Harsh Realities of Trench Warfare in WWI

            Prior to the Great War of 1914, conflicts on the European continent generally consisted of two or three belligerent countries, and were normally resolved within a short period of time.  Towns and the countryside often showed little long-term effects after battles were waged and decided.  These realities were soon to change drastically with the outbreak of hostilities in August of 1914.  Many great military minds of the time predicted that the war would be over before Christmas, and some even sooner.  Little did they know that the idea of one more great push, one more decisive battle, would be the tragic mistake often repeated across the continent and the world. 

To make matters worse for the armies on the field and the towns and countryside’s in which the battles took place, were the improvements made in military firepower.  Whether it was the small but effective French 75’s, or the colossal yet burdensome German 420’s, the effect was devastating to the land and its’ people.  Majestic cathedrals and forest were laid to waste as if a tornado, miles wide, had carved a merciless path through their hearts. 

In few other places were the pointless bombardment, killing and destruction more evident than on the Ypres Salient.  It was in this cold, waterlogged and unforgiving land that the nightmares of a new brand of warfare began to descend on the troops.  Long departed from the battlefield were the days of Napoleon where armies stood with ‘Elan’ and lined up opposite one another and fired away.  Replacing this chivalric act were the horrors of trench warfare.  Day after day troops lived in water-filled muddy holes and waited for the dreaded order to charge.  The constant bombardment and trench raids over time cost each side hundreds of thousands of lives all to gain insignificant amounts of land.  This constant loss of life began to have a profound effect on the leaders and men of both armies.  It will be shown hereafter how trench warfare and the new weapons of war changed the face of battle and how this change affected the troops.

German military leaders had counted on a short war that would initially involve the speedy conquest of France, followed by a transfer of force to the Russian front and victory there, but that was not to be the case.  The Schlieffen-Moltke plan according to S.L.A. Marshall in World War I was, “…far from being recondite, was as simple as a geometric axiom, though for armies a straight line is not always the shortest distance between two points.”[1]  Therefore, the plan dictated that Belgium soil must be violated in order for quick victory to be achieved. 

Believing that Belgium was unlikely to resist, the Germans issued an ultimatum to the King of Belgium to either join them or be invaded.  King Albert I refused to allow the German army safe passage through his land and counted on his heavily fortified strongholds of Liege, Namur, and Antwerp to provide some resistance.  These forts were, ‘…immensely strong, subterranean and self-contained, surrounded by a ditch thirty feet deep.’[2]  Unfortunately for the Belgian King, these forts would fall to one of the most frightening new weapons of war, the 420mm howitzer.  Secretly the Germans had produced these so-called ‘Big Berthas’ for the express purpose of eliminating the threat of the Belgian forts.[3] 

Even against the superior artillery power of the Germans, King Albert I of Belgium brilliantly defended the cities of Liege and Namur, and after their fall he ordered the retreat of his troops to the fortified city of Antwerp.[4]  Although eventually Antwerp fell, Belgian troops provided vital time for the landing and advance of the British Expeditionary Force on the European Continent.

According to Sir Llewellyn Woodward, “Four divisions of the Expeditionary Force landed in France between August 9 and August 17, and moved forward from their main base at Le Havre to the agreed area of concentration between Le Cateau and Maubeuge.”[5]  Almost immediately upon leaving for Belgium the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) encountered German resistance.  The Germans had planned on a double envelopment of the French and English armies, but the fighting that took place between September 5 and September 13 left the Germans outflanked by their enemies.[6]  The Germans began to retreat and according to Winston Groom in A Storm in Flanders: The Ypres Salient, 1914-1918, “The Race for the Sea began September 18, six weeks and four days after the Germans had crowned that they would be occupying Paris.”[7]  During the next three weeks ten minor battles took place in which neither side was willing to make a deciding push.[8]

            The five days that King Albert I was able to hold off the Germans in Antwerp allowed the initial BEF troops to arrive in Flanders.  Antwerp fell on October 10 and in Ypres John Keegan states, “It was here, between 8 and 19 October, that the five corps now comprising the British Expeditionary Force arrived by train and road to sustain the Allied Defense.”[9]  Thus began the conflict on the Ypres Salient, which would last from 1914-1918.

            The initial battles in Flanders were prime examples of excessive confidence and lack of information, which plagued the majority of the military leaders of World War I.  During preparations for the first Battle of Ypres British intelligence was woefully wrong in its assessment of the German force it was facing.  England’s general French estimated that the Germans facing them consisted of ‘only a single corp’.[10]  Supremely confident in his objective French ordered Haig to attack the German troops on October 19.  By October 21 Haig began to realize that the forces he faced were much greater than he had been led to believe.  Instead of facing an “an understrength corps” he was instead facing five German corps with enough artillery to outnumber the British five to one.[11]  Haig was forced to disobey orders from French to attack the Germans and instead ordered his troops to dig in.

            On the other side of the conflict the Germans suffered from the exact opposite problem, in that they overestimated the English force they were facing.  This did not however prohibit the Germans from acting in an arrogant fashion.  The main part of the German Fourth Army consisted of high school and college students.  These soldiers were ill prepared for what they were about to face.  On the other side was the highly trained professional British Army that had been hardened by previous wars.  Nevertheless, according to Winston Groom, “In a fit of Wagnerian frenzy, the German students came on arm-in-arm or waving their rifles in the air, singing, and with their spiked pickelhaube helmets festooned with flowers.”[12]  They would soon regret this show of confidence.  Over 100,000 of these soldiers would be shot down in the hills around Ypres by the end of the attack, and Germany would later name the battle “The Massacre of the Innocents”.[13]

            The areas surrounding Ypres would witness battles in which many youth would die and little ground would be gained.  Finally, the British were pressed back to an inferior low position in which the Germans controlled the high ground.  With the leaders of each army suffering from an inability to admit defeat or that a battle was pointless, both sides were forced to dig in, and here is where the nature and true horrors of the new war became evident.

            Trench warfare introduced a new static nature to armed conflict on the Western Front.  The English, French, and Belgians were relentless in their defense of Ypres and the Germans were equally as insistent on conquering the town.  Thus, with the lower ground, the English led army was forced to try to defend against a superiorly armed, manned, and strategically located enemy. 

The ground in which the Allied army sought to defend was located in an area where the water table was only a few feet from the surface.  To help provide more protection to the soldiers on the line, many were forced to stack sandbags, but these provided little protection against machinegun fire.  Where the water table was lower Winston Groom states:

“Under the supervision of the Royal Engineers, the hastily dug out trenches

 were deepened-or built up-to six to eight feet whenever possible and widened

 to four or five feet, zigzagged so as to prevent any large stretch to be enfiladed

 in an attack.”[14]

Although initially the English were in short supply of barbed wire, when it began to arrive in volume they were able to reinforce their trenches with up to a 150 feet of wire to help protect against trench raids.[15]  This had to be done at night in order to reduce the risk of sniper fire from enemy lines. 

            The trenches were constantly changing and growing and in some areas troops were forced to put up signs in order to navigate the labyrinth of passages.  Some trenches were used to supply the troops of the front line and some were used for reinforcements, but no matter what the purpose, trench life for the allied troops was far from comfortable.

            German troops were afforded a little more comfort and much more safety than their adversaries.  By occupying the high ground the Germans weren’t as affected by the water table as were the Allies, therefore their trench systems were more elaborate.  According to Winston Groom:

“On the higher ridges they dug down sometimes thirty feet deep, safe from

all shell fire, and constructed intricate complexes of bunkers, some complete

with electric lights, running water, kitchens, flooring, and furnished with

chairs, tables, beds, and boudoirs looted from Belgian homes.”[16]

Falkenhayn began to understand that offensives were going to be difficult to undertake, and likely kept in the back of his mind his ‘bleeding white’ strategy, therefore he opted for a heavily fortified shelter for his troops to wait until the opportune time.  This sharply contrasted with the English approach, in which they didn’t want trenches to become a place of relative comfort, so they were built hastily and afforded little comfort.[17]

            The trenches on the allied side did provide some protection to the soldiers, but with the new powerful weapons of war they were still vulnerable to attack.  Other than the very large 420’s, with their 1-ton projectiles, the German artillery had only limited effect on the Allied trenches.  This changed by the second battle of the Ypres Salient in which the German High Command made use of a deadly new weapon it had secretly been researching, asphyxiating gas.  

            Gas had been used in previous conflicts and thus many of the men fighting World War I had been outfitted with gasmasks, but the new German invention was more hideous than previously used formulas.  The masks the Allied troops were fitted with were not able to provide protection against attack.  Sir Llewellyn Woodward states, “The Germans themselves, fortunately for the Allies, employed their weapon on too small a scale to be decisive.”[18]  This proved to be a vital mistake.  The Allies soon developed a mask that provided protection against the new gas and virtually eliminated the threat.

            Another important invention that proved to be vitally important to each side was the airplane.  Though it had little effectiveness in bombing runs during the conflict, it provided important information on troop movements.  On April 22, 1915 flight commander Strange of the Allied forces was flying above the Ypres Salient when he observed a ‘Yellow-Green smoke’, which he realized was gas.  This was the very same attack mentioned above in which the Germans effected an unknown blow to the Allies.  According to Alexander McKee in The Friendless Sky, “Next morning, he went out again-and found the Germans dug in in new positions, but with no Allied troops in front of them.”[19]  This is a great example of how the air forces of World War I were able to help or hurt their own forces.  With this information, of which the Germans had no idea, the Allied air force was able to launch an air campaign that held off the Germans just long enough for the gap to be filled.  These aerial displays also provided the troops on the ground with much needed distraction from the horrors of trench life. 

            The combatants that fought on the Ypres Salient were subjected to some of the most inhumane experiences in the history of warfare.  Trench life and the life of those who burrowed underneath the trench systems was a new experience for the soldiers in Flanders.  No longer were combatants able to look their enemy in the eye when attacking.  Instead, day after day they sat huddled in their holes chilled to the bone wondering whether that day may indeed be their last.

            If the practice of war were not horrible enough, soldiers in the trenches bared witness to the true cost of battle.  Many combatants were forced to eat and sleep among the stinking corpses of dead men.  The ground was wet with blood and the water putrid and discolored.  As one soldier stated:

            “You found the dead embedded in the walls of the trenches, heads, legs and

            half-bodies, just as they had been shovelled out of the way by the picks and

            shovels of the working party.”[20]

These ghastly sites along with the non-stop shelling of their positions wore quickly on the men in the frontlines.

            Soon the commanders of both armies began to realize the stress that trench warfare was having on the men in the frontline.  It became evident that soldiers needed to be rotated out of their positions from time to time.  According to Winston Groom, “Two days in the frontline trenches, two days in the reserve trenches farther back, four to six days “in billets,” and then the whole process started over again.”[21]  This helped alleviate some of the hardships of trench life, but not all.

            Months, and in some cases years in the trenches, had another interesting effect on the men of World War I and particularly those who participated in the Ypres Salient.  At the outset of hostilities national pride lead the troops forward in battle, but as time wore on the mindsets of the troops began to change.  The relentless carnage on both sides turned the anger of the common soldier against their leaders instead of the ‘enemy’.  This was best illustrated on December 25, 1914.

            No one knows exactly how or when the Christmas truce started, but a good starting point can be assumed to be on Christmas Eve.  Most of the combatants on the Ypres Salient were believers in Christianity and therefore practiced the celebration of Christmas.  It was in this spirit that on the night of  December 24, 1914 according to Stanley Weintraub that, “Lieutenant Malcolm Kennedy recalled, “the sounds of singing and merrymaking,” and occasionally the bark of a German could be heard, shouting, “A happy Christmas to you, Englishmen!””[22]  Although no soldier dared poke his head above ground that night, the emotion and camaraderie that was shared between combatants would soon change that fact.

            On Christmas morning the first of many brave souls began to venture forth from their trenches.  One such soldier timidly moved forward and stated, “I am a lieutenant! Gentlemen, my life is in your hands, for I am out of my trench and walking towards you.  Will one of your officers come out and meet me half-way.”[23]  Thereafter, men began to pour out of their trenches all bearing gifts for their enemies.  Some exchanged watches while others shared a drink or sang Christmas carols.  The most popular occurrence was the heated soccer match that took place in the mud.   For one day, the men on the Ypres Salient and other parts of the Western Front were able to forget about killing and staying alive, and instead look at their ‘enemy’ as a fellow man.

            Although the Christmas Truce of 1914 was a singular occurrence in World War I, it proved to demonstrate some of the changes in the nature of warfare.  Long departed from the battlefield were the days of troops amassing face to face in the anticipation of one great clash, which would decide the fate of the war.  Instead, men were reduced to digging holes in which to find some sort of protection from the frightening new weapons of war.  Gone was the severe hatred for the enemy.  Survival and retaining ones sanity were the orders of the day.  Poor strategy and lack of an ability to adjust to the new style of war plagued both sides of the conflict. Generals and other military leaders were often so far removed from the place of action that the ordinary soldier became just a number to be counted as dead or alive.  It became a numbers game in which each side sought to outgun and outman the other until the one side was forced to capitulate.  This fact, along with the new weaponry and static nature of warfare, helped seal the fate of millions of young men who participated in World War I.

By Jeffrey Brandon Lee