Trench warfare
Trench warfare has become archetypically associated with the First World War of 1914–1918, when the Race to the Sea rapidly expanded trench use on the Western Front starting in September 1914. By the end of October 1914 the whole front in Belgium and France had solidified into lines of trenches, which lasted until the last weeks of the war. Mass infantry assaults were futile in the face of artillery fire as well as rapid rifle and machine-gun fire. Both sides concentrated on breaking up enemy attacks and on protecting their own troops by digging deep into the ground. Trench warfare also took place on other fronts, including in Italy and at Gallipoli.
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.