FACING DEATH IN THE TRENCHES
CAVE-DWELLING THE LOT OF MODERN SOLDIERS -- GERMANS HAVE LEARNED MUCH
-- STANDARDIZED MODEL -- FRENCH STUDY OF GERMAN METHODS--“COMFORTS OF
HOME”--BRITISH REFUGES IN NORTHERN FRANCE--“PICNICKING” IN THE OPEN
AIR -- RAVAGES OF ARTILLERY FIRE -- THE COMMON ENEMY, THE WEATHER --
WHY COOKS WEAR IRON CROSSES--“PUTTING ONE OVER” ON THE RUSSIANS.
“Other times, other manners” applies as accurately to the battle-field
as it does elsewhere. The cavalry charge is nearly extinct, mass
formation is going, hand-to-hand conflict is rarely found, and now, it
appears, the old-fashioned and romantic bivouac is no more.
Trench-fighting has been carried on to such an extent in France and
Belgium, and Poland, that the open camp, with its rows of little tents,
outposts, and sentry guard, becomes almost a forgotten picture of
warfare. Doubtless the military schools of the future will make
provision for special instruction in the construction of commodious
caverns on the battle-field, safe, warm, and containing all the comforts
of a barrack.
The modern warrior, like a mole, lives under ground and displays his
greatest activity at night. With the coming of subterranean warfare, as
trench-fighting can be appropriately called, great armies have had to
adopt unique methods. They have been compelled to build peculiar little
forts--for a trench is a fort, in fact--wherever their soldiers meet the
enemy. In consequence these rectangular excavations have been improved
far beyond their original outline.
The first trench was nothing more nor less than a hole in the ground,
deep enough to protect a man kneeling, standing, or sitting, as the case
might be. Before the advent of the modern rifle and modern cannon, these
defenses, with several feet of loose earth thrown up in front of them,
served admirably. In those days the question of head-cover was of minor
importance; today a protective roofing is the sine qua non of any
well-constructed trench. Early in the European war it was discovered
that the trench offered the safest haven from the bursting shells of the
enemy’s field artillery. To all intents and purposes, shrapnel, or, as
its inventor termed it, the man-killing projectile--is practically
harmless in its effect upon entrenched troops. Unless a shell can be
placed absolutely within the two-feet wide excavation it wastes its
destructive powers on the inoffensive earth and air. This has led to a
modification of artillery methods, which, in turn, compels the
elaboration of the trench and emphasizes the importance of head-cover.
GERMANS HAVE LEARNED MUCH
“The history of the great war,” to quote from a French paper, “will
show, among other things, how the Germans profited by the lessons of
recent conflicts. The South African, the Russo-Japanese, and the Balkan
wars were studied minutely by them, and their particular preparations,
their tactics, and their artifices result from the knowledge thus
acquired. They learned much, especially, as regards the formation of
trenches.
“After 1870 we confined ourselves to three regulation types of trenches:
for men prone, kneeling, and standing. While in training, our soldiers
were taught how to take shelter momentarily between advances, by digging
up the soil a little and lying flat behind the smallest of mounds. They
were instructed, moreover, how to protect themselves from the enemy’s
fire by propping up their knapsacks in front of them. This meant
insufficient protection, and an extremely dangerous visibility, since
the foe, by simply counting the number of knapsacks, could know the
strength opposed to him. To insure the making of such shelter, a French
company was equipped with eighty picks and eighty spades; that is, 160
tools for 250 men. These tools were fixed on to the knapsacks; and it
took some time to bring them into use.”
The German methods for defensive and offensive trench-making are quite
different. Each man has a tool of his own, which is fixed on to the
scabbard of his sword-bayonet. When occasion for fighting arises, the
line conceals itself, and, as soon as it is engaged, it prepares for
possible retreat, making strong positions assuring an unrelenting
defensive and counter-attacks.
STANDARDIZED MODEL
It is on these sound principles that all the German fighting-lines are
organized, on a more or less standardized model. The fighting-lines
consist generally of one, two, or three lines of shelter-trenches lying
parallel, measuring twenty or twenty-five inches in width, and varying
in length according to the number they hold; the trenches are joined
together by zigzag approaches and by a line of reinforced trenches
(armed with machine guns), which are almost completely proof against
rifle, machine gun, or gun fire. The ordinary German trenches are almost
invisible from 350 yards away, a distance which permits a very deadly
fire. It is easy to realize that if the enemy occupies three successive
lines and a line of reinforced entrenchments, the attacking line is
likely, at the lowest estimate, to be decimated during an advance of 650
yards--by rifle-fire at a range of 350 yards’ distance, and by the
extremely quick fire of the machine guns, which can each deliver from
300 to 600 bullets a minute with absolute precision. In the
field-trench, it is obvious, a soldier enjoys far greater security than
he would if merely prone behind his knapsack in an excavation barely
fifteen inches deep. He has merely to stoop down a little to disappear
below the level of the ground and be immune from infantry fire;
moreover, his machine guns can fire without endangering him. In
addition, this stooping position brings the man’s knapsack on a level
with his helmet, thus forming some protection against shrapnel and
shell-splinters.
At the back of the German trenches, shelters are dug for
non-commissioned officers and for the commander of the unit. The
latter’s shelter is connected with the communication trench; the others
are not. If one adds that the bank, or, rather, the earth that is dug
from the trenches and spread out in front, extends for five or six
yards, and is covered with grass, or appropriate vegetation, it will be
recognized that the works concealing the German lines can be seen only
when a near approach is made to them.
[Illustration: REINFORCED TRENCHES.
Upper view: Details of roofs, loop-holes, and the form of the
excavations. Lower left-hand view: Vertical section of trenches and
shelters. Lower right-hand view: A plan and section of trenches and
rest-room.]
As to reinforced trenches, the drawings show clearly their conception
and arrangement. They are proof against ordinary bullets and shrapnel.
Only percussion-shells are able to destroy them and to decimate their
defenders. The interior details of the trenches vary according to the
ingenuity and spare time of the occupants and the nature of the ground.
FRENCH STUDY OF GERMAN METHODS
The whole system, that of the rest-rooms more especially, is designed to
give the men the maximum of comfort and security. Doors and wooden
shutters wrenched from deserted houses are used for covers, or else
turf-covered branches.
Ever since the outbreak of the war, the French troops in Lorraine, after
severe experiences, realized rapidly the advantages of the German
trenches, and began to study those they had taken gloriously. Officers,
non-commissioned officers, and men of the Engineers were straightway
detached in every unit to teach the infantry how to construct similar
shelters. The education was quick, and very soon they had completed the
work necessary for the protection of all. The tools of the enemy
“casualties,” the spades and picks left behind in deserted villages,
were all gladly piled on to the French soldiers’ knapsacks, to be
carried willingly by the very men who used to grumble at being loaded
with even the smallest regulation tool. As soon as night had set in on
the occasion of a lull in the fighting, the digging of the trenches was
begun. Sometimes, in the darkness, the men of each fighting
nation--less than 500 yards away from their enemy--would hear the noise
of the workers of the foe: the sounds of picks and axes; the officers’
words of encouragement; and tacitly they would agree to an armistice
during which to dig shelters from which, in the morning, they would dash
out, to fight once more.
“COMFORTS OF HOME”
Commodious, indeed, are some of the present trench barracks, if we may
believe the letters from the front. One French soldier writes:
“In really up-to-date entrenchments you may find kitchens, dining-rooms,
bedrooms, and even stables. One regiment has first class cow-sheds. One
day a whimsical ‘piou-piou,’ finding a cow wandering about in the danger
zone, had the bright idea of finding shelter for it in the trenches. The
example was quickly followed, and at this moment the --th Infantry
possess an underground farm, in which fat kine, well cared for, give
such quantities of milk that regular distributions of butter are being
made--and very good butter, too.”
But this is not all. An officer writes home a tale of yet another one of
the comforts of home added to the equipment of the trenches:
“We are clean people here. Thanks to the ingenuity of ----, we are able
to take a warm bath every day from ten to twelve. We call this teasing
the ‘bosches,’ for this bathing-establishment of the latest type is
fitted up--would you believe it?--in the trenches!”
BRITISH REFUGES IN NORTHERN FRANCE
Describing trenches occupied by the British in their protracted
“siege-warfare” in Northern France along and to the north of the Aisne
Valley, a British officer wrote: “In the firing-line the men sleep and
obtain shelter in the dugouts they have hollowed or ‘undercut’ in the
side of the trenches. These refuges are slightly raised above the bottom
of the trench, so as to remain dry in wet weather. The floor of the
trench is also sloped for purposes of draining. Some trenches are
provided with head-cover, and others with overhead cover, the latter, of
course, giving protection from the weather as well as from shrapnel
balls and splinters of shells. . . . At all points subject to
shell-fire access to the firing-line from behind is provided by
communication-trenches. These are now so good that it is possible to
cross in safety the fire-swept zone to the advanced trenches from the
billets in villages, the bivouacs in quarries, or the other places where
the headquarters of units happen to be.”
“PICNICKING” IN THE OPEN AIR
A cavalry subaltern gave the following account of life in the trenches:
“Picnicking in the open air, day and night (you never see a roof now),
is the only real method of existence. There are loads of straw to bed
down on, and everyone sleeps like a log, in turn, even with shrapnel
bursting within fifty yards.”
RAVAGES OF ARTILLERY FIRE
One English officer described the ravages of modern artillery fire, not
only upon all men, animals and buildings within its zone, but upon the
very face of nature itself: “In the trenches crouch lines of men, in
brown or gray or blue, coated with mud, unshaven, hollow-eyed with the
continual strain.”
“The fighting is now taking place over ground where both sides have for
weeks past been excavating in all directions,” said another letter from
the front, “until it has become a perfect labyrinth. A trench runs
straight for a considerable distance, then it suddenly forks in three or
four directions. One branch merely leads into a ditch full of water,
used in drier weather as a means of communication; another ends abruptly
in a cul-de-sac, probably an abandoned sap-head; the third winds on,
leading into galleries and passages further forward.
“Sometimes where new ground is broken the spade turns up the long-buried
dead, ghastly relics of former fights, and on all sides the surface of
the earth is ploughed and furrowed by fragments of shell and bombs and
distorted by mines. Seen from a distance, this apparently confused mass
of passages, crossing and recrossing one another, resembles an irregular
gridiron.
“The life led by the infantry on both sides at close quarters is a
strange, cramped existence, with death always near, either by means of
some missile from above or some mine explosion from beneath--a life
which has one dull, monotonous background of mud and water. Even when
there is but little fighting the troops are kept hard at work
strengthening the existing defenses, constructing others, and
improvising the shelter imperative in such weather.”
THE COMMON ENEMY, THE WEATHER
But it is not the guns or cannon of the enemy that affect the spirits of
the soldiers. It is the weather. A week of alternate rain and snow, when
the ill-drained dugouts are half-filled with a freezing viscid mud;
when, day after day, the feet are numbed by the frost until all
sensation in them is deadened; when the coarse, scanty ration is refused
by the tortured stomach--then it is that the spirits of the stoutest
falter. Let the enemy attack as he will, and he must fail. It is only in
fighting that the men find an outlet for their rancor.
More than thirty years ago a well-known German general declared that a
book on “Seasonal Tactics” might as properly be written as those on the
tactics of weapons, and of geographical conditions; and in a recent
issue of the Deutsche Revue an unsigned article by a veteran of the
Franco-Prussian war recounts the difficulties that arise when the Frost
King holds sway. “To begin with, the precious hours of daylight are much
fewer, and even these may be shortened by overcast skies and heavy fogs.
Soft snow and mud seriously impede marching and at times it is
impossible to take cross-country cuts, even single horsemen having great
difficulty in crossing the frozen ridges of plowed fields or stubble.
Moreover, even regular highways may become so slippery that they
endanger both man and horse, and in hilly country such conditions make
it necessary to haul heavy artillery up steep ascents by man-power. Cold
head-winds also greatly impede progress.
“The necessity of bringing the troops under cover enforces long marches
at the end of the day’s work, and again at its beginning, and therefore
makes extra demands on energy. . . . The early dark hinders the offense
from carrying out its plans completely and from utilizing any advantage
won by following it up energetically. Night battles become frequent. The
defense seeks to regain what it has lost by day, the offense to make use
of the long nights to win what it could not achieve in the daytime.
Then, too, the need of getting warmed-up makes the troops more
enterprising.”
[Illustration: SINKING OF A TORPEDOED BATTLESHIP.
As the British vessel “Aboukir” was sinking after being torpedoed by a
German submarine, one of the sailors described the last moment as
follows: “The captain sings out an order just like on any ordinary
occasion, ‘If any man wishes to leave the side of the ship he can do so,
every man for himself,’ then we gave a cheer and in we went.”]
[Illustration: RESCUING SAILORS AFTER SINKING OF GERMAN BATTLESHIP.
The conduct of the British fleet is well illustrated by this picture,
which shows life-boats and torpedo destroyers rescuing the drowning
sailors of a German battleship after the latter had been sunk. The heads
and shoulders of numerous unfortunate men are seen dotted about in the
water. (_Photo by Underwood and Underwood._)]
All sorts of constructive work--fortification building, the erection of
stations for telegraphs, telephones and wireless, etc.--is naturally
much more difficult in frozen ground. General von der Goltz of the
German Army is said to have recommended many years ago that in view of
possible winter campaigns provision should be made in quantity of warm
winter clothing, materials for the building of barracks, making double
tents, etc. Another important preventive of suffering and the consequent
diminished efficiency is to provide plenty of good hot food for the men.
WHY COOKS WEAR IRON CROSSES
“There isn’t anything heroic about cooks,” wrote Herbert Corey in the
New York Globe, “and when things go wrong one either apprehends a cook
as chasing a waiter with a bread-knife or giving way to tears.” Yet the
German army contains many a cook whose expansive apron is decorated with
the Iron Cross. “And the Iron Cross,” Mr. Corey reminds us, “is
conferred for one thing only--for 100 per cent courage.”
“‘They’ve earned it,’ said the man who had seen them. ‘They are the
bravest men in the Kaiser’s four millions. I’ve seen generals salute
greasy, paunchy, sour-looking army cooks.’
“The cook’s job is to feed the men of his company. Each German company
is followed, or preceded, by a field-kitchen on wheels. Sometimes the
fires are kept going while the device trundles along. The cook stands on
the foot-board and thumps his bread. He is always the first man up in
the morning and the last to sleep at night.
“When that company goes into the trenches the cook stays behind. There
is no place for a field-kitchen in a four-foot trench. But these men in
the trench must be fed. The Teuton insists that all soldiers must be
fed--but especially the men in the trench. The others may go hungry, but
these must have tight belts. Upon their staying power may depend the
safety of an army.
“So, as the company can not go to the cook, the cook goes to the
company. When meal-hour comes he puts a yoke on his shoulders and a
cook’s cap on his head and, warning the second cook as to what will
happen if he lets the fires go out, puts a bucketful of hot veal stew on
either end of the yoke and goes to his men. Maybe the trench is under
fire. No matter. His men are in that trench and must be fed.
“Sometimes the second cook gets his step right here. Sometimes the
apprentice cook--the dish-washer--is summoned to pick up the cook’s yoke
and refill the spilled buckets and tramp steadily forward to the line.
Sometimes the supply of assistant cooks, even, runs short. But the men
in the trenches always get their food.
“‘That’s why so many cooks in the German Army have Iron Crosses dangling
from their breasts,’ said the man who knows. ‘No braver men ever lived.
The man in the trench can duck his head and light his pipe and be
relatively safe. No fat cook yoked to two buckets of veal stew ever can
be safe as he marches down the trench.’”
“PUTTING ONE OVER” ON THE RUSSIANS
Granville Fortescue, who visited the Russian trenches in Poland, related
in the Illustrated London News a story of how the Germans, to use a
slang phrase, “put one over” on the too-confiding Russians. “This
happened,” he wrote, “at a portion of the line where the positions ran
so close that the men could communicate by shouting. It was around
Christmas, and the Germans invited the Russians to come over for a hot
cup of new coffee just received from home. The Russians replied to this
invitation, shouting: ‘Come over and try our tea. It’s a special gift
from the Czar.’
“The Germans then put up the white flag, and said that they would send
over fifteen men to try the tea if the Russians would send over the same
number to sample their coffee. The plan was carried out. When the
fifteen Germans appeared in the Russian trench, the hosts remarked to
one another that if these were a sample the enemy would not hold out
long. They were a sick-looking lot. Suddenly the Germans pulled down
their white flag and commenced firing. Then the Russians found that
they had exchanged fifteen good soldiers for fifteen typhus patients.
“It is easy to believe that the Russian soldier could be imposed upon in
this way. Although extremely courageous, he is very simple-minded with
it all, and certainly trusting. He is a splendid physical specimen. In
the trail of trench warfare this is the great desideratum. Then, the
Russians of the type that are drafted into the army have all their life
been accustomed to privation and exposure. For this reason they are the
only troops that I have seen who can stick six days and nights on end in
a trench, under constant small arms and shell fire, with the temperature
below zero, and after a day’s rest be as good as ever. The Russians
never grumble.”