The Blue Book of the War 4
The Blue Book of the War
Trench Warfare
THE Great War is particularly interesting because of its unlikeness to all wars of former times. This was, indeed, to be expected; for the advances in science and industry during the present century have been more rapid and wide-reaching than during any period of like duration; and these advances could not fail to profoundly affect the art of war. Success in arms depends at every point upon quick movement, easy communications, abundant transport, and ability to find out what the enemy is doing, quite as much as it does upon big forces and mighty weapons. Motor vehicles, wireless telegraphy, telephones and aeroplanes have profoundly altered the conditions under which armies march and fight; and the most learned student of military history finds his knowledge of but little account when he tries to understand the happenings in Flanders, Artois, Champagne, the Woevre, Poland, Galicia and Russia.
Yet, strange to say, history has, all the time, been repeating itself. While, on the one hand, war has advanced into new regions, as, for example, the air above us and the waters of the depths, it has, on the other hand, stepped back into the methods and arts of our warrior ancestors. This mixing up of new and old is so strange and interesting as to be well worth studying. Already a catch-word, namely "Trench Warfare," has been adopted pretty generally to signify the new aspect of army set against army; but, like most catch-words, it is apt to point in the wrong direction.
A trench is, of course, a ditch; and an army that entrenches itself is merely an army that prefers to hide itself from the enemy rather than face close fighting in the open. It "takes cover," as the saying goes; and this method of avoiding losses is as old as the hills. Every nation in every war has sought after shelter against missiles; and the trenches of 1914-1916 are the descendants of the mounds of the ancient Britons and of the walls of Jericho. It is true that modern entrenchments extend for hundreds of miles and separate warring nations from each other instead of keeping a single army at bay; but even from this point of view we may see there is nothing new under the sun of the twentieth century if we think of the Great Wall of China and the Roman Wall in Northumberland.
Trenches are more practicable than walls. They are very much more quickly constructed, and they do not require supplies of stone, bricks, cement or other materials. Moreover, they are not so easily destroyed. They do not stand out above the surface and thus present an easy mark for the enemy's artillery. Hence they form the very best kind of "cover" as yet known to military science, and have been largely employed in all modern wars. They have, however, become much developed during the Great War. It is found that a mere ditch no longer gives sufficient shelter when bombarded by guns capable of throwing high- explosive shells with great precision, and when the enemy is near enough to toss across from his own lines a constant succession of grenades and bombs. Consequently the ditch is supplemented by caves ("dug-outs") excavated in the sides; and in order that these caves may have a good thickness of earth overhead the trenches are frequently made very much deeper than formerly was the case; while the mere side dug-out is in many cases replaced by a large underground cavern approached by an inclined tunnel from the trench. Much, of course, depends upon whether the ditch intersects high- or low-lying ground, as in the latter ease the question of water has to be taken into account; but even where flooding is apt to occur the modern military engineer (the "sapper," as he is familiarly called) rises to the occasion. ile puts in pipes and pumps and keeps the trenches and other excavations sufficiently drained for occupation; and in the Artois district, where many engines and coal-mines are to be found, he does not hesitate to work his pumps by electric motors. Truly an odd and most modern development! Yet, if we think of Archimedes of old, and of how he destroyed hostile ships by his manipulation of heat-rays from the sun, we may well pause before we give the palm to the twentieth century sappers.
Then, too, in these days of long-range shelling, Generals are not willing to let their men march to and from the trenches over open ground, or to allow their supports and reserves to remain unsheltered. Accordingly it has become the practice to dig long communication trenches extending from positions far (often miles) in the rear to the front, or "firing," trench, and also to provide a series of extra trenches and dug-outs to serve as the stations of the supports and reserves. Add to these matters the necessity that exists for preventing a complete breach of the line held by an army-the precaution taken being to have several sets of trenches in succession behind each other-and we can understand how it is that the "front" of an army occupies a stretch of ground having a depth measured in miles instead of in yards as of old. Two further features of modern trenches require mention. A straight ditch is a dangerous trap for its occupants if the enemy is able to "enfilade " it; that is to say, to fire along it. But if the ditch be dug in a zigzag line or with a succession of half-loops so as to leave a "traverse," or block of ground, lying across the general direction, the danger of being enfiladed disappears, and it is also p05sible to offer a stout resistance to a storming party that has succeeded in entering the trench at any point and attempts to advance along it. The sappers, therefore, who design trenches and superintend their excavation insist upon having numerous traverses, with the result that the ditch becomes practically a line of small pits.
The second feature alluded to above is due mainly to the introduction of machine-guns. These terrible weapons, by means of which one or two men can keep up a fire equal to that of a whole battalion armed with ordinary rifles, demand a clear all-round range of lookout in order to be used to the greatest advantage. Accordingly, in laying out trenches great care is taken to select a run of ground that offers a series of knolls or other points commanding the neighbourhood. These are the positions for the machine- guns; and each one of them is provided with special traverses or other protection so as to become a "redoubt," that is, a completely fortified holding-point, with in many cases a separate communication trench leading to the rear of the position.
Next in importance to the trenches themselves comes the question of how best to defend them against attack. In olden times, the front of an army, in addition to being protected by walls, mounds, fences, stockades, hedges, ditches and the like, was generally strengthened by sundry devices distributed over the ground across which the enemy had to advance. These devices usually consisted of pitfalls with sharp stakes projecting upward from the hollows, and of balls or other small objects (commonly called "crows' feet ") furnished with spikes and scattered about so as to pierce the feet of the hostile soldiers or to lame their horses; and in addition pointed bars of iron arranged X-wise, or trees cut down and laid with their branches directed outwards, were installed along the line to be defended. In modern "trench warfare " much the same things are done; the chief difference being that barbed iron wire is employed instead of the more cumbrous appliances of olden times. Just in front of each fighting trench great numbers of short posts, or stakes, are driven into the ground and lines of barbed wire are either nailed to them or are woven, as it were, in and out among them. Furthermore, in advance of the barbed wire "entanglements" short pegs are fixed, so as to support a series of "trip wires" placed in the grass or other surface covering of the ground, and thus constituting almost invisible obstacles over which the attackers stumble and fall. Here and there are sometimes added lines of wire connected with electric apparatus capable of giving fatal shocks to those who touch the wire; and it is very usual to suspend tins and other like articles from the wires, so as to make a warning sound when the enemy reaches the entanglements during the night. These defences are rendered more formidable by land-mines which explode when trodden upon, or which can be exploded by means of electric wires connected with stations in the trenches.
The active defence of an entrenched line is, of course, entrusted to the troops stationed in the trenches. Their main weapons are their rifles and machine-guns; but when, as is often the case, opposing trenches are within a very short distance (sometimes only twenty yards) of each other, or when the enemy succeeds in rushing the entanglements and so gets to close quarters, missiles capable of being thrown by hand are largely employed. These missiles, known as '' bombs or '' grenades,'' are small tins or other cases filled with high explosives and fragments of iron, or even pebbles. They are furnished with detonators fired by means of fuses which are set alight just before the bomb is thrown; or, in some cases, the detonators are so placed as to explode by percussion when the bomb reaches its mark. And, in order to make the throwing more easy, the bombs are provided with wooden handles (in which case they are known as "hairbrush bombs"), or else they are furnished with pieces of cord by which they can be slung to considerable distances. Some of them, also ("rifle grenades"), are mounted on long, slender rods which can be thrust into the barrels of rifles, and thus enable the soldiers to fire grenades instead of bullets; and others, again, of larger size, are similarly discharged from short, handy, smooth-bored "trench mortars" which can be placed and handled anywhere in the trenches. So, too, with "aerial torpedoes." These are huge projectiles in the form of thimbles with projecting vanes for guiding their course through the air. The torpedo-gun that projects them is merely a short steel stud, or rod-a finger, as it were, on which the thimble is fitted. A small charge of propelling explosive is placed in a cavity at the end of the rod before the projectile is put in position, and when it is ignited the thimble flies off in any desired direction and to any desired distance. So, what with bombs, rifle grenades, mortar petards and aerial torpedoes, it becomes possible for the occupants of a firing trench to hurl very large numbers of very destructive missiles into the enemy's excavations in their front, and to do this while standing well down in their own ditches and without exposing either their heads or their arms to the disagreeable attentions of the hostile sharpshooters, or "snipers" as they are called, who lie in wait at all times to fire whenever a foeman can be seen.
This risk of being "sniped" is supplemented by the dangers incurred from the bursting of shrapnel and (i.e. "high explosive") shells in the air above the trenches; so much so, indeed, as to have brought about a very interesting "throw back." It was supposed that the days of personal armour in battle had for ever departed; and even the glittering helmets and cuirasses of our own horseguards and the analogous troops of other nations were regarded merely as a picturesque survival for the purposes of ceremony and show. But the Great War has taught differently. Steel head-pieces are being adopted in all the contending armies, and in many eases steel breast-plates are being used in addition; while for the special protection of snipers and the firing line at the loopholes in the parapets of the trenches a steel visor has been made to cover their faces.
Trench warfare is likewise responsible for a reversion to another very ancient method of fighting. Popular newspapers have ignorantly spoken of gas and flame attacks as a German invention and as things quite new. The truth is that they date back to the earliest days of recorded military operations. The "stink-pots" of the Chinese were used at least two thousand years ago, and long before then the ancient Egyptians were accustomed to advance against their foes under cover of a cloud of smoke and noxious fumes. In the days of the Byzantine Empire the famous " Greek fire was the deciding feature in winning many a victory; and during the long struggle of Poland as the bulwark of Central Europe against the advancing Turkish tide both parties to the fighting made frequent use of fierce flame and irritating vapours. It is admittedly the case that the Germans have in some respects made the attacks more formidable by employing liquefied chlorine; but in doing so they have merely worked on the lines propounded in America some twenty years ago and submitted to the British Government long before the war. So, too, with regard to high-explosive bombs, petards, rifle-grenades and aerial torpedoes, these were all experimented with and even patented in the United States and Great Britain in the latter part of the last century; and in 1912 a scheme of organisation of a "chemical regiment" was considered by the military authorities of more than one of the European nations. The fact remains, however, that at the last Hague Convention the representatives of the nations agreed that poisonous gases should not be used in warfare, and Germany's utter disregard of her promise is only one among many instances of her faithlessness.
Another new development of a very old system may be seen in the greatly extended employment of sapping and mining. Formerly, these operations were confined to the attack and defence of regular fortifications. Now, they have become a vital feature of operations in the open field. The safest way of assailing an entrenched position is to burrow towards it in the ground, thereby avoiding all entanglements, snipers, rifle fire, machine-guns, shrapnel and H.E. shells, and reaching a point where a few hundredweights of lyddite, or trinitrotoluol, etc., skilfully placed and ignited may blow the hostile trenches and their occupants sky-high. We hear, therefore, almost as much of "craters" being formed and then captured as of trenches being stormed; and in the end we find ourselves thinking of a ditch in a field as though it were a frowning fortress.
Atogether, then, while potent chemicals and more powerful explosives render the fighting of the present time more destructive than that of previous ages, and while wired trenches are found to be more formidable than moated walls, the echoes of the past remain, as it were, inevitably mingled with the sounds of modern battle-fields.