Tricks of Trench Warfare (2020)
gru.gq
gru.gq
The American's brought shotguns ("trench guns") to do that work. It was seen by the Germans as violation of the law of war.
"On 19 September 1918, the German government issued a diplomatic protest against the American use of shotguns, alleging that the shotgun was prohibited by the law of war."
Oh and later, when the war was lost, it was of course the fault of the communist and socialdemocrats, who stabbed the army in the back and not of the glorious, heroic army. And there are still lots of people glorifying the Kaiserreich. I am glad its gone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_weapons_in_World_War_...
All sides started to develop these weapons before the war, and apparently it's the Germans who were capable of deploying these weapons sooner and with greater success.
What you present here nothing less than a one-sided propaganda. It reminds of French villages hundreds of kilometers far from any WWI front line, deep in the rear with memorials dedicated to "Innocent children fallen in the great war" followed by a list of some 10 to 15 male names.
Innocent children, the throat cutter sort, same as those from the other side.
The Hague Convention of 1899 banned chemical warfare, with the US being the only ones to not have signed it.
Doesn't mean that the Germans weren't hypocrits, the complains about shotguns might have been rooted in wanting to point fingers back: https://youtu.be/fvrIVZn1jH8
The French used tear gas first, the Germans were the first to use chlorine. There's a big difference between these gasses.
One gives you trouble breathing and is used widely against civilian demonstrants, because it is very mild - the other one - the one the german army was first to use - kills or cripples your loungs in a horrible way.
But I rather leave this debate.
P.s. I tasted some tear gas, it is certainly not nice. But thats it. It doesn't actually harm you, unless you have a precondition. Chlorine on the other hand is just pure deadly poison
The comment I was responding to made what I interpreted as a false equivalence.
(Actually, trench warfare by later WWI had developed significantly since the early war, it wasn't just sitting in trenches or sending mindless waves of troops over the top)
A trench system is made of three lines of trenches in parallel, covering a mile or more in depth. The front line trench is the combat trench, where the fighting is supposed to take place. Then there is the support trench, which houses units for work parties and counterattacks and so on. Then the reserve trench which houses more work parties and has units resting from front line duty. Units would spent a week or two in the trenches, then rotate into the rear for a while to rest and receive replacements.
As the war progressed everyone basically learned that the front line trench was rubbish. It would be destroyed, overrun, shot up, etc. There was no point in holding it with a lot of troops because they’d get wiped out before they could do much of anything. The Germans switched to a front line that was just fortified shell holes with machine guns. This was very safe against artillery because there was no trench to target. It was effective against infantry attacks because the machine guns could wreak havoc on men with rifles. The support and reserve trenches would be real trenches.
This system of fortified shell holes with supporting strong points from the support trench was “defense in depth.” The opposition could “overrun” the front line, but they’d still have pockets of machine gun nests on their flanks and behind them. Eliminating every single machine gun nest was extremely slow and so… that is how defense was achieved. Not with a single strong trench, but with a system that could absorb an attack, slow it down, and reduce it with machine guns.
[anecdote: during an offensive one officer solved the “eliminate all the machine gun nests” problem by taking a German prisoner and making him stand up on a stump in no mans land pointing out every nest. The officer would prod him with his pistol and demand more information, until all the machine guns were located and neutralized. Only then was the poor German allowed to get off the elevated and exposed position.]
The offensive solution to this system was with artillery box barrages, storm trooper infiltration, and tanks (to some degree). The real solution was to spend years besieging Germany and bleeding her dry so that by late 1918 there was no manpower, materiel or morale to fight. Attrition wins.
Infiltration tactics were basically sending small units of men, say a section (8 men) or platoon (40 men) through the fortified shell hole system at night. That way when the attack began, the men were miles inside enemy territory already and could ambush the strong points, etc. This was what the British began doing by late 1916. Germany gets credit for inventing it almost two years later because, they had a really cool name (storm troopers!) and the enemy always has cooler better stuff than you do. And the British didn’t like a system that gave all the initiative to young officers, particularly the officers later in the war who came from civilian life to fight only for the duration, can’t have those types ruining things for the career officers from good families, etc. etc,
The trench raid was the primary way of defeating the trench system. It begins with a creeping barrage and the box barrage. The artillery fires on the front line trenches until the time when the infantry assault elements are supposed to arrive. Then it lifts and moves to targets further back. It stays on those until the time when the infantry is supposed to arrive then, and then lifts and moves forward again. Creeping barrage. The box baggage was where the artillery fences the area being assaulted with fire along the flanks. This produces a sort of box, where artillery is firing along two sides and one creeping barrage at the back. The idea is that the area within the box will be dealt with by the infantry assault units while the artillery prevents reinforcements and counterattacks.
It is a brittle system because there is so little information flow between the front line assault units and the artillery. If the times scheduled for the advances don’t match with reality the infantry can fall behind the protective screen. When this happens, I.e. the creeping barrage walks too far forward for the infantry to keep up, then the enemy can come up from their dugouts and man their defensive positions. This is, obviously, very bad for the Poor Bloody Infantry.
Anyway, the short answer is that trenches were attacked all the time and clearing trenches was an important activity. There were night raids as well, which is a whole other thing. That’s where the hand to hand fighting comes into it. That’s an entire other subject, including how the armies had to invent modern hand to hand combat training.
These days if you’re in the military you’re taught basically two technica, one to incapacitate and one to kill. Then everything else you learn is a way to setup either of those two techniques. Guy standing up? Ok, get him on the ground and crush his throat. Guy has a knife? Get him on the ground, safely, and crush his throat. Guy has a bayonet? Get him on… and so on. The French system was based on crushing the throat. With thumbs. Very… brutal. I’m not sure how much it was used, but that is what was taught,
From what I read about the german infantery in WW1, is that most troops learned about the technics about effective hand to hand combat only on the frontlines, directly from the Frontschweinen (frontpigs, veterans). Who told them mostly, that what they learned in the drills with fancy bayonett swinging, they should forget and just use their sharpened shovel. Or a rock, or a grenade to hit with it. Anything.
By WW2, all those was integrated into proper infantery training. Improvised, brutal and effective.
But the modern german army, doesn't teach hand to hand combat at all anymore, except for officers, special forces or military police and as far as I know, also only in a very limited way.
On a tangent, but since you seem to be knowledgeable of these things: how did attacking troops deal with the barbed wire, and especially with their own barbed wire? Was there a way to take down their barbed wire prior to an assault? If so, could you guess the time of an enemy assault by monitoring the status of their barbed wire? Or could you even mount a preemptive attack when they took down their barbed wire?
"Invented by Lance-Corporal William Scurry, 7th Battalion, AIF, these ‘drip’ or ‘pop off’ rifles fired at intervals to convince the Ottomans that the Anzacs still occupied their trenches.
The drip rifle incorporated two ration tins. The top one was filled with water, while the empty bottom one was attached to the trigger by a piece of string or wire. Before leaving, a soldier punched a small hole in the upper tin to allow water to trickle into the lower one, which eventually toppled over, pulling the trigger.”
It sounds so easy when written this way :-/
Also if anyone is interested in WW2 sniping the Finnish sniper "white death" might be an interesting starting point.
He went to extreme lengths - and was very successful.
Häyhä is believed to have killed over 500 men during the Winter war (inculding 259 killed by sniper rifle), the highest number of sniper kills in any major war.
That is just ... gruesome.
I was confused when I looked at this article, I misread the URI as "gnu.org" (laptop screen too far away, thanks Covid WFH) and started trying to figure out the analogy they were making for a paragraph or two. :)
Yep. But the alternative were worse. Anyone who hasn't been occupied by Stalin era Soviet should be very happy.
As a kid I heard a bunch of stories from my dad who had friends in Finland and also from my friends who had been there.
One was that the Finnish soldiers always carried a backpack on night patrol so they could safely backstab anyone they came up behind in the night and couldn't identify as if it was one of theirs it would end in a blanket or something anyway.
Another was that of Finnish troops not being to careful when they packed the hay they slept in so some of it would fall on the ground.
Only there would also often be a mine there as well.
Oh, and most of the time the Russians stopped to examine the hay there was just hay on the ground but sniper fire from the hillside behind it.
As Wikimedia points out: the Finnish were lucky because of Stalins great purge, but still they should not be messed with.
Oh, another one, from air combat, this one I learned later from a book probably: according to that source the planes the Russians used for the invasion of Finland had landing gear that had to be lowered using a pulley system. Again, according to that source, some Russian planes were lost after the Finnish pilots figured out this and started ambushing them while they approached landing.
Finland ended WW2 as an independent country, the only European one that borders Russia (along with Norway I guess, but the bulk of Finland is far closer to Russia)
The alternative would’ve been substantially worse
When the Finns started using glass bottles with gasoline and a burning rag as anti tank weapons, they made the joke that these were Molotov cocktails to go with the Molotov bread baskets.
It’s strange how Soviet propaganda (“we’re dropping food!”) lives on in English by way of a Finnish joke from 80 years ago.
This sounds like something that could still be employed. Any snipers out there to know how to counter this?
Likewise, wouldn't multiple snipers all firing on the same fake target simply give away the number of snipers and all of their individual elevations?
That said, just because they may have military superiority doesn't mean they can actually win a war on someone else's home turf.
A military superior force can win a war against a enemy population, but it cannot claim then anymore, to fight for those people.
Also, a marksman deployed with an infantry unit will support small arms fire (~200 yards) with range extension out to say 800 yards. A dedicated sniper team could be taking targets out as far as 3,000 yards. So perhaps a infantry marksman would be more willing to take a shot at a closer target given they are part of a squad, where a sniper team won't shoot at a tin cup or fake head in case they give away their position. It's worth just waiting another hour and see if that guy patrolling comes by again etc.
But I am not sure, if what you describe qualifies as trench warfare.
It's pretty incredible (and often terrible) what humans with hand tools can do when sufficiently organized and motivated.
The basic concept of a trench with something like a wooden barrier proximate goes back to neolithic times. Interestingly most of these sites we've found seem to not be fortifications but rather something ceremonial. It's ambiguous.
> The second siege was that of Padua in 1509. A monk engineer named Fra Giocondo, trusted with the defence of the Venetian city, cut down the city's medieval wall and surrounded the city with a broad ditch that could be swept by flanking fire from gun ports set low in projections extending into the ditch. Finding that their cannon fire made little impression on these low ramparts, the French and allied besiegers made several bloody and fruitless assaults and then withdrew.
Wait so... they just put out tin cans and the enemy snipers would shoot them because their sights needed to be tuned? That doesn't feel like it makes any sense. For one, you can't shoot the can unless your sights are tuned, so I guess they're taking multiple shots? Was it really so hard to invent a sight that could be tuned without firing to give away your position?
The other way? So at their own troops?
Why can't you have the situational awareness that nobody is there just by looking with your eyes? Are you saying that risk of shooting objects on your enemy's side and giving away your position is lower than the risk of accidentally shooting someone on your side when firing at a rock in an open field? It just... doesn't make any intuitive sense to me.
The entire setup of an army, all its communication mechanisms, and systems of control and safety measures, are focused on telling you about what is happening forward along the axis.
Trying to figure out if it's safe to fire backwards is going to be massively error-prone as nobody is set up to tell you this and asking it is going to cause massive confusion.
Also, you can hit things that you can't see, with ricochet and fall of shot.
Other comments about what calibrating actually means seem to have filled in that missing intuition though.
This was circa the 1916-1918 time-frame. Modern range finding equipment did not exist, and what did exist at the time very likely required someone carrying a rather large range finding target over to the enemy lines to use to determine range (with the obvious negative result to that poor individual).
With no easy way to determine range (distance to target) beyond eyeball estimates, the only real way to sight in the sniper rifle was by taking test shots at a target and watching where one's bullet actually lands as compared to that target.
The other big factor is what your buddies in the trench will think of this arrangement. If they know it's you shooting over their heads they will be absolutely pissed, and probably face some sort of discipline from officers. If they DON'T know it's you shooting in their general direction (which they probably won't unless you make sure to tell everyone in advance) it will probably prompt return fire. If they can tell from the sound or muzzle flash that the shot came from their trenches, they may think a sniper infiltrated their lines, which will merit a particularly aggressive response.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone, somewhere during the war did this, but it certainly wouldn't be condoned.
Unless that range also exactly matches the range to the enemy targets, from your current nest, you won't be properly sighted in for your intended targets.
The ranges over which snipers make kills is sufficient that even a very small miss-alignment of the sights translates to a miss (often by many yards) at the target. According to Wikipedia [1], the sniper record is 3,540m (3,871 yd). That is 3.5km - imagine targeting something 3.5km away, firing, and having your shot hit the target.
Even in 1916, while sniper's may not have operated at 3.5km distances, they could easily have been operating across 500-1000m distances (the Wikipedia article lists a 1918 record of 1,280m (1,400 yd) or 1.2km). Even at those relatively shorter ranges, the margin for misalignment is still tiny. You have to actually sight the rifle in for the actual range, the actual elevation (whether you are shooting uphill or downhill) the current wind conditions, etc. And still hit a rather small target. Aligning to some other fixed berm will not be nearly accurate enough.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_recorded_sniper_kills
Because they're using fixed (non-floating) barrels and they need to re-zero in the field and can't get back to a rear area to do that.
It's seriously astounding the math and thought that goes into shooting at long range. It makes me realize why I used to miss all the time as a kid; it's not just point and shoot.
The use of debris was a simple way to sight in. You tell your spotter that you’re gonna shoot that tin can just by the sandbag over there. They tell you where you’re hitting so you can adjust your sights. Naive snipers would fall for this trick, but later on experience taught to use puddles instead.
did they have radios? Or would they send a runner?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR-300
Vacuum tubes are a clumsy technology.
> The scout would raise the head above the trench and attempt to get shot by a German sniper. Apparently the sensation of a bullet slamming into a target held mere inches above your head while you were smoking through it was rather bracing.