Tactics – How the war was meant to be won

When the spring of 1915 was reached, the ideas of the generals of the British and French were simple.  Somehow, break through the enemy’s line of trenches, secure that position and send many troops through that gap, when a war of movement will return.  The allies believed they could win a war of movement, the problem was how to achieve a breakthrough?  After a few unsuccessful attacks, the allied commanders devised a new plan, a war of attrition.  The idea now was to kill as many Germans as possible, until they run out of men.  Whether the British or French took heavy casualties was irrelevant, as long as the Germans ran out of men first.  A breakthrough was not so important now, attacks to gain ground became the priority and this was to be achieved by capturing the frontline of an enemy trench, using the following plan.  A heavy artillery bombardment would go on for days, supposedly destroying all resistance.  Then British soldiers would march unopposed across no-mans-land (the wasteland between the front line trenches of the two sides) and capture the front line enemy trench and possibly the trenches behind it.

This diagram shows what was supposed to happen… However the reality (shown below) was somewhat different.

 

One the reasons this plan failed most of the time, was because the defences of the German trenches were far better than the British had anticipated.  Also any element of surprise was lost, because the German planes could see troops being gathered and the first artillery fire signalled the start of the attack.  When the shelling stopped, the Germans would come out of their underground concrete bunkers and be ready for the British, who were held up anyway by the barbed wire, which hadn’t been destroyed.  The problems the British faced are shown below.

One of the worst problems that faced attacking troops, was the mud of no-mans-land.  Even without guns or horses (as seen below), the mud was still very hard to cross.