By Captain André Laffargue, 153d Infantry (French).
I.
CHARACTER OF THE PRESENT ATTACK.
The attack at the present period has become one of siege warfare. We
must accept it as it is, study it, tax our wits to find special means to
prepare effectively for it and to orient the instruction of troops
entirely with this in view.
The attack on all points of our front consists in breaking through
several lines of defense upon a depth of about three kilometres and in
preventing the enemy from holding on further back on new lines already
prepared or merely improvized.
The attack is therefore an immense, unlimited, simultaneous assault on
all points of the front of attack, furiously pushed straight to the
front until all the enemy’s defenses are broken through.
_The characteristic of this attack is that it is not progressive but is
an assault of a single rush; it must be accomplished in one day as
otherwise the enemy reforms, and the defense, with terrible engines of
sudden destruction, will later recover its supremacy over the attack,
which cannot quickly enough regain the mastery of this consuming fire._
The whole series of frightful defenses cannot be nibbled at
successively; they must be swallowed whole at one stroke with one
decision.
Therefore, the fight is an unlimited assault. In order to attempt the
assault, what is necessary?
Assaulting troops—and all troops are far from being assaulting troops.
An overwhelming superiority of fire all the time and not only at the
moment of assault.
The possibility of rushing forth from a line of shelter a short distance
from the enemy, a condition equally to be sought for in any other phase
of the combat.
In order that the assault may be unlimited, the sacrifice being resolved
upon, it must be pushed through to a finish and the enemy drowned under
successive waves, _calculating, however, that infantry units disappear
in the furnace of fire like handfuls of straw_.
Is it possible to pierce the enemy’s lines? I firmly believe so since
the 9th of May[2]. But before that, this hypothesis seemed to me a mad
temerity. I had taken part in the Battle of Nancy and in the Battle of
Ypres where it appears that the Germans, after a terrifying deluge of
heavy projectiles during interminable days, tried to break through us,
which I certainly did not think possible, seeing the paltry and easily
shattered efforts of their infantry. In considering the forces put into
action which did not succeed in making us yield a foot, I believed in
the inviolability of the lines of defense. On the 9th of May, by a
single dash, our first wave submerged in one hour all the enemy’s
first-line defenses to a depth of several kilometres.
The assault is extremely murderous; it is an implacable struggle in
which one or the other must fall and in which the engines of combat not
destroyed beforehand often make terrible havoc in the ranks of
unprotected assaulting troops.
He who risks his life and does not wish to die but to succeed, becomes
at times ingenious. That is why I, who was part of the human canister
for more than nine months, have set about to consider the means of
saving the inestimable existence of so many humble comrades, or at least
to figure out how the sacrifice of their lives may result in victory.
II.
PREPARATION OF THE ATTACK.