting injured or killed. Also, men had to carry large amounts of equipment around with them almost all day and night. Having to carry their packs up and over their trench in attack, losing much needed strength. These packs could be as heavy as 66 pounds at times.
 * __ADVANTAGES/DISADVANTAGES:__**

Their packs included:
 * Extra clothes
 * Gas Mask
 * Water Bottle
 * 170 Rounds
 * Shovel
 * Wire Cutters
 * Toiletries
 * Medicine Kit
 * Cooking Stove and Fuel
 * Mess Tins
 * "Iron Rations" (Corned beef, sugar, tea, biscuits)
 * Grenades

A usual day in the trenches was backwards. Most of the work was done at night for greater safety. New trenches were constantly being built. Every single drop of clean water went to drinking. None was saved for washing, and because of this, the soldiers were constantly covered in mud. Most supplies were carried by hand. This included food, ammo, tools, timbers, mail, and medical supplies. Sentries watched over no-man’s land for enemy attacks all night in two hour shifts.
 * __LIFE IN THE TRENCHES:__**

__Routine__ Soldiers suffered from boredom, even though the enemy was only fifty yards (forty six meters) away. Gunfire prevented the soldiers from getting more than three to four hours of sleep. Some soldiers were on sentry duty. They used periscopes to see over the parapet. The Allies had listening posts to warn of German tunneling under Allie positions. Night patrols were spotted by the use of lit flares which were used to brighten the scene. The men froze as to not be targeted by the snipers.

__Health and Sickness__ The soldiers luckily did not go hungry- even with the food shortages back home. They might have gotten bored with repeated (and often unappetizing) meals, but they never went hungry. They received canned food, breads, jams, biscuits and maconochie (meals in a tin). The soldiers in the front lines rarely received fresh food. Water was in short supply, and the chemicals used to purify the water tasted very bad. Plenty of tea and alcohol was consumed, and on a regular basis. The soldiers were given shots for bravery. The soldiers were infested with lice, rats that spread diseases, and diseases such as bronchitis, pneumonia, trench foot (which is where the feet rotted due to all of the bacteria infested water they had to stand- and live- in. The feet were often amputated), boils and stomach problems circulated. There was something known as a “daily medical parade” where the doctors would check in out complaints, and helped the soldiers anyway they could.





With War World 1, along came new technology as well. Machine guns, fighter aircraft, tear gas, and tanks were all being developed at this time. Each opposing side was trying to produce the newest and most effective weapons. Soldiers experimented with new weaponry which was hoped to break the deadlock on the Western Front.
 * __WEAPONS/ATTACK:__**

__Original War Tactics__ Before tanks and other more advanced methods of attack, there were only two ways in which an army could attack its enemy. Either by frontal assault or by outflanking the enemy. Frontal assault involved crossing no man's land on either foot or on horseback, which was 18 miles long. The horror of charging by frontal assault is well documented in this first hand account:

"We fell into the mud and writhed about like wasps crawling from rotten plums...The dead and wounded were piled on each other's backs...The second wave, coming up from behind, were knocked over in their tracks and lay in heaving mounds...Those unable to crawl into the sloping shell holes were doomed." This type of attack was not making much progress for either side. The other involved outflanking the enemy in hope of attacking from the side or rear. A key element was surprise and another was concentrating on a few weak points along the trenches. But soon soldiers looked towards other methods to successfully attack.



__Explosives__ In June 1917 the British made a huge victory at Messines. They were inspired by a very popular Roman strategy. They secretly dug below their enemy defenses. Royal Engineers constructed a huge mine beneath the Germans along the Messines Ridge. They dug a tunnel filled with about 1 million pounds of explosives. A large part of the ridge was destroyed and after the mine was detonated thousands died. The Germans lost about 25,000 soldiers and about 7,000 men were taken prisoner. The Allies also lost about 17,000 men.

__Tear Gas__

In the August of 1914, the French began using tear-gas grenades. But the Germans were the first to utilize gas on a large-scale. Interestingly enough, the Allies used this to their advantage. They applied propaganda tactics saying that the Germans were "barbaric" people, who'd poison large amounts of people and stop at nothing to win the war. But it wasn't long before the Allies imitated their enemy's gas tactic. In this excerpt from a British Captain's Diary he explains one major problem of using gas: "Towards morning the wind...seemed to be blowing...from the German trenches towards us. However, the order was to let loose the gas, but when those in charge of the cylinders turned on the taps, clouds of gas blew backwards...One of the gas men...became overcome and was lying at my feet groaning horribly." At first, this poison was unpredictable and unreliable. This problem was overcome by the idea to fire gas in shells and the creation of mustard gas. Here a British company had been warned of a gas attack:

"After wearing them for some time...[the men] thought the original alarm was false as no gas had been smelt. What they did not know was that this was mustard gas, had no smell, and had delayed action...By nightfall every officer and man was either dead or in hospital." Most of the time poison gas was used before attack to weaken and disadvantage the opposing soldiers. By the end of the war it had taken over a million casualties. Because of the gas men had to dress in protective masks and clothing that obscured their vision and movement.

__Tanks__ In 1914 the idea of developing armored vehicles came into play. The first tank did not serve the Allies until 1916. The name "tank" was actually used to throw off the Germans, the Allies had hoped it would lead them to believe that it was merely a water tank. It's insides were cramped and noisy, a bit of a joke to the Germans. Often times the tanks would be swallowed by mud or would catch on fire. It took two years until the French and British could use the tanks fully to their advantage. In 1918, on the 8th of August, 600 tanks were deployed upon the German trenches. This day became the "black day of the German Army". 324 tanks made it through to the end and proved victorious. The Allies had successfully gained back land from the Germans in the Ludendorff offensive. This was a huge set back for the Germans and the tank had finally proved itself. Diagram of Tank __Machine Guns__ The machine gun was invented in the nineteenth-century. But in 1914, the machine gun was highly underestimated. Few officers used them to their full potential. The French only had 2,500 machine guns for its whole army in the beginning of the war. The British only supplied 2 machine guns for an entire battalion which had about 850 men. However, by the end of the war Britain set up a Machine Gun Corps and gave one machine gun to each platoon which held about 60-80 men. The Vickers machine gun could fire 450 rounds per minute. The rifle could only fire about 15 rounds per minute even with a highly experienced infantryman. The machine guns were more expensive to produce, but was a better investment in the end. Vickers Machine Gun media type="file" key="wwIpodcast.mp3" width="240" height="20" **__Sources:__** Dorothy Hoobler - Putnam - 1978
 * 1) Witness History Series: War in the Trenches by Stewart Ross 1991, The Bookwright Press
 * 2) Life in the Trenches by Micheal Duffy, August 2009 Link
 * 3) The Great War, PBS 2004 Link
 * 4) The trenches; fighting on the Western Front in World War One