World War One
Industrialized Warfare in the Great War

• Gunpowder was poured (or ladled, for cannon) into the dangerous front end (muzzle) of the weapon.
• Wadding was jammed in to push the powder back to the breech and keep it there.
• A roundish projectile was inserted and rammed home hard with a ramrod.
• The projectile moved rather loosely in the barrel, so the ramming was done to pack things into place. The projectile was loosey-goosey because manufacturing processes of the time couldn't make balls which would fit exactly. And if the ball was too tight, things would kind of blow up in your face. Loose was safest and best.
• With a musket, the gunpowder was set off by a spark (e.g. flint against metal) at a powder vent hole.
• With a cannon, a fire or other red-hot source was touched to a powder-primed vent hole above the powder in the barrel.
• A volley of musket fire was 'pointed' in the enemy's direction across the battlefield.
• When a cannon fired, the recoil rolled it backwards on its wheels ... so it would have to be repositioned before firing again.

• Slow (2 shots per minute) individual rate of fire ... because of all that reloading, ramming and cannon repositioning activity. However, a well-disciplined force (like the British) could keep adequate supplies of musket balls coming from different parts of the formation on a very regular basis. An attacking enemy was always walking into hot lead from somewhere.
• Close range between enemies on the battlefield was required to be able to hit anything or anybody - the loose musket balls bounced around as they raced down the gun barrel, making proper aim impossible except at close range.
• Plenty of smoke from the gunpowder - interfering with visibility on the battlefield. Most of the combustion products of gunpowder (55%) were solids, not gases. Naturally this also fouled the gun barrels.
• Everyone stayed in tight formation to be effective ... thoughtfully making a dense target for the enemy in the process.
• However, if the tight formation was charged by the enemy ... disciplined soldiers in the formation, standing side-by-side with lowered pointy bayonets would be something pretty dangerous to run into.
• Orders from the commander were quickly communicated down the chain of command by voice, by bugle, or by drum.
• So ... the ideal European battlefield system in 1759 was professionals working together in unison like a single organism. 

So it's about 0930hr and some French soldiers with a large number of Canadien militia come on to the field of battle - about 4500 in all.

To play head games, the British fire their cannon at the French for about 30 minutes as the latter get organized. This produces more stress than casualties.

Around 1000hr, in a ragged formation, the French come forward. The Canadien militia was not into this European 'one fighting organism' thing - any sensible person would take cover !

Then the French fire while their muskets are pretty much out of range.

• Conscription ('the Draft'), early 1800s - Napoleon brought back an invention of the ancients to build massive fighting forces for his European campaigns. The new/old idea was that the European states could now welcome all able-bodied males to get involved in the ever popular war game. War wasn't just a game for professional soldiers to play on a little battlefield anymore !
• Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 - Machines do things better than people (... well, except when computers use certain operating systems). Large amounts of capital were invested in industrial machines and infrastructure, which in turn led to a concentration of workers living around factories. This led to the necessity of urban sanitation and the concept of  'public health' as the impoverished and sickly workers provided a wonderful medium for disease hosting and epidemics.
• Railways and the steam engine 1800-1900 - This important technology of the Industrial Revolution provided portable power to efficiently transport heavy loads and power factories - free from the natural limits of wind, water or muscle power.
• Aircraft and airships, early 1900s - powered by small gasoline engines, these could provide some transportation, but more importantly, they provided a bird's eye view of the ground below. Previously, only the earthbound horseback cavalry had been available to perform quick reconnaissance on enemy positions and movements for military commanders' decisions.
• Telegraph 1840-1900 and the steamship 1850-1900 - Communication and world travel went hand-in-hand with the expanding industrial economy ... and the existing colonies of the European empires. Modern warships could control the sea lanes or harass enemy colonies 'on a schedule' as long as they could be bunkered (refueled with coal) every 8 or 9 days. Orders and intelligence could be relayed by wireless telegraph. The whole world could now participate in a European war !
• Understanding and regulating the economy - After : 
• the works of Adam Smith (circa 1780) and David Ricardo (circa 1800) explaining some aspects of 'economics'
• the experiences of governments legislating elements of the Industrial Revolution
• the experiences of capitalists financing, building, and operating large corporate empires ...
• ... governments and/or rulers, government bureaucracies, and industrialists ... had the new-found ability to focus complex national economies on a single project. In other words, they could create a 'Total War Economy'.  From this came the cheerful conclusion that even civilians working in cities away from the battleground were legitimate targets for shells and bombs. Humans were making big progress !

• Chemical industry advances 1850-1900 - Chemical, electrical or heat treating of coal, oil, nitrogen compounds and other materials yielded new industrial chemicals which provided more efficacious ammunition and explosives ... and handy gases such as hydrogen and chlorine.
• Rifling, 1850s - By using new machine technology, fine spiral grooves could be carved into the inside of gun barrels so bullets or artillery shells would spin down the barrel and continue to spin in flight, achieving much greater range and accuracy than musket or cannon balls.
• Smokeless powder, 1850-1900 - more power, less smoke, for firearms due to the chemical industry's advances. Smokeless powder fired when wet - no one would ever say 'keep your powder dry' again ! More ammunition could be carried because less powder was needed for firing ... new all-in-one metal ammunition cartridges could be smaller and lighter. Barrel rifling and tight physical tolerances on small arms were also possible because the solid residue left by gunpowder was no longer a problem. This new-found gun barrel cleanliness maintained targeting accuracy, reliability during longer battles, and facilitated the use of automatic cartridge feeding/ejecting mechanisms. 
• Breech loading weapons with magazines 1850-1900 - Modern manufacturing techniques allowed weapons to be mass produced with much greater precision. The rear end of a mass-produced precision-manufactured rifle cartridge, made from thin metal, expanded momentarily on firing to ensure that all the combustion gases were used to force the separating bullet down the barrel ... then the spent cartridge reverted to its original dimensions so it could be removed from the firing chamber at the breech. With a multiple-cartridge magazine connected to a rifle, a good rifleman might be able to fire 5-10 bullets in less than 15 seconds - before 'reloading' by pulling out the old magazine and inserting a full one. While firing this fast would not be accurate at a distance, it would certainly be very discouraging for an enemy running up to take over the rifleman's position. (After each shot, a British rifleman generally had to eject the spent cartridge and insert the next from the magazine by moving a 'bolt' back and forth in an 'L'-shaped movement. This gross movement after each shot generally meant it was necessary to pause to re-aim for each bullet.)
• Breech-loading artillery using rifled barrels and smokeless powder provided the ultimate in mass production of death and destruction for the modern battlefield. Progress, progress, progress !
• Machine guns 1884-1918 - A quantum leap - from the hand-cranked Gatling gun of the US Civil War to the Maxim gun/machine gun - enabled a stream of bullets to be fired with just one press of a trigger. Conserved combustion gases ejected the spent cartridge, and loaded and fired the next one (known today as 'fully automatic fire').

• The old 1759 battle model was standing shoulder to shoulder on a little old European battlefield.
• Beyond 40 yards (or metres), you wouldn't really hope to hurt anybody.
• A soldier's firing rate was two rounds per minute.
• Cannon had to be repositioned and re-aimed after each firing.

• With the new 1914 battle model, heavy rifles could provide harassing fire up to one mile away, and fire about 20 rounds per minute with some accuracy.
• Machine guns could sweep a wide area with about 400 rounds per minute.
• The range of heavy artillery was measured in miles.
• Some quick-loading field guns could fire 20 rounds per minute and the recoil disappeared into 'recoil shock absorbers' - so the guns didn't roll out of position when they fired.

Fun with a trench mortar

The Famous French 75s in the battlefield !

The thing about these 75 mm field guns at the right was they were quick firing. A crew could fire off a shell every 2-3 seconds.

• Open the breech.
• Insert shell.
• Close breech.
• Bang !
• Open the breech, spent shell casing pops out.
• Reload.
  

During a field battle on level ground, a battery of 75s had amazing firepower.


Wow ... an 'aeroplane' ! This must be a cheating newspaper photographer's composite photo. Certainly, a frail aircraft like that didn't last long during the war. Planes turned out to be a big deal later.


But look again ...

HORSIES !  Lots of them ! And the war's voracious appetite for horses never really diminished in spite of new technologies.

The 'Entente' ... Britain, France, (and sometimes Russia, USA) etc. ...
had the reserve manufacturing capacity to make greater use of motorized transportation later.

However, the 'Central Powers' ... Germany, Austria-Hungary, (and sometimes the Ottoman Empire) etc. ...
and the many smaller theatres of war always took a terrible toll on horses and other draft animals, including dogs.

Desperately chasing elusive German quasi-guerillas in east Africa, imported horses taken into areas where the tsetse fly was endemic had a life expectancy of 4 weeks.

As I continue to build the case for more efficient transportation systems for another page, notice the big stack o' hay.
Hay, oats, etc. were transported to the battlefield in great quantities to 'fuel' the horses.
Some sources suggest the tonnage of ammunition, and the tonnage of fodder, hauled into the war zone ... were roughly equivalent.

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How war technology and ideas evolved on the western front ...

As you might expect, no one really planned things the way they turned out.
In most cases, when one side used a new weapon or technique, the other side quickly adapted ... unless their hard-headed military dogma initially slowed progress (oh hello, Britain).

Generally, the Germans had better weapons and techniques in the beginning ...

• Storm troopers were elite soldiers who were 'empowered' to make decisions on the spot as they advanced in multiple groups of fewer than 10 soldiers.
• Storm troopers advanced with gathering momentum toward their objectives ... pockets of resistance were ignored - to be worn down later by regular infantry or artillery.
  
• The German military saw the benefits of the machine gun for their armed forces before the war and really stocked up on them ... and they had better artillery.

Generally, the British military was focused on seapower and was not well-prepared to fight a European land war ...

• Empowering ! ... and trendy 'loose/tight' principles for soldiers ?! ... well, it just wasn't right !  'It would be like letting the monkeys run the zoo !' (a 1983 quote)
• The British rifleman is the finest in the world ! Cavalry is what is needed for decisive victory ! Machine guns would undermine our war-fighting traditions and they might even be unethical.
• However, as the war stumbled along, the British military finally mastered modern technology and tactics and surpassed Germany.
• Kitchener - the guy with a moustache pointing sternly from recruiting posters - a career military man and Secretary of State for War ... presided over a massive expansion of the British Army from 20 to 70 divisions (division = about 12,000 soldiers) during the first two years of the war.
  

Kitchener used the idea of 'Pals Battalions' (A battalion is about 1000 soldiers - a small, complete fighting unit). The 'pals' were a group of sportsmen, or sometimes a group of similar occupation - most often they were from the same city or geographical area. Local social pressure acted to influence individuals to volunteer with their pals. On the battlefield, this resulted in the strong cohesion and loyalty desirable in military units.

Generally, the French (and Belgians) expected the Germans to pop by every few decades ... and had pre-invested heavily in forts and citizen soldiers ...

• Important point : they were fighting to defend their own lands and homes.
• One of the first lessons of the war was that permanent fortifications could be bypassed, starved out, or smashed by huge German Krupp-built siege guns.

Krupp siege mortars like the one above were used to crack open the stone and concrete forts of France and Belgium.
This piece would probably have been pulled into position by a steam-powered traction engine - one of those early farm tractors.
The longest barrel fired the shell. The cylinder on the right was typical of many guns and it was designed to absorb the force of the the recoil.
This looks like a builder's photo at the Krupp yard.

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It's a small world, after all ... it's a small, small world

The large 1915 newspaper map is included below because it offers so much easy-to-understand information about conditions early in the war. It was created before computer graphics !

For most of the war, the 'Western Front' extended in a continuous line of trenches : from the northern border of Switzerland, continued obliquely (west of the France-Belgium border), then north at around Lille to the last 'k' in Dunkirk. The Germans held, and took advantage of, most of the important mining and industrial land of France and Belgium during the war.

If nothing else, you can conclude that this 'battle for a continent' was going to involve more than the 9000 soldiers employed on the Plains of Abraham !



Notes:

• 'The Great trade route to Russia and the East' is written on the Mediterranean Sea ... The British tried to seize 'the Dardanelles' (key straits in Ottoman Turkey) through Kitchener and Churchill's diversionary Gallipoli campaign, so that Russia could be resupplied by sea. The German navy controlled the Baltic Sea, so the only other choice was the Mediterranean. This didn't work out as planned.
• The notation of 600,000 at Great Britain notes in small print : 'excluding India and colonies ' . World War One pulled in many colonial resources, particularly from the empires of Britain and France. There is a fairly complete list of participants at the end of this page. The battles and tactics I describe include the colonial troops of the many nationalities under French and British command.

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• Soldiers had excellent firepower ... modern accurate rifles with preloaded magazines of about 5-10 rounds.
• However, machine guns were often placed in staggered and sheltered positions to defeat the firepower of the advancing infantry.
• The Germans made the decision to dig in using easy-to-defend trenches so some troops could be taken away to fight the Russians on the Eastern Front.
• Until this point in history, barbed wire had been for cattle. Barbed wire entanglements were placed in front of the trenches to slow down attacking enemy infantry - to help defend the trenches. Paths were left through the barbed wire entanglements to allow for infantry attacks FROM your own trenches TO the enemy trenches. Your defending machine gunners only had to target these specific paths in the wire. In other words, the paths were like turnstiles used to control crowds. You set your machine guns up to target the 'turnstiles'.
• Hand grenades, grenade launching rifles, flamethrowers, and trench mortars were used in efforts to destroy the machine gunners and other enemy troops. During a battle, one source suggested, a working machine gunner would live for about 5 minutes.
• To break the wire for an attack, high explosive artillery shells were used ... sometimes successfully. Bangalore torpedoes (long pipes filled with explosives) could sometimes be slid along the ground under the wire and detonated to clear a path for the infantry.
• Generally ... all routine activity ... troop rotations, barbed wire placement in No Man's Land, and trench raids were conducted at night. It was too dangerous to be sighted by the enemy by daylight. The daytime was for sleeping.
• Learned the hard way : There was really no way for infantry to successfully attack a trench protected by machine guns with barbed wire entanglements in front.

This postcard photograph was most likely taken after the war. I have been unable to find any wartime story to explain the site's name.
It shows the accumulations of barbed wire entanglements and the destruction of soil and vegetation.
The Argonne Forest was in the French/American sector, about 120 miles east of Paris.

• Artillery usually had to be 'registered' in new locations by observers ... The gunners were often too far away to see their targets or to assess their fire.
• Paraphrasing the observers (a lot) ... 'a little to the left'  - kaboom ... 'now up a bit' - kaboom ...'Perfect ! fire for effect' - lots of kabooms.
• Artillery observation was done from hills, trees, and eventually tethered observation balloons filled with hydrogen above friendly territory.
• Then enemy aircraft started coming over to shoot down the observation balloons in flames.
• Then observers started wearing parachutes in case they had to leave before their shift was over.
• Then friendly planes, shot down the enemy planes, which were shooting down the observers.
• Then enemy planes, shot down the friendly planes, which were shooting down the enemy planes, which were shooting down the observers.
• Finally, specialized observation aircraft and fighter aircraft began their own separate 'war' above the battlefield.
• Sometimes, if things were quiet, fighter aircraft would bomb or strafe enemy ground positions.
• London and Paris got their first bombing by large German biplane bombers in 1917 ... Total War ... included civilians far behind the lines.
• The Secretary of State for Air in Britain sent a message to the Chief of Air Staff  'I would very much like it ... if you could start up a big fire in one of the German towns. If I were you, I would not be too exacting as regards accuracy in bombing railway stations in the middle of towns. '
• 'Tactical' (military target) bombing had evolved into 'Strategic' (city) bombing before the end of World War 1 - the grandfather of 'Mutually Assured Destruction' 50 years later.
  

1. Barbed wire entanglements
2. Front line trenches
3. Often second and third line combat trenches - in case the first line was taken ... with numerous connections between them. The trenches were often named in alphabetical order.
4. Then, extensive honeycombs of 'communications trenches' for moving and massing of troops, communications, and storing food and ammunition supplies. In theory you could walk from Switzerland to the North Sea without ever leaving this elaborate maze of ... um ... ditches.
5. Then, heavy artillery batteries, some organized medical treatment, heavy transportation systems and supply massing areas. ('Bricks and mortar' hospitals were often near the coast.) 'Rest' billets for soldiers taking a duty turn away from the trenches were often within range of lucky strikes by heavy artillery shells.
6. Command and administrative support were in the rear and safe. Thank goodness.
   

• Orders and information were communicated by pigeons, dogs, human runners, telegraph and telephone. If the enemy shelled, the telegraph and telephone lines were destroyed. Pigeons didn't like to fly in damp overcast weather.
• Sometimes the British would shell for days before an attack. Continuous rapid shell explosions were termed 'drumfire' and sometimes their frequency could be approximated by chattering one's teeth. This means ... sometimes over a million of artillery shells were fired in a few days.
• With great physical and psychological hardship the Germans (for example) survived in reinforced concrete bunkers which might be 3 stories into the ground. They lived this way under bombardment for days at a time, completely cut off from the world, including food, water and medical care. The British were always amazed to see the Germans pop up with machine guns right after the shelling stopped, and effectively defend against an attack. Often during intense shelling ... the Germans had resolved that active death through bitter fighting was better than passive death by shelling. So, freed from their bunkers ... they finally had control over their fates and fought hard.
• If the British had the right shells ... High explosive was used to break the bunkers and cut the wire. Air-burst shrapnel was used to kill troops. A variety of different gas shells would keep the enemy off balance.
• Sometimes they had the right shells, used enough of them in the right way, and actually co-ordinated barrages with friendly troop advances on the enemy..
• But often, up to 1/3 of the shells were duds early in the war, and high explosive shells went deep into the mud and did nothing except chew up the land the infantry had to cross.
• As you can imagine, there are many practices I am leaving out for ... brevity. The Germans got really elaborate with 'defense in depth' rather than just a few frontline trenches holding 'all their eggs in one basket'.
  

• Varying only 20 to 40 miles (maximum) in position from east to west, the pink dashed lines show the positions of fixed trench lines ... as well as their dates of use.
• The orange area, including West Flanders is western Belgium.
• The pink area is France and you can see Dunkirk on the coast of the North Sea.
• West 20 miles from Dunkirk is Calais (off the map). From there it is only 22 miles to Dover.
• The yellow dashed line shows the maximum extent of Germany's quick but objectiveless offensive in the spring of 1918.
• Railways : black/white alternating ... double track. 
• A single black line is a secondary railway line ... or a river.
• Canals are black lines with hatching on one side.
  
• A reference suggested that great battles were fought at Ypres (Belgium) because German occupation of the nearby coastline could affect British dominance of the North Sea/English Channel waterway. The British were concerned about U-boat torpedoes, naval shelling, and particularly mining of the transportation routes from England to the war zone. A mine had sunk Kitchener's warship, killing Kitchener and almost all the crew while he was on his way to Russia in 1916.
• Finding the correct pronunciation of 'Ypres' counter-intuitive ... (pronounced: EEpr) ... the British generally referred to it as 'Wipers'.
• In Flanders, the Germans had long held the heights overlooking the artillery-churned soupy mud occupied by the British. Having no British divisions handy to take Passchendaele (150 feet above sea level) and feeling the need for a battle, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force sent in ANZAC (Australia & New Zealand Army Corps) forces. They ran into machine gun fire from all sides, were unable to get through the wire, and withdrew. Canadian commander General Sir Arthur Currie was then called on to send in the Canadian Corps and he did so under protest. There were 16,000 Canadians killed and wounded during the Passchendaele Battle (or Third Battle of Ypres) in exchange for 5 square kilometres of mud and 3 Victoria Crosses.
  

• Much of the Western Front battlefield had been farmland, scattered with woodlands and villages.
• Natural drainage patterns had formed over centuries.
• Farmers worked their fields by plowing furrows, and also deeper rigoles from time to time, to retain or drain moisture as needed.
• The woodlands also helped modify drainage patterns and reduce erosion.
• In Flanders (particularly that area of Belgium near the English Channel) the water table was often near the surface.
• Livestock manure was used to maintain the fertility of the soil.

• High explosive shells disrupted the natural drainage patterns, and shellholes quickly filled with rainwater.
• The incessant shelling also destroyed all trees and vegetation on the battlefield.
• After an attack, it was usually impossible to evacuate the wounded from No Man's Land by day.
• Freshly created war graves were opened by new shelling and unburied dead humans and animals were scattered by the shelling.
• Trenches = ditches and they often filled with water because natural drainage patterns no longer existed. In some essential cases 'breastworks' (above-ground trenches : mud forts) were built at key points because of the high water table.
• The soil of this former farmland had already been well treated with decomposing livestock manure.
• Penicillin had not been invented.
  
• Advancing soldiers were under orders not to stop to attend to the wounded. Advancing soldiers took cover in water-filled shellholes as needed.
• Surgical intervention was generally far to the rear, inaccessible during a battle, and therefore hours away and sometimes days away.
• ... So bacterial infections were a bit of a problem ...

• Achieve a breakthrough in the enemy lines and use the cavalry to decisively exploit the weakness behind the enemy - in other words, 'fight the last war'.
• To avoid the deadly fire of enemy artillery and machine guns on both flanks, the breakthrough must be several miles wide.
• On to Germany before Christmas !
  

• Germany is literally being starved for food and war materiel by the Royal Navy North Sea blockade.
• Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire are not competent allies of Germany.
• Germany is alone against Britain and France - and the Entente has access to American financing and war materiel. American companies are making good money for their efforts.
• Use heavy shelling and repeated massed attacks. Kill more enemy soldiers than you lose.
• Eventually surviving Entente soldiers will outnumber surviving German soldiers in a 2 to 1 ratio. 
• The Entente will have won !

• Gasoline powered tanks, conceived separately by both the French and British around 1915, carry heavy machine guns or light field guns ... and lead infantry over barbed wire and across enemy trenches. The Germans are completely surprised and have nothing similar. Tanks break down in battle and becoming sitting ducks ... the crews decide to use up their ammunition while they are sitting there  ... and terrified Germans still run up to them to surrender !
• The German army is fighting alone without decent allies, worn down ... and the civilian population is literally starving and demoralized. During the war, the mail censors keep their fingers on the psychological pulse of the armies and report to their superiors on soldiers' morale and gripes. It turns out that the British and French soldiers have had a bellyful of war and just want it to end. The French soldiers mutiny (really a very disciplined sit-down strike) and get a commander sacked and demand that they be treated better than beasts being sent to the slaughterhouse. About fifty are executed with full division march-pasts by the bodies - as an example of what better treatment looks like. 'You don't let the monkeys run the zoo.'
• This is a strategy ?
  
• The Americans have joined the war really late in April 1917. The recent German promise of unrestricted U-boat warfare against neutrals was one thing ...  but the last straw was being shown secret British decodes of German diplomatic feelers to Mexico about an alliance and an attack on U.S. soil ... if the U.S. were to enter the war. 'Fresh man in the mow !' as we used to rejoice on the farm. Certainly as smart as any British Commander at the beginning of the war, U.S. Commander General Pershing doesn't know what his troops are in for. He still thinks riflemen and mobility will win the day - i.e. 'fighting the last wars' ... in his specific case ... against Geronimo, and most recently 'Pancho' Villa in Mexico (prototype for The Frito Bandito). The Americans save shipping space by using French Renault tanks and French equipment and British helmets. They want to fight as an independent army. The US Army in Europe would have reached critical mass by 1919, so their chief impact is psychological on both sides.
• ... Say, did I ever tell you about 'Fresh man in the mow !' ?

In the left background, a village and church are being shelled.
In 1915 when this cartoon was published in the U.S., the worst was yet to come.




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