This is an excerpt from the article "Dumb Donkeys or Cunning Foxes? Learning in the British and German Armies during the Great War" by Dr Robert T. Foley of the Defence Studies Department, King’s College London.
Across the Western Front from early September, a rather strange thing began occurring. As the French and German armies shifted units from their southern wings to their northern in an attempt to outflank each other, improvised field positions began appearing wherever the two armies remained. While these were by no means the extensive trench systems of later in the war, they allowed positions to be held with fewer troops, freeing up others for use elsewhere. Although often seen as an innovation of the First World War, field positions had a long history, including in wars in the years immediately before 1914. Both the Balkan Wars of 1912/13 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/05 had seen extensive use of entrenchments, and European armies were well versed in their use. By November 1914, the belligerents in Belgium and France faced each other from two increasingly sophisticated defensive systems. These trenches proved successful at resisting most attempts to break through for the next four years. Several interrelated factors created this deadlock.
First, the combination of cover and firepower created a tactical problem for attackers. Field fortifications provided cover for defending troops as they waited out enemy preparatory artillery bombardments and small-arms fire. Once this fire had lifted to allow attacking troops to close with the enemy, defenders would emerge and fire into the now-exposed attacking troops. Even if some defenders were killed or incapacitated by the preparatory fire, modern rifles could easily fire 20 rounds per minute, and the increasingly available machine guns could fire up to 600 rounds per minute. Added to the firepower of the infantry was that of the artillery. Again, as the war progressed, artillery firepower increased with ever-larger numbers and sizes of artillery pieces being added to the tables of organization of European armies. All of this firepower struck the attacker when he was at his most vulnerable. In order to attack the enemy, the attacker had to leave the protection of his own trenches, exposing him to the fire of the enemy. Thus, on the Western Front, relatively few defenders to stop cold almost any attack in its tracks.
Added to this tactical problem was an operational problem. The defensive effectiveness of frontline trenches meant that they could be held by relatively few troops. Given the size of armies during the war, this left large numbers of units free to act as a reserve in case the enemy did succeed in breaking into a defensive position. (Although the calculations are by no means exact, the British official history noted that the two sides could each field 15,000 men per mile, or 10 men per yard, on the Western Front in 1914.) Moreover, it was clear to all that any attempt to break through the trenches would have to be carefully managed—attacking troops would have to be brought forward and artillery preparation carried out. Throughout most of the war, this buildup of men and material telegraphed an attacker’s intentions and allowed a defender to ready his reserves. Even if surprise could be achieved, the tactical break-in took so long that invariably defenders had time to bring up fresh reserves.
As the war progressed, the two problems became more closely intertwined. From late 1915, the simple field fortifications gave way to complex defensive systems of considerable depth. Instead of a simple trench line, by late 1917, the Germans had developed sequential defensive systems, each of which comprised a number of trench lines and centres of resistance with a depth of up to 15 kilometres. The object of defensive ceased to be holding the forward line and became absorbing an enemy attack and inflicting high casualties before counter-attacking to regain lost ground. With systems being so deep, the problem of tactical mobility combined with that of operational mobility to prevent movement on the Western Front.
Source: International Affairs 90/2 (March 2014)
Also see Dr. Foley's article "Machine Gun Lessons from the Somme" HERE
This is good, but it's not complete. The extensive defensive belts, and the massive churn of artillery, made it next-to-impossible to move artillery and supplies to support a breakthrough, once achieved. That's the real operational impact, that operational maneuver was generally defeated by the lack of mobility across the deep battlefield.
ReplyDelete20 rounds per minute was possible but rarely achieved. The 'Old Contemptibles' had to meet a standard of 15 per minute but later soldiers weren't trained to that standard. Also bearing in mind that the 20 rounds per minute rate of fire would require magazine rechargings after every five rounds fired.
ReplyDelete