CHAPTER III
TRENCH ORGANIZATION
1. General remarks.
2. General plan of an intrenchment system. Trenches. First and second lines. Trenches of attack. Artillery. Wires.
3. Mines and counter-mines.
4. Special railway troops. Transportation by roads.
5. General remarks on transportation.
6. Camouflage.
1. General Remarks. When her dream of a short war which was to realize all her aims of conquest was dissipated, Germany resorted to a policy of occupation in the hope of either maintaining her hold upon the territory she had seized, or else of eventually using it as an asset in negotiations for peace. At the end of 1914 she occupied nearly the whole area of seven French Departments, three or four of which are among the richest agricultural and industrial districts of France.
To attain her ends, Germany intrenched her armies on the nearest front that she had time to occupy, one of several defensive lines which she had selected long before. Her spies, in time of peace, had furnished her with accurate knowledge of all the important positions.
Thus, when the German armies of the first line were beaten on the Marne, and fell back in disorder, they found, at a distance of three or four days’ march, beyond Soissons, on the frontier of Lorraine, an unbroken line of intrenchments already organized by the second-line troops while they were operating their enforced retreat.
The French pursuing armies had not, in September, 1914, the material means of assaulting the enemy’s intrenchments. They had just fought a series of battles which had considerably lessened their effective forces. Their regiments had to be officered anew. They had no alternative but to intrench themselves, on positions as little disadvantageous as possible, in front of the enemy. Thus all along a line extending from the North Sea, at Nieuport, to the frontier of Switzerland, began the formidable conflict which is still raging.
The distance between the two hostile fronts varies from 30 or 40 metres to 1200 or 1500 metres at most.
After big attacks, prepared by long bombardments, the first lines cease to exist, and very often both of the hostile fronts are merged into one another. The most advanced small outposts have no other shelter than that of shell-craters, and it is by means of grenades thrown from one crater to another, and with whatever earthworks can be improvised with the tools on hand, that attempts to rectify the fronts are made.
Both parties, most of the time, have three successive lines of organized defence, and sometimes more.