One of the enduring canards of the Great War is that attacks consisted simply of large numbers of men climbing out of their trenches and walking slowly through a nightmarish moonscape of shell holes and barbed wire into the teeth of enemy machinegun fire. In such scenarios, of course, everyone knows they are going to die as soon as they get out of the trench and, sure enough, most of them do. No support is provided to the attackers, the enemy are ready and waiting to receive them, nothing is accomplished, and the attackers perish, gallantly but pointlessly, in the archetypal example of the brutal wastefulness of war.
For the most part, this image is utter nonsense. The number of casualties suffered by both sides in the Great War was horrific, but then the scale of the war is close to unimaginable for many modern readers and viewers unfamiliar with military history. Armies of millions lined a network of trenches and bunkers that ran from the Channel coast to the Alps. In the first day of battle of the Somme, when the British and French armies famously lost over 60,000 men killed and wounded, the initial attacks had consisted of 750,000 men. For a modern American perspective, the combined strength of the US Army and Marine Corps in 2011 did not reach 740,000, counting all commissioned and enlisted personnel everywhere in the world, not just those deployed to war zones, let alone actually those in combat roles (for example, US troop strength in Afghanistan has never reached 100,000).
So, about three percent of the British troops who went into battle on the first day of the Somme were killed, and six percent were wounded. Fewer than one in ten were causalities in what is widely seen as the most horrific trench battle of the war--far from the near-total slaughter generally depicted in popular images of the war.
Also omitted in most depictions of trench warfare are the tremendous amounts of preparation that went into such attacks. And of this, the battle of Vimy Ridge (mentioned yesterday) is a prime example. One of the reasons that Canadian troops succeeded so brilliantly in their attack can be seen in the months leading up to the offensive. Strategic and operational planning for the April attack began in November of the year before, and tactical planning began in January, leading to a final plan adopted formally in March. Officers studied previous engagements under similar conditions, developed new tactics, trained and rehearsed troops repeatedly in the months leading up to the assault. Officers and men learned the roles and responsibilities of their superiors and subordinates, so as to be able to take over for fallen comrades. Aircraft and patrols thoroughly explored the enemy defenses, and tens of thousands of maps were prepared and issued from the squad level and higher.
Often given short shrift in popular depictions of the war is the crucial role played by artillery. Guns had gone, during the course of the war, from weapons firing individually at targets visible to them within a few thousand yards to firing bombardments by map direction at targets often miles away. The detailed artillery plan for the Vimy attack coordinated the efforts of over a thousand field guns, mortars, and howitzers. Plans included preliminary bombardments directly on enemy defenses, a moving barrage aimed to protect the advancing troops and suppress any defenses they might face, and preparations for counterbattery fire against any German guns that might respond to the attack. (Techniques of direction- and distance-finding based on sound-ranging and flash-detection had become quite sophisticated.) Troops often did advance to the attack slowly, but when they did it was because they were trailing behind a screen of shell fire that both obscured them from enemy view, smashed bunkers and trench defenses, and tore up barbed-wire obstacles. Before the battle, engineers laid hundreds of miles of telephone wire so as to provide instant communication from observers at the operation's start line to the rear area where the artillery were located. In preparation for a new offensive, batteries would often be re-sited so that enemy guns that had previously been able to fire on them would shoot at the wrong coordinates. Multiple firing locations might even be prepared. And careful calculations would be made from all these locations to ensure that the guns were aimed precisely at the enemy defenses. And, if needed, miles of light rail would be laid to bring forward a steady stream of shells from depots deep in the army's rear area to the batteries' firing positions.
And there was more than high explosive to fear. By 1917, both sides had developed tactics for the use of chemical weapons. Some gas dissipated quickly; other forms were persistent. Some killed quickly, other types merely caused irritation or nausea. Different varieties and combinations served different purposes. Once an enemy's artillery positions or supply depots were located, those might be targeted for persistent gas attacks. If below-ground barracks were observed, heavy, long-lasting gas that would sink into them might be fired into the area. Firing on a position that one expected one's own troops to assault and capture, only gas that would dissolve or blow away quickly, so the defenders would be incapacitated but friendly forces arriving to take possession would not be harmed.
Another tool used by armies preparing for a defensive was the shovel. Not only would new firing positions for artillery be prepared, and new saps (trenches leading towards the enemy front line) be prepared, but where practical troops would engage in mining. Digging deep in the earth, sappers would create tunnels to bring friendly troops to the front line under cover--both protected from enemy artillery and invisible to enemy scouts and reconnaissance aircraft. And more tunnels would reach forward under no-mans-land to the enemy positions; chambers directly under the enemy's strongpoints were filled with high explosive which, when detonated, would destroy the strongpoint and open a gap in the foe's defenses.
So, tremendous amounts of preparation (planning, training, movement of troops, build-up of supplies) went on before an offensive was launched. Most troops knew where they were going and what they were expected to do. Enemy forces were often subjected to weeks of artillery bombardments and mining before an attack, destroying their strongpoints and weakening their morale. Enemy defenses received saturation shelling as an attack began, and troops were often preceded by a curtain of flame and destruction, making it well-nigh impossible to target them as they advanced.
So why did so many attacks fail? Why did the fighting continue year after year? In a word, resiliency. Defenders learned to build defenses stronger and in greater depth; instead of one line of foxholes, a fortified trenchline; instead of one trenchline, two, one behind the other; instead of linear fighting positions that, once penetrated, could be infiltrated laterally, belts of concrete pill boxes with adjacent fighting positions, which could support each other with fire. Instead of one gun position, half a dozen for each gun, all carefully sighted, so that enemy attacks would have to waster fire on unmanned positions.
And attackers still lacked one vital component: the ability to swiftly communicate between advanced forces and the main body. The initial stage of an attack had the full weight of supporting firepower (artillery, machineguns, aircraft) behind it. But an attacker who achieved his objective, capturing the enemy's frontline trenches, had no way to communicate with those assets. Two-way radios were too heavy to carry forward, even to mount on aircraft. Communication lines (telephone and telegraph) could be carried forward as troops advanced, but any shellfire into no mans land was likely to break those lines. Flag signals could be used, but only for limited messages and at the reach of line of sight.
So, far too often, attacks succeeded but follow-on forces could not be directed to the right area, higher headquarters could only learn which units had failed and which succeeded by men running back across the battlefield to report. And an area pulverized by the explosion of mines and weeks of artillery fire was not suitable for the rapid advance of cavalry, motor vehicles (the Canadians had a contingent of armored trucks mounted with machineguns to use as a pursuit force).
One of the great operational breakthroughs of Allied doctrine was the development of "bite and hold" tactics. Instead of trying to make the ultimate breakthrough, rupturing the enemy lines and thrusting cavalry forces through to roll up his line and destroy his rear areas, troops focused on limited objectives, overwhelmed them, then occupied and rebuilt them as a base for the next attack. "Slow and steady wins the race" might be a way of describing this sort of action. Once the Allies adopted this sort of advance and stopped wasting men and material on huge operations that could never be fully executed, they started moving towards success.
And the battle for Vimy Ridge was, arguably, an excellent example of "bite and hold".
Next time: why this ridge?
Postscript: I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that, in addition to their tactical wargames, Too Fat Lardies has published a Great War kriegsspiel that directly addresses this sort of operational planning. It's called (in their typical hearty fashion), "Corps Blimey", and it's available in their 2008 Christmas Special. A quick description of it can be found in their blog, here, and they posted an AAR of a Corps Blimey playtest game to The Miniatures Page. As chance would have it, the playtest scenario was a British assault on Vimy Ridge.
Well said, Sir!
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