This essay discusses one chapter of John Keegan’s book about WWI.
IIntroduction
The First World War, according to many historians, accomplished little or nothing except to create the circumstances that made the second conflict possible. It was a brutal, senseless war whose most memorable feature was the trench warfare that rolled back and forth across Europe for years, often ending with thousands of lives lost and no objectives gained. It was a vicious waste of lives, materiel and time.
This paper examines the chapter entitled “Stalemate” from the book. The term refers to 1915, in which the Allies made little or no progress; the Western Front took shape; and the losses were appalling. I’d suggest that in addition to examining the trench warfare, we can also consider the question of whether or not the First World War was a modern war, on the last old-fashioned one. While many people see it as directly connected to the Second World War and its technological advances, I see it as being the last great struggle of the non-technological ages.
IIDiscussion
The word “stalemate” can be applied to the entire war, because it seems to have ground to a halt on more than one occasion. For months at a time, the two sides started at each other across no-man’s land, and no one gained the advantage. The chapter describes the network of trenches in detail. All sides, of course, dug these extensive lines of trenches, not only marking the front, but also extending far to the rear. Men and supplies could be brought up to the front in relative safety, shuffling along below the surface of the earth. Troops took shelter in the trenches, and had to climb ladders to go “over the top” to attack the enemy.
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Trench warfare has become so closely identified with the First World War that we tend to overlook the fact that it is a method that was used in several conflicts in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, including (something that is often overlooked) the American Civil War. In the latter part of the that conflict, trenches were dug by both Confederate and Union troops in Maryland, and they took shelter in them for a period of over ten months. (This is from Ken Burn’s film “The Civil War,” but I don’t have a reference. I do remember hearing that, however, and being surprised by it.)
The trench warfare described in this book, then, is not a modern invention or the beginning of a new tactic; rather, it is the end of an era. Trench warfare never again played the role in later conflicts that it did in the First World War.
The trenches in France were the absolute culmination of the “art” (if that’s the word) of this type of warfare. The ditches were dug deep enough to shelter a man; they were narrow enough so that only a lucky enemy shell would cause a direct hit; and they were kinked at intervals into what’s called “traverses,” angled walls that blocked bullets and bits of shrapnel, and made it impossible for anyone to see any distance down the trench. That meant that if an enemy managed to overrun the trench, he wouldn’t be able to see very far down its length, and this in turn would prevent him from capturing the entire position.
To the rear of the front line trenches, secondary trenches ran; others were in line behind those. The entire region was a four-mile wide strip of churned mud and barren open spaces.
As the armies’ positions stalled, they used the time to improve the trenches. They reinforced them with sandbags, smoothed the floors (some troops put down wooden sidewalks); the Germans began to build concrete machine gun nests and reinforcing their trenches with timber and iron. (P. 180).
The Essay on Trench Warfare World War
... used in war. Many viewed trench warfare to be an effective tactic against enemy advancement. Because of this view, trench warfare proved to be, in World War I, ... trenches were the support and reserve trenches, respectively. These trenches were constructed to easily move supplies and troops to the front trenches. All of the trenches ...
But if we consider this entire picture carefully, I believe it shows us warfare at its most sluggish, static and old-fashioned. Troops stayed in their trenches until they charged, led by officers the same way they had been led 40 years earlier in the Civil War. As in that conflict, the weapons had improved by the tactics seem curiously outmoded. It wasn’t until the Second World War and further technological improvements, as well as new thinking with regard to the way in which troops ought to be used in war, that things changed. With the advent of reliable air power, which is perhaps the supreme example of technological development in warfare, military leaders were forced to change their thinking about the most effective deployment of their troops. Now there was no place safe, not with airplanes that could fly at over 400 mph and strafe ground troops with accuracy. Trenches afforded little protection from an enemy that could dive on them from above, and thus we see little of it after this.
IIIConclusion
The trenches of the First War were cold, wet, muddy, awful places that inevitably changed all those who sheltered in them. Massing troops for a charge and then leading them against the enemy guns had been a standard tactic for centuries, but this is the last time it is used to such a great extent; technological improvements, particular in aircraft, made it impractical. Thus, I think the First World War is the last “old” war rather than the first modern one.
IVReference
Keegan, John. “Stalemate.” The First World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999: 175-203.
