When did trench warfare first start?
Trench warfare
Trench warfare prevailed on the Western Front from late 1914 until the Germans launched their Spring Offensive on 21 March 1918. After the buildup of forces in 1915, the Western Front became a stalemated struggle between equals, to be decided by attrition. Frontal assaults, and their associated casualties, became inevitable because the continuous trench lines had no open flanks. Casualties of the defenders matched those of the attackers, as vast reserves were expended in costly counter-attacks or exposed to the attacker's massed artillery. There were periods in which rigid trench warfare broke down, such as during the Battle of the Somme, but the lines never moved very far. The war would be won by the side that was able to commit the last reserves to the Western Front.
Trench warfare
A well-developed trench had to be at least deep to allow men to walk upright and still be protected. Trenches were never straight but were dug in a zigzagging or stepped pattern, with all straight sections generally kept less than a dozen meters (yards). Later, this evolved to have the combat trenches broken into distinct fire bays connected by traverses. While this isolated the view of friendly soldiers along their own trench, this ensured the entire trench could not be enfiladed if the enemy gained access at any one point; or if a bomb, grenade, or shell landed in the trench, the blast could not travel far.
World War I
After the First Battle of the Marne (5–12 September 1914), Allied and German forces unsuccessfully tried to outflank each other, a series of manoeuvres later known as the "Race to the Sea". By the end of 1914, the opposing forces were left confronting each other along an uninterrupted line of entrenched positions from Alsace to Belgium's North Sea coast. Since the Germans were able to choose where to stand, they normally had the advantage of the high ground; in addition, their trenches tended to be better built, since Anglo-French trenches were initially intended as "temporary," preparatory to breaking the German defences.
Howitzer
The onset of trench warfare after the first few months of the First World War greatly increased the demand for howitzers that gave a steep angle of descent, which were better suited than guns to the task of striking targets in a vertical plane (such as trenches), with large amounts of explosive and considerably less barrel wear. The German army was well equipped with howitzers, having far more at the beginning of the war than France.
Trench warfare
A basic wire line could be created by draping several strands of barbed wire between wooden posts driven into the ground. Loose lines of wire can be more effective in entangling than tight ones, and it was common to use the coils of barbed wire as delivered only partially stretched out, called concertina wire. Placing and repairing wire in no man's land relied on stealth, usually done at night by special wiring parties, who could also be tasked with secretly sabotaging enemy wires. The screw picket, invented by the Germans and later adopted by the Allies during the war, was quieter than driving stakes. Wire often stretched the entire length of a battlefield's trench line, in multiple lines, sometimes covering a depth or more.
Horses in warfare
Early in the War, cavalry skirmishes were common, and horse-mounted troops widely used for reconnaissance. On the Western Front cavalry were an effective flanking force during the "Race to the Sea" in 1914, but were less useful once trench warfare was established. There a few examples of successful shock combat, and cavalry divisions also provided important mobile firepower. Cavalry played a greater role on the Eastern Front, where trench warfare was less common. On the Eastern Front, and also against the Ottomans, the "cavalry was literally indispensable." British Empire cavalry proved adaptable, since they were trained to fight both on foot and while mounted, while other European cavalry relied primarily on shock action.
Siege
Mainly as a result of the increasing firepower (such as machine guns) available to defensive forces, First World War trench warfare briefly revived a form of siege warfare. Although siege warfare had moved out from an urban setting because city walls had become ineffective against modern weapons, trench warfare was nonetheless able to use many of the techniques of siege warfare in its prosecution (sapping, mining, barrage and, of course, attrition), but on a much larger scale and on a greatly extended front.
German military rifles
The needle gun first made its appearance in street fighting during the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849. It also played an important role in the Danish–German War of 1864. The gun saw its heaviest use in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Because the breech-loader made it possible for a Prussian soldier to fire five (or more) shots, even while lying on the ground, in the time that it took his Austrian counterpart to fire one (and then reload while standing), it was seen as allowing the Prussians to sweep the field.
Robert E. Lee
Grant eventually was able to stealthily move his army across the James River. After stopping a Union attempt to capture Petersburg, Virginia, a vital railroad link supplying Richmond, Lee's men built elaborate trenches and were besieged in Petersburg, a development which presaged the trench warfare of World War I. Lee attempted to break the stalemate by sending Jubal A. Early on a raid through the Shenandoah Valley to Washington, D.C., but Early was defeated early on by the superior forces of Philip Sheridan. The Siege of Petersburg lasted from June 1864 until March 1865, with Lee's outnumbered and poorly supplied army shrinking daily because of desertions by disheartened Confederates.
Christmas truce
Truces between British and German units can be dated to early November 1914, around the time opposing armies had begun static trench warfare. At this time, both sides' rations were brought up to the front line after dusk, and soldiers on both sides noted a period of peace while they collected their food. By 1 December, a British soldier could record a friendly visit from a German sergeant one morning "to see how we were getting on". Relations between French and German units were generally more tense, but the same phenomenon began to emerge. In early December, a German surgeon recorded a regular half-hourly truce each evening to recover dead soldiers for burial, during which French and German soldiers exchanged newspapers. This behaviour was often challenged by junior and senior officers; the young Charles de Gaulle wrote on 7 December of the "lamentable" desire of French infantrymen to leave the enemy in peace, while the commander of 10th Army, Victor d'Urbal, wrote of the "unfortunate consequences" when men "become familiar with their neighbours opposite". Other truces could be enforced on both sides by weather conditions, especially when trench lines flooded in low-lying areas, though these often lasted after the weather had cleared. On the Eastern Front, Fritz Kreisler reported incidents of spontaneous truces and fraternisation between the Austro-Hungarians and Russians in the first few weeks of the war.
Anti-tank warfare
Anti-tank warfare arose as a result of the need to develop technology and tactics to destroy tanks during World War I. Since the first tanks were developed by the Triple Entente in 1916 but not operated in battle until 1917, the first anti-tank weapons were developed by the German Empire. The first developed anti-tank weapon was a scaled-up bolt-action rifle, the Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr that fired a 13mm cartridge with a solid bullet that could penetrate the thin armor of tanks of the time and destroy the engine or ricochet inside killing occupants. Because tanks represent an enemy's greatest force projection on land, anti-tank warfare has been incorporated into the doctrine of nearly every combat service since. Most predominant anti-tank weapons at the start of World War II were the tank-mounted gun, anti-tank guns and anti-tank grenades used by the infantry as well as ground-attack aircraft.
Battle
A new style, during World War I, known as trench warfare, developed nearly half a century later. This also led to radio for communication between battalions. Chemical warfare also emerged with the use of poisonous gas during World War I.
32nd Infantry Division (United States)
Captain Alien L. Briggs returned to Camp MacArthur to assist with training. He had been an Aide-de-camp to General Parker and had been in Europe when the war broke out in 1914. He had observed the training methods used in military schools in France. As training intensified in preparation for leaving for France, five French and four British officers, along with several non-commissioned officers, joined the division as instructors. A trench system was built outside the camp in which the division practiced the techniques of trench warfare. There was a continual shortage of equipment that hampered training in the artillery and machine gun battalions. Additional training for junior and non-commissioned officers was implemented, and General Haan offered additional daily instruction to the brigade, regimental and battalion commanders.
Trench warfare
Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied fighting lines consisting largely of military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. The most famous use of trench warfare is the Western Front in World War I. It has become a byword for stalemate, attrition, sieges, and futility in conflict.
Trench warfare
Various mechanical devices were invented for throwing hand grenades into enemy trenches. The Germans used the "Wurfmaschine", a spring-powered device for throwing a hand grenade about . The French responded with the "Sauterelle" and the British with the Leach Trench Catapult and West Spring Gun which had varying degrees of success and accuracy. By 1916, catapult weapons were largely replaced by rifle grenades and mortars.
Western Front (World War I)
To break the deadlock of trench warfare on the Western Front, both sides tried new military technology, including poison gas, aircraft and tanks. The adoption of better tactics and the cumulative weakening of the armies in the west led to the return of mobility in 1918. The German Spring Offensive of 1918 was made possible by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that ended the war of the Central Powers against Russia and Romania on the Eastern Front. Using short, intense "hurricane" bombardments and infiltration tactics, the German armies moved nearly to the west, the deepest advance by either side since 1914, but the result was indecisive.
British Expeditionary Force (World War I)
By the end of First Battle of Ypres both sides started to dig in and trench warfare replaced the manoeuvre warfare that had featured during the Race to the Sea. The continuous trench lines of the Western Front now stretched from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier. The British Army held a small portion of this 400 mile front: from just north of the pre-war Belgium border to the River Somme in France, varying in length from in 1914, to over in 1918, in the area commonly known as Flanders.
John T. Thompson
World War I began in Europe in 1914, and Thompson was sympathetic to the Allied cause. Since the U.S. did not immediately enter the war, and because he recognized a significant need for small arms in Europe (as well as an opportunity to make a substantial profit), Thompson retired from the Army in November of that year and took a job as Chief Engineer of the Remington Arms Company. While with the company he supervised the construction of the Eddystone Plant in Chester, Pennsylvania, at that time the largest small arms plant in the world. It manufactured Pattern 1914 Enfield rifles for British forces, and Mosin–Nagant rifles for Russia.
The introduction of trench warfare in the First World War changed tactics substantially, and by 1916 Thompson was experimenting again with automatic small arms, this time attempting to design a weapon that troops could use to clear an enemy trench—what he called a "trench broom." Thompson studied several designs and was impressed with a delayed-blowback breech system designed by John Blish, a commander in the United States Navy. With Blish as a partner, Thompson obtained the necessary venture capital to form the Auto-Ordnance Company, and began working on the design of what eventually became the Thompson submachine gun.
Mauser 1918 T-Gewehr
During the First World War the onset of static, trench warfare saw the rise in the use of armour plate for personal defense, and the development and use of armour-piercing ammunition to counter this. Both Britain and Germany used high-powered rifles, such as elephant guns from their African colonies, for this purpose.
The first use of armoured fighting vehicles (tanks) was by the British at the Battle of Flers–Courcelette in September 1916 and were followed by the French.
By June 1917, the German Army faced the Mark IV tank, and found that the standard armour-piercing 7.92 mm K bullet was no longer effective.
This prompted the development by the Germans of a heavy-calibre and high-velocity rifle as an anti-tank weapon.
The Mauser Company responded with the 13mm "T-gewehr" and began mass production at Oberndorf am Neckar in May 1918. The first of these off the production lines were issued to specially raised anti-tank detachments.
Trench warfare
Once the guns stopped, the defenders had time to emerge and were usually ready for the attacking infantry. The second aim was to protect the attacking infantry by providing an impenetrable "barrage" or curtain of shells to prevent an enemy counter-attack. The first attempt at sophistication was the "lifting barrage" where the first objective of an attack was intensely bombarded for a period before the entire barrage "lifted" to fall on a second objective farther back. However, this usually expected too much of the infantry, and the usual outcome was that the barrage would outpace the attackers, leaving them without protection.
Trench warfare
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 completed system a further kilometre behind. This duplication made a decisive breakthrough 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.
Barrage (artillery)
Artillery usually fired over open sights at visible targets, until the Second Boer War when indirect fire started to be used. The largest unit accustomed to firing at a single target was the brigade (i.e. an artillery battalion), normally 18 guns. Trench warfare led to the necessity for indirect firing through the use of observers, more sophisticated artillery fire plans and an increasingly scientific approach to gunnery. Gunners had to use increasingly complicated calculations to lay the guns. Individual guns were aimed so that their fall of shot was co-ordinated with others to form a pattern; in the case of a barrage, the pattern was a line. The term “barrage” was first used in World War I in English in the orders for the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915.
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Britain entered the war to protect Belgium from German aggression, and quickly assumed the role of fighting the Germans on the Western Front, and dismantling the overseas German Empire. The romantic notions of warfare that everyone had expected faded as the fighting in France bogged down into trench warfare. Along the Western Front the British and French launched repeated assaults on the German trench lines in 1915–17, which killed and wounded hundreds of thousands, but made only limited gains. By early 1916, with number of volunteers falling off, the government imposed conscription in Britain (but was not able to do so in Ireland where nationalists of all stripes militantly opposed it) in order to keep up the strength of the army. Industry turned out munitions in large quantities, with many women taking factory jobs. The Asquith government proved ineffective but when David Lloyd George replaced him in December 1916 Britain gained a powerful and successful wartime leader.
Trench warfare
The small, improvised trenches of the first few months grew deeper and more complex, gradually becoming vast areas of interlocking defensive works. They resisted both artillery bombardment and mass infantry assault. Shell-proof dugouts became a high priority. The space between the opposing trenches was referred to as "no man's land" and varied in width depending on the battlefield. On the Western Front it was typically between , though only on Vimy Ridge.
Rocket-propelled grenade
The static nature of trench warfare in World War I encouraged the use of shielded defenses, even including personal armor, that were impenetrable by standard rifle ammunition. This led to some isolated experiments with higher caliber rifles, similar to elephant guns, using armor-piercing ammunition. The very first tanks, the British Mark I, could be penetrated by these weapons under the right conditions. Mark IV tanks, however, had slightly thicker armor. In response, the German rushed to create an upgraded version of these early anti-armor rifles, the Tankgewehr M1918, the first anti-tank rifle. In the inter-war years, tank armor continued to increase overall, to the point that anti-tank rifles could no longer be effective against anything but light tanks; any rifle made powerful enough for heavier tanks would exceed the ability of a soldier to carry and fire the weapon.
2-inch medium mortar
As the Western Front in France and Belgium stagnated into trench warfare in late 1914, British forces found themselves with no means of replying to the German "minenwerfers" (trench mortars) which were lobbing both small and large (over 100 pound) high-explosive shells into their frontline trenches from short range. British commanders requested an accurate short-range weapon which was manually portable in the trenches, could be safely used to attack enemy trenches as close as 100 yards to the British trenches, was easily concealed and projected a reasonably large explosive charge capable of damaging protected enemy positions. The British Expeditionary Force had been expected to participate only in mobile warfare and was not equipped with any mortars.
Trench knife
Because French industry was working under wartime conditions with numerous material shortages, often using subcontracted labor, even officially sanctioned French Army trench knives tend to vary significantly from knife to knife. The need for knives was so great that already-understrength French Army formations were forced to demobilize hundreds of former cutlery workers so that they could return to their former jobs and begin quantity production of trench knives for the armed forces. As the war went on, newer and more versatile blade-type trench knife patterns such as the double-edged dagger "Couteau Poignard Mle 1916 dit Le Vengeur" began to replace the "French Nail" and earlier stiletto-style trench knives. The French lead in trench knife development was closely followed by the United States, which introduced three successive trench knife models - the M1917, M1918, and Mark I (1918) - all based directly or indirectly upon previous French designs.
Trench
Trenches have often been dug for military purposes. In the pre-firearm era, they were mainly a type of hindrance to an attacker of a fortified location, such as the moat around a castle (this is technically called a ditch). An early example of this can be seen in the Battle of the Trench, one of the early Battles of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.
Trench map
The earliest trench maps dating from 1915 were often made from enlargements of French and Belgian maps of variable quality. Some re-surveying of the front was carried out when it was found that such enlargements were not sufficiently precise. Precision was paramount to the artillery, especially later in the war when techniques were developed to "shoot from the map".
Trench warfare
Once the war entered the static phase of trench warfare, the number of lethal head wounds that troops were receiving from fragmentation increased dramatically. The French were the first to see a need for greater protection and began to introduce steel helmets in the summer of 1915. The Adrian helmet replaced the traditional French kepi and was later adopted by the Belgian, Italian and many other armies.
Mariana Trench
The trench was first sounded during the "Challenger" expedition in 1875, using a weighted rope, which recorded a depth of . In 1877, a map was published called "Tiefenkarte des Grossen Ozeans" ("Deep map of the Great Ocean") by Petermann, which showed a "Challenger Tief" ("Challenger deep") at the location of that sounding. In 1899, USS Nero, a converted collier, recorded a depth of .
Trench
With the advent of accurate firearms, trenches were used to shelter troops. Trench warfare and tactics evolved further in the Crimean War, the American Civil War and World War I, until systems of extensive main trenches, backup trenches (in case the first lines were overrun) and communication trenches often stretched dozens of kilometres along a front without interruption, and some kilometres further back from the front line.
Mark V tank
During the Battle of Amiens in August 1918, 288 Mark V tanks, along with the new Whippet and Mk V*, penetrated the German lines in a foretaste of modern armoured warfare, and signaled the end of trench warfare.
Trench warfare
Artillery dominated the battlefields of trench warfare. An infantry attack was rarely successful if it advanced beyond the range of its supporting artillery. In addition to bombarding the enemy infantry in the trenches, the artillery could be used to precede infantry advances with a creeping barrage, or engage in counter-battery duels to try to destroy the enemy's guns. Artillery mainly fired fragmentation, high-explosive, shrapnel or, later in the war, gas shells. The British experimented with firing thermite incendiary shells, to set trees and ruins alight. However, all armies experienced shell shortages during the first year or two of World War I, due to underestimating their usage in intensive combat. This knowledge had been gained by the combatant nations in the Russo-Japanese War, when daily artillery fire consumed ten times more than daily factory output, but had not been applied.
Trench warfare
In 1917 and 1918, new types of weapons were fielded. They changed the face of warfare tactics and were later employed during World War II.
The Trench (Dix)
The Trench (German: "Der Schützengraben"), but earlier known as "Das Kriegsbild" ("The War Picture") or simply "Der Krieg" ("The War"), was an oil painting by German artist Otto Dix. The large painting was made from 1920 to 1923, one of several anti-war works by Dix in the 1920s inspired by his experience of trench warfare in the First World War.
Trench raiding
Trench raiding was a feature of trench warfare which developed during World War I. It was the practice of making small scale night-time surprise attacks on enemy positions.
Eingreif division
"Eingreif" division is a term for a type of German Army formation of World War I, which developed in 1917, which was responsible for engaging in immediate counter-attacks ("Gegenstoße") against enemy troops who broke through a defensive position being held by a front-holding division (). Attacks by the French and British armies against the "Westheer" on the Western Front had been met in 1915 and 1916 by increasing the number and sophistication of trench networks, the original improvised defences of 1914 giving way to a centrally-planned system of trenches in a trench-position and then increasing numbers of trench-positions, to absorb the growing firepower and offensive sophistication of the Entente armies.
Trench warfare
Only starting in 1916, on the battlefield of Verdun, came the use of portable small radio stations that could transmit short Morse codes. Radio frequency overlap occurred with neighboring divisions until precise regulation and radio discipline developed. Also, enemy interception was common until effective codebook practices were enforced. These problems were not completely resolved until the war's end.
Tunnel warfare
Mining saw a brief resurgence as a military tactic during the First World War, when army engineers attempted to break the stalemate of trench warfare by tunneling under no man's land and laying large quantities of explosives beneath the enemy's trenches. As in siege warfare, tunnel warfare was possible due to the static nature of the fighting.
Trench warfare
The Crimean War (1853-1856) saw "massive trench works and trench warfare",
even though "the modernity of the trench war was not immediately apparent to the contemporaries".
Royal Artillery Memorial
The First World War, which took place between 1914 and 1918, saw the extensive use of artillery, particularly on the Western Front. Technical advances, combined with the relatively static nature of trench warfare, made these guns a key element of the conflict: over half the casualties in the war were caused by artillery. Artillery guns and their crews were themselves targets, however, and 49,076 members of the Royal Artillery died during the conflict. In the years after the war, many former servicemen, including gunners, found the scale of the losses difficult to deal with, or felt that the events challenged their trust in the political leadership that had led them into the war. Visual reminders of the conflict were often avoided: mutilated servicemen, for example, were banned in the 1920s from joining in veterans' marches, and those with facial injuries often hid them in public.
Trench railways
Trench railways represented military adaptation of early 20th century railway technology to the problem of keeping soldiers supplied during the static trench warfare phase of World War I. The large concentrations of soldiers and artillery at the front lines required delivery of enormous quantities of food, ammunition and fortification construction materials where transport facilities had been destroyed. Reconstruction of conventional roads (at that time rarely surfaced) and railways was too slow, and fixed facilities were attractive targets for enemy artillery. Trench railways linked the front with standard gauge railway facilities beyond the range of enemy artillery. Empty cars often carried litters returning wounded from the front.
Trench warfare
Trench warfare has become a powerful symbol of the futility of war. Its image is of young men going "over the top" (over the parapet of the trench, to attack the enemy trench line) into a maelstrom of fire leading to near-certain death, typified by the first day of the Battle of the Somme (on which the British Army suffered nearly 60,000 casualties) or the grinding slaughter in the mud of Passchendaele. To the French, the equivalent is the attrition of the Battle of Verdun in which the French Army suffered 380,000 casualties.
Koos de la Rey
Having realised that the traditional Boer tactic of fighting from higher ground exposed them to the superior British artillery, de la Rey insisted that his men and Prinsloo's Free-Staters dig in on the banks of the Modder and Riet Rivers, the first use of trench warfare in the war. The plan was to hold fire until the British had approached close enough for the Boers' advantage in rifle fire to take effect, while making it difficult for the full force of the British artillery to be used. In the early hours the British troops advanced across the plain unopposed, but Prinsloo's men opened fire at long range, the troops took cover and the artillery pounded the Boer trenches. A series of British rushes pushed the Free-Staters back across the ford, and only a counter-attack led by de la Rey enabled the Boers to hold the field until dusk, when they slipped away. De la Rey was wounded and his son Adriaan was killed; he blamed Cronjé for failing to send reinforcements.
Trench warfare
Trench warfare has been infrequent in recent wars. When two large armoured armies meet, the result has generally been mobile warfare of the type which developed in World War II. However, trench warfare reemerged in the latter stages of the Chinese Civil War (Huaihai Campaign), the Korean War (from July 1951 to its end), and at Dien Bien Phu and other later locations and engagements during the Vietnam War. During the Cold War, NATO forces routinely trained to fight through extensive works called "Soviet-style trench systems", named after the Warsaw Pact's complex systems of field fortifications, an extension of Soviet field entrenching practices for which they were famous in their Great Patriotic War (the Eastern Front of World War II).
Logistics in World War I
However, as the war ground down into static trench warfare it became easier for armies to support their troops with the use of the railway, especially for the artillery. This made the transportation of supplies easier and quicker to get from the factories to the front line. This did have problems of their own, as seen by the Shell Crisis of 1915. Where the stalemate of trench warfare took hold, special narrow gauge trench railways were built to extend the rail network to the front lines. The great size of the German Army proved too much for its railways to support except while immobile. Tactical successes like Operation Michael devolved into operational failures where logistics failed to keep up with the army's advance over shell-torn ground.
Trench map
Partly in response to the evident deficiencies of such maps, the British Army put into use, starting in July 1915, the "Regular Series" trench map. These Regular Series maps, printed in Britain, did much to improve the situation (all 1:10,000 scale maps in this series, printed by the Geographical Section of the General Staff, bear the GSGS number 3062; 1:20,000 scale maps of this series bear the GSGS number 2742; maps of this series were almost invariably backed with linen, greatly improving their durability). Even after the Regular Series came into use in the Summer of 1915, however, local editions of maps, of different formats and printed at the front, remained in use, and did so throughout the war.
Early modern Britain
The Anglo-Dutch Wars were a series of three wars which took place between the English and the Dutch from 1652 to 1674. The causes included political disputes and increasing competition from merchant shipping. Religion was not a factor, since both sides were Protestant. The British in the first war (1652–54) had the naval advantage with larger numbers of more powerful "ships of the line" which were well suited to the naval tactics of the era.. The British also captured numerous Dutch merchant ships. In the second war (1665–67) Dutch naval victories followed. This second war cost London ten times more than it had planned on, and the king sued for peace in 1667 with the Treaty of Breda. It ended the fights over "mercantilism" (that is, the use of force to protect and expand national trade, industry, and shipping.) Meanwhile, the French were building up fleets that threatened both the Netherlands and Great Britain. In third war (1672–74), The British counted on a new alliance with France but the outnumbered Dutch outsailed both of them, and King Charles II ran short of money and political support. The Dutch gained domination of sea trading routes until 1713. The British gained the thriving colony of New Netherland, and renamed it New York.
Trench code
Trench codes (a form of cryptography) were codes used for secrecy by field armies in World War I. Originally, the most commonly used codes were simple substitution codes, but due to the relative vulnerability of the classical cipher, trench codes came into existence. (Important messages generally used alternative encryption techniques for greater security.) The use of these codes required the distribution of codebooks to military personnel, which proved to be a security liability since these books could be stolen by enemy forces.
Military history of Germany
By 1917 the German army had begun employing new infiltration tactics in an effort to break the trench warfare deadlock. Units of stormtroopers, were trained and equipped for the new tactics, and were used with devastating effect along the Russian front at Riga then at the Battle of Caporetto in Italy. These formations were then deployed to the Western front to counter the British tank attack at the Battle of Cambrai.
Trench warfare
Enemy trenches, 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 or "Ration Trench" on the Somme. 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.
Boezinge
In the 1990s an original British trench system ("Yorkshire Trench") was discovered by amateur archaeologists, on the site of an industrial estate near the village. Yorkshire Trench was a first line trench for about one year between summer or autumn 1916 until the summer of 1917. In spring of 1917, 173rd Tunnelling Company added a deep dugout to the existing trench. The completed Yorkshire Trench dugout then served as headquarters for the 13th and 16th Battalions of the Royal Welch Fusiliers at the start of the Battle of Passchendaele later that year. The BEF had decided to carry out all operations in the offensive of summer 1917 from deep dugouts. East of the Ypres Canal in the close vicinity of Yorkshire Trench there were several more dugouts, seven of which - all south and southeast of Yorkshire Trench - were finished by the 173rd or 179th Tunnelling Companies. Of these, "Yorkshire Trench", "Butt 18", "Nile Trench" and "Heading Lane Dugout" were double battalion headquarters, "Bridge 6" was a brigade headquarters, and" Lancashire Farm Dugout" contained two battalion and two brigade headquarters. The condition of the ground made digging the deep dugouts extremely difficult and dangerous. Work had to be carried out silently and secretly, facing an observant enemy who was only a few hundred metres away. About 180 dugout sites have been located in the Ypres Salient and in the 1990s some of them were entered, at least in part. 
Yorkshire Trench was rediscovered by amateur archaeologists and systematically excavated in 1998. Although the area is now part of a large industrial estate, the location was opened to the public in 2003 Yorkshire Trench is located close to the John McCrae memorial site at Essex Farm.The estate was destroyed during the first world war in July 1917 and rebuilt after the war.
Trench code
The Germans started using trench codes in the spring of 1917, evolving into a book of 4,000 codewords that were changed twice a month, with different codebooks used on different sectors of the front. The French codebreakers were extremely competent at cracking ciphers but were somewhat inexperienced at cracking codes, which require a slightly different mindset. It took them time to get to the point where they were able to crack the German codes in a timely fashion.
Trench warfare
Only with the advent of accurate firearms did the use of trenches as positions for the defender of a fortification become common. Elaborate trench and bunker systems were employed by the Māori to withstand British artillery barrages and bayonet charges during the New Zealand Wars in the 1840s. Trench systems were also employed in the Russo-Japanese War and American Civil War. The military usage evolved very quickly in the First World War, until whole systems of extensive main trenches, backup trenches (in case the first lines were overrun) and communication trenches had been developed, often stretching dozens of kilometres along a front without interruption, and some kilometres further back from the opponent's lines.
Male hysteria
World War I was the first instance in which a war neurosis and mental trauma was rampant and affected soldiers considerably. This could be attributed to the particular form of fighting – trench warfare – which was impersonal and constantly kept the soldier on edge for the next attack. Eric Leed writes that war neurosis was a result of the breakdown of the previously personal relationship of the soldier and his means of fighting. Rivers considered the idea that the traumatized men resorted to neurotic behavior because of a loss of their usual defense mechanism – physical hand-to-hand combat.
Anti-tank rifle
The first tanks, beginning with the British Mark I launched against the German trenches in World War I, were nearly impregnable to ordinary rifle fire. Most armoured cars were similarly protected, but troops rarely faced armoured cars, as they could not navigate the landscape of trench warfare very well. Though tanks and armoured cars were vulnerable to artillery, mortars, and grenades, infantry was at a significant disadvantage when facing armoured fighting vehicles since they had no effective direct fire weapon, with the exception of the ubiquitous trench mortar, improvised on the spot. In the direct fire mode, this weapon was manhandled by German infantry over the front of a trench wall and fired at low angles by eye at approaching enemy vehicles. Though somewhat effective, these actions were obviously very hazardous to any desperate mortar crew as their exposure could attract enemy fire.
92nd Brigade (United Kingdom)
The brigade was first introduced to trench warfare on 21 March by groups being attached to the 36th (Ulster) Division in the line. On 28 March the 10th and 11th Bns relieved Ulster battalions in front of Beaumont-Hamel and Y Ravine, with 12th and 13th Bns in support. Although this was a quiet sector of the line, the battalions suffered their first casualties during this short tour, mainly from German "Minenwerfer"s (trench mortars). Shortly afterwards 31st Division formed its own light trench mortar batteries (TMBs), with the Hull Pals contributing men to 92/1 and 92/2 TMBs for 92 Bde. 10th Battalion also provided working parties to assist the 252nd Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers, digging the Hawthorn Ridge mine that was to be exploded to launch the forthcoming Battle of the Somme. Over the next weeks the battalions took their turns in the routine of trench holding, working parties, patrolling and trench raiding, with a constant drain on manpower from shelling and snipers.
Trench warfare
Methods to defeat it are rudimentary. Prolonged artillery bombardment could damage them, but not reliably. The first soldier meeting the wire could jump onto the top of it, hopefully depressing it enough for those that followed to get over him; this still took at least one soldier out of action for each line of wire. In World War I, British and Commonwealth forces relied on wire cutters, which proved unable to cope with the heavier gauge German wire. The Bangalore torpedo was adopted by many armies, and continued in use past the end of World War II.
Gloucestershire Regiment in World War I
On the Western Front, hostilities commenced 2 August 1914 with the German invasion of Luxembourg and Belgium, designed to envelop Paris in a right sweep that avoided the most heavily defended French territory. The French, whose main effort was directed towards Alsace and Lorraine as a prelude to an invasion of Germany, were thrown onto the defensive on their left flank, which included one cavalry and four infantry divisions of the British Expeditionary Force. At the end of a two-week retreat from Mons the French managed to stop the Germans on the outskirts of Paris in the First Battle of the Marne. German forces retreated to the River Aisne and dug in, the first act of trench warfare that was to dominate the war.
Trench warfare
Initially each gun would need to register its aim on a known target, in view of an observer, in order to fire with precision during a battle. The process of gun registration would often alert the enemy an attack was being planned. Towards the end of 1917, artillery techniques were developed enabling fire to be delivered accurately without registration on the battlefield—the gun registration was done behind the lines then the pre-registered guns were brought up to the front for a surprise attack.
Mường Thanh Valley
The First Indochina War began on December 19, 1946 as a battle between the French trying to regain their colonial claims in Vietnam and the Viet Minh attempting to gain control of the area. In the early 1950s Viet Minh forces were making steady advancements on French-controlled parts of Northern Vietnam. By late 1952 much of the Red River Delta was under Viet Minh control. Due to its proximity to supply routes from China, the Mường Thanh Valley region was vital to the survival and support of the Viet Minh. The French forces in Vietnam under General Henri Navarre sought to occupy Dien Bien Phu. This would allow them to cut off an important supply route to the Viet Minh and also help them to fight against a Viet Minh offensive in Laos.
Trench warfare
A specialised group of fighters called "trench sweepers" ("Nettoyeurs de Tranchées" or "Zigouilleurs") evolved to fight within the trenches. They cleared surviving enemy personnel from recently overrun trenches and made clandestine raids into enemy trenches to gather intelligence. Volunteers for this dangerous work were often exempted from participation in frontal assaults over open ground and from routine work like filling sandbags, draining trenches, and repairing barbed wire in no-man's land. When allowed to choose their own weapons, many selected grenades, knives and pistols. FN M1900 pistols were highly regarded for this work, but never available in adequate quantities. Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless, Savage Model 1907, Star Bonifacio Echeverria and Ruby pistols were widely used.
Trench warfare
A recent example of trench warfare is the War in Donbass. To consolidate and defend their territory, government and rebel forces have dug trenches and have initiated warfare reminiscent of World War I, with troops staying in and fighting from trenches for months at a time using cement mixers and excavators at their lines for digging network tunnels and deep bunkers for protection. Since the Minsk peace agreements the front lines have not moved significantly and the two sides mostly fire mortars and sniper shots at each other. As a result both sides have dug elaborate networks of trenches and deep bunkers for protection.
Trench warfare
Very early in the war, British defensive doctrine suggested a main trench system of three parallel lines, interconnected by communications trenches. The point at which a communications trench intersected the front trench was of critical importance, and it was usually heavily fortified. The front trench was lightly garrisoned and typically only occupied in force during "stand to" at dawn and dusk. Between behind the front trench was located the support (or "travel") trench, to which the garrison would retreat when the front trench was bombarded.
Trench map
These first trench maps, used until the Summer of 1915, also suffered from a lack of standardization. In the absence of a single, theatre-wide format for trench maps, some rather idiosyncratic patterns came into being in these early days of trench warfare. For example, on the British 1st Army Front, troops used the notorious maps that the intelligence officer Col. Charteris favored, which actually printed the North on the bottom and the East on the left-hand side of the map! In addition, the inverted Charteris maps lacked an over-printed grid with hash-marks, so that individual targets required individual target reference numbers. The British Army had to fight two of the largest early battles of the war, those of Aubers Ridge and Festubert, using these wholly unsatisfactory maps.
Trench warfare
Field works are as old as armies. Roman legions, when in the presence of an enemy, entrenched camps nightly when on the move. In the early-modern era troops used field works to block possible lines of advance.
Trench Magazine
A trench magazine (also known as a trench journal or trench periodical) describes a type of publication made by and for soldiers during the First World War while living in the trenches. These magazines appear solely within the time frame of World War I (1914-1918), and within Europe, with most being British, French, or German. There were also some minor American, Canadian, and Australian magazines in this genre that existed as well.
Trench warfare
According to some reports, trench warfare led to the loss of "thousands of young lives in human-wave assaults on Eritrea's positions". The Eritrean defences were eventually overtaken by a surprise Ethiopian pincer movement on the Western front, attacking a mined, but lightly defended mountain (without trenches), resulting in the capture of Barentu and an Eritrean retreat. The element of surprise in the attack involved the use of donkeys as pack animals as well as being a solely infantry affair, with tanks coming in afterwards only to secure the area.
Race to the Sea
Over the winter lull, the French army established the theoretical basis of offensive trench warfare, originating many of the methods which became standard for the rest of the war. Infiltration tactics, in which dispersed formations of infantry were followed by (trench cleaners), to capture by-passed strong points were promulgated. Artillery observation from aircraft and creeping barrages, were first used systematically in the Second Battle of Artois from 9 May to 18 June 1915. Falkenhayn issued memoranda on 1915, to govern defensive battle on the Western Front, in which the existing front line was to be fortified and to be held indefinitely with small numbers of troops, to enable more divisions to be sent to the Eastern Front. New defences were to be built behind the front line to contain a breakthrough until the position was restored by counter-attacks. The began the huge task of building field fortifications, which were not complete until the autumn of 1915.
Trench map
A Trench map shows trenches dug for use in war. This article refers mainly to those produced by the British during the Great War, 1914–1918 although other participants made or used them..
Trench warfare
The problems of trench warfare were recognised, and attempts were made to address them. These included improvements in artillery, infantry tactics, and the development of tanks. By 1918, taking advantage of failing German morale, Allied attacks were generally more successful and suffered fewer casualties; in the Hundred Days Offensive, there was even a return to mobile warfare.
The Guns of August
Throughout the aforementioned narrative, Tuchman constantly brings up a theme: the numerous misconceptions, miscalculations, and mistakes that she believed resulted in the tragedy of trench warfare, such as:Overall, Tuchman argues that while some of the war's major combatants looked forward to a war, specifically Germany and Austria-Hungary, all of them expected it to be a short one, and none of them desired or anticipated a prolonged war. Likewise, she argues that even successes, such as the First Battle of the Marne, a French victory, were to some extent accidental victories that were won despite, and not because of, military leadership or strategy.
Trench map
For much of the Great War, trench warfare was almost static, giving rise to the need for large scale maps for attack, defence and artillery use. Initially, British trench maps showed the German trench systems in detail, but only the British Front line. Later in the war, more of the British trenches were shown. The only British maps that showed full detail of both sides were the secret editions, usually marked "Not to be taken beyond Brigade HQ" for fear of their falling into enemy hands.
Infiltration tactics
Forms of these infantry tactics were used by skirmishers and irregulars dating back to classical antiquity, but only as a defensive or secondary tactic; decisive battlefield victories were achieved by shock combat tactics with heavy infantry or heavy cavalry, typically charging "en masse" against the primary force of the opponent. By the time of early modern warfare, defensive firepower made this tactic increasingly costly. When trench warfare developed to its height in World War I, most such attacks were complete failures. Raiding by small groups of experienced soldiers, using stealth and cover was commonly employed and often successful, but these could not achieve decisive victory.
Combat shotgun
The development of the repeating pump-action shotguns in the 1890s led to their use by US Marines in the Philippines insurrections and by General "Black Jack" Pershing's pursuit of Pancho Villa, and "riot" shotguns quickly gained favor with civilian police units, but the modern concept of the combat shotgun was fully developed by the American Expeditionary Forces during World War I. The "trench gun", as it was called, was a short-barreled pump action shotgun loaded with 6 rounds containing antimony hardened 00 buckshot, and equipped with a bayonet. The M1897 and M1912 also could be slam fired: the weapon having no trigger disconnector, shells could be fired one after the other simply by working the slide if the trigger was held down, though in the heat of combat one could easily short-stroke the weapon and jam it. When fighting within a trench, the shorter shotgun could be rapidly turned and fired in both directions along the trench axis. The shotguns elicited a diplomatic protest from the German government, claiming the shotguns caused excessive injury, and that any troops found in possession of them would be subject to execution. The US Government rejected the claims, and threatened reprisals in kind if any US troops were executed for possession of a shotgun.
Aisne
It is thought that the Aisne River was the birthplace of the trench warfare seen in the First World War. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had initial early successes driving the Germans back to the Aisne River; the German troops dug in and managed to hold out against both British and French attacks. This German entrenchment was to mould the entire face of World War One as both sides began digging in and fortifying their positions. Thus began the stalemate that became a significant feature of the First World War.This linguistic variance probably explains the difficulty for residents south of Aisne to identify themselves as belonging to the Picardy region.
In 2008, the department had 4.1% of second homes. This table shows the main communes of Aisne that have second homes which occasionally exceed 10% of total housing.
Infiltration tactics
As far back as the 18th century, Prussian military doctrine stressed maneuver and force concentration to achieve a decisive battle (). The German military searched for ways to apply this in the face of trench warfare. Captain Willy Rohr fought in the long Battle of Hartmannswillerkopf (1914–1915), starting with two "Pionier" (combat engineer) companies. Such engineers often employed non-standard weapons and tactics compared to the regular infantry. Rohr's initial efforts to use these as special advanced strike teams, to break French lines for following troops to exploit, achieved only limited success, with heavy losses. Rohr, working with his superiors, saw equipment improved, including the new "Stahlhelm" (steel helmets), ample supplies of hand grenades, flamethrowers, light mortars and machine guns. Rohr's analysis was that much more training was needed to incorporate the new weapons and to coordinate separate attacks as needed to achieve the overall operational goals. His analysis got the attention of the "Oberste Heeresleitung" ("OHL", German army high command). In December 1915, Rohr was given the task of training the army in "modern close combat", and soon promoted to major. During the next two years, special stormtrooper detachments were created in divisions throughout the army; select men were sent to Rohr for training, who became trainers when they returned to their units. These tactics were expanded and refined by many in the German military command, extending the Prussian military doctrine down to smallest units—specially trained troops maneuvered and massed to assault positions, wherever opportunities were found.
Cecil Vandepeer Clarke
When production of the limpet mine was under way, Clarke started work on a radical and ambitious project. Drawing on his experiences of trench warfare in the First World War and his particular expertise in tunnelling and explosives, he drew up a proposal for an armoured trench-forming machine. Although the war had started, there was little real fighting on the Western Front and this period became known as the Phoney War. However, Clarke reasoned that eventually Germany's much vaunted "Siegfried Line" must be attacked. His trench-forming machine would drive through the earth advancing 2000 yards in a single night, men and tanks following in its wake in the relative safety of the trench it had formed.
Trench warfare
As far back as the 18th century, Prussian military doctrine stressed maneuver and force concentration to achieve a decisive battle (). The German military searched for ways to apply this in the face of trench warfare. Experiments with new tactics by Willy Rohr, a Prussian captain serving in the Vosges mountains in 1915, got the attention of the Minister of War. These tactics carried Prussian military doctrine down to smallest units — specially trained troops maneuvered and massed to assault positions they chose on their own. During the next 2 years the German army tried to establish special stormtrooper detachments in all its units by sending selected men to Rohr and have those men then train their comrades in their original units.
Trench warfare
At various times during the war—particularly early on—official truces were organised so that the wounded could be recovered from no man's land and the dead could be buried. Generally, senior commands disapproved of any slackening of the offensive for humanitarian reasons and so ordered their troops not to permit enemy stretcher-bearers to operate in no man's land. However, this order was almost invariably ignored by the soldiers in the trenches, who knew that it was to the mutual benefit of the fighting men of both sides to allow the wounded to be retrieved. So, as soon as hostilities ceased, parties of stretcher bearers, marked with Red Cross flags, would go out to recover the wounded, sometimes swapping enemy wounded for their own.
Experimental Mechanized Force
In the aftermath of the First World War, several theorists sought ways to avoid a repetition of trench warfare, despite the war of movement from August to December 1914 costing the French and the Germans The trench warfare that followed had been less costly in men but attrition warfare was indecisive; limited objective attacks under an umbrella of massed heavy artillery-fire could succeed but only at the cost of unlimited duration. Colonel J. F. C. Fuller, formerly the Chief of Staff of the Tank Corps, proposed an all-tank force, which would operate independently against enemy headquarters and lines of communication. Less radical theorists such as the historian and former British army officer Basil Liddell Hart, advocated mechanised forces of all arms, able to carry out operations of war other than the all-out offensive. Giffard LeQuesne Martel, a third influential reformer, proposed that tanks should be subordinated to infantry formations, while many cavalry officers maintained that the horse still had a part to play on a modern battlefield, in spite of all evidence to the contrary on the Western Front in the First World War.
Battle
Until the 19th century the majority of battles were of short duration, many lasting a part of a day. (The Battle of Preston (1648), the Battle of Nations (1813) and the Battle of Gettysburg (1863) were exceptional in lasting three days.) This was mainly due to the difficulty of supplying armies in the field, or conducting night operations. The means of prolonging a battle was typically by employment of siege warfare. Improvements in transportation and the sudden evolving of trench warfare, with its siege-like nature during World War I in the 20th century, lengthened the duration of battles to days and weeks. This created the requirement for unit rotation to prevent combat fatigue, with troops preferably not remaining in a combat area of operations for more than a month. Trench warfare had become largely obsolete in conflicts between advanced armies by the start of the Second World War.
Trench warfare
Between the two world wars many nations developed their own unique tanks and divergent theories of tank tactics, including the UK, France, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Japan, the US, and Italy. Though German tank development was restricted by the terms of the treaty ending World War I, Germany successfully combined their own tanks (plus Czech tanks from occupied Czechoslovakia) with infiltration tactics to produce blitzkrieg during World War II.
Gallipoli Campaign
By late 1914 the war on the Western Front had become a stalemate; the Franco-British counter-offensive of the First Battle of the Marne had ended and the British had suffered many casualties in the First Battle of Ypres in Flanders. The war of manoeuvre ended and trench warfare began. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary closed the overland trade routes between Britain and France in the west and Russia in the east. The White Sea in the arctic north and the Sea of Okhotsk in the Far East were icebound in winter and distant from the Eastern Front, the Baltic Sea was blockaded by the "Kaiserliche Marine" (Imperial German Navy) and the entrance to the Black Sea through the Dardanelles was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. While the empire remained neutral supplies could still be sent to Russia through the Dardanelles but prior to the Ottoman entry into the war the straits had been closed and in November the Turks began to mine the waterway.
Battle of the Trench
The men from Banu Khuza'a reached Muhammad in four days, warning him of the Confederate armies that were to arrive in a week. Muhammad gathered the Medinans to discuss the best strategy of overcoming the enemy. Meeting the enemy in the open (which led to victory at Badr), and waiting for them inside the city (a lesson learnt from the defeat at Uhud) were both suggested. Ultimately, the outnumbered Muslims opted to engage in a defensive battle by digging deep trenches to act as a barrier along the northern front. The tactic of a defensive trench was introduced by Salman the Persian. Every capable Muslim in Medina including Muhammad contributed to digging the massive trench in six days. The ditch was dug on the northern side only, as the rest of Medina was surrounded by rocky mountains and trees, impenetrable to large armies (especially cavalry). The digging of the ditch coincided with a near-famine in Medina. Women and children were moved to the inner city. The Medinans harvested all their crops early, so the Confederate armies would have to rely on their own food reserves.
British Expeditionary Force (World War I)
The Allied retreat finally ended at the River Marne, where Entente forces prepared to make a stand to defend Paris. This led to the First Battle of the Marne, which was fought from 5 to 10 September 1914. This battle would prove to be a major turning point of the war: it denied the Germans an early victory. From 13 September the First Battle of the Aisne took place, with both sides starting to dig trenches. Then for a three-week period following the development of trench warfare each side gave up frontal assaults and began trying to encircle each other's flank. This period became known as the Race to the Sea: the Germans aimed to turn the Allied left flank, and the Allies sought to turn the German right flank.
Tunnel warfare
The oldest known sources about employing tunnels and trenches for guerrilla-like warfare are Roman. After the uprising in Germania the insurgent tribes soon started to change defence from only local strongholds into utilising the advantage of wider terrain. Hidden trenches to assemble for surprise attacks were dug, connected via tunnels for secure fallback. In action often barriers were used to prevent the enemy from pursuing.
Role of geography in World War I
Trench Warfare was common during WWI, although it was not exactly the healthiest or morale-boosting experience for soldiers living in the trenches. They were constantly wet and water would often build up to several inches. Urine, body odor, poison gas, bad food, rats, little clothing, and misery all defined the trench lifestyle. Diseases such as Trench Foot emerged and close quarters caused infection to be passed from one person to another and from rats and bugs to humans as well. Loud bombs could often cause deafness and long periods in the trench often led to mental illness as well.
Trench warfare
In the New Zealand Wars (1845-1872) the indigenous Maori developed elaborate trench and bunker systems as part of fortified areas known as pā, employing them successfully as early as the 1840s to withstand British cannon, muskets, and an experimental poison-gas mortar. These systems included firing trenches, communication trenches, tunnels, and anti-artillery bunkers. British casualty rates of up to 45 percent, such as at Gate Pa in 1844 and the Battle of Ohaeawai in 1845, suggested that contemporary firepower was insufficient to dislodge defenders from a trench system.
Trench warfare
At 3.10 on June 7, 1917, a series of mines was detonated by the British to launch the Battle of Messines. The average mine contained 21 tons of explosive and the largest, 125 feet beneath Saint-Eloi, was twice the average at 42 tons. As remarked by General Plumer to his staff the evening before the attack:
Entrenching tool
During World War I entrenching tools became extremely important with the introduction of trench warfare. Entrenching tools designed for the individual infantryman soon appeared with short straight handles, T-handles, D-handles, and other designs.
Artillery of World War I
The artillery of World War I was used primarily to counter the trench warfare that set in shortly after the conflict commenced, and was an important factor in the war, influencing its tactics, and operations, and being incorporated into strategies that were used by the belligerents to break the stalemate at the front. World War I raised artillery to a new level of importance on the battlefield.
The Guns of August
"The Guns of August" thus provides a narrative of the earliest stages of World War I, from the decisions to go to war, up until the start of the Franco-British offensive that stopped the German advance into France. The result was four years of trench warfare. In the course of her narrative Tuchman includes discussion of the plans, strategies, world events, and international sentiments before and during the war.
7th Cavalry Brigade (United States)
After the brutal trench warfare of World War I, the United States was looking for new ways to engage in armed conflict. As the German Army invaded France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, the United States military hierarchy realized that an armored division was essential for a modern army. While training outside of Alexandria, Louisiana, the commanders of the 7th Cavalry Brigade met in a high school basement to discuss the creation of an American armored division. Major General Frank M. Andrews, Generals Adna R. Chaffee and Bruce Magruder, and Colonel George S. Patton Jr. agreed to recommend to Washington that the U.S. Army establish its first tank division.
Trench warfare
Early World War I trenches were simple. They lacked traverses, and according to pre-war doctrine were to be packed with men fighting shoulder to shoulder. This doctrine led to heavy casualties from artillery fire. This vulnerability, and the length of the front to be defended, soon led to front line trenches being held by fewer men. The defenders augmented the trenches themselves with barbed wire strung in front to impede movement; wiring parties went out every night to repair and improve these forward defences.
Henri Mordacq
In August 1914, Mordacq was chief of staff of general Archinard's First Reserve Corps Group in the Eastern Army. When the Germans breached the French lines through Belgium, he asked for a frontline command and became commander of the famous 159th Regiment of Alpine Infantry. He immediately took part in the Battle of the Frontiers and his regiment participated in the ending of the German advance in the Vosges before the First Battle of the Marne led to the Race to the Sea. He then took command of the defence of Arras, the "key to the sea" and again halted the German advance there, which led to the stabilization of the front and the beginning of trench warfare.
Battle of the Trough
The Battle of the Trough (March or April 1756) was a skirmish of the early French and Indian War (1754–63) fought between Native Americans and British settlers in the valley of the South Branch Potomac River in what is now northern Hardy County, West Virginia, USA.
Military
A major development in infantry tactics came with the increased use of trench warfare in the 19th and 20th centuries. This was mainly employed in World War I in the Gallipoli campaign, and the Western Front. Trench warfare often turned to a stalemate, only broken by a large loss of life, because, in order to attack an enemy entrenchment, soldiers had to run through an exposed 'no man's land' under heavy fire from their opposing entrenched enemy.
Military strategy
There was still room for triumphs for the strategy of manoeuvre such as Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864, but these depended upon an enemy's unwillingness to entrench. Towards the end of the war, especially in defense of static targets as in the battles of Cold Harbor and Vicksburg, trench networks foreshadowed World War I. Many of the lessons of the American Civil War were forgotten, when in wars like the Austro-Prussian War or the Franco-Prussian War, manoeuvre won the day.
Trench warfare
The French introduced the CSRG 1915 Chauchat during Spring 1916 around the concept of "walking fire", employed in 1918 when 250,000 weapons were fielded. More than 80,000 of the best shooters received the semi-automatic RSC 1917 rifle, allowing them to rapid fire at waves of attacking soldiers. Firing ports were installed in the newly arrived Renault FT tanks.