NEW METHODS AND HORRORS OF WARFARE
When Germany embarked upon its policy of frightfulness, it held in
reserve murderous inventions that had been contributed to the German
General Staff by chemists and other scientists working in conjunction
with the war. Never since the dawn of time had there been such a
perversion of knowledge to criminal purposes; never had science
contributed such a deadly toll to the fanatic and criminal intentions
of a war-crazed class.
As the war uncoiled its weary length, and month after month of embargo
and privation saw the morale of the German nation growing steadily
lower, these murderous inventions were successively called into play
against the Allies, but as each horror was put into play on the
battlefield, its principles were solved by the scientists of the
Allied nations, and the deadly engine of destruction was turned with
trebled force against the Huns.
This happened with the various varieties of poison gas, with liquid
fire, with trench knives, with nail-studded clubs, with armor used by
shock troops, with airplane bombs, with cannon throwing projectiles
weighing thousands of pounds great distances behind the battle lines.
Not only did America and the Allies improve upon Germany’s pattern in
these respects, but they added a few inventions that went far toward
turning the scale against Germany. An example of these is the “tank.”
Originally this was a caterpillar tractor invented in America and
adopted in England. At first these were of two varieties, the male,
carrying heavy guns only, and the females, equipped with machine guns.
To these was later added the whippet tank, named after the racing dog
developed in England. These whippet tanks averaged eighteen miles an
hour, carrying death and terror into the ranks of the enemy. All the
tanks were heavily armored and had as their motto the significant
words “Treat ’Em Rough.” The Germans designed a heavy anti-tank rifle
about three feet longer than the ordinary rifle and carrying a charge
calculated to pierce tank armor. These were issued to the German first
line trenches at the rate of three to a company. That they were not
particularly effective was proved by the ease with which the tanks of
all varieties tore through the barbed-wire entanglements and passed
over the Hindenburg and Kriemhild lines, supposed by the Germans to be
impregnable.
The tanks in effect were mobile artillery and were used as such by
all the Allied troops. Germany frantically endeavored to manufacture
tanks to meet the Allied monsters, but their efforts were feeble when
compared with the great output opposed to them.
Before considering other inventions used for the first time in this
war, it is well to understand the tremendous changes in methods and
tactics made necessary by these discoveries.
Put into a sentence, the changed warfare amounts to this: it is a
mobilization of material, of railroads, great guns, machine guns, food,
airplanes and other engines of destruction quite as much as it is a
mobilization of men.
The Germans won battle after battle at the beginning of the war
because of their system of strategic railways that made it possible
to transport huge armies to selected points in the shortest possible
time both on the eastern and the western fronts. Lacking a system
of transportation to match this, Russia lost the great battles that
decided her fate, Belgium was overrun, and France, once the border was
passed, became a battlefield upon which the Germans might extend their
trench systems over the face of the land.
Lacking strategic railways to match those of Germany, France evolved an
effective substitute in the modern system of automobile transportation.
When von Kluck swung aside from Paris in his first great rush, Gallieni
sent out from Paris an army in taxicabs that struck the exposed flank
and went far toward winning the first battle of the Marne. It was the
truck transportation system of the French along the famous “Sacred
Road” back of the battle line at Verdun that kept inviolate the motto
of the heroic town, “They Shall Not Pass.” Motor trucks that brought
American reserves in a khaki flood won the second battle of the Marne.
It was the automobile transportation that enabled Haig to send the
British, Canadians and Australians in full cry after the retreating
Germans when the backbone of the German resistance was broken before
Lens, Cambrai, and Ostend.
America’s railway transportation system in France was one of the
marvels of the war. Stretching from the sector of seacoast set apart
for America by the French Government, it radiated far into the
interior, delivering men, munitions and food in a steady stream.
American engineers worked with their brothers-in-arms with the Allies
to construct an inter-weaving system of wide-gauge and narrow-gauge
roads that served to victual and munition the entire front and further
serve to deliver at top speed whole army corps. It was this network of
strategic railways that enabled the French to send an avalanche clad
in horizon blue to the relief of Amiens when Hindenburg made his final
tremendous effort of 1918.
In its essentials, military effort in the great conflict may be roughly
divided into
Open warfare,
Trench warfare,
Crater warfare.
The first battle of the Marne was almost wholly open warfare; so also
were the battles of the Masurian Lakes, Allenstein, and Dunajec in the
eastern theater of war, and most of the warfare on the Italian front
between the Piave River and Gorizia.
In this variety of battle, airplanes and observation balloons play
a prominent part. Once the enemy is driven out of its trenches, the
message is flashed by wireless to the artillery and slaughter at long
range begins. If there have been no intrenchments, as was the case in
the first battle of the Marne, massed artillery send a plunging fire
into the columns moving in open order and prepare the way for machine
gunners and infantry to finish the rout.
In previous wars, cavalry played a heroic rôle in open warfare; only
rarely has it been possible to use cavalry in the Great War. The
Germans sent a screen of Uhlans before its advancing hordes into
Belgium and Northern France in 1914. The Uhlans also were in the van in
the Russian invasion, but with these exceptions, German cavalry was a
negligible factor.
British and French cavalry were active in pursuit of the fleeing
Teutons when the Hindenburg line was smashed in September of 1918.
Outside of that brief episode, the cavalry did comparatively nothing
so far as the Allies were concerned. It was the practice on both sides
to dismount cavalry and convert it into some form of trench service.
Trench mortar companies, bombing squads, and other specialty groups
were organized from among the cavalrymen. Of course the fighting in the
open stretches of Mesopotamia, South Africa and Russia involved the use
of great bodies of cavalry. The trend of modern warfare, however, is
to equip the cavalryman with grenades and bayonets, in addition to his
ordinary gear, and to make of him practically a mounted infantryman.
Trench warfare occupied most of the time and made nine-tenths of the
discomforts of the soldiers of both armies. If proof of the adaptive
capacity of the human animal were needed, it is afforded by the
manner in which the men burrowed in vermin-infested earth and lived
there under conditions of Arctic cold, frequently enduring long
deprivations of food, fuel, and suitable clothing. During the early
stages of the war, before men became accustomed to the rigors of the
trenches, many thousands died as a direct result of the exposure. Many
thousand of others were incapacitated for life by “trench feet,” a
group of maladies covering the consequences of exposure to cold and
water which in those early days flowed in rivulets through most of
the trenches. The trenches at Gallipoli had their own special brand
of maladies. Heatstroke and a malarial infection were among these
disabling agencies. Trench fever, a malady beginning with a headache
and sometimes ending in partial paralysis and death, was another common
factor in the mortality records.
But in spite of all these and other discomforts, in spite of the
disgusting vermin that crawled upon the men both in winter and in
summer, both sides mastered the trenches and in the end learned to live
in them with some degree of comfort.
[Illustration: FORTS, FLYING AND NAVAL BASES ON THE NORTH SEA]
At first the trenches were comparatively straight, shallow affairs;
then as the artillery searched them out, as the machine gunners learned
the art of looping their fire so that the bullets would drop into the
hiding places of the enemy, the trench systems gradually became more
scientifically involved. After the Germans had been beaten at the Marne
and had retired to their prepared positions along the Aisne, there
commenced a series of flanking attempts by one side and the other which
speedily resolved itself into the famous “race to the sea.” This was
a competition between the opposing armies in rapid trench digging.
The effort on either side was made to prevent the enemy from executing
a flank movement. In an amazingly short time the opposing trenches
extended from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border, making further
outflanking attempts impossible of achievement.
This was not the first time in history that intrenched armies opposed
each other. The Civil War in this country set the fashion in that
respect. The contending sides in the Great War, however, improved
vastly upon the American example. Communicating trenches were
constructed, leading back to the company kitchens, and finally to the
open road leading back to the rest billets of the armies.
When night raiding commenced, it was speedily seen that straight
trenches exposed whole companies of men to enfilading fire. Thereupon
bastions were made and new defenses presented by zig-zagging the
front-line trenches and the communicating ditches as well.
To the formidable obstacles presented by the trenches, equipped
as they were with sandbag parapets and firing steps, were added
barbed-wire entanglements and pitfalls of various sorts. The greatest
improvement was made by the Germans, and they added “pill boxes.” These
were really miniature fortresses of concrete and armor plate with a
dome-shaped roof and loopholes for machine gunners. Only a direct hit
by a projectile from a big gun served to demolish a “pill box.” The
Allies learned after many costly experiments that the best method to
overcome these obstacles was to pass over and beyond them, leaving them
isolated in Allied territory, where they were captured at the leisure
of the attackers.
Trench warfare brings with it new instruments. There are the flame
projectors, which throw fire to a distance of approximately a hundred
feet. The Germans were the first to use these, but they were excelled
in this respect by the inventive genius of the nations opposing them.
The use of poison gas, the word being used in its broad sense, is
now general. It was first used by the Germans, but as in the case of
flame-throwers, the Allies soon gained the ascendency.
The first use of asphyxiating gas was by the Germans during the first
battle of Ypres. There the deadly compound was mixed in huge reservoirs
back of the German lines. From these extended a system of pipes with
vents pointed toward the British and Canadian lines. Waiting until
air currents were moving steadily westward, the Germans opened the
stop-cocks shortly after midnight and the poisonous fumes swept slowly,
relentlessly forward in a greenish cloud that moved close to the earth.
The result of that fiendish and cowardly act was that thousands of men
died in horrible agony without a chance for their lives.
Besides that first asphyxiating gas, there soon developed others
even more deadly. The base of most of these was chlorine. Then came
the lachrymatory or “tear-compelling” gases, calculated to produce
temporary or permanent blindness. Another German “triumph” was mustard
gas. This is spread in gas shells, as are all the modern gasses. The
Germans abandoned the cumbersome gas-distributing system after the
invention of the gas shell. These make a peculiar gobbling sound as
they rush overhead. They explode with a very slight noise and scatter
their contents broadcast. The liquids carried by them are usually of
the sort that decompose rapidly when exposed to the air and give off
the acrid gases dreaded by the soldiers. They are directed against
the artillery as well as against intrenched troops. Every command, no
matter how small, has its warning signal in the shape of a gong or a
siren warning of approaching gas.
Gas masks were speedily discovered to offset the dangers of poison
gases of all kinds. These were worn not only by troops in the field,
but by artillery horses, pack mules, liaison dogs, and by the civilian
inhabitants in back of the battle lines. Where used quickly and in
accordance with instructions, these masks were a complete protection
against attacks by gas.
The perfected gas masks used by both sides contained a chamber filled
with a specially prepared charcoal. Peach pits were collected by the
millions in all the belligerent countries to make this charcoal, and
other vegetable substances of similar density were also used. Anti-gas
chemicals were mixed with the charcoal. The wearer of the mask breathed
entirely through the mouth, gripping a rubber mouthpiece while his nose
was pinched shut by a clamp attached to the mask.
In training, soldiers were required to hold their breath for six
seconds while the mask was being adjusted. It was explained to them
that four breaths of the deadly chlorine gas was sufficient to kill;
the first breath produced a spasm of the glottis; the second brought
mental confusion and delirium; the third produced unconsciousness; and
the fourth death. The bag containing the gas mask and respirator was
carried always by the soldier.
The soldier during the winter season in the front-line trenches was a
grotesque figure. His head was crowned with a helmet covered with khaki
because the glint of steel would advertise his whereabouts. Beneath the
helmet he wore a close fitting woolen cap pulled down tightly around
his ears and sometimes tied or buttoned beneath his chin. Suspended
upon his chest was the khaki bag containing gas mask and respirator.
Over his outer garments were his belt, brace straps, bayonet and
ammunition pouches. His rifle was slung upon his shoulder with the
foot of a woolen sock covering the muzzle and the leg of the same sock
wrapped around the breech. A large jerkin made of leather, without
sleeves, was worn over the short coat. Long rubber boots reaching to
the hips and strapped at ankle and hip completely covered his legs.
When anticipating trench raids, or on a raiding party, a handy trench
knife and carefully slung grenades were added to his equipment.
Airplane bombing ultimately changed the whole character of the war. It
extended the fighting lines miles behind the battle front. It brought
the horrors of night attacks upon troops resting in billets. It visited
destruction and death upon the civilian population of cities scores of
miles back of the actual front.
Germany transgressed repeatedly the laws of humanity by bombing
hospitals far behind the battle front. Describing one of these
atrocious attacks, which took place May 29, 1918, Colonel G. H.
Andrews, Chaplain of a Canadian regiment, said:
“The building bombed was one of three large Red Cross hospitals at
Boulenes and was filled with Allied wounded. A hospital in which were a
number of wounded German prisoners stood not very far away.
“The Germans could not possibly have mistaken the building they
bombed for anything else but a hospital. There were flags with red
cross flying, and lights were turned on them so that they would show
prominently. And the windows were brilliantly lighted. Those inside
heard the buzz of the advancing airplanes, but did not give them a
thought.
“The machines came right on, ignoring the hospital with the German
wounded, indicating they had full knowledge of their objective, until
they were over a wing of the Red Cross hospital that contained the
operating room on the ground floor. In the operating room a man was on
the table for a most difficult surgical feat. Around him gathered the
staff of the hospital and its brilliant surgeons. Lieutenant Sage of
New York had just given him the anaesthetic when one of the airplanes
let the bomb drop. It was a big fellow. It must have been all of 250
pounds of high explosive.
“It hurtled downward, carrying the two floors before it. Through the
gap thus made wounded men, the beds in which they lay, convalescents,
and all on the floors came crashing down to the ground. The bomb’s
force extended itself to wreck the operating room, where the man on the
table, Lieutenant Sage, and all in the room were killed. In all there
were thirty-seven lives lost, including three Red Cross nurses.
“The building caught fire. The concussion had blown the stairs down,
so that escape from the upper floors seemed impossible. But the
convalescents and the soldiers, who had run to the scene of the
bombing, let the very ill ones out of the windows, and escape was made
in that way.
“And then to cap the climax, the German airplanes returned over the
spot of their ghastly triumph and fired on the rescuers with machine
guns. God will never forgive the Huns for that act alone. Nor will our
comrades ever forget it.”
The statement of Colonel Andrews was corroborated by a number of other
officers.
To protect artillery against counter-fire of all kinds, both sides
from the beginning used the art of camouflage. This was resorted to
particularly against scouting airplanes. At first the branches of
trees and similar natural cover were used to deceive the airmen. Later
the guns themselves were painted with protective colorations, and
screens of burlap were used instead of branches. The camoufleur, as
the camouflage artist was called, speedily extended his activities
to screens over highways, preventing airmen from seeing troops in
motion, to the protective coloration of lookout posts, and of other
necessary factors along the fighting front. Camouflage also found great
usefulness in the protective coloration of battle-ships and merchant
vessels. Scientific study went hand in hand with the art, the object
being to confuse the enemy and to offer targets as small as possible to
the enemy gunners.
[Illustration: © _Underwood and Underwood, N. Y._
THE MADE-TO-ORDER INFERNO OF THE FLAME-THROWER
A “rain-of-fire” attack in the front-line trenches. This weapon
was devised by the Germans and was apparently one of those pre-war
inventions they had counted on to make their conquest easy. It was
never as effective a weapon as gas, even when developed by the Allies,
but its terrifying effect can be gauged by the illustration given.]
Crater warfare came as a development of intensified artillery attacks
upon trench systems. It was at Dunajec on the eastern front that for
the first time in modern war the wheels of artillery were placed hub
to hub in intensified hurricane fire upon enemy positions. The result
there under von Mackensen’s direction was the rout of the Russians.
When later the same tactics were employed on the western front, the
result was to destroy whole trench systems with the exception of deep
dugouts, and to send the occupants of the trenches into the craters,
made by shell explosions, for protection.
It was observed that these craters made excellent cover and when
linked by vigorous use of the intrenching tools carried by every
soldier, they made a fair substitute for the trenches. This observation
gave root to an idea which was followed by both armies; this was the
deliberate creation of crater systems by the artillery of the attacking
force. Into these lines of craters the attacking infantry threw itself
in wave after wave as it rushed toward the enemy trenches. The ground
is so riddled by this intensive artillery fire that there is created
what is known as “moon terrain,” fields resembling the surface of the
moon as seen through a powerful telescope. Troops on both sides were
trained to utilize these shell holes to the utmost, each little group
occupying a crater, keeping in touch with its nearest group and moving
steadily in unison toward the enemy.
One detail in which this war surpassed all others was in the use of
machine guns and grenades. The Germans were first to make extensive
use of the machine gun as a weapon with which to produce an effective
barrage. They established machine-gun nests at frequent intervals
commanding the zone over which infantry was to advance and by skillful
crossfire kept that terrain free from every living thing. The Germans
preferred a machine gun, water cooled and of the barrel-recoil type.
The English used a Vickers-Maxim and a Lewis gun, the latter the
invention of an officer in the American army. The French preferred
the Hotchkiss and the Saint-Etienne. The Americans standardized the
Browning light and heavy machine guns, and these did effective service.
It was asserted by American gunnery experts that the Browning excels
all other weapons of its type.
Two general types of grenades were used on both sides. One a defensive
bomb about the size of an orange, containing a bursting charge weighing
twenty-two ounces. Then there was a grenade used for offensive work
carrying about thirty-two ounces of high explosives. The defensive
grenades were of cast iron and so made that they burst into more than
a hundred jagged pieces when they exploded. These wounded or killed
within a radius of one hundred and fifty yards. In exceptional
instances, the range was higher.
The function of artillery in a modern battle is constantly extending.
Both the big guns and the howitzers were the deciding factors in most
of the military decisions reached during the war. Artillery is divided
first between the big guns having a comparatively flat trajectory and
the howitzers whose trajectory is curved. Then there is a further
division into these four classes:
Field artillery,
Heavy artillery,
Railroad artillery,
Trench artillery.
The type of field artillery is the famous 75 millimeter gun used
interchangeably by the French and Americans. It is a quick-firing
weapon and is used against attacking masses and for the various kind of
barrages, including an anti-aircraft barrage.
[Illustration: _British light Tank, of 1918, with turret action and
high speed._
_British Tank of the earliest type, as used at Cambrai._
_German land battleship captured in 1918 on the western front._
_Improved French Tank first used in Champagne in 1918._
TYPES OF LAND BATTLESHIPS DEVELOPED BY ALLIES AND GERMANS]
Included in the heavy artillery are guns and howitzers of larger
caliber than the 75 millimeter. Three distinct and terrifying noises
accompany explosions of these guns. First, there is the explosion when
the shell leaves the gun; then there is the peculiar rattling noise
like the passing of a railway train when the shells pass overhead;
then there is the explosion at point of contact, a terrific concussion
which produces the human condition called “shell shock,” a derangement
of body and brain, paralyzing nerve and muscle centers and frequently
producing insanity.
The railroad artillery comprises huge guns pulled on railways by
locomotives, each gun having a number of cars as part of its equipment.
These are slow-firing guns of great power and hurling the largest
projectiles known to warfare. The largest guns of this class were
produced by American inventive genius as a reply to the German gun of
St. Gobain Forest. This was a weapon which hurled a nine-inch shell
from a distance of 62 miles into the heart of Paris. The damage done by
it was comparatively slight and it had no appreciable effect upon the
morale of the Parisians.
Its greatest damage was when it struck the Roman Catholic Church of St.
Gervais on Good Friday, March 29, 1918, killing seventy-five persons
and wounding ninety. Fifty-four of those killed were women, five being
Americans. The total effect of the bombardment by this big gun was to
arouse France, England and America to a fiercer fighting pitch. The
late Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York, expressed this sentiment,
when he sent the following message to the Archbishop of Paris:
Shocked by the brutal killing of innocent victims gathered at
religious services to commemorate the passing of our blessed Saviour
on Good Friday, the Catholics of New York join your noble protest
against this outrage of the sanctuary on such a day and at such an
hour and, expressing their sympathy to the bereaved relatives of the
dead and injured, pledge their unfaltering allegiance in support of
the common cause that unites our two great republics. May God bless
the brave officers and men of the allied armies in their splendid
defense of liberty and justice!
Trench artillery are Stokes guns and other mortars hurling aerial
torpedoes containing great quantities of high explosives. These have
curved trajectories and are effective not only against trenches but
also against deep dugouts, wire entanglements and listening posts.
One of the most important details of modern warfare is that of
communication or liaison on the battlefield. This is accomplished by
runners recruited from the trenches, by dogs, pigeons, telephone,
radio, signalling lamps, rockets, but above all by airplanes using
radio. These communications between air and earth are of course not as
exact nor as general by night as they are by day, but even at night the
airplane plays its important part in liaison.
As has been heretofore stated, the airplane considered in all its
developments, is the newest and most important of factors in modern
warfare. It photographs the enemy positions, it detects concentrations
and other movements of the enemy, it makes surprise impossible, it is
a deadly engine of destruction when used in spraying machine-gun fire
upon troops in the open. As a bombing device, it surpasses the best and
most accurate artillery.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.