World War I

by Stewart Ross

  One of the first specialist aircraft to appear was the fast and maneuverable fighter, designed to shoot down enemy aircraft in “dogfights.” A popular example was the British Sopwith Camel. The French Breugets were among the earliest bombers. The Italian SIA 7 was intended specifically for reconnaissance, the German Halberstadt CL11 for attacking troops on the ground, and the Short 184 for carrying torpedoes.

  A German speciality was the gas-filled airship, known as the Zeppelin, used for long-range bombing. Able to rise to about 22,000 feet (6,700 m), higher than any aircraft before 1916, and carry 2,205 pounds (1,000 kg) of bombs, they killed 550 civilians in raids on Britain. Once aircraft could reach the same height as a Zeppelin, however, the cumbersome “sausages” (as they were known) became easy targets.

  In 1918 two aircraft appeared that pointed to the future. One was Germany’s sleek and rapid Junkers D1, the world’s first all-metal warplane. The other was Britain’s Handley Page V/1500, a four-engined bomber capable of carrying 4,410 pounds (2,000 kg) of bombs and staying airborne for fourteen hours. With aircraft such these, no one, neither soldier nor civilian, was safe. Thus World War I saw the emergence of the “home front”—war waged against the civil population of a country—alongside the traditional battle front.

  The war in the air. This map shows how the use of aircraft as bombers meant that no one on the ground, neither soldier nor civilian, was safe from attack.

  CHAPTER 3

  DEADLOCK, 1915–17

  One of the millions of victims—a French soldier killed in the 1915 campaign in the Champagne region.

  During 1915, particularly after the failure of the Allied Gallipoli expedition (see pages 16-17), it was generally recognized that the fight on the Western Front was now critical and that the war would be won or lost there. Here, at the direct interface between Germany, France, and Britain—where the front lines confronted one another—the fighting became more and more costly.

  A walk in hell: German reinforcements move up to the front line during the Champagne offensive of 1915.

  At the start of the year, commanders on both sides, especially the Allied one, hoped that a quick breakthrough would end the stalemate on the Western Front and bring the war to a rapid conclusion. As they found time and time again, however, seizing three lines of enemy trenches was difficult enough, but coordinating an advance after that proved just about impossible. In March 1915, for example, the British broke through at Neuve-Chapelle in northern France but, after advancing a mere 1.25 miles (2 km), the attack ground to a halt. The story was similar the next month, when the Germans, using poison gas for the first time, broke through at Ypres in Belgium. When the battle stopped on May 25, they had only been able to flatten the Ypres salient. For these small gains, German and Allied casualties totalled 103,000.

  The breakthrough that never came: the Allied plan for the spring offensive of 1915 that it was hoped would win the war at a stroke.

  In the same month of May 1915, the British and French went on the offensive again, this time in the Artois region. As before, in some places the attackers managed to break through the enemy lines but they made little progress after that. September saw the launch of a massive offensive that was to smash through the German lines in Champagne and allow the French to sweep north into Belgium. After a 2,500-gun bombardment, 500,000 French troops attacked along a 15-mile (24-km) front. The same pattern emerged: some initial gains, then stagnation, and horrific casualty rates. By September 28, the French had lost 145,000 men.

  As the Champagne offensive was grinding to a halt, an Anglo-French offensive started further north in the Artois region of France. The French lost 48,000 men for negligible gains, while the incompetent leadership of Sir John French, commander of the British army in France, bungled the promising British breakthrough around the village of Loos, from September 25 to November 4.

  THE BATTLE AT VERDUN Unknown to each other, both sides planned even bigger offensives for 1916. They hoped for a breakthrough, of course, but there was a growing recognition that this might not be possible. In its place came the concept of attrition (see pages 10–11)—a war that would be won only when the enemy was either too depleted or too exhausted to fight on.

  IN THE FRONT LINES

  Although it is a novel, All Quiet on the Western Front by the German soldier Erich Remarque is widely recognized as one of the finest accounts of life on the Western Front. This is his description of bombardment:

  “An uncertain red glow spreads along the skyline from one end to the other. It is in perpetual movement, punctuated with bursts of flame from the nozzles of the batteries … French rockets go up, which unfold a silk parachute to the air and drift slowly down. They light up everything as bright as day… ‘Bombardment,’ says Kat. The thunder of the guns swells to a single heavy roar and then breaks up again into separate explosions. The dry bursts of the machine guns rattle. Above us, the air teems with invisible swift movement, with howls, pipings, and hisses …”

  —From All Quiet On the Western Front, Erich Remarque

  French troops defending their line at Verdun go over the top of their trenches in a counteroffensive against the encircling Germans in 1916.

  The Verdun campaign of 1916. Although the Germans made some significant gains, they failed to break through or crush the spirit of the French Army.

  While the Allies planned a summer offensive near the Somme River, at the junction of the French and British armies, the German commander General Erich von Falkenhayn hoped to break France’s spirit by continual assault on a narrow front that was difficult to defend. His target was Verdun, a city that (because of its historical importance as a fortress since Roman times) he knew the French would defend to the last man. Here, he undertook to “bleed” the French army to death. The German attack on Verdun began on February 21, 1916. One million men launched themselves on a network of forts that had been left under-manned and under-gunned. Within 72 hours, after the Germans had pushed forward more than 3 miles (5 km), it looked as if they might well take Verdun and its surrounding defenses. As Falkenhayn had predicted, however, the French were determined to hold out. Pouring men and munitions into the line, they resolved that the German forces would not pass.

  Happy to be out of the fight—German prisoners taken at Verdun are paraded through the streets under mounted guard on their way to captivity.

  What became known as the “hell of Verdun” raged on for the rest of the year. The French lost about 378,000 men but still were not quite bled to death. The Germans, on the other hand, lost almost as many themselves. Since they were also fighting on the Eastern Front, where they had to support Austria-Hungary, as well as supplying troops to other theaters of war, such as Africa and the Middle East, the losses were harder for them to bear. Also, in July, their assault on Verdun had drawn a massive British counterassault on the Somme.

  OVER THE TOP

  British private soldier Roy Bealing remembers going over the top of his trench during an attack on the Somme:

  “When the whistle went, I threw my rifle on top of the trench and clambered out of it, grabbed the rifle and started going forward. There were shell-holes everywhere. I hadn’t gone far before I fell in one…. I must have fallen half a dozen times before I got to the first line, and there were lads falling all over the place. You didn’t know whether they were just tripping up, like me, or whether they were going down with bullets in them, because it wasn’t just the shells exploding round about, it was the machine guns hammering out like hell from the third German line because it was on slightly higher ground.”

  —Quoted in Somme, Lyn Macdonald

  THE SOMME In late 1915 (as we saw on page 29), the Allies had planned a joint attack on the Somme for the late summer of 1916. This plan was altered when the Verdun offensive pinned down the bulk of the French Army. In response, the main weight of the Allied attack—which at the request of the French was brought forward by several weeks—would now be borne by the British.

  “
Fix Bayonets!” British troops prepare to go over the top of their protective trench on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1, 1916. For many, this was their first experience of battle; for most of the 60,000 killed and wounded, it was also their last.

  Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig (1861–1928), friend of British King George V and commander in chief of the British forces in France, 1915–18.

  Before 1914, the British had concentrated their military spending on the Royal Navy. Their regular army ready for European action had consisted only of the 150,000-strong British Expeditionary Force. By 1916, this had been all but wiped out, meaning that the hugely expanded army—now over two million men—was largely made up of eager but inexperienced volunteers. They were joined by the small but highly efficient contingents provided by Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. It was with these forces, domestic and colonial, that the new British commander, Sir Douglas Haig, hoped to break through the well arranged German defenses on the Somme.

  The Battle of the Somme, 1916. The battleground was not chosen for strategic reasons, but because it was where the French and British lines met.

  The first day of the offensive—July 1, 1916—was the worst ever experienced by a British army. Despite careful preparation and a huge, eight-day preliminary bombardment of the enemy lines, the troops were forced to walk across “no man’s land” into barbed wire and the deadly fire of machine guns—most of which had survived the artillery bombardment in deep concrete shelters. The attacking Allies were mowed down like grass. Some 58,000 men were lost for minimal gains. Only on the southern flank and in the neighboring French sector was much progress made.

  The battle raged on until November, by which time the Allies had advanced no more than 10 miles (16 km) at a cost of 613,000 men killed and wounded (419,000 British). Even so, the German army had suffered equally heavy losses. Combined with the losses at Verdun and the Brusilov Offensive (see below), by the end of the year it was no longer fit to attack.

  RUSSIA’S LAST ATTACK As the British were attempting to take pressure off the French by attacking on the Somme, so the Russians had gathered themselves for one final offensive on the Eastern Front. They also planned to help their Italian allies by drawing Austro-Hungarian divisions away from the Alps. The general responsible for planning and launching the attack was Alexei Brusilov, probably the most capable Russian commander of the war.

  Russia’s Brusilov Offensive in 1916 forced the Germans to switch troops from the Western Front but brought the Russian army to its knees.

  Tired of official incompetence and senseless slaughter, Russian soldiers surrender in 1917.

  The last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, sits alone after being forced to abdicate his throne in 1917.

  What is now called the “Brusilov Offensive” began on June 4, 1916. The Russians moved forward in the valleys of the Prut Rivers and Dniester and further north toward the town of Lutsk. Brusilov placed himself between the two points of attack. His enemy, mostly Austro-Hungarian, was taken somewhat by surprise and fell back in disarray. Within two weeks, the Russians had advanced about 50 miles (80 km) and taken almost 100,000 prisoners.

  Realizing the danger, both German and Austro-Hungarian reinforcements were rushed to the front and halted the Russian advance for a while. Twice that summer the Russians resumed their advance. They met with considerable success against the Austro-Hungarians in the south, where the Russians reached the Carpathian Mountains, but less against the Germans in the north. Finally, in mid-September, Brusilov called off his entire operation. His army had fought itself to a standstill, having lost about 1.4 million men as casualties and prisoners. The figure for his opponents was only slightly less.

  THE RUSSIAN ARMY

  The Russian 3rd, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 11th armies launched the Brusilov Offensive. Their strengths and varied make-up were as follows:

  3rd Army

  6 infantry divisions

  6 cavalry divisions (5 of Cossacks)

  1 reserve division

  7th Army

  9 infantry divisions

  2 divisions of Finnish troops

  2 cavalry divisions (1 of Cossacks)

  3 reserve divisions, including 1 of Turks

  8th Army

  10 infantry divisions

  2 divisions of Turkish troops

  3 cavalry divisions (1 of Cossacks)

  1 division of Finnish troops

  2 reserve divisions

  9th Army

  9 infantry divisions

  5 cavalry divisions (4 of Cossacks)

  1 reserve division

  11th Army

  8 infantry divisions

  4 cavalry divisions

  1 division of Finnish troops

  3 reserve divisions

  Total initial strength of all armies:

  57 infantry divisions (570,000 men approx.);

  20 cavalry divisions (200,000 men approx.)

  (Note: These numbers do not include troops who were brought in later)

  Brusilov had been let down by his support services, not by his troops. Sometimes attacks were halted because the ammunition ran out. On other occasions, reinforcements came too late because of the inefficiency of the Russian railway system. Supplies of food and new weapons were at best unreliable, and sometimes nonexistent. To top it all, the country’s military leadership, from Supreme Commander Czar Nicholas II on down, failed to cooperate with one another or coordinate their activities. In fact, after the Brusilov Offensive, the entire Russian military machine began to fall apart.

  FRANCE GRINDS TO A HALT The most interesting development on the Western Front during 1917 was that the Germans withdrew to the Hindenburg Line (Siegfried Stellung) that ran south in France from Arras to near Soissons. The Hindenburg Line was a preprepared defensive arrangement of barbed wire entanglements, trenches, machine gun posts, and concrete bunkers that proved exceptionally difficult to penetrate by conventional means. The Germans gave up any idea of launching an offensive in this part of the front and instead retired to these defended bunkers between February 23 and April 5. In contrast, the Allies still hoped for their elusive breakthrough. The new French commander, General Robert Nivelle, well known for his offensive strategies, believed he could break through the German lines in the region of the River Aisne. His subordinates, including Marshal Philippe Pétain, strongly advised him to reconsider. He refused.

  An army falls apart—French deserters run toward the German lines, spring 1917. News of events such as this mutiny by serving soldiers was not revealed to the general public.

  Germany’s Hindenburg Line, 1916, peppered with many shell craters.

  By way of a diversion, in April the British under Haig attacked near Arras. After the usual bombardment, they made the biggest single-day advance of the war by British forces thus far—pathetically, less than 3.5 miles (5.5 km). Although the fighting continued to mid-May, further gains were very limited before the offensive was called off.

  The Battle of Arras, 1917. Canadian forces seized Vimy Ridge in one of the most gallant actions of the entire war.

  Meanwhile, the French had launched their offensive between Soissons and Reims (see locations on page 29). Yet again, despite the use of tanks (first seen on the Somme), a decisive breakthrough that could release the cavalry over open ground was not achieved. After some early gains, including the capture of 20,000 German soldiers and a section of the Hindenburg Line, the advance floundered to a halt. The casualty rate had been as high as ever—in less than a month Nivelle lost 187,000 of the 1.2 million men under his command. The Germans’ figure was about 163,000 losses.

  GASSED

  Harold Clegg recalls the effects of a German attack in July 1917 using a new form of gas—mustard gas—that burned away at the organs with which it came into contact:

  “Our eyes now began to feel irritated. The tea was instrumental in making all and sundry commence to vomit. After being violently sick I received instructions to prepare myself to join
a [guard] party … I began to scrape the … mud from my [equipment] … “While doing so I heard several men complain about pain in their eyes, some even complaining of going blind.”–July 1917.

  —Quoted in The Imperial War Museum Book of the First World War, edited by Malcolm Brown

  The morale of many French troops now broke: a large number simply refused to take part in any further attacks. For a while (April to June 1917), the mutiny threatened to force France out of the war, making a German victory highly probable. Nivelle was promptly fired and, with great skill, Pétain began the difficult task of pulling his shattered forces together again.

  The war of attrition goes on … and on. Heavily laden British troops moving up to the front line, October 1917.

  THE GERMAN LINE HOLDS 1917 was the crucial year of the war. Russia was in turmoil (see pages 40-1). Austria-Hungary crushed the Italians (see pages 18-19), who were more and more disillusioned with the war. The bulk of the French were in no fit state to do more than hold their line. The German command sensed that victory in the east was near, and a sustained attack on the demoralized French line might, at last, achieve breakthrough. Field Marshal Douglas Haig, the British commander-in-chief, still believed he could pierce the German line with a massive frontal assault.

  THE ONLY ONE

  Private R. Le Brun, a Canadian machine gunner, remembers fighting in the deep November mud around the village of Passchendaele.

  ‘There was nothing between us and the Germans across the swamp. Three times during the night they shelled us heavily, and we had to keep on spraying bullets into the darkness to keep them from advancing. The night was alive with bullets. By morning, of our team of six, only my buddy Tombes and I were left. Then came the burst that got Tombes. It got him right in the head. … It was a terrible feeling being the only one left.’