With our army in Flanders

by Valentine Williams

But this German phrase “Stellungskrieg” is a very accurate description of the great stalemate on the western front which we, more vaguely, term “trench warfare.” It is, indeed, a constant manœuvring for positions, a kind of great game of chess in which the Germans, generally speaking, are seeking to gain the advantage for the purposes of their defensive, whilst the Allies’ aim is to obtain the best positions for an offensive when the moment for this is ripe. It is a siege in which we are the besiegers, the Germans the besieged. I adhere to this view despite the great German thrusts against the Ypres salient. Both these were comparable to sorties en masse from a fortress, and in both instances, although the besieged were able to push the besiegers a little farther away from them, they failed to achieve their object, which was to break the lines of investment, and, if possible, cut off and surround part of the besieging forces.

The situation on the Western front, at least as far as the British line is concerned, for only of that am I competent to speak, represents siege warfare in its highest expression. The opponents face one another in endless lines of trenches winding in and out of the mostly flat country of Flanders, following the lie of the ground or the positions captured or lost in one or other of the great battles which from time to time break the monotony. By monotony I mean only the sameness of life and not inaction. For work never ceases on either side. It is not sufficient to capture, consolidate, and hold a position. The general situation must be reviewed in relation to the ground gained. Its possible weaknesses and the opportunities it offers for strengthening the adjacent positions must be studied. Trenches must be joined up with those captured, redoubts constructed to counteract a danger threatening from some point, and communication trenches dug to afford safe and sheltered ingress to and egress from the new position.

The ground is under ceaseless survey. A move by the enemy calls for a counter-move on our part. A new trench dug by him may be found to enfilade our trenches from a certain angle, and while by the construction of new traverses or the heightening of parapet and parados, the trench may be rendered immune from sniping, a fresh trench will be dug at a new angle, or a machine-gun brought up to make life sour for the occupants of the new German position, and force them in their turn to counter-measures.

Anyone who saw the trenches at Mons or even, much later, the trenches on the Aisne, would scarcely recognize them in the deep, elaborate earthworks of Flanders with the construction of which our army is now so familiar. At Mons our men sought shelter in shallow ditches dug in the ground, the entrenchments of field-days in the Chiltern Hills. In Flanders the trenches are dug deep into the soil, and built up with sandbags high above the ground-level, plentifully supplied with traverses to localize the effect of bursting shells. Very solid affairs, too, these traverses are, great masses of clay firmly bound together with wire-netting and topped with sandbags—stout sacks filled with earth—that can be relied upon to stop a bullet.

Trenches must not be too wide, or they would afford too broad a target to bullets and shells, yet they must be spacious enough to allow comparative freedom of movement to their inmates to pass swiftly from place to place in the event of a sudden attack. They must be roomy enough for the men holding them to live therein with a fair measure of comfort, with places for dug-outs where the men off duty may sleep, and where the officers, who are never off duty, properly speaking, in the trenches, may have their meals and snatch a few hours of slumber between times. There must be safe storage-places for such dangerous wares as ammunition, bombs, fuses, and flares, and specially prepared emplacements for the machine-guns. Sanitation, on which the lives of thousands depend, must also have its special arrangements.

Underwood & Underwood phot.
A corner of a trench with a traverse in the extreme left—note officer’s gas helmet.

The flooring of the trench must be boarded—sometimes in marshy places with two or three layers of planks—against the wet, with “grids” laid across. In the winter not even pumps sufficed to keep the trenches dry. Sandbags, disembowelled by the continual patter of bullets, must be constantly renewed. A stray shell, plumping through the timber and earth roofing of a dug-out, may do damage that will take three days (or rather nights, if the fatigue-party is in view of the enemy by day) to repair. Then the access to the trenches is a question requiring constant attention and unremitting labour.

Men in the firing-line roundly declare they would rather be in the front trench than in the area behind the lines. Both sides attempt to embarrass the bringing-up of reliefs and supplies by shelling the roads and communication trenches leading up to the firing-line. Of course, nothing is ever allowed to interfere with the sending-up of reliefs or food, but the shells that crash daily, mostly towards evening, behind the lines claim their toll of life. It is to guard against this promiscuous shelling, against snipers posted in coigns of vantage in the enemy lines, and against spent bullets that come whinneying over from the front (gallant John Gough, most beloved of Generals, was struck and mortally wounded by a stray bullet at a long distance from the firing-line, in a spot that was believed to be entirely safe), that communication trenches are necessary.

The amount of work that some of these communication trenches represent is simply incredible. Going up to some trenches in the Ypres salient, I remember, I came across a short patch of road, 200 yards of it at the outside, which was well in view of the enemy and over which shrapnel burst from time to time, whilst bullets skimmed over it the live-long day. To avoid this dangerous area a communication trench had been dug in the fields bordering the road, and threaded its way in and out of the corn and the poppies for fully a mile before it again rejoined the road, which by this had wound out of view of the Germans. In many parts of the line there is a walk of a mile and a half through communication trenches up to the firing-line.