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2014-05-21

"The men have learnt at last to dig and burrow like

rabbits": Entrenchment, Field Fortifications, and the

Learning Process in the British Expeditionary Force,

1914-15

Dykstra, Bodie

Dykstra, B. (2014). "The men have learnt at last to dig and burrow like rabbits": Entrenchment,

Field Fortifications, and the Learning Process in the British Expeditionary Force, 1914-15

(Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28247

http://hdl.handle.net/11023/1538

master thesis

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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

“The men have learnt at last to dig and burrow like rabbits”:

Entrenchment, Field Fortifications, and the Learning Process in the British Expeditionary

Force, 1914-15

by

Bodie D. Dykstra

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

CALGARY, ALBERTA

May 2014

© Bodie D. Dykstra 2014

ii

Abstract

Academic historians have in the past three decades largely dispelled the notion that British

generalship in the First World War was plagued with incompetence and have instead

explained the heavy casualties of the conflict as the by-product of commanders learning to

overcome the tactical difficulties of static trench warfare. Such analyses have inevitably

focused on the British army’s offensive role, since it was in the attack that Britain suffered

its heaviest losses. The role of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the defensive in

1914 and early 1915 has consequently gone largely overlooked. Trench warfare contained

both offensive and defensive qualities, the latter of which revolved chiefly around the

construction and employment of field fortifications. In terms of its theories and ideas about

how to use earthworks on the battlefield, the BEF was well prepared for war in 1914.

Barring some temporary setbacks, most notably during the First Battle of Ypres, the British

army between September 1914 and March 1915 continuously adapted its field fortification

techniques and gradually improved its methods of training inexperienced officers in new

methods, until the change in its operational-strategic posture from defence to offence

resulted in the British gradually falling behind the Germans in terms of both defensive

theory and field fortification quality.

iii

Acknowledgements

Mom, our conversations about this project were crucial to my formulating ideas. The end

product owes much to your genuine interest and unwavering support.

iv

Table of Contents

Abstract .................................................................................................................................. ii

Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... iii

Table of Contents .................................................................................................................. iv

List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................. v

Maps ...................................................................................................................................... vi

Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1

Chapter 1: Developing a System after South Africa ............................................................ 16

Chapter 2: Response and Adaptation on the River Aisne .................................................... 34

Chapter 3: Overcoming Setbacks at La Bassée and First Ypres .......................................... 54

Chapter 4: Consolidation and the Test of Second Ypres ..................................................... 76

Postscript and Conclusions .................................................................................................. 97

Bibliography ...................................................................................................................... 111

Appendix A: Prewar Trench Designs and Specifications .................................................. 118

Appendix B: Prewar Designs of Machine-Gun Emplacements and Redoubts .................. 119

Appendix C: Forward and Reverse Slope Trench Sites .................................................... 120

Appendix D: Field Fortifications, September 1914 – May 1915 ...................................... 121

v

List of Abbreviations

BEF British Expeditionary Force

GHQ General Headquarters

IWM Imperial War Museum

LAC Library and Archives Canada

Ms Manuscript

NAM National Army Museum

TNA The National Archives of the United Kingdom

Ts Typescript

vi

Map 1

Battle of the Aisne, 14-21 September 1914

vii

Map 2

Battle of La Bassée, 19-29 October 1914

viii

Map 3

First Battle of Ypres, 29-31 October 1914

ix

Map 4

Second Battle of Ypres, 22 April – 3 May 1915

x

Map 5

Second Battle of Ypres, 3-13 May 1915

1

Introduction

In the United Kingdom, the image of the First World War as a grand national

tragedy perpetrated by an ill-prepared and largely incompetent British generalship remains

pervasive one century later. Academic historians have in the past three decades largely

dispelled this notion and explained the losses of the war as the by-product of commanders

learning to overcome the tactical difficulties of static trench warfare, but such analyses have

inevitably focused on the British army’s offensive role, since it was in the attack that

Britain suffered its heaviest losses. The Battle of the Somme in the summer of 1916 and the

fighting around Passchendaele in the summer and autumn of 1917, in particular, have

attracted considerable attention from both popular and academic historians because of the

enormous losses sustained in return for only a few miles of ground. Consequently, the

offensive aspects of trench warfare, namely the weapons and tactics necessary to overcome

the deadlock on the Western Front, have received the bulk of attention from historians of

the British army in the First World War. Trench warfare had both offensive and defensive

elements, however, the latter of which revolved chiefly around the construction and

application of field fortifications. Focus on the large-scale British offensives and the

development of the army’s capacity to successfully attack German positions between 1915

and 1918 have overshadowed the role of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the

defensive and, by extension, its use of field fortifications during the early phases of the war

in 1914 and early 1915.

Although Franco-British forces spent the majority of the war attempting to dislodge

the occupying Germans from Belgium and parts of northeastern France, in 1914 the

Entente was on the strategic defensive in the west. The war opened in early August with the

French and Germans developing simultaneous offensives, but the French push to recover

the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine (Plan XVII) failed to produce any substantial results.

On the other hand, the German drive through Belgium, spearheaded by the

disproportionately strong First and Second Armies on the right wing, made relatively good

2

progress. Obstructing the Germans’ advance was therefore the Entente’s primary objective.

With the German right wing crossing the River Marne and threatening to advance on Paris

in early September, General Joseph Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief, orchestrated a

flanking manoeuvre with the newly-organized French Sixth Army. Seeing his position as

compromised, General Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of the German General Staff,

ordered his armies to retire on 9 September. Joffre and his British counterpart, Field

Marshal Sir John French, failed to capitalize on their victory and the German First and

Second Armies safely withdrew, digging in on the north side of the River Aisne on the

12th. Although Moltke had temporarily assumed the defensive, his replacement, General

Erich von Falkenhayn, remained committed to securing a quick victory in France and

launched fresh attacks in Champagne, Artois, and finally Flanders. Joffre, frustrated by his

inability to catch the retiring Germans between 9 and 12 September, likewise ordered his

armies to advance. The result was that in late September and early October 1914, both sides

were attempting to outflank one another in a series of operations that has become known,

rather erroneously, as the “race to the sea.” Strategically, however, the Allies remained on

the defensive in the West since their principal goal was to prevent the Germans from

renewing their drive toward Paris.1

The BEF mounted only two brief offensives in 1914, both of which resulted in

largely defensive engagements. The first, launched in cooperation with the French as part

of the Marne battle, was slow, cautious, and ended in the army’s introduction to static

trench warfare on the Aisne in mid-September. After the initial attempt to wrestle the high

ground from the entrenched Germans failed on 14 September, Sir John French resigned the

army to simply holding its positions and fending off enemy counter-attacks. The BEF’s

second offensive, this time through Flanders as the last stage of the “race to the sea,”

produced an encounter battle which, due to the sheer numerical superiority of the attacking

German forces, quickly transformed into a desperate defensive battle. It was only with

Falkenhayn’s failure to break through and envelop the Allied left wing in Flanders that the

German army assumed the strategic defensive in the west. Both sides spent the winter of

1 For a broad narrative of the war on the Western Front in 1914, see Hew Strachan, The First World War, vol. 1, To Arms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 163-280; For recent German and French perspectives, see Holger H. Herwig, The Marne: The Opening of WWI and the Battle that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2009) and Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 46-104.

3

1914/15 improving their trenches and fortifying their defensive positions. Even though

Falkenhayn had abandoned his plans to win the war on the Western Front in late November

1914, the BEF fought another major defensive battle when the German Fourth Army

launched renewed attacks against Ypres in April and May 1915, in large part to test the

effects of asphyxiating gas. Thus, for the first ten months of the war the British army

experienced mostly defensive combat.2

Entrenchment and field fortification were crucial elements of the defensive in the

First World War. The revolution in weapons technology in the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries dramatically improved the range, accuracy, and killing power of small

arms and artillery, exacerbating the need for shelter on the battlefield. Trenches in the

American Civil War (1861-65) and Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) were shallow by First

World War standards, but as weapons became increasingly lethal over the course of the

next three or four decades, particularly with the advent of time-fused shrapnel shells which

burst in the air and could kill or wound a number of unprotected men with a single shot,

infantry began to dig deeper for better shelter. Quick-firing artillery, the barrel of which

was mounted on a chassis and equipped with buffers to reduce recoil, allowed gunners to

fire without having to adjust their aim between shots. When combined with the improved

firing rate of breech-loading mechanisms, quick-firing guns were a substantial

improvement in artillery technology which reinforced the importance of infantry

entrenchment. Indeed, quick-firing artillery was the deadliest weapon of the First World

War. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) clearly demonstrated to European observers the

killing power of new guns and affirmed the role of trenches in twentieth-century warfare.

Besides providing shelter, entrenchments also aided the defender in guarding against

infantry attacks. Because deep trenches concealed their occupants from view, riflemen

therefore presented a smaller and less visible target. Entrenched positions were even more

formidable when supported by stand-alone field redoubts or screened by obstacles such as

barbed wire. Although Japanese forces managed to overcome Russian field defences in

Manchuria with determined infantry attacks, the enormous losses incurred in the process

foreshadowed the vital role that fortifications would play on the Western Front. In spite of

2 J.M. Bourne, Britain and the Great War 1914-1918 (New York: Edward Arnold, 1989), 31; Strachan, The First World War, 163-280.

4

the significance of trench work and fortification by 1914, British military historians have

overlooked the BEF’s level of preparedness for the entrenchment requirements of the First

World War and how effectively it applied field defences during the battles of 1914 and

early 1915.3

Early narratives of the BEF published while Britain was still at war downplayed the

role of field fortifications in order to emphasize the heroic and human qualities of British

successes. This first phase of British First World War historiography intended to boost

morale at home rather than critically appraise British fighting methods, and consequently

authors highlighted the bravery, endurance, heroism, and exceptional marksmanship of the

ordinary British rifleman over the defensive value of entrenchments.4 In his description of

the Battle of the Aisne, for example, Arthur Conan Doyle remarked that “One can well

sympathise with the feelings of the German commanders who, looking down from their

heights [on the north bank of the Aisne river valley], saw the British line in a most

dangerous strategical [sic] position, overmatched by their artillery, with a deep river in their

rear, and yet were unable to take advantage of it because of their failure to carry the one

shallow line of extemporised trenches.” The Germans could do “nothing” to challenge the

BEF’s superior marksmanship skills and British defensive fire reportedly left “a fresh

fringe” of dead enemy soldiers in front of the fire trenches on numerous occasions. In this

assessment, Conan Doyle emphasized the skill of British riflemen and their capacity to hold

on in spite of German artillery superiority. He failed to acknowledge, however, that British

trenches were deep and well-concealed behind the crest of the hill so that German gunners

could not directly observe or target them. The supposedly ill-fated German infantry

therefore had little artillery support when they attacked British positions.5

Sir James Edmonds, the official historian of the British army in the First World

War, examined field fortifications in greater detail than the contemporary narrators of the

1910s, but his analyses were shallow and suffered from an acute lack of contextualization.

3 John Terraine, White Heat: The New Warfare 1914-18 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1982), 103-10, 142-6; Hew Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983), 111-24; Michael Howard, “Men Against Fire: Expectations of War in 1914,” International Security 9, no. 1 (Summer 1984), 41-57; Nicholas Murray, The Rocky Road to the Great War: The Evolution of Trench Warfare to 1914 (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2013), 45-170. 4 Keith Grieves, “Early Historical Responses to the Great War: Fortesque, Conan Doyle and Buchan,” in The First World War and British Military History, ed. Brian Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 15-37. 5 Arthur Conan Doyle, The British Campaign in France and Flanders 1914 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916), 180-1.

5

Written at the direction of the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, the

official histories were published over the course of more than two decades, the first three

volumes of which detailed the British defensive battles of 1914 and early 1915. Edmonds, a

Royal Engineer officer who served as the 4th Division’s Chief of Staff until September

1914 and afterward as a staff officer at General Headquarters (GHQ), had a unique insight

into field fortifications. However, he was reluctant to criticize his former superiors,

particularly in the 1920s when many senior commanders such as Field Marshal Sir Douglas

Haig, Sir John French’s replacement as Commander-in-Chief of the British army from late

1915 until the end of the war, were still alive.6 Thus, Edmonds did not assign responsibility

in cases where the BEF’s fortifications proved inadequate to withstand enemy attack.

Furthermore, his descriptions of British defences suffered from poor contextualization. He

viewed the early trench networks constructed on the Aisne and in Flanders as primitive

relative to the more mature and therefore more developed field works of 1916-1917. To

Edmonds, the trenches of 1914 and early 1915 were representative of the first stage in the

evolution of First World War field defences, but evolution did not necessarily begin in

1914. As will be demonstrated later in this thesis, the South African War was a seminal

event in the development of British field fortification techniques which Edmonds neglected

to consider in his assessments of early First World War trench systems.7

The 1930s marked a significant change in the historiography of the British army

which ultimately resulted in historians largely ignoring the BEF’s experience on the

defensive and its application of field fortifications in 1914 and early 1915. With the

growing anti-war sentiment of the 1930s, epitomized by the 1928 novel All Quiet on the

Western Front and its subsequent 1930 film adaptation, coupled with Germany’s re-

emergence as a military power and the threat of a new world war in the second half of the

decade, the idea that the unprecedented losses of 1914-18 were the product of inept British

generalship began to take root. Significantly, Haig’s death in 1928 helped remove the taboo

6 See David French, “Sir James Edmonds and the Official History: France and Belgium,” in The First World War and British Military History, ed. Brian Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 69-86. 7 Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, Military Operations: France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1922), 430-5. See also Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, Military Operations: France and Belgium, 1914, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1925) and Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence, Military Operations: France and Belgium, 1915, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1927). The official histories are henceforth cited as Military Operations 1914 and Military Operations 1915.

6

of criticizing former BEF commanders. Basil H. Liddell Hart, a former army captain turned

historian, spearheaded the attack on the military leadership in his 1930 The Real War.

Liddell Hart argued that British losses on the Western Front were the direct result of

incompetency at the highest levels of the British military apparatus. In his estimation,

defeating the Central Powers on the Western Front was not the most prudent strategic

approach. Other strategic options, like the Dardanelles, Africa, and the Middle East, should

therefore have been exploited in order minimize casualties. By focusing on the war in

France and Belgium the War Office therefore ensured that supposedly unskilled

commanders like Haig were permitted to squander the lives of British soldiers in futile

frontal attacks against well-established and largely impregnable German defences. In this

way, Liddell Hart was most concerned with the casualties resulting from what he regarded

as meaningless offensives on the Western Front; the General Staff’s handling of the Somme

and Flanders offensives predictably received the bulk of his criticisms. This vein of

analysis proved highly appealing in the socio-political climate of the 1930s and with the

Second World War producing a lull in First World War scholarship, the argument that the

British army was a “lion led by donkeys” persisted into the 1960s.8

A revisionist trend emerged after the nature and scope of the Second World War

helped contextualize the experience of 1914-18. Revising the “donkeys” thesis, however,

meant that historians continued to prioritize explaining the casualties of the Somme and

other Western Front offensives over analyzing the BEF’s defensive battles or its use of

field fortifications during the first ten months of the war. The first phase of revisionist

historiography tended to argue that the casualties of the Western Front were more the

product of circumstances beyond the control of military leaders rather than widespread

incompetency.9 Cyril Falls, in the preface to his 1959 The Great War, “denied the

allegation that the leadership [of European armies] was mentally barren.” Although

8 Sir Basil Liddell Hart, The Real War (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1930); Hew Strachan, “‘The Real War’: Liddell Hart, Crutwell, and Falls,” in The First World War and British Military History, ed. Brian Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 41-52; The phrase “lions led by donkeys” originated with Alan Clark in his 1961 The Donkeys. Although not a scholarly work, The Donkeys was indicative of the pervasiveness of Liddell Hart’s arguments. See Alan Clark, The Donkeys: A History of the BEF in 1915 (London: Hutchinson, 1961) and Alex Danchev, “‘Bunking’ and Debunking: The Controversies of the 1960s,” in The First World War and British Military History, ed. Brian Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 263-88. 9 Danchev, “‘Bunking’ and Debunking,” 263-88; Strachan, “‘The Real War,’” 41-52; For an early example of revisionist literature, see C.R.M.F. Crutwell, A History of the Great War, 1914-1918 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1934).

7

“baffled” by static trench warfare, commanders applied “skill and intelligence” in their

attempts to restore mobility to the battlefield. Unlike Liddell Hart, Falls did not dispute

British grand strategy and accepted that the Western Front was the decisive theatre. He

argued that fighting in the west was so costly because its decisiveness meant that it was

held by more troops, more guns, and better fortifications than any other front.10 Early

revisionists’ treatment of the Somme battle was indicative of the changing historiographical

assessment of the British army in the 1960s. To John Terraine, the root of British

difficulties on the Somme was “the rawness” of the volunteer troops comprising the

majority of the ranks in 1916, not the ineptitude of Haig or General Sir Henry Rawlinson,

the architect of the offensive. Terraine conceded that the Somme was “probably the greatest

single catastrophe of the whole War [sic],” but argued that the “shock” of nearly 60,000

casualties on 1 July 1916 had “obscured” the fact that, in the 140 subsequent days of the

battle, the British army “inflicted [its] first major defeat upon the Germans” and introduced

important new tactical and technological innovations, namely the tank.11

The idea that the British army improved its fighting methods over the course of the

war, and that its leadership adapted to the conditions of the Western Front and learned to

overcome stalemate through trial-and-error, caused historians to begin arguing in the late

1970s and early 1980s that the losses of the First World War were the product of the army’s

unpreparedness for the tactical realities of 1914. This second phase of revisionist literature

was indebted to the Public Records Act of 1967, which made the previously-classified

official military documents available to historians in 1968. Tim Travers was one of the first

academics to extensively mine the records housed at the Public Records Office (known as

The National Archives since 2003) in Kew.12 He concluded that Haig and the senior British

command were not incompetent, but that tactical innovation and the adoption of new

weapons before 1914, particularly heavy howitzers but also the machine gun, was

hampered by conservatism in the army’s upper ranks. Reluctance to deviate from

traditional methods led to a continued emphasis on the moral rather than the technical

10 Cyril Falls, The Great War (New York: Capricorn, 1959) 10-1. 11 John Terraine, The First World War 1914-18 (London: Macmillan, 1984), 114-120. First published by Macmillan and Hutchinson in 1965; See also John Terraine, Haig: The Educated Soldier (London: Cooper, 1990). First published by Macmillan and Hutchinson in 1963. 12 The National Archives recommends capitalizing the definite article, regardless of whether or not it comes at the beginning of a sentence.

8

qualities of war, which limited how quickly the army adopted new techniques.13 Historians

Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham expanded on this argument and stressed that in

1914 the British army lacked anything approaching a coherent tactical “doctrine.”

Tacticians before the war failed to develop the methods of employing infantry and artillery

that were necessary to take heavily-fortified enemy positions, and consequently many of

the difficulties of 1916 stemmed from commanders’ efforts to produce a true attack

doctrine.14 This idea that the casualties of the war were the result of a “learning curve” in

the British army eventually transplanted the “donkeys” thesis by the 1990s.

While the later revisionist school resembled both Liddell Hart and earlier

revisionists like Falls and Terraine in that it ultimately aimed to explain the death toll of the

Western Front, historiography has recently begun to move toward describing how and why

the British army became tactically proficient. Led by historians Paddy Griffith, Robin Prior,

Trevor Wilson, and Gary Sheffield in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this “post-revisionist”

school has argued that the British army in fact became the most effective fighting force on

the Western Front.15 In his aptly titled Forgotten Victory (2001), Sheffield argued that

historians’ fixation on the failures at the Somme and the hindrances obstructing the army

from learning new lessons had obscured the fact that the British army won the war in

1918.16 The post-revisionist school embraced the “learning curve” thesis to explain tactical

development in 1915-18 as a trial-and-error process. According to this interpretation, the

losses of the Somme were the source of important lessons about how to punch holes in

German defences, protect infantry during the advance to enemy lines, and solidify captured

positions. One key product of the move away from explaining casualties has been what

Sheffield referred to as the “scholarly rehabilitation” of Haig and other senior commanders.

13 Tim Travers, “The Offensive and the Problem of Innovation in British Military Thought, 1870-1915,” Journal of Contemporary History 13 (1978), 531-53; Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, The Western Front and the Emergence of Modern War 1900-1918 (South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2003). First published by Allen & Unwin in 1987. 14 Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, Fire-Power: British Army Weapons and Theories of War 1904-1945 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), 2-37. 15 Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Font: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson 1914-1918 (South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2004). First published by Blackwell in 1992; Paddy Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army’s Art of Attack, 1916-18 (New Have: Yale University Press, 1994); Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory: The First World War, Myths and Realities (London: Headline, 2001); See also Tim Travers, How the War was Won: Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917-1918 (London: Routledge, 1992). 16 Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, xi-xvi.

9

In his most recent work, a military biography of the commander-in-chief, Sheffield

operated from the assumption that Haig was an educated commander capable of learning

the lessons of the war and applying new techniques, a far cry from Liddell Hart’s

supposition that Haig was unintelligent and inflexible.17

Another product of the post-revisionist move away from explaining casualties has

been a growing tendency for historians to acknowledge that the prewar British army was in

fact better prepared for the fighting on the Western Front than Travers, Bidwell, or Graham

had argued in the 1980s. Nikolas Gardner, in his study of the nature of British command in

1914, demonstrated that senior officers, although they continued to endorse the positive

effects of bravery and self-sacrifice, showed a keen interest in new tactics and technologies.

His notion of the “hybrid” officer as a commander who simultaneously embodied

traditional military conservatism and modernizing tendencies suggested that British

leadership was capable of learning lessons from the outset.18 Spencer Jones, moreover, has

argued that the BEF was, as a direct result of the lessons learned from the South African

War in 1899-1902, in fact the most tactically proficient and well-trained force on the

Western Front in August 1914.19 Significantly, Jones did not focus solely on attack tactics

but also discussed defence and entrenchment. Generally speaking, post-revisionists have

tended to look at the offensive since it was by attacking that the British army compelled the

Germans to sign the armistice in November 1918. Growing emphasis on reassessing the

BEF’s preparedness in 1914, however, has recently led to a somewhat greater interest in

entrenchment. South Africa, Jones argued, was the origin of British First World War

entrenchment tactics and field fortification techniques, and that the army’s experience

digging trenches in 1899-1902 proved invaluable on the Western Front in 1914.20

In spite of Jones’ assessment of entrenchment in the BEF after South Africa,

historians’ overwhelming focus on the army’s experience on the attack since the 1930s has

had two important effects on the historiographical treatment of field fortifications. First,

explaining the casualties of the Western Front and the notion of the offensive “learning

17 Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army (London: Aurum Press, 2011), 7. 18 Nikolas Gardner, Trial by Fire: Command and the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 2-32. 19 Spencer Jones, From Boer War to World War: Tactical Reform of the British Army, 1902-1914 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012). 20 Jones, From Boer War to World War, 104-13.

10

curve” have resulted in historians viewing field fortifications primarily as obstacles that had

to be overcome rather than components integral to the BEF’s ability to fight on the

defensive. Barbed wire, for example, has been typically described in post-revisionist

histories in terms of the problems it posed for attacking British infantrymen, not how well

British defenders employed it in 1914-15.21 Furthermore, because historians have focused

their efforts on the offensive qualities of trench warfare, namely the development of new

weapons and attack tactics, little original research has been conducted on British

entrenchment and fortification practices, with the result that Edmonds’ poorly

contextualized and highly uncritical assessments of defences in 1914-15 have largely

endured into the 2000s. Ian Beckett, for instance, echoed the official historian’s

descriptions of British field works in his narrative of the first Flanders battles, particularly

those around Ypres in late October 1914. Even Gardner, whose research was based on a

thorough reading of the official records in Kew, also cited the official history when his

narratives or arguments required him to describe the state of British field fortifications.22

Jones’ look at entrenchment from 1899-1914 and, to a lesser extent, Richard Holmes’ semi-

academic 2004 account of how the regular British soldier experienced the war on the

Western Front, which included a section on trench systems and digging, were the

exceptions. In general, the construction and development of British field fortifications in

1914-15 have not received much scholarly attention since Edmonds.23

This dearth of new insights has resulted in the BEF retaining a reputation as being

unprepared for the trench war and negligent on the defensive. Edmonds, Terraine, and even

Sheffield argued that because the British did not possess the heavy artillery and trench

mortars in 1914 which later came to dominate the war, the German army was innately more

prepared to fight a static trench war than the BEF.24 Travers, Bidwell, and Graham

reinforced this notion by demonstrating that the British lacked the necessary combined-

arms tactics to successfully overcome enemy trench systems in 1914-15. This argument,

although contested by Jones and some other post-revisionist historians, namely Stephen

21 Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 98-99; See also Griffith, Battle Tactics of the Western Front, 29-44. 22 Ian Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914 (Edinburgh Gate: Pearson Education, 2004), 115; Gardner, Trial by Fire, 131. 23 Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (London: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004), 245-64. 24 Military Operations 1914, 430-5; Terraine, The First World War, 61-2; Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 99.

11

Badsey, only accounted for the offensive components of trench warfare and lacked

reference to the BEF’s entrenchment and field fortification capabilities.25 Edmonds

suggested that British troops were not well-trained in digging before the war, but he

neglected to suggest why or assess the extent to which the army understood how to apply

field works in battle.26 In addition, comparisons of the British works of 1916-17 with those

of the German army have produced an image of the BEF as only marginally concerned with

entrenchment. Niall Ferguson, for example, chastised the quality, habitability, and comfort

of the army’s field works relative to its opponent.27 Indeed, it is sensible to conclude that

the Germans, having assumed the strategic defensive on the Western Front in 1915, would

have had better earthworks because the absence of immediate offensive prospects meant

that they could be largely permanent. Comparisons with German defences, although

typically accurate, have further contributed to the idea that the British army was innately

inferior to the Germans in its capacity to fight a trench war. German tactical successes

against the British army during the offensives of March 1918 only served to reinforce

historians’ conception of the British as not capable of effectively using field fortifications

or fighting on the defensive.28

This thesis contests the interpretation of the BEF as wholly unprepared for the

defensive requirements of trench warfare and the image of the army as deficient in its

capacity to construct and employ fortifications in 1914-15. In terms of its theories and ideas

about how to use field works, the BEF was well prepared for the war in 1914. Barring some

setbacks, most notably deficiencies in prewar training, the infantry’s reliance on Royal

Engineers for entrenching tools, and the negative effects of the offensive spirit during the

First Battle of Ypres, the army continuously adapted its field fortification techniques and

gradually improved its methods of training inexperienced officers between September 1914

and March 1915. The process by which the army’s leadership at GHQ learned new lessons,

modified existing tactics, and disseminated amendments to prewar theory resembled the

25 Stephen Badsey, Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry, 1880-1918 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Badsey argued that the British cavalry was not a backward and obsolete military arm. On the contrary, he asserted that the cavalry made a number of important technical and tactical changes prior to 1914 and successfully adapted to the conditions of the static fighting on the Western Front. 26 Military Operations 1914, vol. 1, 430-5. 27 Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (New York: Basic Books, 1999), 350. First published by Allen Lane in 1998. 28 For the March 1918 German offensives from a British perspective, see Bourne, Britain and the Great War, 82-92; Travers, The Killing Ground, 220-49.

12

“learning curve” in that setbacks and failures proved educational and sparked further

improvement. Although the BEF did not possess the weapons or tactics necessary for the

offensive requirements of trench warfare, it was intellectually equipped to use field

fortifications to good effect and was therefore more prepared than Edmonds and revisionist

historians like Bidwell and Graham have suggested. In addition, the army’s capacity to

adapt its field fortifications to match the realties of combat on the Western Front in 1914

and early 1915 reinforce Gardner’s argument that the senior command in the early phases

of the war took interest in improving the army’s technical capabilities. Lastly, that the BEF

was both prepared to dig and dug quite well during the first ten months of the war indicates

that it was not, as historians have come to assume, innately inferior to the German army in

its capacity to entrench and fight a war dominated by field fortifications.

In terms of approach and methodology, this thesis resembles Nicholas Murray’s

recent The Rocky Road to the Great War (2013) in that it analyzes field fortifications from

a defensive point-of-view. Whereas British First World War historians have analyzed the

antecedents to trench warfare in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to

determine why European militaries did not alter their offensive tactics to account for the

dangers inherent in the attack, Murray used these pre-1914 examples to understand how

trench designs evolved in response to improved weapons technology and how defenders

employed field fortifications to strengthen their positions. In other words, Murray was

interested in what made field fortifications defensively effective.29 However, whereas

Murray limited his assessments mainly to how field fortification designs changed in

response to improvements in weapons technology, this thesis goes further and examines

how the British army manned its defences. In addition, because the present work aims to

use field fortifications and their development in 1914-15 as a method of determining how

well the British high command responded to the realities of the First World War, it

therefore seeks to uncover how quickly tactical officers responded on the ground, how

effectively senior commanders modified existing tactics in order to reflect changing

techniques, and the processes by which the most up-to-date methods were transmitted

throughout the army and to new formations arriving from the United Kingdom. In short,

29 Murray, The Rocky Road to the Great War, 1-5.

13

this thesis employs both an on-the-ground tactical approach and a focus on the workings of

the British military leadership.

Unit war diaries, personal diaries, and battlefield communications between units or

their superior formations provide the bulk of the evidence for how field fortification

techniques were applied at the front lines. Royal Engineer records are particularly valuable

as they give insight into the technical aspects of field fortification design that infantry

records typically overlook. Because the official records of Haig’s I Corps, namely the 1st

Division Commander Royal Engineers, housed at The National Archives in Kew, are

unusually detailed regarding the construction of field works, this thesis tends to rely on

them more heavily than those of other BEF formations. The personal papers of tactical

officers and of General Rawlinson, housed at the Imperial War Museum and the National

Army Museum in London, respectively, are also consulted. Furthermore, J.M. Craster’s

Fifteen Rounds a Minute (1967), an annotated collection of diary entries written by officers

and enlisted men in the 2nd Division’s 2/Grenadier Guards in 1914, is an important source

for the BEF during the first period of the war. Craster’s interest in how the mobile war

transformed into static trench warfare in September and October 1914 benefits this thesis in

that his chosen documents often detail the development of field fortifications. In this way,

Fifteen Rounds a Minute offers unique insights into how one British battalion entrenched

and built its field works.30 Prewar infantry training manuals, military engineering manuals,

tactical memoranda, and official tactical pamphlets issued by the War Office are used to

assess how well prepared the army was in 1914, and to examine how well senior formation

commanders and the army’s leadership at GHQ absorbed the lessons of the war and

disseminated new methods. Official tactical memoranda in unit and formation war diaries

at The National Archives and the series of pamphlets published by the War Office in late

1914 and early 1915, all of which are housed at the Imperial War Museum, are significant

in that they reveal the army’s state of knowledge at a given moment, therefore permitting

analysis of how theory and techniques evolved over time.

This thesis defines field fortifications (also referred to as field works or field

defences) as any type of fortification constructed on the battlefield that was temporary or

30 See J.M. Craster (ed.), Fifteen Rounds a Minute: The Grenadiers at War, August to December 1914 (London: Macmillan, 1967).

14

semi-permanent in nature. Whereas the fortress systems around Antwerp in Belgium or

Verdun in France were constructed in fixed locations before the opening of hostilities,

characteristic of field fortifications was their comparatively short build times and their

capacity to be established without considerable foresight or planning. The term

encompasses both entrenchments and obstacles. The former could be any combination of a

trench, dugout, outpost, or redoubt. Entrenchment and earthwork are used interchangeably,

mostly for stylistic purposes, but also because in the case of the British army in the First

World War, entrenchments were constructed primarily out of earth. Entrenchment, when

describing an action, refers to digging or constructing earthworks. Obstacles were field

fortifications designed specifically to obstruct the movement of enemy troops. Breastworks,

ditches, or, most commonly, wire and barbed wire entanglements were examples of

obstacles in the First World War. Field fortifications served two primary purposes: to

shelter men from enemy fire and aid in the defence against infantry attack. While obstacles

remained mostly limited to obstructing enemy troop movements, some entrenchments

provided protection while simultaneously resisting enemy assault. Trenches, for example,

both sheltered men and helped conceal their occupants from enemy view while redoubts

offered some degree of protection and presented a substantial barrier for enemy infantry to

overcome.31

Chapter 1 begins by analyzing the British army’s reactions to the war in South

Africa to provide the necessary foundation from which to assess the BEF’s level of

preparedness for the First World War. In addition, this analysis of how the British army

modified its entrenchment and field fortification techniques between 1902 and 1914

establishes the continuity between South Africa and the Western Front that the official

history and later studies of British defensive capabilities have lacked. The second chapter

discusses the BEF’s tactical response to the power of German artillery on the River Aisne

in September 1914 and the General Staff’s subsequent tactical adaptation in early October.

The performance of the British field fortification system at the battles of La Bassée and

31 Murray approached his study of field fortifications under the assumption that they performed six major functions: (1) helping prevent desertion, (2) providing physical protection, (3) enhancing fighting power, (4) reinforcing key tactical points, (5) providing a secure base, and (6) dominating an area. Desertion was not an issue for the British army in the First World War. Moreover, functions 3-6 can be reduced to simply a combination of function 2 (physical protection) and defending against infantry attack. Thus, in the simplest terms, field fortifications in the First World War only served two functions: (1) sheltering troops and (2) defending against infantry attack. See Murray, The Rocky Road to the Great War, 22-39.

15

First Ypres in Flanders are the focus on the third chapter, the latter portion of which

examines the army’s tactical adaptations in time for renewed German attacks against Ypres

in early November. Significantly, the Flanders battles represented a major setback in the

development of British field fortifications in the First World War. Chapter 4 discusses the

BEF’s responses to the failures of the first Flanders battles, the challenges of terrain and

wet weather, and new threats from aerial observation and German trench mortars during the

winter of 1914/15. Finally, through an examination of the newly-arrived V Corps’

defensive stand on Frezenberg Ridge as part of the Second Battle of Ypres in May 1915,

Chapter 4 analyzes how well the War Office and General Staff trained inexperienced

officers in new entrenchment tactics and field fortification methods. Finally, the Postscript

and Conclusions section briefly outlines British entrenchment theory in 1916-17 and the

effects of the strategic offensive on field fortification development after Second Ypres

before summarizing this thesis’s principal arguments.

16

Chapter 1

Developing a System after South Africa

In 1906 Sir Richard Haldane, the Secretary of State for War, confirmed Britain’s

commitment to intervene in a future European war with the formation of the BEF. Efforts

to re-evaluate tactics and fighting methods to prepare the BEF for war against a first-rate

Continental power were complicated, however, by recent developments in military

technology, namely quick-firing artillery and the machine gun. British military theorists

hotly debated how best to use these new weapons and minimize infantry losses in

offensives, but, as historians Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham demonstrated, the

BEF nevertheless lacked a coherent attack doctrine in 1914. On the other hand, between

1902 and 1914 the army developed clear ideas about how to entrench and construct field

works. Experience in South Africa and, to a lesser extent, observations of the fighting

between the Russians and Japanese in Manchuria confirmed to the army the importance of

entrenchments on the modern battlefield, led to improved trench designs and shelter

systems to deal with enemy artillery, and produced new methods of fortifying positions for

defence against infantry attack. The field fortification system developed by British

tacticians between 1902 and 1914 both reflected the improvement in weapons technology

in the late nineteenth century and demonstrated a clear understanding of how fortifications

could strengthen a defensive position. Although the BEF suffered from training

deficiencies, dependence on Royal Engineers for tools and technical expertise, and a

continued doctrinal emphasis on the offensive, the field fortification system developed

before 1914 was largely suited to the requirements of modern war. In other words, the BEF

was, in spite of these shortcomings, intellectually prepared to use entrenchments in the First

World War.

Historian Spencer Jones argued that the experience in South Africa triggered a

considerable change in how the army perceived entrenchment. Before 1899, infantry

manuals described shallow trenches of no more than 1.5 feet (0.3 metres) in depth that were

17

rarely to be dug any deeper for fear of obstructing the movements of friendly cavalry.1

Construction of more thorough defences was regarded as the domain of the Royal

Engineers. The Boers, in contrast, built deep and cleverly-sited trench systems that

provided defending troops with excellent shelter from artillery fire and were difficult for

the enemy to detect. At Paardeberg, Boer trenches so successfully withstood regular

bombardment that one British observer reckoned the position could have held out for many

weeks had it not run out of supplies. At Colenso and the Modder River, the British had little

idea of the whereabouts of Boer positions until the defenders opened fire. The effectiveness

of Boer trenches and the casualties caused by artillery and rifle fire as a result of their own

careless entrenching habits led the British to imitate Boer methods. By the end of the war in

1902, British infantry had learned the value of good spade work and routinely dug in

whenever they captured an important tactical point. 2

Colonel E.D. Swinton, a veteran of South Africa, neatly summed up the lessons of

the war in his 1904 tactical treatise, The Defence of Duffer’s Drift. Although Swinton’s aim

was to educate young officers on the merits of critical thinking and on-the-spot decision

making, he also emphasized three general points about entrenchment and the preparation of

defensive positions. First, shallow trenches with high parapets were “worse than useless”

since they provided enemy gunners a clear target but did not offer troops much cover from

shrapnel. Deep trenches sheltered infantry from rifle fire and shells exploding overhead,

and traverses could help localize the effect of shells that managed to hit a position directly.

Head cover, high parapets through which troops could fire their weapons without exposing

themselves, offered additional protection.3 Second, a deep field of fire allowing riflemen to

maximize the effect of their weapons should be the chief consideration in the selection of a

defensive position. Swinton suggested that points at the base of a slope trending toward the

enemy were the strongest.4 The Boers utilized such sites to good effect at the Battle of

Magersfontein. British artillery, ignorant of the Boer position, shelled the hilltop and

inflicted only three casualties. The defenders were left largely unmolested and, positioned

1 Since contemporary documents identified distances and volumes in imperial units, this thesis uses feet, yards, and miles while providing the metric conversion in brackets. 2 Jones, From Boer War to World War, 104-6. 3 E.D. Swinton, The Defence of Duffer’s Drift (Washington, D.C.: National Capital Press, 1916), 27-8, 36. Traverses were earthen walls that extended out from the oblique front of a trench. See Appendix A, figure 5. 4 Swinton, The Defence of Duffer’s Drift, 36-7, 45-6.

18

with a long, clear, and unobstructed field of fire, wreaked havoc on the advancing British

infantry.5 Third, camouflaging trenches made it difficult for enemy guns to find defensive

positions and helped surprise attacking troops. Swinton suggested that dummy positions,

covering parapets with brush or earth, and conforming trenches to the natural folds in the

ground were the best methods of concealment.6 These three points, that trenches should be

deep and carefully dug, sited to afford a good field of fire, and well camouflaged, became

the key principles governing fortification theory before 1914.

The Russo-Japanese War, although less impactful than South Africa, confirmed

many of the lessons of 1899-1902 and demonstrated the power of quick-firing artillery. In

general terms, Tim Travers, Michael Howard, and Yigal Sheffy argued that the war taught

British tacticians rather little. Howard perhaps worded it best when he asserted that expert

observers “read into the experiences of the war very much what they wanted to find.”7

Firepower proponents found in the static fighting dominated by artillery a validation of the

merits of defensive fire. Proponents of morale and manpower, on the other hand, regarded

Japanese successes as evidence of the superiority of discipline, self-sacrifice, the offensive

spirit, and the bayonet. Both schools of thought acknowledged the place of entrenchments

on the battlefield.8 The question regarding field fortifications after 1905, then, was not if

they applied to war in a European context, but rather how infantry would break through

them. The war in Manchuria did, however, serve to reinforce to the British army some key

lessons of South Africa. General Sir Ian Hamilton, the senior British military attaché to the

Japanese army and the General Staff’s chief source of information about the war, evaluated

Russian defensive performance using the same criteria that Swinton described in The

Defence of Duffer’s Drift. He concluded that the Russians failed to hold their trenches at

Yalu River partly because they were poorly camouflaged, easily seen by enemy gunners,

and lacked any form of head cover.9 Sheffy argued that the Germans were the only western

European army to convert their observers’ findings on field defences into practical reform,

5 Jones, From Boer War to World War, 105. 6 Swinton, The Defence of Duffer’s Drift, 36-7. 7 Howard, “Men Against Fire,” 534. 8 Howard, “Men Against Fire,” 523-34; Travers, “The Offensive and the Problem of Innovation in British Military Thought,” 537-42; Yigal Sheffy, “A Model Not to Follow: The European Armies and the Lessons of the War,” in Impact of the Russo-Japanese War, ed. Rotem Kowner (New York: Routledge, 2007): 253-69. 9 Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap-Book during the Russo-Japanese War (London: Edward Arnold, 1905), 30-2.

19

which contributed to their supposed defensive superiority in 1914.10 The British army,

however, produced some alterations to its shelter techniques after 1905, largely in response

to the power of heavy quick-firing artillery in the Russo-Japanese War (see below).

As previously mentioned, field fortifications served two primary purposes, the first

being to cover troops from enemy fire. As the wars in South Africa and Manchuria

demonstrated, developments in weapons technology rendered cover indispensable and the

army responded by designing deeper trenches and more effective shelters. Even though the

Boers possessed few heavy guns, Instruction in Military Engineering Part I: Field

Defences, published in 1902 shortly after the South African War, made clear that improved

artillery technology, specifically in the form of shrapnel but also howitzers, rendered

shallow trenches with high parapets insufficient to protect troops. Instruction in Military

Engineering and its successors, the 1905 Manual of Military Engineering and the 1911

Manual of Field Engineering, specified that trenches should be no less than 4.5 to 5.0 feet

(about 1.4 metres to 1.5 metres) in depth, regularly traversed every ten to forty feet (three to

twelve metres), and equipped with undercut recesses in which men could seek temporary

shelter during bombardment.11 Instruction in Military Engineering also contemplated head

cover.12 The Manual of Military Engineering spoke of it favourably, but also warned that it

made trenches more conspicuous and reduced the number of rifles in the firing line. The

power of quick-firing artillery in Manchuria, however, led the Manual of Military

Engineering to advocate the use of “top” or “overhead” cover consisting of sheets of

corrugated iron covered with earth which completely shielded the top of a trench from

high-trajectory fire.13 The Manual of Field Engineering was more restrained about the use

of either head or overhead cover and argued in 1911 that they should only be applied in the

latter stages of an engagement when opposing lines had crept so close together as to render

10 Sheffy, “A Model Not to Follow,” 261-2. 11 War Office, Chatham School of Engineering, Instruction in Military Engineering Part I:Field Defences, 7th ed. (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1902), 55-6, 67-8; War Office, General Staff, Manual of Military Engineering (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1905), 36-7, plate 16; War Office, General Staff, Manual of Field Engineering (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1911), 29, plate 9; See Appendix A, figures 1-4 for diagrams of trench and shelter designs. 12 Instruction in Military Engineering, 68-9. Head cover was essentially a parapet high enough to cover a man while standing on the firing step. It was typically constructed of either earth or sandbags. In order that a rifleman could utilize his weapon while remaining covered, metal loopholes through which the rifle could be aimed were inserted into the parapet. 13 Manual of Military Engineering, 34-6.

20

concealing a position largely superfluous.14 Despite this hesitancy to build head or

overhead cover from the outset, South Africa and Manchuria prompted engineers to

acknowledge its fundamental significance, which in September 1914 contributed to the

development of the first dugouts.

The Manual of Field Engineering envisioned a system of two interconnected trench

lines through which men and supplies could freely move without being exposed to enemy

fire. Front-line firing trenches would serve as the main point of defence and be connected

via communications trenches to supporting cover trenches garrisoned with local reserves

further in the rear. Undercut recesses and overhead cover were best suited to cover trenches

since fire steps precluded the construction of the former in fire trenches, and the latter could

potentially obstruct a rifleman from freely aiming and rapidly firing his weapon.15 When

equipped with recesses or overhead cover, support trenches provided greater shelter than

traverses or high parapets in fire trenches, particularly against high-trajectory howitzer fire.

The main defensive advantage afforded by superior cover in support trenches was that it

allowed men in the firing line to temporarily withdraw to better-sheltered positions during

periods of heavy bombardment, and then move back into the front trenches once enemy

firing ceased.16 This concept was first articulated in the 1905 Manual of Military

Engineering and was therefore likely a response to the observed power of quick-firing

howitzers in the Russo-Japanese War rather than a lesson learned from first-hand

experience in South Africa.17 Significantly, moving troops from firing to support positions

could partly compensate for poorly concealed fire trenches in the line-of-sight of enemy

artillery.

The second role of field fortifications was to defend against infantry attacks.

Trenches, Instruction in Military Engineering argued, could not in themselves present

effective barriers to enemy assaults, but when fortified with obstacles and machine-gun

posts, their defensive capabilities could be considerably enhanced.18 Obstacles were, in the

words of the Manual of Field Engineering, used to obtain “definite control” of both the

14 Manual of Field Engineering, 27-8. 15 Manual of Field Engineering, 29-31. 16 Manual of Field Engineering, 29. 17 Manual of Military Engineering, 37. 18 Instruction in Military Engineering, 55.

21

direction and speed of enemy troop movements. Barbed wire was the preferred tool. The

Manual of Field Engineering instructed engineers to leave gaps in entanglements screening

fire trenches, the positions of which would be known to defending infantry, with the object

of funnelling attackers into zones swept with concentrated fire. Machine guns could

improve the effectiveness of obstacles by drastically increasing the amount of fire trained

on these gaps.19 Machine-gun platforms constructed as appendages to fire trenches, usually

in the shape of a half-circle extending toward the enemy’s lines, increased the weapon’s

radius of fire and therefore its capacity to enfilade advancing infantry.20 In theory, the

combination of barbed wire entanglements and well-sited machine-gun emplacements had

considerable defensive potential, but was limited in practice by ammunition and water

supply for machine guns. Furthermore, as Travers has argued, senior officers’ reluctance to

view the machine gun as anything more than a “weapon of opportunity” resulted in the

allotment of only two per battalion.21 Nevertheless, the tactical benefits of machine-gun

emplacements and barbed wire were well understood by 1914.

Field redoubts were a form of earthwork specifically designed to thwart infantry

attacks. Instruction in Military Engineering described redoubts as stand-alone positions

“entirely enclosed” by traversed trenches and strengthened with wire. The size and garrison

of a redoubt depended on the nature of the ground and local defensive requirements, but the

Manual of Military Engineering and the Manual of Field Engineering recommended

oblique faces approximately sixty feet wide (twenty metres) manned by twenty to thirty

infantrymen.22 Redoubts had greater resisting power against infantry than a group of

trenches because their non-linear arrangement could deliver enfilading fire on attacking

troops as the passed by. Men in redoubts, however, were vulnerable to enemy artillery.

Though traversed trenches and shelter positions within the enclosure could shield troops to

some extent, a redoubt’s large size and conspicuous nature made it an obvious target. For

this reason, engineering manuals stressed that they should be positioned behind the front-

line trenches so that they were more difficult to spot. Furthermore, redoubts in the rear

19 Manual of Field Engineering, 35-6. 20 Manual of Military Engineering, 37-8; Manual of Field Engineering, 32. See Appendix B, figures 1-2. 21 Travers, “The Offensive and the Problem of Innovation in British Military Thought,” 531-5. 22 Instruction in Military Engineering, 71, plate 19; Manual of Military Engineering, 39, plates 25-9. Recommended garrison sizes were 1 to 1.5 men per yard (0.9 metres) of parapet. See Appendix B, figure 3 for a top view of a standard redoubt.

22

could act as rallying points for withdrawing defenders, help check successful enemy

infantry assaults, and allow the line to reform for local counter-attacks.23 The Manual of

Field Engineering heavily emphasized this point. Trenches and redoubts, it argued, should

work together in an “elastic” way. If the enemy managed to penetrate the front line, the

garrison of a redoubt would then repel the breakthrough and facilitate the recapture of lost

positions with a counter-attack.24 In this way, redoubts added an element of depth to

defensive lines. Though the front line of firing trenches remained the indisputable first line

of defence, this emerging theory regarding the tactical application of redoubts demonstrates

that British officers, particularly engineers, were thinking in terms of elasticity.

Ideas about machine-gun emplacements, redoubts, and defensive elasticity

underscored the army’s understanding of the merits of defensive fire, and improvements in

trench design reflected its newfound respect for the power of modern artillery. On the

surface, deep and well-sheltered trench systems augmented with barbed wire

entanglements, machine-gun posts, and redoubts appeared to both account for the dangers

of enemy artillery and exploit the advantages of defensive fire. The issue of siting positions

complicated this apparent balance. The topographical contours of a battlefield presented

two options for siting trenches: the forward and reverse slopes. These sites afforded

contrasting and largely irreconcilable advantages. Forward slopes, with more observable

ground between defending infantry and enemy positions, afforded a more superior field of

fire when compared to reverse slopes. They also controlled the high ground, from which

defenders could view enemy movements while simultaneously denying him the same

advantage. Reverse slopes, on the other hand, had relatively shallow fields of fire and

conceded the high ground. However, forward slopes stood in the line-of-sight of the enemy

and its artillery and were far more vulnerable to shell fire than positions on reverse slopes.

In other words, they maximized the effect of defensive fire but were exposed to enemy

observation. In contrast, trenches on reverse slopes, concealed from enemy guns by the

crest of a hill, more effectively sheltered defending infantry but limited its field of fire.25

23 Instruction in Military Engineering, 71-2; Manual of Military Engineering, 38-9; Manual of Field Engineering, 32-4. 24 Manual of Field Engineering, 33. 25 Military Operations 1915, vol. 2, 312. Edmonds described the comparative advantages and disadvantages of forward and reverse slopes in reference to the positions of V Corps on the eve of the Second Battle of

23

Thus, the choice between siting trenches on a forward or reverse slope depended on

whether theoreticians considered fire effect or securing shelter more tactically expedient.

Entrenchment tactics favoured the former and based the siting of trenches on the

assumption that the advantages of good fields of defensive fire offset the potential dangers

of exposure to enemy guns, thus tacitly advocating forward slopes. The 1902 edition of

Infantry Training asserted that the strength of a fortified position depended principally on

the field of fire which it afforded.26 Cover from enemy fire was of secondary importance.

Instruction in Military Engineering reiterated this point, stressing that the value of deep

fields of fire outweighed that of concealment or cover.27 Subsequent infantry and military

engineering manuals did not deviate from this fundamental principle. According to the

Manual of Military Engineering, for example, good fields of fire of about 400 feet (350

metres) were not to be sacrificed to “any other consideration.”28 Field Service Regulations

1909, and later Infantry Training 1911 and Infantry Training 1914, asserted that the “chief”

point an officer should consider when establishing an entrenched position was that “fire

from it should be effective.”29 Besides good fields of fire, the other attraction of forward

slopes was good observation, particularly for artillery. Since trenches on forward slopes

held the high ground, they consequently gave artillery a direct line-of-sight to the enemy

and a good position from which to engage opposing guns and infantry with direct fire.

Bidwell and Graham explained that although the Russo-Japanese War expounded the

possibility of firing indirectly from behind cover or on reverse slopes, a consequence of the

increased accuracy afforded by quick-firing technology, artillery tactics still favoured close

infantry support.30 Indeed, Field Artillery Training 1914 underscored that for guns to most

effectively support troops on the defensive, they should be positioned on high ground rear

of the main defensive line, which necessitated that fire trenches be sited on forward

Ypres. See Chapter 4. See also Appendix A, figures 1-2 for diagrams and further explanations of forward and reverse slopes. 26 War Office, General Staff, Infantry Training 1902 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1902), 206. 27 Instruction in Military Engineering, 59. 28 Manual of Military Engineering, 31-2. 29 War Office, General Staff, Field Service Regulations 1909 Part I: Operations (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912), 146. First published in 1909; War Office, General Staff, Infantry Training 1911 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1911), 133-4; War Office, General Staff, Infantry Training 1914 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1914), 154. 30 Bidwell and Graham, Fire-Power, 8-13.

24

slopes.31 Related to the idea that the high ground should be held for the purpose of

maintaining good observation of the enemy was the notion that the forward slope served as

a more favourable point from which to launch an attack or counter-attack. This affinity for

forward slopes ultimately stemmed from an underestimation of firepower. Although deeper

trenches, improved shelter, machine-gun posts, and redoubts indicate that British tacticians

acknowledged both the dangers and defensive merits of firepower, they adopted forward

slope sites to maximize range and observation, suggesting that they also underestimated the

effect of their own defensive fire. Consequent exposure to enemy guns, while recognized as

potentially hazardous, was not regarded so threatening as to negate the advantages of good

fields of fire. The true lethality of modern firepower, first evidenced to British commanders

on the River Aisne in September 1914, revealed that forward slopes were not viable

positions and that more shallow fields of fire of 100 yards (about 90 metres) or less were

more than adequate.32

British tacticians were not ignorant of the dangers of forward slopes and siting

regulations heralded a degree of caution regarding artillery by emphasizing concealment as

a means of compensating for the risk of exposure. Concealment took two forms. The first

form, cover from view, aimed to disguise and camouflage trenches in the enemy’s line-of-

sight. Rendering excavated earth inconspicuous, covering parapets with brush or foliage,

and assimilating trenches with the natural contours of the ground were regarded as the most

effective methods. Considerable foresight would be required to disguise positions, both in

terms of siting and gathering the necessary materials to camouflage trench works.

Furthermore, regulation manuals only provided broad guidelines of how to conceal

trenches and made few definite recommendations. Cover from fire was the second form of

concealment and, unlike cover from view, aspired to hamper the ability of enemy gunners

to range and locate positions by siting trenches away from prominent terrain features.33

Dummy trenches composed of fake parapets could draw artillery fire away from the true

position. Siting trenches on reverse slopes could also provide superior cover, but only at the

expense of reducing fields of fire. Infantry Training 1914 warned against exposing trenches

31 War Office, General Staff, Artillery Training 1914 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1914), 255. 32 See Chapter 2. 33 Manual of Field Engineering, 21-4; Infantry Training 1914, 154-7.

25

to strong artillery, recommending instead that more shallow fields of fire from concealed

trenches “may give better results,” but it did not encourage siting on reverse slopes.34 The

only explicit mention of reverse slopes came in reference to support positions. Infantry

Training manuals from 1902 made clear that cover trenches, the specific purpose of which

was to shelter infantry from enemy fire, should be deployed behind the crest of a hill.35

Overall, concealment was of enormous value if trenches were to be sited on forward slopes,

but it never received the warranted degree of attention before 1914. At training exercises,

umpires regularly complained that troops did not understand its key role. The senior umpire

for Blue Force at the 1912 army manoeuvres, for instance, asserted that trench work

“generally showed a lack of appreciation of the value and importance of concealment,” but

he made no suggestions of how troops could have made improvements.36 In general,

concealing trenches remained somewhat of an afterthought, but even though the most

effective concealment method, siting trenches on reverse slopes, was not adopted for fire

trenches before 1914, the superior cover it afforded was recognized, thus making adaptation

to the firepower realities of the First World War a potentially straightforward process.

British commanders had the necessary theoretical knowledge of reverse slopes to

quickly correct siting issues during war, but deficiencies in peacetime training meant that

troops were poorly practiced in digging and deploying entrenchments on the battlefield.

General problems of training included the relatively small numbers of men concentrated for

unit exercises and the General Staff’s inability to ensure that the quality of training was

consistent in the various military commands.37 Due to the dual nature of the British army in

which half of a battalion served abroad on imperial garrison duty while the other half

remained at home as a recruitment force, whole units rarely trained together and officers

wielded only skeleton forces during manoeuvres. Officers in command of higher

formations, such as a division, therefore had almost no experience directing forces

comparable in size to those that left for Europe in August 1914. These shortcomings,

compounded by the army’s low proportion of defence funding relative to the Royal Navy,

34 Infantry Training 1914, 150. 35 Field Service Regulations 1909, 156-77; Infantry Training 1911, 133-9; Infantry Training 1914, 155-6; Manual of Field Engineering, plate 16. 36 Report on Army Manoeuvres 1912, p. 140, The National Archives (TNA): WO 279/47. 37 Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly, The Edwardian Army: Recruiting, Training, and Deploying the British Army, 1902-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 69-70.

26

affected its performance as a whole in the early phases of the First World War.38 However,

it was the absence of proper facilities, a growing apathy toward digging caused by the

waning number of officers with combat experience, and the problems stemming from

demarcating simulated field works during manoeuvres that specifically affected

entrenchment training.

Training of infantry in spade work after South Africa reflected the army’s

recognition of its new significance, but its quality declined markedly after 1908. As

Inspector General of the Forces, Sir John French stressed to infantry officers in 1905 that

“the skillful use of entrenchments is one of the most powerful weapons in their armoury.”39

As late as 1908 he commented that entrenchment in the 5th Division, for example, was

“carefully executed” and “carried out in accordance with tactical principles.”40 Only one

year later he observed that although the division was practiced in digging, commanders

sited their trenches poorly. He found the trenches of the 13th Brigade to be “well dug,” but

he protested that their siting did not afford a good field of fire.41 After his 1910 inspection,

a dismayed French doubted if entrenching was “now insisted upon to an extent

proportionate to its vast importance in modern war.”42 A 1912 memorandum on training

showed little improvement, remarking that men did not receive sufficient instruction in the

use of the portable entrenching tool, issued to home battalions in 1910, and that the tactical

importance of siting trenches was “frequently lost sight of” during company training.43

General C.W. Douglas, French’s successor as Inspector General, noted on the eve of the

First World War that although the standard of entrenchment training had improved since

1912, troops still handled their tools poorly and were not practiced in laying obstacles or

siting positions.44

One of the primary reasons for this observed decline in the standards of infantry

training was the scarcity of facilities on which the men could practice their digging skills.

The Aldershot army base had plenty of government-owned land consisting of soft and

38 Bowman and Connelly, The Edwardian Army, 69-73. 39 Quoted in Jones, From Boer War to World War, 108. 40 IGF Annual Report for 1908, Army Council Minutes 1909, p. 236, TNA: WO 163/14. 41 IGF Annual Report for 1909, Army Council Minutes 1910, p. 365, TNA: WO 163/15. 42 IGF Annual Report for 1910, Army Council Minutes 1911, pp. 237-8, TNA: WO 163/16. 43 Memorandum on Army Training, 19 December 1912, p. 12, TNA: WO 279/552. 44 IGF Annual Report for 1913, Army Council Minutes 1914, pp. 327-33, TNA: WO 163/20.

27

easily-worked soil that could be dug up as necessary, but other training areas were not so

well endowed.45 Southern Command, for instance, was almost totally devoid of ground for

entrenchment training. During his 1909 inspections, French was unable to inspect the 3rd

Division’s entrenching skills because its commanders objected to destroying the surface of

Salisbury Plain.46 Paucity of funds was the underlying problem. The Military Manoeuvres

Act of 1897 allowed entrenchment on privately-owned land, but it aimed to minimize

damages so as to reduce claims of compensation from farmers and asserted that all trenches

had to be filled in after they had been dug. Entrenching that would disturb “antiquarian

remains, or places of historic interest or exceptional beauty” was strictly prohibited.47

Training and Manoeuvre Regulations 1909 encouraged unit commanders to deal in person

with landowners and required them to immediately speak to a compensation officer if he

opted to entrench on private property, thereby creating a number of proverbial hoops

through which he would have to jump in order to dig.48

French posited that another cause of poor entrenchment training after 1908 was that

as the number of men who had fought in South Africa grew fewer, the lessons of that war

became “dimmer.”49 Indeed, in 1914 only half of the men in the BEF had served for more

than two years.50 This decline in the number of war-hardened veterans with first-hand

experience dealing with the consequences of modern firepower created apathetic feelings

toward digging which, when combined with the prohibitions against entrenching on certain

ground, resulted in what French described as “slackness” during training.51 General

Douglas, as the senior umpire for Blue Force during the 1909 army manoeuvres, observed a

“marked disinclination” on the part of the troops to dig trenches and reported they had a

tendency to apply prohibitions even to areas where restrictions did not apply.52 Soldiers’

reluctance to dig was largely the product of their contempt for the hard labour of

45 Jones, From Boer War to World War, 108. 46 IGF Annual Report for 1908, Army Council Minutes 1909, p. 220, TNA: WO 163/14. 47 Excerpt from the Military Manoeuvres Act of 1897 in War Office, General Staff, Training and Manoeuvre Regulations 1913 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1913), 126. 48 War Office, General Staff, Training and Manoeuvre Regulations 1909 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1909), 78-87. 49 IGF Annual Report for 1910, Army Council Minutes 1911, p. 238, TNA: WO 163/16. 50 Jones, From Boer War to World War, 109-10. 51 IGF Annual Report for 1910, Army Council Minutes 1911, p. 244, TNA: WO 163/16. 52 Report on Army Manoeuvres 1909, p. 112, TNA: WO 279/31.

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entrenching. According to the Manual of Field Engineering, a five-foot (1.5 metre) deep

trench could be constructed in four hours with each individual soldier excavating 80 cubic

feet (2.25 cubic metres) of earth, or an approximately four-foot long section.53 Digging

would be easier in softer soils, but nevertheless, troops were generally not fond of the

“dull” work of entrenching, particularly after marching. The fact that men were required to

fill in their trenches added work to an already tiring enterprise. According to one General

Staff officer in 1912, it was “disheartening to troops to know that the more they dig the

more they will have to put back.”54

In lieu of digging, unit commanders were permitted to lay out coloured tape with

their entrenching tools to denote earthworks, which had the adverse effects of promoting

bad tactical habits and creating unrealistic combat scenarios. Douglas summed up the

problem when he argued that prohibitions against digging “encouraged the use of the tape

rather than the spade.”55 Laying tape was simply easier and less tiring than digging. During

the 1909 manoeuvres a Red Force battalion laid down tape, advanced a few hundred yards,

laid down a second line of tape, then attacked an enemy position. When the attack failed,

the battalion simply withdrew to a new line and put down tape for a third time.56 Had the

battalion actually constructed three sets of trenches, it would have taken upwards of twelve

hours if the men actually managed to muster enough energy to complete all three lines.

They thus learned neither the foresight necessary to plan positions, nor the labour and time

required to dig a proper trench. Furthermore, tape was often difficult for umpires to see.

The senior umpire of Blue Force complained after the 1910 manoeuvres that he observed

troops lying down in what appeared to be “exceedingly indifferent” positions in open fields

or on exposed slopes, only to be informed later that they were supposed to be entrenched.57

In spite of these acute problems, no alternative method of replicating realistic entrenching

practices emerged before the First World War. General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, the

commanding officer at Aldershot and later the commander of the British II Corps in 1914,

argued in 1911 that trenches should as often as possible be actually dug rather than simply

53 Manual of Field Engineering 1911, 15-7. 54 Quoted in Jones, From Boer War to World War, 110. 55 Report on Army Manoeuvres 1909, p. 112, TNA: WO 279/31. 56 Report on Army Manoeuvres 1909, p. 112, TNA: WO 279/31. 57 Report on Army Manoeuvres 1910, p. 152, TNA: WO 279/39.

29

“imagined,” but the 1913 edition of Training and Manoeuvre Regulations contained the

same prohibitions as the 1897 Military Manoeuvres Act and still recommended using tape

as a substitute for digging.58

Constructing field fortifications required the close cooperation of engineers,

infantry, and, in some cases, cavalry. Although infantry manuals stressed the skillful

tactical employment of trenches and dealt at length with the issue of siting, serious

construction endeavours like building overhead cover, shelter positions, and obstacles

remained the special domain of engineers. Infantry Training 1914 contained no design

specifications for fire or cover trenches, merely noting that cover trenches should be

“deep.” It made no mention of obstacles at all.59 Discussions of defensive tactics in cavalry

regulation manuals lacked even brief reference to entrenchments. The defensive merits of

mobility rather the value of entrenchments was the emphasis. Though Cavalry Training

1907 asserted that positions should, time permitting, be “put into a state of defence,” it

remarked that preparations should only be of the “simplest kind,” thereby extricating

cavalry from any serious entrenching duties.60 Training reflected this division between

these three arms. Sir John French observed in 1910 and 1911 that infantry seldom built

obstacles like wire entanglements or even planned to use them during exercises.61 At army

manoeuvres, coordination between infantry and Royal Engineer units was often confused

or substandard. For example, at the 1910 manoeuvres a detachment of Territorials was

charged with establishing the main defensive line for Red Force, but no engineers were

dispatched to assist them. After a 2nd Division exercise in 1912, Douglas criticized some

infantry battalions for not calling on their assigned engineer detachments to help them dig

trenches.62 Training of cavalry in entrenchment was almost non-existent. Cavalry Training

1907 noted that cavalrymen should be “familiar” with defensive works and that special

“cavalry pioneers,” non-commissioned officers with engineering backgrounds, train with

58 Instructions for Collective Training, 2 January 1911, Imperial War Museum (IWM): Maxse Papers; Training and Manoeuvre Regulations 1913, 112. 59 Infantry Training 1914, 156; 148-61. 60 War Office, General Staff, Cavalry Training 1907 (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1910), 133-4. Reprint edition with amendments. 61 IGF Annual Report for 1910, Army Council Minutes 1911, pp. 243-4, TNA: WO 163/16; IGF Annual Report for 1911, Army Council Minutes 1912, p. 514, TNA: WO 163/17. 62 Report on Army Manoeuvres 1910, p. 58, TNA: WO 279/39; IGF Annual Report for 1912, Army Council Minutes 1913, p. 646, TNA: WO 163/18.

30

the Royal Engineers, but no reports from the Inspector General before 1914 made reference

to how skilled cavalrymen were in digging trenches. It can therefore be presumed that

cavalry troopers had little to no practice with the spade. In addition, cavalrymen were only

issued the portable entrenching tool in early 1914, further substantiating that entrenching

was not seriously studied or rehearsed by the cavalry before the First World War.63

Infantry, being the first to take a position, would have to shoulder much of the

burden of entrenching a position, but its ability to do so was potentially handicapped due to

its deficiency in tools.64 Though each rifleman and non-commissioned officer was equipped

with the portable entrenching implement, it was only suitable in soft soils and its short

length limited the amount of leverage the user could exert, therefore intensifying fatigue.65

Heavier tools more useful in hard soils, such as picks and spades, remained stowed for

transport in wagons behind the front lines. Each of a battalion’s two wagons contained an

allotment of 55 shovels and 38 picks, or a total of 110 and 76 per battalion, respectively. A

brigade reserve wagon had an additional 568 shovels and 368 picks. Thus, a battalion of

approximately 1,000 men had only enough tools for about 18 per cent of its established

troop strength. The total for a brigade of four battalions was 46 per cent, but those stowed

in brigade reserve were not easily accessible.66 These quantities were insufficient for

serious digging and made the infantry dependent on engineers for tools. When Territorials

were dispatched to construct Red Force’s main defensive line at the 1910 manoeuvres, for

example, it was soon discovered that they did not possess the necessary tools to complete

the task, a problem impossible to solve without an attached Royal Engineer field

company.67 Furthermore, since carts behind the front line would not necessarily keep pace

with troop movements, battalions hastily entrenching a position would not always have

63 See various IGF Reports; Cavalry Training 1907 (reprint edition), 212-5; Badsey, Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry, 1880-1914, 198. Badsey argued that the issuing of the portable entrenching tool to cavalrymen was an indication of how modern the cavalry had become by the First World War. In the context of the shock versus firepower debate and the cavalry’s affinity for the lance over the rifle, equipping cavalry with entrenching tools was certainly an important victory for firepower advocates. However, in the context of entrenchment training and tactical theory in the BEF as a whole, the cavalry was woefully unprepared for a war of entrenchments; See also Jones, From Boer War to World War, 167-206 and Bowman and Connelly, The Edwardian Army, 75-95. 64 Comments on Training 1913, Aldershot Command Papers, p. 7, TNA: WO 279/53. 65 Manual of Field Engineering, 10. 66 War Office, General Staff, Field Service Manual 1914: Infantry Battalion, Expeditionary Force (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1914), 39. 67 Report on Army Manoeuvres 1910, p. 58, TNA: WO 279/39.

31

easy access to the bulk of their tools. For this reason, Smith-Dorrien emphasized in 1911

that combined training between engineers and infantry should emphasize pushing tool carts

forward and using engineers, more liberally supplied with implements, to assist in

entrenching operations. Although the difficulty of getting tools to the front line was

recognized, no alternative method was proposed and tool shortages contributing to the

infantry’s dependence on specialists remained a perennial problem during the mobile or

semi-mobile phases of the war in 1914.68

A final obstacle that had the potential to impede the army from effectively

employing field fortifications in war was the growing emphasis after 1909 on the offensive

in British military ethos. Field Service Regulations 1909 made clear that “if victory is to be

won, the defensive attitude must be assumed only in order to obtain or create a favourable

opportunity for decisive offensive action [emphasis in original].”69 The 1911 and 1914

editions of Infantry Training further distinguished between active and passive defence. The

aim of active defence was to temporarily hold the enemy while generating a manpower

reserve for a decisive counter-attack. Passive defence, on the other hand, sought no more

than to repulse enemy attacks. The former was preferable since the latter afforded the

enemy unchallenged initiative and therefore risked “crushing defeat.”70 This subordination

of the defensive regarded the purpose of entrenchments as a means to facilitate offensive

operations rather than to hold the line indefinitely. Field Service Regulations 1909 and

Infantry Training 1914 emphasized that defensive positions should be chosen and prepared

with a view to “economising the power expended on defence in order that the power of

offence may be increased.” Thus, the ultimate goal of entrenching was to reduce the

number of men required to hold a position, thereby freeing up reserves for counter-

attacks.71

The main effect that the primacy of the offensive had on entrenchment practice was

that troops spent little time preparing their positions for extended occupation. Accounting

68 Instructions for Collective Training, 2 January 1911, IWM: Maxse Papers; War Office, General Staff, Field Service Manual 1914: Field Company, Royal Engineers, Expeditionary Force (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1914), 59. Each of the four sections in a Royal Engineer field company was allotted 24 shovels, 3 spades, and 22 pick axes. Thus, a field company of approximately 200 men had nearly as many entrenching implements as an infantry battalion. 69 Field Service Regulations 1909, 127. 70 Infantry Training 1911, 131-2, 144-5; Infantry Training 1914, 149, 162-3. 71 Field Service Regulations 1909, 140; Infantry Training 1914, 149.

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for the drainage of surface water and communications from fire trenches to rear areas was

particularly neglected. Though engineering manuals insisted that drainage must be attended

to and communications trenches should be constructed if time permitted, troops rarely did

either during exercises. Sir John French complained in his 1911 inspection that defences

lacked drainage systems and communications trenches, making the entire position “only

suitable for temporary occupation.”72 French’s argument is contradictory, however, in that

he endorsed the passive defence while he argued in the same report that troops had not paid

sufficient attention to the principle of economising men for counter-attacks.73 This

contradiction highlights an underlying problem with entrenchment theory before August

1914. Senior officers understood the value of well-built field defence systems in repulsing

enemy infantry attacks and limiting the casualties caused by artillery fire, but they

simultaneously equated their construction and lengthy occupation with a loss of initiative

and probable defeat. During the First World War, particularly at First Ypres and La Bassée,

this incongruity in defensive entrenchment theory had near-disastrous consequences since

units were continuously ordered to attack and had little time to prepare their defences.

When the German offensives developed and the British were thrown firmly on the

defensive, battalions were expected to hold their lines for weeks in only rudimentary and

often flooded trenches equipped with few or no covered communications.

How well prepared was the BEF for the entrenchment requirements of the First

World War? It was certainly not, as Sir James Edmonds and Niall Ferguson have implied,

ignorant of field fortifications and their value on modern battlefields. By 1914 engineers

had designed a system that addressed the power of artillery with deep trenches, head and

overhead cover, and undercut recesses. Combined with plans to withdraw troops from fire

trenches through communications trenches to cover positions, this knowledge served as the

necessary antecedent to the development of dugouts. The basic tenets of fortifying a

position for defence against infantry attack, namely with barbed wire, machine-gun

emplacements, and redoubts, were also thoroughly articulated before 1914. The weakness

of the BEF was therefore not intellectual ineptitude. Rather, an underestimation of

firepower, deficiencies in training, the infantry’s dependence on Royal Engineers, and the

72 IGF Annual Report for 1911, Army Council Minutes 1912, p. 515, TNA: WO 163/17. 73 IGF Annual Report for 1911, Army Council Minutes 1912, p. 514, TNA: WO 163/17.

33

primacy of the offensive had the potential to limit the army’s ability to effectively

implement its field fortification system on the battlefield. In short, the BEF was well

prepared in terms of its theory, but it was not well practiced in applying that theory.

Exposure to modern firepower during the first two months of the war, most notably that of

German heavy howitzers, quickly revealed these shortcomings and set in motion a process

of adaptation. The learning process, moreover, could prove straightforward due to an

understanding of reverse slopes and shelter positions, and acknowledgements of infantry

tool shortages. Applying an effective field fortification system thus depended on the senior

command’s capacity to use engineers so as to capitalize on their expertise, adapt its theory

and absorb new lessons, and effectively transmit modified techniques to all its tactical

officers, particularly those arriving on the Western Front in late 1914 and early 1915.

34

Chapter 2

Response and Adaptation on the River Aisne

By 17 August 1914, four of the BEF’s six divisions, approximately 80,000 men

organized into two corps, had crossed the English Channel and completed their assembly

near Amiens in northeastern France. Their first objective was to cover the left flank of the

neighbouring French Fifth Army as it advanced on Charleroi. After a brief engagement

with the German First Army near Mons on 23 August, the sheer weight of enemy

numerical superiority and the unexpected withdrawal of the French Fifth Army compelled

the BEF to retreat with the Germans in close pursuit. Sir John French, the Commander-in-

Chief of the BEF, having all but abandoned any prospect of reviving his disorganized force,

halted his retreat on 4 September and supported the planned French counter-attack. The

BEF, having swelled to three corps with the arrival of the 4th and 6th Divisions (III Corps),

played only a minor role in the subsequent Battle of the Marne. Weary from the retreat and

erring on the side of caution, French and his corps commanders began on 6 September to

slowly push into the gap that had opened between the German First and Second Armies.

General Helmuth von Moltke, the chief of the German General Staff, seeing his flank

compromised by the eastward movement of the French Sixth Army on the Ourcq, withdrew

his right wing on the 9th. The French Commander-in-Chief, General Joseph Joffre, ordered

a “vigorous” pursuit, but weeks of near-continuous fighting had left Allied troops

exhausted. Relatively unmolested the Germans crossed the River Aisne on 12 September

and established defensive positions on its northern heights. The BEF began crossing the

river the following day and on the morning of the 14th began its push up the northern

slopes.1

The Battle of the Aisne marked the beginning of static trench warfare for the BEF.

When the British attack on 14 September ground to a halt in thick weather and difficult

1 For an overview of the Battle of the Frontiers and the Marne, see Strachan, The First World War, vol. 1, 219-261; For a more detailed analysis of the Marne, particularly from the German perspective, see Herwig, The Marne, 191-306; For British operations in August and early September 1914, see John Terraine, Mons: Retreat to Victory (New York: Macmillan, 1960) and Gardner, Trial by Fire, 33-72.

35

terrain against German heavy artillery fire, both sides took to the spade and the BEF

remained stationary until it withdrew to Flanders in early October. Unlike the brief

defensive stands at Mons and Le Cateau in late August, the Aisne was the first prolonged

engagement requiring extensive field defence construction, and was therefore the first test

of the army’s entrenchment and fortification capabilities. Military theorists’

underestimation of the power of modern artillery was quickly apparent. Brigade and

battalion commanders discovered between 14 and 16 September that forward slope sites

were untenable and units in all sectors of the British line adopted reverse slopes for their

fire trenches. In most respects, however, prewar entrenchment theory proved well suited to

the conditions of the Aisne battle and promoted the development of an effective field

defence system capable of withstanding German bombardment and infantry attacks.

Equipped with the knowledge of the advantages of reverse slopes and a theoretical

familiarity with cover trenches and the basic tenets of fortification, units deviated from

prewar siting regulations without hesitation and dug dual lines of deep trenches augmented

with traverses, undercut recesses, and barbed wire entanglements, all linked when possible

via communications trenches. The Aisne was also instructive in that it conditioned the BEF

to large-scale entrenchment, reinforced a number of lessons learned in South Africa but

subsequently neglected during peacetime training, and prompted division and corps

commanders to critically consider how their units’ responses had affected existing theory.

That field fortifications proved so effective and were modified when necessary to match the

conditions of the battle indicate that the army was, in spite of training deficiencies and the

infantry’s dependence on Royal Engineer tools and expertise, largely prepared for the

entrenchment requirements of the First World War and fully capable of quickly adapting to

new circumstances.

The only significant change to prewar entrenchment theory made necessary by the

fighting on the Aisne was the switch from forward to reverse slope sites. Prior to the Aisne

at Mons and Le Cateau, units followed existing siting recommendations and positioned

their trenches on forward slopes to maximize the effect of their weapons on attacking

infantry. For instance, when directed to dig in near Mons, the commanding officer of the

4/Middlesex Regiment in the 3rd Division selected for his fire trenches points on the

forward slope of a ridge behind the Mons-Condé canal. Hedges screening the firing line

36

were seen as satisfactory to conceal the position from enemy view.2 German artillery, in the

words of historian Holger H. Herwig, “mercilessly battered” the 4/Middlesex’s exposed

trenches on 23 August and inflicted as many as 400 casualties, roughly forty per cent of its

peacetime establishment. Nevertheless, the battalion’s forward slope sites afforded it a deep

field of fire, for the defenders had a clear view of attacking German infantry as it advanced

in columns toward the canal and could pour rapid fire into its closely formed ranks.3 At Le

Cateau the battalions of the 5th Division entrenched the forward slope with the aim of

giving its artillery a good line-of-sight to the enemy. The result was that the guns of the

German First Army could see and directly target both the British infantry and artillery

positions. Defending troops suffered heavy losses in the ensuing engagement, particularly

when they exposed themselves on the crest line while retreating from their fire trenches

nearer the base of the hill.4 Despite the damage done to infantry by German artillery at

Mons and Le Cateau, there is no evidence to suggest that divisional or corps commanders

questioned the viability of forward slope sites after these early battles. On the contrary, the

effectiveness of defensive rifle fire at Mons demonstrated that they could potentially prove

highly advantageous, therefore likely confirming rather than bringing into question prewar

siting regulations.

The Aisne reversed this confidence in the viability of forward slopes and

unequivocally demonstrated that cover from fire rather than attaining deep fields of fire

should govern the siting of defensive positions. This reversal in thinking was relatively

straightforward for the BEF due to tacticians’ understanding of the advantages of reverse

slopes. However, the immediate cause of the army adopting reverse slopes for its fire

trenches was tactical expedience rather than foresight or planning. In the evening of 13

September Sir John French ordered the BEF, forward units of which had already

established themselves on the northern banks of the river, to “vigorously” continue their

pursuit of the reportedly retreating Germans the following morning.5 Securing the high

2 Diary of T.S. Woollcombe, 22 August 1914, 4/Middlesex Regiment War Diary, August 1914 – October 1915, TNA: WO 95/1422. 3 Herwig, The Marne, 154. Herwig estimated First Army losses as high as 5,000 on 23-24 August; Terraine, Mons, 104. 4 Strachan, The First World War, vol. 1, 223; Herwig, The Marne, 182. 5 Operations Order No. 24, GHQ War Diary, 13 September 1914, TNA: WO 95/1. The German First and Second Armies had in reality halted their withdrawal and begun constructing defensive positions on 12 September.

37

ground was the primary tactical objective. As per prewar theory, brigade and battalion

commanders on 14 September therefore had every intention of entrenching the forward

slope in order to hold the plateau, but a number of factors rendered this task exceedingly

difficult. The heights north of the Aisne stood between 300 to 325 feet (90 to 100 metres)

atop heavily wooded, steep, and broken slopes cut by numerous spurs and ridges which

afforded the Germans good screens, enfilading positions, and a vital advantage in

observation.6 German high-trajectory fire weapons, including a number of siege howitzers

released from Maubeuge, were extremely well suited to defensive fighting on the Aisne

since they could indirectly shell the river valley from reverse slopes without coming into

the line-of-sight of British guns, the majority of which were 18-pounder field pieces

designed to fire on targets directly.7 British gunners’ ability to support the infantry by

neutralizing enemy batteries was therefore very limited. This combination of difficult

terrain, poor observation, and German artillery superiority, particularly in heavy howitzers,

placed attacking British battalions at a considerable disadvantage. Rain and thick weather

on 14 September compounded the problem and the capture and subsequent defence of the

heights against counter-attack proved a very costly endeavor.

The experience of the 2nd Brigade in General Douglas Haig’s I Corps epitomized

both the obstacles confronting tactical commanders as they attempted to secure the heights

and their motives for extemporaneously adopting reverse slope positions for their trenches.

Ordered to advance toward Troyon as the lead element of the 1st Division, the 2nd Brigade

aimed to seize the Chemin des Dames, a prominent road which ran along the plateau. Thick

fog and difficult terrain caused considerable confusion during the attack and the battalions

of the 2nd Brigade became intermingled with one another and those of the neighbouring

3rd Brigade as they advanced up the broken slopes. Fog also made it difficult for gunners to

locate enemy infantry positions and troops thus had practically no artillery support.8

Although the brigade managed to reach and temporarily establish itself on the Chemin des

6 Douglas Wilson Johnson, Battlefields of the World War, Western and Southern Fronts: A Study in Military Geography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1921), 240-3. 7 Strachan, The First World War, vol. 1, 257-9; Bidwell and Graham, Fire-Power, 12-3. The British 18-pounder was an 84 mm caliber gun, slightly larger than the French 75 mm and German 77 mm field guns. Divisional artillery in 1911 consisted of 54 18-pounder field guns and only 18 34-pounder field howitzers. Plans to incorporate more heavy pieces were incomplete in 1914 and the 18-pounder remained the predominant gun in the BEF. 8 Ts diary of E.S. Bulfin, 14 September 1914, TNA: CAB 45/140.

38

Dames, the position proved completely untenable. Rifle and machine-gun fire from

entrenched German infantry concealed behind brush and in farm fields inflicted what one

observer considered “truly appalling” casualties. A German counter-attack supported by a

heavy artillery bombardment forced the brigade off the heights and a British attempt to

recapture them later in the evening failed.9 One company of the 2/King’s Royal Rifle Corps

advanced beyond the plateau and onto the forward slope but exposure to German fire and

an absence of artillery support compelled it to withdraw behind the hillcrest.10 Unable to

advance any further and seeking to escape the “full force” of German shell and shrapnel

fire, General E.S. Bulfin, commander of the 2nd Brigade, opted to consolidate his position

and ordered his battalions to entrench on the reverse slope.11

Inability to safely occupy the heights leading to entrenchment of reverse slopes

occurred throughout the BEF. In the 2nd Division, the 2/Grenadier Guards advanced on the

high ground north of the Soupir farm, but owing to confusion between battalions, stiff

infantry resistance, and heavy shell fire, it failed to make appreciable progress and

entrenched on the reverse slope at night fall. Support companies took cover further down

the hill behind a wall enclosing the farm.12 The 13th Brigade in the 5th Division near the

centre of the BEF line had established itself on the north side of the river on 13 September

and managed to capture a spur on the Chivres ridge the following day. Disorganization of

the brigade’s battalions and incessant German shelling prompted the brigadier to decide

against holding the ridge itself, and he instead ordered his units to withdraw and dig in at

the foot of the hill.13 On the British left, the 4th Division captured and strongly entrenched

the high ground northeast of Bucy on 13 September. Having achieved its primary tactical

goal, it made no attempt to advance any further so General Alymer Hunter-Weston,

commander of the 11th Brigade, directed his battalions to make any modifications to their

sites that “recent experience” may have dictated. Cover from artillery fire was the foremost

9 Diary of an anonymous second lieutenant, 13 September 1914, 1/Loyal North Lancashire Regiment War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1270. The author mistakenly dated the attack as occurring on 13 September. 10 2/King’s Royal Rifle Corps War Diary, 14 September 1914, TNA: WO 95/1272. 11 Ts diary of E.S. Bulfin, 14 September 1914, TNA: CAB 45/140; The war diary of the 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers also notes that the 2nd Brigade entrenched the reverse slopes on 14 September. See 26th Field Company to 1st and 2nd Division Commander Royal Engineers, 15 September 1914, 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 12 Diary of George Jeffreys, 14 September 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute: The Grenadiers at War, August-December 1914, ed. J.M. Craster (London: Macmillan, 1976), 88. 13 13th Brigade War Diary, 13-14 September 1914, TNA: WO 95/1548.

39

concern. The Germans, in possession of the Chivres ridge, had a clear view of British

defensive positions to the south and west, particularly those of the 10th and 11th Brigades

situated on the heights near Bucy. Consequently, on 16 September Hunter-Weston clarified

his previous order and specified that trenches should be sited so that they were “secure” and

concealed from German artillery fire originating from this point.14

With his forces unable to dislodge the Germans from the heights, French ordered

the BEF on 15 and 16 September to “strongly” entrench and solidify the positions gained

on the 14th.15 Although he coveted a renewed northward advance, difficult terrain and

continued German artillery superiority precluded any offensive action and thus

strengthening field works became the BEF’s primary task. Even with trenches sited on

reverse slopes, the unforeseen ferocity of German heavy shell fire and the lack of support

from friendly guns threatened the BEF’s position on the Aisne. Units responded by digging

deeper trenches and constructing improved shelters to better withstand regular

bombardment. In the early stages of the battle, when most engineering field companies

were occupied with repairing bridgeheads demolished by the German First Army on 12

September, improvement took the form of infantry digging deeper and hastily adding

undercut recesses or rudimentary traverses. For instance, an anonymous second lieutenant

in the 1/Loyal North Lancashire Regiment wrote on 16 September that his battalion spent

the previous night deepening its trenches.16 The 1/Royal West Surrey Regiment similarly

deepened its trenches on the night of 15/16 September and further improved them with

recesses on the 16th for protection against high explosive shell fire.17 The

1/Northumberland Fusiliers in the 3rd Division reported to its parent brigade on 16

September that it had begun to construct traverses since German gunners had ranged the

position and were accurately pitching shells directly into its trenches.18 Improving the

quality of trenches by digging deeper continued into late September and became part of a

battalion’s daily routine. The war diary of the 2/King’s Royal Rifle Corps made note of

14 11th Brigade to Battalions, 14 and 16 September 1914, 11th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1486; Ms Diary of Alymer Hunter-Weston, 13-16 September 1914, British Library: Hunter-Weston Papers. 15 Operations Order No. 26-27, 15-16 September 1914, GHQ War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1. 16 Diary of an anonymous second lieutenant, 16 September 1914, 1/Loyal North Lancashire Regiment War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1270. 17 1/Royal West Surrey Regiment War Diary, 15-16 September 1914, TNA: WO 95/1280/1. 18 1/Northumberland Fusiliers to 9th Brigade, 16 September 1914, 9th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1425.

40

troops digging better trenches and working on their positions for four consecutive days

between 21 and 25 September.19

From the outset, the BEF aimed to develop the shelter system consisting of two

parallel lines of entrenchments linked via communications trenches described in the 1911

Manual of Field Engineering. On 17 September, the 4th Division in III Corps ordered its

three brigades to dig cover trenches for supports and reserves, and to construct “covered

approaches” from them to firing trenches.20 In the 1st Division, the 1/Loyal North

Lancashire Regiment began work on second-line trenches on 16 September.21 The

1/Northumberland Fusiliers, suffering losses in spite of traversing due to their trenches

having been ranged by German artillery, also began arranging on the 16th to dig shelter

trenches behind the main firing line. The goal, the battalion indicated in its communication,

was to withdraw two-thirds of the front-line garrison to these cover positions during the day

so as to expose fewer men to enemy shelling. This response was a particularly adept

application of prewar entrenchment theory. Since German howitzers had located and could

target the battalion’s trenches with indirect fire, they in effect reduced the advantage

afforded by the reverse slope site. Digging a second line not yet ranged by enemy gunners

to which troops could retire therefore helped compensate for poorly concealed firing

trenches.22

The limiting factor for infantrymen in the early stages of the battle, when

engineering units were busy attending to the bridging of the Aisne, was not an absence of

knowledge on how to construct adequate shelter systems or a shortage of motivation to dig,

but rather a scarcity of tools with which to carry out the work. In fact, the infantry’s

deficiency in entrenching tools was already clear in August and almost immediately

recognized as a problem. In a memorandum to the Commanders Royal Engineers of the 1st

and 2nd Divisions dated 24 August, Major Pritchard of the 26th Field Company noted that

infantry battalions had at their disposal “very few tools.” Individual riflemen and non-

commissioned officers were each equipped with the portable entrenching tool, but it was

19 2/King’s Royal Rifle Corps War Diary, 21-25 September 1914, TNA: WO 95/1272. 20 4th Division to brigades, 17 September 1914, 11th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1486. 21 Diary of an anonymous second lieutenant, 16 September 1914, 1/Loyal North Lancashire Regiment War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1270. 22 1/Northumberland Fusiliers to 9th Brigade, 16 September 1914, 9th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1425.

41

not regarded as suitable for thorough entrenching and Royal Engineer units had at Mons

been forced to hand over their picks and shovels. Even then the number of tools available to

infantry battalions was insufficient to dig proper defences, necessitating that they seek out

and acquire civilian tools from homes and farms.23 This deficiency in entrenching tools was

so acute at Le Cateau that men who could not find civilian tools reportedly scooped earth

with mess tins or even their hands.24 The underlying problem, Pritchard argued, was that

there was “a tendency to treat [infantry] tool carts as if they were baggage wagons & to

bring them in too late & send them away too early.” He therefore recommended that

infantry tool carts be made as readily available to battalions as engineer carts were to field

companies.25 Implementing this solution would entail good communications between front-

line units and rear areas not easily maintained when advancing troops lacking wireless

radios lost contact with their baggage trains. Furthermore, infantry brigades contained an

allotment of tools for less than half of their men.26 Augmenting the infantry’s gross supply

would require shipments from the United Kingdom, a time-consuming logistical feat made

more difficult by the lengthening of supply lines as the BEF rapidly retreated away from

the English Channel in late August and early September.

Tool shortages persisted on the Aisne and were acute between 13 and 16

September. Bulfin, for instance, indicated that the men of the 2nd Brigade had to

requisition tools from farms around Vendresse and Troyon before they set about

entrenching in the evening of the 14th.27 General Smith-Dorrien, the commander of II

Corps, complained in his diary that although his 3rd and 5th Divisions had managed to dig

themselves in “pretty well” by the night of the 15th, they had done so with “the minimum”

of entrenching tools.28 In III Corps, the 12th Brigade reported to the Commander Royal

Engineers of the 4th Division at 16:27 local time on 14 September that it “badly needed”

tools to construct its trenches. Labour and technical guidance was not the issue since the

brigade indicated that Royal Engineer assistance was not necessary and that it only required

23 26th Field Company to 1st and 2nd Division Commander Royal Engineers, 24 August 1914, Appendices to 1st Divisional Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 24 Ernest W. Hamilton, The First Seven Divisions: Being a Detailed Account of the Fighting from Mons to Ypres (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1916), 64. 25 26th Field Company to 1st and 2nd Division Commander Royal Engineers, Appendices to 1st Divisional Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 26 See Chapter 1. 27 Ts diary of E.S. Bulfin, 14 September 1914, TNA: CAB 45/140. 28 Ts Diary of Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, 15 September 1914, TNA: CAB 45/206.

42

a loan of tools. The 4th Division responded three hours later with assurance that 150 picks

and shovels would arrive by 20:30.29 This loan represented a mere nine per cent increase in

the brigade’s total tool allotment. That it received an additional 370 picks, 547 shovels, and

123 spades less than a week later suggests that the 150 tools received on the 14th proved

inadequate.30 The presence of Royal Engineers and their carts alleviated shortages in most

infantry units, but the dearth of tools early in the battle partly contributed to trench

construction proceeding more slowly than anticipated. The 1911 Manual of Field

Engineering expected an individual rifleman to dig in normal conditions a 4.0 foot (1.2

metres) wide section of 5.0 foot (1.5 meter) deep trench in four hours.31 By 19 September,

five days after II Corps first broke ground, some of the 3rd and 5th Divisions’ trenches

were still too shallow for troops to stand in.32 Exhaustion, incessant enemy fire, and

reduced manpower stemming from casualties sustained on the 14th also negatively affected

the pace of trench construction, but a dearth of tools meant that fewer men could engage in

digging, even if they were physically capable.

Field defence development accelerated once the bulk of the engineering forces had

completed their work bridging the Aisne and infantry had access to Royal Engineer tools

and expertise. In addition to field companies assisting infantry by deepening fire trenches,

adding rudimentary head cover, and improving shelter and communications trenches, the

arrival of the Royal Engineers at the front lines marked the appearance of the first dugouts.

The range and power of German high-trajectory guns required cover for men not

immediately engaged in the fighting and so engineers took the idea of cover positions one

step further. The result was shelters in the rear of the fire and support trenches for officers

and reserves. Brigadier-General J.F. Trefusis, the 4th Brigade’s adjutant to the 1/Irish

Guards, recorded in his diary that by 1 October the battalion had two such shelters. He did

not describe their form in any detail, but due to the uneven terrain and easily-worked soil of

the Aisne valley, hollows cut into the hillside large enough for multiple men would have

been sufficient protection against shell fire.33 Indeed, Lieutenant-Colonel Wilfred R.A.

29 12th Brigade to 4th Division, 14 September 1914, 4th Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1463. 30 4th Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, 21 September 1914, TNA: WO 95/1463. 31 See Chapter 1. 32 Memorandum for Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Loch, 19 September 1914, IWM: Loch Papers. 33 Ts Diary of J.F. Trefusis, 28 September and 1 October 1914, IWM: Trefusis Papers.

43

Smith, commander of the 2/Grenadier Guards, described in a 21 September letter to his

wife that he was writing in a sort of “cave” dug behind the battalion’s main defensive

line.34 Sited on a reverse slope and cut into the hillside, the 1/Irish and 2/Grenadier Guards’

dugouts were thus protected from direct enemy fire by the crest of the hill and further

shielded from high-trajectory howitzer fire by the earth above. Where shelters could not be

dug deep enough into a reverse slope to provide adequate protection from howitzer fire,

dugouts were augmented with overhead cover. A photograph of the 1/Somerset Light

Infantry’s reserve positions, likely taken in late September or early October before III

Corps withdrew from the Aisne, depicts a position consisting of a shallow recess equipped

with a wooden ceiling held up by posts dug into the earth.35

Although constructing additional cover in the form of dugouts was a key response

to heavy artillery fire, preparing positions for defence against infantry attack remained a

high priority. By 17 September the Germans had turned their attention away from the Aisne

and toward the Allied left flank near Albert, but the First and Seventh Armies continued

launching holding attacks until late September to pin the French and British in place and

prevent them from shifting forces to the northwest. Reverse slope trench sites, though

superior to forward slopes in terms of cover from fire, afforded far more shallow fields of

fire than what Haig referred to as the “text book” standard of 400 yards (350 metres) called

for in infantry training manuals.36 Bulfin, for instance, observed the depth of the 2nd

Brigade’s fields of fire to be in some places less than 80 yards (about 75 metres). Shallow

fields of fire meant that riflemen had less time to aim, fire, and reload their weapons before

attacking troops rushed the front lines. Defending infantry thus relied heavily on barbed

wire entanglements to stall the forward movements of attacking troops. Since infantry units

were not themselves supplied with barbed wire or the wooden stakes on which to mount it,

Royal Engineer field companies were attached to brigades and charged with both the

construction and placement of entanglements.37

34 Wilfred R.A. Smith to his wife, 21 September 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 95. 35 Photograph of shelter and reserve trenches, Ms Diary of Alymer Hunter-Weston, British Library: Hunter-Weston Papers. 36 “Operations of the Ist Corps on the River Aisne, 13th to 30th September 1914,” I Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/988. See also “Situation of the 1st Corps after the battle of 14th September,” Ts Diary of Douglas Haig, TNA: WO 256/1. 37 Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, various messages dated 14-28 September 1914, TNA: WO 95/1244.

44

Demand for wire in most cases exceeded that of the available supply and quantities

were often insufficient to evenly screen trench positions. Difficulty transporting materials

up the rugged slopes from rear areas to front-line defences was one cause of wire

shortages.38 Engineers’ efforts to speedily erect wire entanglements were therefore limited

by the rate at which materials could be transported, and units typically used wire faster than

it was delivered. The 23rd Field Company reported on 25 September that it had during the

previous night erected approximately 300 yards (275 metres) of wire entanglements in front

of the 2nd Brigade’s right flank, but also indicated that it would require more wire in order

to continue screening the position.39 Gross quantity was another inhibiting factor. The

Commander Royal Engineers of the 1st Division, after having received the 23rd Field

Company’s report, requested the divisional Deputy Assistant Director of Ordnance Services

order a minimum ten additional miles (16 kilometres) of wire from GHQ.40 Faced with

supply deficiencies, the 23rd Field Company improvised by concentrating wire

entanglements in front of the most vulnerable sections of trench where fields of fire were

the shallowest.41 It is unclear if other field companies followed suit. The war diary of the

5th Field Company, for example, made no mention of compensating for supply shortages in

this way. Regardless, the 23rd Field Company’s solution was a practical response to the

problem of unexpectedly shallow fields of fire caused by reverse slopes and the chronic

deficiencies in available wire, demonstrating that engineers had, like the infantry, quickly

begun to adapt to defending positions on reverse slopes.

The appearance of cover and communications trenches, embryonic dugouts, and

barbed wire entanglements indicates that inconsistent and insufficient prewar training and

the infantry’s dependence on Royal Engineers for tools and expertise had only marginal

effects on the army’s capacity to develop its field fortification system. Growth was uneven,

however, in the sense that some battalions went further than others to secure shelter and

fortify their positions, which may have been a reflection of poor training. In a number of

38 5th Field Company War Diary, 22 September – 2 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1330. 39 23rd Field Company to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers, 25 September 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 40 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers to 1st Division Deputy Assistant Director of Ordnance Services, 25 September 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 41 23rd Field Company to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers, 25-6 September 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244.

45

cases, battalion records noted that upon relieving another unit in a different section of the

line, troops had to improve trenches in order to meet their particular standards. For

example, after having recently completed its communications trenches and dugouts, and

finished digging its fire trenches deep enough so that the troops could stand in them without

exposing their heads, the 1/Irish Guards were relieved on 1 October by the

2/Worcestershire Regiment. Trefusis complained that it was “Rather annoying as we had

had all the work of making these trenches etc. and building shelters so that the Battalion

[sic] that relieved us will get the benefit … [W]here we go [next] I expect we will have to

start all over.” Conversely, the Worcestershires reportedly complained that the Irish

Guards’ trenches were too wide.42 Thus, in spite of the specifications laid out in military

engineering manuals, in September 1914 there existed in practice no standard design.

Disparity between units could plausibly have been the consequence of varying degrees of

Royal Engineer assistance, but was more likely the result of infantry battalions having had

no practice constructing complete field defence systems in peacetime. With minimal

experience digging trench networks and little more than textbook theory to guide them,

battalions went only as far as they considered necessary.

Overall, the BEF’s field fortifications on the Aisne were, in spite of ordnance

shortages and uneven levels of development, very effective at both sheltering defending

troops from shell fire and resisting infantry attacks. In reference to the former, Hunter-

Weston wrote on 14 September that unless a German shell fell directly into a trench – a

highly unlikely scenario – the men of his brigade were “quite safe.”43 Smith-Dorrien

similarly recorded in his diary on the 27th that although the Aisne valley was “a mass of

bursting shells,” German artillery had caused very few casualties owing to good trenches.44

Captain E.J. Pike of the 2/Grenadier Guards wrote in a 23 September letter that the German

shelling went on “all day” and enemy snipers fired on his trench during the night, but the

unit had “been very lucky lately” and lost very few men. “[B]eing in the trenches,” he

concluded, “saves them.”45 In fact, the only significant casualties suffered by the

2/Grenadier Guards due to shell fire while on the Aisne was on the 16th when a German

42 Ts Diary of J.F. Trefusis, 1 October 1914, IWM: Trefusis Papers. 43 Ms Diary of Almyer Hunter-Weston, 14 September 1914, British Library: Hunter-Weston Papers. 44 Ts Diary of Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, 27 September 1914, TNA: CAB 45/206. 45 Quoted in Craster, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 101-2.

46

heavy shell hit a quarry behind the battalion’s main defensive line housing supports and

wounded. About 100 men in total were either killed or injured in the quarry, but the fire

trenches emerged from the bombardment unscathed. Major George Jeffreys noted that

because the battalion was dug in on a reverse slope, most shells flew over the main trench

lines and landed a safe distance behind them.46 Effective use of cover trenches also reduced

losses. For example, when the Germans began bombarding the 2nd Brigade on 5 October,

Bulfin withdrew the troops from the front lines to cover trenches and consequently only a

“few men” were hit.47

Since the task of the German First and Seventh Armies was simply to prevent the

Entente from shifting forces to the northwest, the ability of British defences to withstand

full-scale infantry assaults was never seriously tested. Furthermore, the BEF did not fight

any prolonged infantry engagements on the Aisne and thus it is difficult to precisely

determine how fortifications, specifically barbed wire entanglements, factored into

defensive battles. It was quickly apparent, however, that British tacticians before the war

severely underestimated the effects of their own defensive fire. Tactical and operational

officers realized shortly after 14 September that the relatively shallow fields of fire afforded

by reverse slope trench sites were more than sufficient to combat enemy infantry. Although

the 2nd Brigade’s fields were in some places less than 80 yards (about 75 metres), Bulfin

recorded that his battalions successfully beat back two German counter-attacks on 14

September. Thus, the brigade’s trench site did not prove to be a significant defensive

handicap.48 Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Edward Loch, liaison officer between GHQ and II

Corps, reported that even though the fields of fire in front of the 3rd Division were less than

the optimal 400 yards (350 metres), they were “quite good enough against infantry.”49

Regarding the impact of fortifications, relatively low casualty figures and tactical officers’

tendency to attribute their success to good trenches suggests that field defences did in fact

help the BEF stop German infantry. Smith of the 2/Grenadier Guards credited light losses

during a 20 September attack solely to effective fortifications:

In the evening [the Germans] made a feeble attack, and we wiped them out. I was thankful the men have learnt at last to dig and burrow like rabbits. I don’t know

46 Diary of George Jeffreys, 16 and 18 September 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 91. 47 Ts Diary of E.S. Bulfin, 5 October 1914, TNA: CAB 45/140. 48 Ts Diary of E.S. Bulfin, 14 September 1914, TNA: CAB 45/140. 49 Memorandum for Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Loch, 19 September 1914, IWM: Loch Papers.

47

what others lost, but we lost only 2 killed, and 4 wounded, entirely owing to good digging.50

Unit records did not describe in detail the effect of barbed wire in slowing the forward

movement of enemy attackers, but Haig noted at the end of September that entanglements

placed in “suitable locations” successfully held up German troops on “several occasions.”51

Therefore, the combination of good trenches and well-sited barbed wire entanglements

reduced losses by shielding troops and generating more time for men to aim, fire, and

reload their weapons, thereby enhancing the already powerful effect of defensive fire.

Sir James Edmonds asserted that the Aisne defences were rudimentary compared to

those developed later in the war, and described the trenches as simply “narrow fire pits”

which were rarely continuous and easily knocked in by enemy shells. To Edmonds, this so-

called “Augustan” period of fortification was, as its namesake implied, the first stage in a

lengthy evolution culminating in the defences of 1916-17.52 His assessment, although

applicable to the First World War, did not place the Aisne fortifications in their wider

context. The British army had not constructed field defences in wartime since South Africa

and the scale of fortification in 1899-1902 did not compare to that made necessary by

German heavy artillery on the Aisne. Between South Africa and the Aisne, then, the field

fortifications of the latter represented considerable growth over those of the former. Though

the BEF was unprepared to fight a war of entrenchments in terms of its training and tools

supply, it was equipped after South Africa with the necessary theoretical foundation to

employ a robust system capable of adaptation. Trenches were indeed rudimentary

compared to those of 1916-17, but, contrary to Edmonds, were more advanced than

traversed rifle pits. Although trenches in some cases remained disconnected, battalions

quickly realized that continuous systems provided superior shelter and many endeavoured

to link trench segments together. Trefusis, for example, noted on 1 October that he could

walk fully erect from one end of his battalion’s trench line to the other without exposing

himself to enemy fire.53 Embryonic dugouts, communications trenches, and well-placed

50 Wilfred R.A. Smith to his wife, 21 September 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 96. 51 “Notes on R.E. work during the operations on the AISNE between 13th ànd 27th September, I Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/988; See also “Notes on R.E. work during the operations on the AISNE between 13th ànd 27th September,” Ts Diary of D. Haig, TNA: WO 256/1. 52 Military Operations 1914, vol. 1, 433. 53 Ts Diary of J.F. Trefusis, 1 October 1914, IWM: Trefusis Papers.

48

barbed wire entanglements only enhanced the system’s ability to withstand enemy artillery

bombardment, promote the movement of troops between fire and cover trenches, and stall

enemy infantry attacks.

The reason that field fortifications on the Aisne reached this level of complexity

was because infantry and engineers had ample time to work on them. Though some

battalions made minor modifications to their trench sites and units on the extreme British

right had to adjust their positions to match the movements of the adjacent French Fifth

Army, the Aisne was in every sense a truly static battle. The BEF made no attempt after 14

September to drive the Germans from their positions on the heights and thus, in spite of the

warnings in Field Service Regulations 1909 and subsequent Infantry Training manuals, its

defence was completely passive. By allowing troops to hunker down in their trenches,

encouraging units to develop their defences to the fullest extent, and not ordering repeated

attacks that may have continuously shifted the line, Sir John French ensured that the BEF’s

fortifications received ample attention. This decision was operationally sound. As Smith-

Dorrien explained, the BEF had “nothing to lose” from holding its positions on the Aisne.

Since a quick and decisive victory in the west was crucial to the success of the German war

plan, the French and British armies had much to gain from simply stalling the Germans’

efforts. In the words of Smith-Dorrien, “the longer we can detain [them] the better.”54

Driving the Germans from their positions on the Aisne was of no immediate operational or

strategic value. Improving trench positions and creating tactically strong lines of defence,

on the other hand, helped fulfill the Allied purpose of slowing German advances into

France. In short, the Aisne underscored the relationship between solid field fortifications,

passivity, time, and defensive effectiveness. The subsequent battles in Flanders, in contrast,

would demonstrate that an offensive attitude severely reduced the army’s ability to

withstand large-scale attack by distracting units from preparing trench positions.

With the Aisne battle at a standstill and the Germans’ attention focused on turning

the Allied left flank in Champagne and Picardy in late September and early October, GHQ

set about absorbing recent lessons for the purpose of instructing formations due to arrive on

the Continent, namely IV Corps from Great Britain and the Indian Corps from overseas.55

54 Ts Diary of Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, 18 September 1914, TNA: CAB 45/206. 55 See Gardner, Trial by Fire, 92-5 for an overview of the main points contained in the corps reports.

49

On 24 September, GHQ’s Sub Chief of Staff Sir Henry Wilson released to each of the

BEF’s three corps a memorandum requesting details on any tactical and administrative

“experience” gained since early August. Although the reports were officially authored and

signed by each corps’ chief of staff, in many cases, particularly in II Corps, there was an

effort to include input from the divisions and even brigades.56 GHQ therefore sparked an

upward flow of information meant to facilitate the adjustment of any prewar regulations

requiring modification. Once collected, GHQ and the General Staff aimed to consolidate

this information and supply it to the IV and Indian Corps for dissemination. Thus, Wilson’s

memorandum represented the first organized attempt to improve the fighting methods of

the BEF. As regards field fortification theory, the memorandum was important in the sense

that it afforded brigade, divisional, and corps officers the opportunity to inform the British

high command of new techniques and ideas.

In general, the corps reports affirmed to GHQ the importance of good trenches and

indicated that corps commanders remained confident in prewar fortification methods.

Smith-Dorrien argued in II Corps’ report that there were “few notes to be made on the

subject of infantry” and that the “soundness of our Field Service Regulations and Infantry

Training has been thoroughly proved.” Trench work, he concluded, “has been carried out as

practiced in peace time, and there is practically nothing new to add to the regulations in this

respect.”57 Sketches of trench system designs in the report reflected those in prewar

engineering manuals. It recommended that trenches be a minimum of 3.5 feet (about 1.0

metres) deep, 2.0 feet (0.5 metres) wide, and traversed at regular intervals.

Communications trenches were to link all fire and cover trenches to reduce the risk of men

being caught in the open during reliefs or withdrawals. Any deviations from the Manual of

Field Engineering were minor. For instance, the report opposed undercut recesses, but only

because they were liable to collapse in wet weather, not for their inability to adequately

shelter men. Any problems that II Corps encountered were not due to poor theory or bad

technique. Rather, the report asserted that enemy shells inflicted “unnecessary” casualties

only in cases where troops had “skimped” on digging and did not carefully construct their

56 GHQ to corps, 24 September 1914, II Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/629. 57 “Notes, based on the experience gained by the Second Corps during the campaign,” II Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/629.

50

trenches.58 The reports of I and III Corps similarly echoed the main points of trench

construction in prewar manuals. That of the latter formation, for instance, reinforced that

trenches should be deep, narrow, and traversed every “five to ten rifles.”59 In short, corps-

level officers saw no reason to significantly alter their methods of sheltering infantry.

The main point relayed to GHQ in the corps reports was that German heavy artillery

had affected the way in which divisional and corps commanders conceived of how field

defences should be employed on the battlefield. All three reports agreed that the unexpected

power of German guns had made necessary the entrenchment of reverse slopes, but they

went further and argued that since reverse slopes deprived German artillery of its ability to

evict defenders from trenches on its own, such sites compelled enemy infantry to attack. In

other words, reverse slopes made it impossible for the Germans to rely solely on their guns.

Reverse slopes therefore had the dual advantage of adequately shielding defending troops

while simultaneously coaxing the Germans into exposing their infantry to British defensive

fire.60 The report of III Corps succinctly summed up this new defensive approach by

maintaining that the occupation of ground for defence “should be made to combine the fire

of our own guns and rifles against the enemy’s infantry, while denying to the enemy the use

of his artillery by the siting of trenches in positions … behind rather than on the crest line

or forward slopes.”61 This approach contrasted starkly with the active defence touted in

Field Service Regulations 1909 and Infantry Training manuals. Experience on the Aisne

indicated that hunkering down in defences and waiting for enemy attacks was not only a

necessity dictated by German artillery superiority, but more tactically expedient than

entrenching a position which afforded good observation for friendly guns, deep fields of

fire, and favourable points from which to launch counter-attacks. This change in tactical

thinking was only made possible by commanders’ acknowledgment of their own defensive

firepower. Whereas prewar manuals underestimated the effect of small arms defensive fire

and advocated fields of fire exceeding 400 yards (350 metres), infantry combat on the

58 “Notes, based on the experience gained by the Second Corps during the campaign,” II Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/629. 59 “Report to III Corps,” III Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/688. 60 “Memorandum on British and German Tactics,” I Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/588; “Notes, based on the experience gained by the Second Corps during the campaign,” II Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/629. 61 “Report of III Corps,” III Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/688.

51

Aisne demonstrated to divisional and corps commanders that rifleman were sufficiently

lethal at less than 100 yards (91 metres).62

The result of the corps reports was two General Staff memoranda representing the

accumulation of new tactical information which GHQ deemed pertinent enough to pass

along to newly-arriving formations. The first, “Tactical notes: for the information of troops

arriving in the theatre of operations,” outlined lessons for each of the army’s three arms

based on the experiences of August and September. For infantry and engineers, the

memorandum underscored the importance of digging. “Our soldiers who have fought in

this war,” it remarked, “have come to regard the entrenching tool as one of their most

valuable possessions.” It further noted that shallow trenches were “quite ineffective,”

encouraged troops to construct recesses and overhead cover, and reiterated the corps

reports’ recommendations that trenches on reverse slopes favoured a passive defensive

approach. However, there is no indication in this memorandum that the General Staff

considered deviating from an offensive doctrine. Experience on the Aisne produced some

change in the way that senior British officers conceived of employing field fortifications,

but it did not in any way impact British military ethos which continued to heavily favour

the offensive. Although “Tactical notes” stressed the value of digging and highlighted the

lessons of the Aisne, it did not correct the underlying problem with entrenchment theory,

that even though good field fortifications required time to construct, time spent digging

afforded the enemy initiative and therefore the offensive should be resumed at every

opportunity.

The focus of the second memorandum, “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched

position,” was on the more technical aspects of shelter construction and design. Like

“Tactical notes,” it emphasized the point that trenches should be carefully constructed so as

to reduce avoidable casualties. Furthermore, it also detailed in the form of diagrams drawn

from observations of Aisne field defences various types of fire trenches, cover positions,

and dugouts.63 The memorandum underscored how experience with German heavy artillery

had made shielding infantry from enemy fire a top defensive priority, but it was flawed in

62 “Memorandum on British and German Tactics,” I Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/588; “Notes, based on the experience gained by the Second Corps during the campaign,” II Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/629; “Report of III Corps,” III Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/688. 63 See Appendix D, figure 1 for an example of a dugout constructed on the Aisne in September 1914.

52

that it described trenches and shelters that were specific to the Aisne battlefield. Deep

dugouts cut into steep hillsides, for example, would be impossible to construct on the

extremely flat battlefields of Flanders and northeastern France.64 In addition, the clay

substructure and high water table of the Flanders plain rendered digging deep trenches

impractical since they would quickly inundate.65 “Notes on the preparation of an

entrenched position” was an achievement for the General Staff in the sense that it

accurately conveyed how units dealt with German fire on the Aisne, but much of its content

was not applicable to the BEF’s area of operations in October and November 1914. With

the advantage of hindsight, it is apparent that the memorandum was of little practical value

to the Indian and IV Corps, both of which were sent directly to Flanders. Nevertheless,

there is no evidence to suggest that the General Staff made any effort to determine the

character of the land to which the army was transferring or how its terrain would affect

trench construction.

When evaluated in terms of what senior officers learned from the Aisne, “Tactical

notes” and “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position” suggest that the battle was

highly educational and that its lessons vis-à-vis field fortifications were indeed apparent.

The former included all the main points of the corps reports and the latter represented a

genuine effort to understand how best to provide infantry with adequate shelter. The two

memoranda indicate that the BEF’s response to the conditions of the Aisne was

successfully absorbed and incorporated into existing tactical thought. They serve as

evidence that the BEF had by mid-October adapted its field fortification theory and

techniques to match the experienced realities of the war. However, considering that GHQ

intended these memoranda to serve as guides for officers due to arrive in Flanders and who

lacked first-hand experience, “Tactical notes” and “Notes on the preparation of an

entrenched position” were together only partially successful, primarily because the latter

did not address the vast difference between the terrain of the Aisne river valley and that of

the Flanders plain. Thus, senior commanders and the British General Staff excelled at

64 “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position,” dated October 1914, Lahore Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/3911. Also in III Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/668. 65 See Johnson, Battlefields of the World War, 9-25 and Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 42-7 for more on the terrain of Flanders and its impact on trench construction.

53

identifying problems and formulating solutions, but were lacking in their capacity to

consider their relevance to future operations.

By the time the last British units had begun to withdraw from the Aisne in mid-

October, GHQ and the General Staff had, with the cooperation of the divisions and corps,

corrected the most obvious entrenchment-related problems encountered to date. That the

BEF so seamlessly altered its siting regulations indicates that its prewar entrenchment

tactics were relevant to the conditions of the First World War. Indeed, British units

developed a robust field defence system on the Aisne which closely resembled that

described in the Manual of Field Engineering, suggesting that training deficiencies and the

infantry’s reliance on engineers for tools and technical expertise were by no means

debilitating weaknesses. Having made the necessary modifications to its tactics and

thoroughly highlighted the vast importance of digging and proper trench work, the BEF had

upon its arrival in Flanders successfully adapted its entrenchment theory. Adaptation,

however, would mean nothing if senior operational officers like General Henry Rawlinson,

the commander of IV Corps, failed to disseminate this information to brigade- and

battalion-level commanders responsible for siting positions and overseeing their

development. Moreover, although the General Staff attempted to relay to IV Corps the

shelter designs well suited to the Aisne battlefield, its failure to address the flat topography

and water-logged soil of Flanders meant that the entire BEF, including those formations

that had first-hand combat experience, would have to improvise. The lengthy battles around

Ypres and La Bassée in October and early November 1914 would test not only how well

the BEF could transmit new techniques and ideas, but how well its units could adapt to

unforeseen and largely unanticipated circumstances, most notably the notorious mud of

Flanders. Lastly, continued devotion to the offensive had the potential to deny British units

the important benefit of time and therefore negatively affect their efforts to properly

entrench in preparation for what amounted to be the army’s greatest challenge of 1914.

54

Chapter 3

Overcoming Setbacks at La Bassée and First Ypres

Stalemate on the Aisne prompted both sides to shift their forces to the north in

hopes of exploiting the open flank between Albert and the English Channel. General Erich

von Falkenhayn, the chief of the German General Staff since 14 September, aimed to strike

the French left with Crown Prince Rupprecht’s Sixth Army from Lorraine. General Joseph

Joffre countered with a new French Second Army and a detachment of two infantry and

one cavalry corps, later designated the Tenth Army. These movements, erroneously known

as the “race to the sea,” resulted in a series of indecisive battles which stretched the trench

lines from Champagne, through Picardy and Artois, and into southwestern Belgium.1 With

the Sixth Army stalled, Falkenhayn raised a new Fourth Army to drive through Flanders

and strike the Tenth Army’s left flank.2 Sir John French, hoping to shorten his lines of

supply and communication, proposed to Joffre that he withdraw the BEF from the Aisne

and redeploy it on the Allied left. Joffre reluctantly agreed, and on 2 October British

battalions began leaving their trenches on the Aisne. Smith-Dorrien’s II Corps arrived west

of La Bassée on the 9th, followed by III Corps near Armentières two days later. The newly

designated IV Corps, commanded by Rawlinson and originally tasked to relieve the

beleaguered Belgian fortresses at Antwerp, withdrew to the vicinity of Ypres on 16

October. The last British formation to leave the Aisne, Haig’s I Corps, took up positions on

the 19th between IV Corps to the south and French marines defending Dixmude to the

north.

The “race to the sea” and the mobile war ended when Entente forces clashed with

the German Fourth and Sixth Armies. For the BEF, the Flanders battles were the most

costly of 1914 and resulted in nearly 60,000 casualties, approximately 65 per cent of its

1 On 4 October Joffre organized the Second and Tenth Armies into a new Army Group North under General Ferdinand Foch. 2 For a general history of the “race to the sea,” see Strachan, The First World War, vol. 1, 262-80; For the French perspective, see Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory, 85-104; For the German perspective, see Holger H. Herwig, The First World War 1914-1918: Germany and Austria-Hungary (New York: Arnold, 1997), 113-20 and Holger H. Herwig, “Eyeball to Eyeball with the Enemy” Quarterly Journal of Military History 21, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 88-93.

55

total losses for the year and more than one quarter its total strength in mid-October.3

Although the Battles Nomenclature Committee identified seven distinct engagements,

fighting generally clustered along two axes: II, III, and later the Indian Corps in the south

between La Bassée and Armentières, and I, IV and the Cavalry Corps in the north near

Ypres. British operations proceeded in two phases, beginning with the army’s initial

advance from 12-18 October and followed by its lengthy defence against German attacks

between 19 October and 22 November.4 The latter phase comprised three German

offensives. First were those of the Fourth and Sixth Armies which began on 20 October.

British II and IV Corps bore the brunt of these first attacks, their lines nearly collapsing

between 20 and 26 October. From 29-31 October, a new German army group composed of

infantry units and heavy guns from the Sixth Army and commanded by General Max von

Fabeck launched a second attack against the BEF, concentrated against the 1st and 7th

Divisions along the Ypres-Menin road. A period of relative calm in early November

preceded Falkenhayn’s final bid to break through when German formations, spearheaded

by the Guards Division opposite I Corps near Nonne Bosschen Wood, attacked on 11

November. The attacks faltered against improved British defences and although fighting

continued until 22 November, the Flanders battles effectively ended on the 12th.5

In terms of entrenchment and fortification, the battles of La Bassée and First Ypres

represented a step backward from the Aisne and an episode of temporary regression in the

development of British field defence capabilities in 1914-15. The General Staff’s continued

confidence in the offensive and its failure to consider how terrain on the Flanders plain

would affect trench construction in “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position”

had important consequences in mid- to late October. Sir John French and GHQ, optimistic

about the prospects of outflanking the German Sixth Army in spite of numerous warnings

that large enemy formations were assembling to the east, opened the battle with an attack

instead of securing tactically strong lines of defence. Advancing troops had little

opportunity to dig fortifications and defended largely incomplete and rudimentary positions

3 Keith Simpson, The Old Contemptibles: A Photographic History of the British Expeditionary Force, August to December 1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981), 108; Strachan, The First World War, vol. 1, 278. 4 Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 4-5. The battles named by the Battles Nomenclature Committee were La Bassée (10 October – 2 November), Armentieres (13 October – 2 November), Messines (12 October – 2 November), Langemark (21-24 October), Gheluvelt (29-31 October), and Nonne Bosschen (11 November). 5 For the BEF and the Flanders battles see Military Operations 1914, vol. 2; Anthony Farrar-Hockley Death of an Army (New York: William Morrow, 1968); Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914.

56

when the Germans counter-attacked. Difficulties working with the water-logged Flanders

soil, constant enemy pressure, exhaustion, and tool shortages inhibited efforts to improve

earthworks thereafter. Compounding these early struggles was Rawlinson’s failure to

communicate to his tactical officers the importance of concealing trenches from enemy fire.

Brigadiers in IV Corps therefore followed obsolete siting regulations and entrenched

forward slopes on 18-21 October. As a result of these largely self-imposed difficulties,

British field works were not sufficiently developed to adequately shelter defending infantry

from German shell fire, and defensive lines remained weak and were vulnerable to being

pierced by repeated infantry assaults. In spite of its initial failures, by early November the

BEF had begun to adapt to the intensity of the fighting in Flanders when Haig’s I Corps

constructed the first redoubts to help defend against enemy breakthroughs by adding an

element of elasticity to trench lines. Thus, the Flanders battles were indicative of how

adapting field fortifications to the realities of the war resembled the “learning curve” in the

sense that setbacks proved painfully educational, and led to commanders improving their

techniques and applying more effective methods.

Due to the generally featureless topography of the Flanders plain, establishing the

full field defence system consisting of firing trenches linked to cover positions or dugouts

via communications trenches, as described in the Manual of Field Engineering and

constructed in a number of instances on the Aisne, was of considerable importance. On the

Aisne, trenches sited behind hillcrests escaped the brunt of heavy artillery bombardments

because they were well concealed and out of the enemy’s line-of-sight. In other words, only

very accurate, high-trajectory fire could damage trenches and inflict many casualties. In

contrast, in only a few places did the ground in Flanders rise above 100 feet (30 metres).

Mount Kemmel, whose status as a “mountain” was entirely relevant to its surroundings,

was the highest point on the battlefield at about 400 feet (120 metres).6 Sparse hills meant

that concealing positions on reverse slopes was not always possible, and so trenches were

inescapably more visible and in turn subjected to more accurate fire. Safely withdrawing

troops through communications trenches to better shelter further in the rear was the only

way to prevent heavy losses. This detail was not lost on formation commanders. When

ordered on 21 October to establish a new defensive position behind its front lines, the 3rd

6 Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 42-3.

57

Division’s headquarters specified to its brigades that it be constructed “with a view to

economy of men in the front line.”7 Though it was clear to division-level officers that cover

positions, shell-proof dugouts, and good communications trenches were necessary to

reduce casualties, they required time to construct. On the Aisne, for example, the 4th

Division ordered its brigades to begin building cover trenches four days after it had first

entrenched on 13 September.8 Sir John French did not appreciate this fact and instead chose

to attack through Flanders even though intelligence suggested that Falkenhayn was

preparing an offensive of his own.9

Whereas heavy fighting on 14 September gave way to a prolonged static

engagement favourable to defensive development, the offensives in Flanders produced a

series of encounter battles which denied infantry and engineers the time required to

construct complex field works before the German attacks began. In the south, battalions in

II and III Corps recurrently dug in during the advance, but continuous movement hampered

their ability to improve one particular position. Captain C.I. Stockwell of the 2/Royal

Welch Fusiliers in the 6th Division tidily summed up the problem. On 19 October the

battalion advanced to Fromelles, where it occupied some positions originally constructed

by French cavalry. Finding the trenches too shallow, the officers began discussing plans to

improve them when the brigadier arrived and “pooh-poohed the notion,” announcing the

battalion would soon be advancing again.10 The 1/East Surrey Regiment dug its first line of

trenches in the evening of 13 October. It occupied these same positions for two additional

days, but new orders to continue the advance on the 16th prevented it from developing

them any further.11 Units in II Corps typically occupied trenches only two- or three-days-

old when the Germans attacked. The 3rd Division’s 9th Brigade, for example, entrenched

fresh positions after capturing the village of Herlies on 17 October. With the division under

orders to advance on the 18th, but unable to do so for fear of opening a gap between it and

French cavalry on the left, the brigadier wisely instructed his battalions to spend the day

7 3rd Division to 8th and 9th Brigades, 21 October 1914, 9th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1425. 8 4th Division to brigades, 17 September 1914, 11th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1486. 9 For more on French’s decision to ignore intelligence indicating the presence of large German formations in line of his advance, see Farrar-Hockley, Death of an Army, 44-6; Gardner, Trial by Fire, 152-3; Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 58-62. 10 Quoted in J.C. Dunn (ed.), The War the Infantry Knew, 1914-1919, 2nd ed. (London: Jane’s, 1987), 74-5. 11 1/East Surrey Regiment War Diary, 12-19 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1563.

58

improving their defences. Nevertheless, on 20 October the 9th Brigade defended trenches it

had dug only three days before.12

The offensive also negatively affected the quality of a secondary defensive position

behind II Corps’ front line. Smith-Dorrien, having quickly recognized that his formation’s

haphazardly-entrenched positions were not adequate for prolonged defence against

concerted enemy attacks, hastily ordered the construction of a new line in the evening of 21

October, only about thirty-six hours before the 3rd and 5th Divisions withdrew to and

occupied it early on the 23rd. He had originally considered the idea before the 16th, but

thought it unnecessary because his corps had begun to make relatively good progress.13

Historian Nikolas Gardner has argued that Smith-Dorrien experienced considerable anxiety

regarding the security of his job as II Corps commander and his decision to cancel

construction of a secondary trench line may therefore have stemmed from his apprehension

of appearing hesitant or irresolute to Sir John French. In both cases, the offensive ethos was

the underlying cause.14 Either Smith-Dorrien remained confident that his formation could

successfully carry on its attack, or he feared displeasing his attack-oriented commander-in-

chief. By waiting until the situation was desperate rather than establishing a reserve line in

advance on 16 October, Smith-Dorrien denied the engineers charged with preparing the

position five additional working days. As a result, II Corps’ new defences were poorly

developed when the 3rd and 5th Divisions arrived. Their most apparent weakness was a

dearth of cover trenches. The 15th Brigade reported to the 5th Division on 23 October that

its new defences were “very unsatisfactory” and completely lacked shrapnel-proof

shelters.15

The encounter phase was shorter in the north around Ypres, lasting only two and

three days for I and IV Corps, respectively, but troops in these formations also had little

time in their trenches before coming under attack. The 1/Royal West Surrey Regiment in

the 1st Division, for example, began its advance in the morning of 20 October. It did not

entrench that night, but instead went into billets in nearby farmhouses. The battalion

12 1/Lincolnshire Regiment to 9th Brigade, 17 October 1914, 9th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1425; 9th Brigade to battalions, 18 October 1914, 9th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1425; 4/Royal Fusiliers Regiment to 9th Brigade, 20 October 1914, 9th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1425. 13 II Corps to 3rd Division, 16 October 1914, 3rd Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1375. 14 Gardner, Trial by Fire, 128-31. 15 15th Brigade to 5th Division, 23 October 1914, 5th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1510.

59

encountered considerable enemy resistance as it renewed its advance on the 21st. Two

companies dug trenches in the evening, the night before being heavily attacked on 22

October.16 The 2/Grenadier Guards in the 2nd Division entrenched two separate trench

lines in two days on 20 and 21 October. Having passed through Ypres early in the morning

of the 20th, the battalion took up and entrenched a position northeast of St. Julien without

coming into contact with the enemy. The following day, 21 October, the Grenadier Guards

left these positions and mounted an attack with the 3rd Brigade. Major George Jeffreys

recalled encountering “serious opposition” and the battalion made little progress. It

entrenched a second position that night, which it improved on the 22nd before intense

German shelling began on the 23rd.17 The 7th Division in IV Corps, after having aborted its

attempt to relieve the Belgians at Antwerp and withdrawn to Ypres between 9 and 14

October, was marginally better off in terms of time than the 1st or 2nd Divisions.18 Its 20th

and 21st Brigades established their first positions on 16 October. They spent the 17th

improving these trenches, but in accordance with GHQ’s orders to advance toward Menin,

entrenched a new line on the 18th. Both brigades remained in these trenches for three days

before heavy German shelling commenced in the morning of 21 October.19

The immediate results of the offensive in the north were that the Germans caught

the BEF, particularly I Corps, in only partially-constructed and poorly-sited trenches which

were not continuous, often formed exposed tactical salients, and lacked sufficient barbed

wire screens. In the 1st Division, trenches dug during the infantry’s advance in some

instances sat in highly exposed positions. Because the 1/Royal West Surrey Regiment

advanced further than the neighbouring 2/Welch Regiment and 2/King’s Royal Rifle Corps,

for example, its trenches jutted into enemy lines and were exposed to artillery fire on both

flanks.20 Furthermore, since its defensive lines were not continuous, some trench segments

as a result of their haphazard placement even came under enemy fire from the rear.

Engineers attempting to provide greater cover by constructing traverses and encouraging

infantrymen to dig recesses suggested that the only real remedy would be to straighten out

16 1/Royal West Surrey Regiment War Diary, 20-22 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1280. 17 Diary of Major George Jeffreys, 20-23 October 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 108-112. 18 7th Division War Diary, 9-17 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1627. 19 20th Brigade War Diary, 17-21 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1650; 21st Brigade War Diary, 17-21 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1658. 20 1/Royal West Surrey Regiment War Diary, 20-23 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1280.

60

the line.21 To defend against infantry attacks, the 23rd Field Company began laying wire as

soon as the line stabilized on 22 October, far more quickly than it had done on the Aisne in

September.22 However, because Haig’s force was advancing until the moment the German

Fourth Army counter-attacked, engineers, in spite of their best efforts and rapid response

time, could do little to adequately fortify positions before defending battalions came under

attack.

Whereas GHQ directed II and III Corps to hold their positions after 20 October, I

Corps received new orders to attack on 25-28 October, forcing it to begin trench

construction from scratch. With IV Corps thinly stretched over a wide frontage of about six

miles (almost ten kilometres), French shifted I Corps southward to east of Ypres. Relief of

Rawlinson’s force required Haig to mount an attack in order to alleviate pressure on the 7th

Division and facilitate the withdrawal of its heavily-pressed units, namely the 22nd

Brigade. This movement, combined with the fact that the 7th Division’s trenches were in a

state of disrepair (see below), Haig’s units had to dig fresh positions. The 2/Grenadier

Guards attacked toward Reutel on 25 October, but owing to stiff enemy resistance from

well-concealed infantry, made little progress and dug new trenches after dark.23 The

battalion remained in this position until the 28th when it received new orders to attack

toward Becelaere with the 6th Brigade. Again, the Grenadier Guards encountered

considerable opposition and had to entrench for the second time in four days. They

managed to construct two trench lines before heavy German shelling began in the morning

of 29 October, but there is no indication that they were continuous or equipped with

communications trenches.24

Historians of the BEF have not identified this link between the offensive and

poorly-prepared field works in late October. Sir James Edmonds described I Corps’

defences around Ypres on 22 October as short, disconnected lengths of shallow trench

which had no dugouts, communications trenches, or “anything in the nature of a second

line.” These positions, he remarked, lacked complexity because they were “hastily

21 26th Field Company to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers, 24 October 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 22 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers to 23rd Field Company, 22 October 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 23 Diary of George Jeffreys and Bernard Gordon-Lennox, 25 October 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 115-7. 24 Diary of George Jeffreys, 28-29 October 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 118-9.

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constructed during the few hours that the troops had been on the ground.”25 He was correct

in both his assessment of the quality of I Corps’ field works and the identification of time

as the immediate cause, though he failed to correlate the latter with the army’s repeated

orders to advance. On the other hand, Anthony Farrar-Hockley, Ian Beckett, and Gardner

criticized GHQ’s unwarranted optimism at the beginning of the battle and argued that the

offensive resulted in numerous casualties and severely weakened much of the army,

particularly II Corps. Nevertheless, while all three cited Edmonds’ descriptions of British

field works, none drew the connection between the offensive, shortage of time, and poor

quality trench systems.26 Sir John French and, to a lesser extent, his Sub Chief of Staff Sir

Henry Wilson were ultimately responsible for British units having so little time to dig

earthworks. Both continued to endorse offensive operations in Flanders in spite of the

indications that passive defence promoted trench construction and field works development

on the Aisne. In other words, they failed to resolve the underlying contradiction in British

entrenchment theory. The General Staff acknowledged the importance of proper spade

work in “Tactical notes,” but GHQ did not deviate from the offensive ethos in Flanders,

causing the BEF to be caught with its field works unprepared for what amounted to be its

greatest challenge of 1914.

Occupying incomplete and hastily-constructed shelters when the Germans attacked,

infantry and engineers sought to improve defences in late October, but their efforts to do so

were frustrated in a number of ways. Many difficulties stemmed from the water-logged

Flanders soil. Engineers on the Aisne could simply drain water by cutting troughs at the

bottom of a trench, but owing to the flat topography in Flanders, gravity was more of a

hindrance than an ally as water tended to pool in any depressions or holes. Moreover,

beneath the topsoil was a thick layer of clay which prevented water from being absorbed

into the ground. It therefore tended to mix with the topsoil to produce a highly viscous

mud. This process affected trench construction in two ways. First, deep trenches were

susceptible to inundation since the water table in Flanders was relatively high due to the

clay substructure. Second, muddy sidewalls were liable to collapse both under their own

weight and when exposed to the forces produced by exploding shells. Overall, terrain in

25 Military Operations 1914, vol. 2, 173. 26 Farrar-Hockey, Death of an Army, 83; Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 62; Gardner, Trial by Fire, 152-3.

62

Flanders was not favourable for the deep trenches called for in military engineering

manuals or dug on the Aisne. Trenches instead had to be shallow unless constructed atop

some of the sparse high ground where the water table was further beneath the surface.27

Because “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position” gave tactical officers

no indication of how to modify their trenches to compensate for the high water table,

battalions encountered considerable difficulty digging and maintaining subterranean shelter

in Flanders. As both sides began to entrench, throw up barricades and breastworks, and

otherwise modify the landscape on which they fought, they obstructed natural drainage

channels which proceeded to flood sections of the battlefield. The area behind II Corps’

second line was so wet as to resemble a “bog.”28 Though rain was relatively sparse in

October compared to the late autumn and winter, showers in the night of 25/26 October

troubled soldiers in the trenches.29 Captain James C. Dunn, a medical officer in the 2/Royal

Welch Fusiliers, recalled undercut recesses collapsing and whole sections of trench falling

away when high-explosive shells landed nearby.30 Further north in the 2nd Division,

Jeffreys of the 2/Grenadier Guards complained in his diary on the 26th that the rain-soaked

ground frustrated his men as they sought to improve the trenches they had dug the previous

day.31 In addition to making trenches shallow, then, the high water table and wet soil

encumbered the growth of field fortifications by forcing men to spend their time shoring up

and repairing crumbling fire trenches instead of digging new support shelters or

communications trenches. Attempts to equip positions with better shelter often failed to

materialize. Dugouts, in particular, were difficult to build in the Flanders soil. The 11th

Field Company in the 2nd Division, for instance, completed a dugout around 03:00 on 31

October, only to have it collapse as the men were on their way to billets for the night.32

The army’s first instinct was to shore up trench walls to prevent them from

collapsing, but this solution required large quantities of sandbags which were in desperately

short supply. Each battalion contained a peacetime allotment of only thirty, and although

Royal Engineer field companies left for Europe in August with 852 apiece, construction

27 Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 42-3; Farrar-Hockley, Death of an Army, 174-5; Johnson, Battlefields of the World War¸9-25; Military Operations 1914, vol. 2, 89, 173, 264. 28 II Corps to 5th Division, 24 October 1914, 5th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1510. 29 See Johnson, Battlefields of the World War, 9-25. 30 Dunn (ed.), The War the Infantry Knew, 83. 31 Diary of George Jeffreys, 26 October 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 117. 32 Ms Diary of W.H. Long, 31 October 1914, IWM: Long Papers.

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projects at Mons and on the Aisne had diminished their supply.33 In fact, the 23rd Field

Company reported to the 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers on 23 October that it

was already experiencing shortages.34 Even though two million additional sandbags arrived

in Flanders on the 28th, field companies did not begin using them for defensive works in

time for the attacks of 29-31 October.35 The earliest indication of these new sandbags going

to front-line infantry units came from the war diary of the 4th Division Commander Royal

Engineers, which noted that the division had received 1,400 sandbags on 30 October.36 In

the 1st Division, the next mention of sandbags came on 4 November when the Commander

Royal Engineers instructed its two field companies to deliver “liberal” quantities to the

infantry battalions.37 Improved supply of sandbags in early November was sufficient to

shore up positions for the remainder of the Flanders battle, but in the long term was only a

temporary solution. Beginning in late November and lasting for the duration of the winter,

the BEF’s most visible and persistent enemy in Flanders was the mud, whose damage to

trenches engineers could only temper with wooden duckboards and revetments.

In addition to terrain, enemy pressure hampered field fortification development in

two ways. First, enemy shell fire and sniping made it dangerous for infantrymen to dig

freely. For instance, the 6th Division reported that in many places troops in the 18th

Brigade could do no work during the day on 25 October owing to “heavy” shell fire.38

Daytime shelling meant that infantry and engineers preferred to dig and lay wire at night.

Snipers, however, aided by the cover of darkness, were most active after nightfall. Even at

night, then, infantrymen risked being hit if they exposed themselves. Captain G.H. Davies

of the 19th Brigade wrote that in spite of his best efforts to encourage the men to “dig like

hell,” the threat of being hit by enemy snipers deterred them from standing up to do so.39

Second, full-scale infantry attacks could set back defence construction by forcing units to

evacuate their trenches and start from scratch. The 16th Brigade, for example, first came

under enemy attack on 20 October. The 1/Buffs occupied the front-line positions while the

33 Farrar-Hockley, Death of an Army, 107. 34 23rd Field Company to 1 Division Commander Royal Engineers, 23 October 1914, Appendices 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 35 Farrar-Hockley, Death of an Army, 107. 36 4th Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, 30 October 1914, WO 95/1463. 37 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers to 23rd and 26th Field Companies, 4 November 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 38 “Narrative of events, Oct. 18th – Oct. 25th,” 6th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1581. 39 Quoted in Dunn (ed.), The War the Infantry Knew, 82.

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brigade’s remaining three battalions had withdrawn slightly in the morning to begin

working on a second trench line.40 Around 23:00, German infantry pierced the 18th

Brigade’s lines on the Buffs’ left. In order to avoid being enfiladed or attacked from the

rear, the battalion withdrew to the secondary position, consequently turning the 16th

Brigade’s support trenches into firing trenches. The brigade spent 21 and 22 October

attempting to shore up this new line, but when German infantry renewed their attacks on

the 23rd, the fire trenches were not continuous or equipped with covered communications

linking the front lines to support areas. A 6th Division after-action report argued that the

16th Brigade simply had “no time” to develop its defences any further.41

Continuous enemy pressure and heavy fighting exhausted infantry in all formations

and detracted from troops’ capacity to dig. Smith-Dorrien observed on 22 October that the

men of the 5th Division appeared “quite worn out” from incessant fighting, a sentiment

echoed in the division’s war diary. As a consequence of the formation’s fatigue, when it

withdrew with the rest of II Corps on the night of 22/23 October to find its new trenches

“very little prepared,” the men were “too exhausted to do much work” improving them.42

An anonymous second lieutenant in the 1/Loyal North Lancashire Regiment recorded in his

diary for the 30th that digging trenches after a day of heavy fighting was “too much for us,

for by this time we are dead beat. After I had dug down a couple of feet I gave it up, and

told the men to do the same. We had to reserve some strength for now.”43 Heavy fighting

therefore presented the second lieutenant with the difficult choice of either exhausting

himself and his subordinates with digging better trenches, or allowing them to recuperate

some energy to fend off future German attacks. Choosing the latter gave the men valuable

rest, but only at the expense of shelter.

Tool shortages continued to affect some battalions. However, because Royal

Engineer field companies advanced with the infantry during the offensive and were not

occupied with other construction projects as they had been on the Aisne, tools were more

accessible to infantry in Flanders. For example, the 9th Field Company reported that during

40 16th Brigade War Diary, 18-20 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1605. 41 “Narrative of events, Oct. 18th – Oct. 25th,” 6th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1581. 42 Ts Diary of Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, 22 October 1914, TNA: CAB 45/206; 5th Division War Diary, 22-23 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1510. 43 Diary of an anonymous second lieutenant, 30 October 1914, 1/Loyal North Lancashire Regiment War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1270.

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the evening of 13 October it lent tools to infantry in the 4th Division, which were returned

the next morning before the advance resumed.44 That field companies were attached to

combat units during the advance in Flanders indicates that the tool shortages between 14

and 17 September on the Aisne had impressed upon division-level infantry and Royal

Engineer officers the advantages of having engineers at the front lines from the outset.

Even so, by the time of the Flanders battles they had not completely solved the problem of

supply, and tools remained at a premium for some infantry units. When the 1/Somerset

Light Infantry took over positions from the 4th Dragoon Guards and 19th Hussars on 21

October, it reportedly did not have enough tools to turn what one observer termed “badly

made pits” offering “no protection from shell fire” into proper trenches.45 In the north, the

anonymous second lieutenant of the Loyal North Lancashires wrote on 28 October that

digging trenches west of the Ypres-Menin road proved “a very difficult job” since tools

were “scarce.”46 These and similar instances aside, reports of tool shortages in unit war

diaries and official communications, particularly those between infantry brigades and Royal

Engineer field companies, were far fewer in number in late October than in mid-September.

As a consequence of the army’s offensives and the problems arising from difficult

terrain, constant enemy pressure, exhaustion, and to a lesser extent tool shortages, shelter

was chronically inadequate to protect defenders from the effects of heavy shell fire in late

October. Hastily-constructed trenches in many cases did not survive high explosive shell

fire. On 26 October, for instance, German artillery blew in a number of the 3rd Division’s

trenches. Originally constructed as part of Smith-Dorrien’s new defensive line on 21-22

October, this position lacked shell-proof dugouts. Defending battalions therefore suffered

“severely” in their firing trenches and had to retire, forfeiting the village of Neuve

Chappelle to German infantry.47 In addition, the absence of communications trenches made

movement between front and rear areas extremely hazardous. The commander of the

2/Grenadier Guards remarked in a note to his regimental adjutant on 28 October that the

44 “Report of Work done by No. 2 and No. 3 Sections on night 13th/14th Oct.,” 4th Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1463. 45 Anonymous 1/Somerset Light Infantry Ts Diary, 21 October 1914, IWM: misc. 230, item 3279. 46 Diary of an anonymous second lieutenant, 28 October 1914, 1/Loyal North Lancashires War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1270. 47 “Report on Operations of the 3rd Division from 11th to 30th October 1914,” 3rd Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1375.

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battalion had lost many orderlies tasked with sending messages to the front lines.48 Captain

Dunn claimed that the “want of communications trenches” in the 2/Royal Welch Fusiliers’

positions were the cause of “many casualties.” Without communications trenches, troops

reinforcing firing trenches from support positions during enemy attacks had to cross over

open ground and expose themselves to enemy sniper and artillery fire.49

Although the expeditionary force as a whole suffered casualties as a result of

deficient shelter, IV Corps encountered additional problems when its battalions entrenched

forward slopes. Rawlinson’s formations, particularly the 7th Division, had a reputation for

elitism within the British army since the majority of its battalions were drawn from

overseas garrison duty. However, the 7th Division and the other element of IV Corps, the

3rd Cavalry Division, only arrived in Europe on 6-8 October and had no first-hand combat

experience on the Western Front. On 18 October the 7th Division received orders to

advance on Menin, but Rawlinson, having learned of large enemy formations east of his

objective, decided to postpone the attack.50 Wheeling toward the southeast to face Menin,

the 7th Division found itself in possession of the northern portion of Messines-

Passchendaele Ridge. As the predominant topographical feature of the area, it afforded a

vital advantage in observation to the army which possessed it.51 Upon occupying the ridge,

the 7th Division’s brigades followed the siting recommendations in Field Service

Regulations 1909 and Infantry Training 1914 and entrenched the forward slope to solidify

their hold of the tactically important high ground. The 3rd Cavalry Division likewise dug

its trenches on the forward slope in positions to the right of the 20th Brigade three days

later. Although IV Corps had captured and fortified some of the sparse high ground on the

Flanders battlefield, its battalions unwittingly placed themselves in a dangerously exposed

position in the direct line-of-sight of Germany gunners.52

48 Wilfred A. Smith to 2/Grenadier Guards’ regimental adjutant, 28 October 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 119. 49 Dunn (ed.), The War the Infantry Knew, 83. 50 Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 58-61; Gardner, Trial by Fire, 146-7. 51 Johnson, Battlefields of the World War, 39. 52 20th Brigade War Diary, 18 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1650/1; 21st Brigade War Diary, 18 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1685; 3rd Cavalry Division War Diary, 16-27 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1141; 3rd Cavalry Division to 3rd Cavalry Brigade, 27 October 1914, Appendices to 3rd Cavalry Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1142. A trench map dated 27 October shows the division’s trenches on forward slopes; Rawlinson to Capper, 22 October 1914, National Army Museum (NAM): Rawlinson Papers. In this message, Rawlinson informed General Thomas Capper, commander of the 7th Division, that the 22nd Brigade’s struggles on 22 October were in large part the consequence of it being entrenched on the forward slope.

67

German artillery battered IV Corps between 22 and 27 October, obliterating many

exposed trenches, inflicting heavy losses, and severely weakening lines of defence. The

22nd Brigade on the 7th Division’s left flank suffered heavily and could not hold its

positions against concerted shell fire on the 22nd. Brigadier-General R.M. Owens recalled

after the war that German artillery fired on the 1/Royal Welch Fusiliers at “point-blank

range,” blowing in their trenches and killing a number of soldiers as they climbed out of

their ruined shelters.53 With the Welch Fusiliers’ trenches “wholly annihilated” and

casualties in the battalion approaching 750 officers and men, almost three-quarters of its

total strength, the 22nd Brigade began to withdraw in considerable disarray during the

afternoon.54 German artillery hit the 20th Brigade’s trenches near Kruiseke equally as hard

on 26 October. The brigade’s war diary recorded that enemy shells “repeatedly” blew in the

battalions’ trenches, “burying five or six men at a time, each man having to be dug out with

a shovel.” The brigade’s defences were so fragile that resistance collapsed when German

infantry attacked around 15:30. The 2/Scots Guards, which occupied the front-line trenches

during the bombardment, were surrounded and nearly destroyed. The 20th Brigade retired

from its positions on the ridge in the late afternoon and regrouped further to the rear during

the evening, its casualties for the day being around 2,000 or about fifty per cent of the

entire unit.55

Officers in the 3rd Cavalry and 7th Divisions appear to have been largely ignorant

of both the dangers of entrenching forward slopes and the advantages of siting fire trenches

behind the crests of a hill. The 20th Brigade’s war diary listed the length of the brigade’s

line, an exposed salient near Zandvoorde, and nearby wooded patches as “serious defects”

with the position entrenched on 18 October, but it made no mention of forward slopes.56

The 21st Brigade boasted that its forward slope position was “quite good” with respect to

its field of fire. It was thus unaware that, as brigadiers had learned first-hand on the Aisne,

acquiring deep fields of fire was not the primary consideration governing the siting of a

position and that they in fact needed to be sacrificed for better concealment from enemy

53 “Questions asked of Brig.-General R.M. Owens, C.M.G., as to doings of 1st Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment at YPRES in October and Nov. 1914. Together with Brig.-General Owen’s Replies,” TNA: CAB 45/141. 54 Hamilton, The First Seven Divisions, 178; Gardner, Trial by Fire, 157. 55 20th Brigade War Diary, 26 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1680. 56 20th Brigade War Diary, 18 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1680.

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guns.57 The 3rd Cavalry Division’s war diary noted with apparent astonishment on 27

October, “It would seem that trenches must be on reverse slopes – field of fire giving way

to protection against hostile shell fire.” Accompanying this statement was a sketch of a hill

with the forward and reverse slopes labelled as “wrong position” and “right position,”

respectively.58 Officers in other formations scrutinized IV Corps’ comparative

inexperience. Following the withdrawal and virtual destruction of the 2/Scots Guards on the

26th, Major Bernard Gordon-Lennox of the 2/Grenadier Guards commented, “Can’t make

out why every Battalion [sic] doesn’t dig itself in properly. If they did they might never be

turned out of their trenches like some of them have been lately.”59 Whether Gordon-Lennox

was referring to its forward slope sites or some other deficiency is unclear. Regardless, that

he criticized the 20th Brigade’s digging skills implies a considerable gap in knowledge

between I and IV Corps.

Rawlinson was responsible for his brigades’ difficulties on Messines-Passchendaele

Ridge since he neglected to disseminate the lessons of the Aisne and communicate the

importance of concealing trenches. Following the 22nd Brigade’s retreat on 22 October,

Rawlinson blamed its commander, General S.T.B. Lawford, for the unit’s inability to hold

its positions on the ridge. In a letter to the 7th Division commander, General Thomas

Capper, Rawlinson stated that the brigade’s heavy losses “were largely due to the bad siting

of the trenches” and that “[Lawford] alone must be held responsible for this.”60 As Gardner

pointed out, choosing trench sites was not the responsibility of formation commanders like

Rawlinson or Capper.61 However, since IV Corps assembled in Flanders in early October,

“Tactical notes” and “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position” may not have

made their way into the hands of tactical officers in the 3rd Cavalry and 7th Cavalry

Divisions. In fact, neither of these memoranda appears in the war diaries of IV Corps or

either of its subordinate formations.62 Thus, Rawlinson had an obligation to ensure that his

brigadiers were aware of new methods. That he recognized forward slopes as the source of

57 21st Brigade War Diary, 18 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1685. 58 3rd Cavalry Division War Diary, 27 October 1914, TNA: WO 95/1141. 59 Diary of Bernard Gordon-Lennox, 26 October 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 117. 60 Rawlinson to Capper, 22 October 1914, NAM: Rawlinson Papers. 61 Gardner, Trial by Fire, 158-9. 62 See IV Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/706; 7th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1627; Appendices to 7th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1634; 3rd Cavalry Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1141; Appendices to 3rd Cavalry Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1142.

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the 22nd Brigade’s problems in his letter to Capper indicates that he was very much aware

of their hazards. Indeed, Rawlinson witnessed first-hand how trenches were being

constructed on the Aisne when he temporarily filled in for the injured General Thomas

Snow as the commander of the 4th Division on 23 September.63 Having plausibly not seen

GHQ’s memoranda and received no information from their superiors indicating that

entrenchment methods had changed, Lawford and his counterparts in the 20th and 21st

Brigades abided by prewar siting regulations. To the best of their knowledge, they had

correctly sited their defences. Sir John French acknowledged that Rawlinson was at least

partially responsible for his corps’ troubles when dissolved IV Corps and pulled the 3rd

Cavalry and 7th Divisions from his command on 27 October.64

Given its difficulties establishing defences of sufficient strength to adequately

shelter infantry from shell fire, why did the BEF’s lines not buckle and collapse under

heavy German pressure in late October? First, Falkenhayn never concentrated his attacks

on a single axis and instead chose to pressure the Entente defenders along the entire line.

Thus, he did not achieve a sufficient numerical superiority to exploit breakthroughs and

transform tactical gains into operational results. Second, German attack tactics had not

solved the problem of crossing the fire-swept zone between opposing trench lines.

Problems of communication between infantry and artillery, difficulties locating enemy guns

for counter-battery fire, growing shell shortages, and the continued preference of close-

order infantry attacks ensured heavy casualties during attacks in October and early

November.65 Third, Britain’s French allies reduced the BEF’s responsibilities by relieving I

Corps and the 7th Division near Langemark on 25 October, and plugging holes with its

cavalry in the south between II and III Corps.66 Fourth, Haig’s effective use of the 2nd

Brigade as a mobile reserve shored up weak points in the line and relieved pressure on units

adjacent to breakthrough points on 29-31 October.67 Lastly, the marksmanship skills, rapid-

63 Ts Diary of Sir Henry Rawlinson, 21 September 1914, NAM: Rawlinson Papers; Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 57; Wilson and Prior, Command on the Western Front, 11. 64 General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Cavalry Corps and Haig’s I Corps took control of the 3rd Cavalry and 7th Divisions, respectively. 65 Bruce Gundmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics: Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918 (New York: Praeger, 1989), 4-7, 10-13. 66 Terraine, The First World War, 45. 67 Gardner, Trial by Fire, 222-4.

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fire training, and generally good morale of volunteer British infantrymen ensured that the

BEF’s resistance was stubborn and costly for the attacker.68

As German attacks subsided after 31 October and a period of relative calm ensued

for the first ten days of November, French and GHQ, tempered by the heavy casualties and

desperate fighting of late October, wisely adopted a defensive attitude and so afforded

infantry and engineering units their first real opportunity to focus on improving field works.

In I Corps, the formation against which the German Guards Division would concentrate its

attacks on 11 November, Royal Engineers’ first priority was to lay barbed wire

entanglements. One engineer in the 11th Field Company wrote in his diary that he did little

else between 3 and 8 November other than lay wire in front of the trenches near

Zillabeke.69 The 23rd Field Company’s war diary noted that the unit wired the 1st

Brigade’s positions for five of the first six days of November.70 Wire also appears to have

been in adequate supply. While I Corps was advancing from 19-21 and 25-28 October the

23rd and 26th Field Companies regularly complained to the 1st Division Commander

Royal Engineers about a shortage of wire at the front. Shortages during these periods

stemmed largely from confusion. On the 25th, for instance, the 26th Field Company

reported that it had taken more wire than it could carry, even though the 23rd Field

Company was experiencing shortages. The former had to return the surplus to 1st Division

headquarters before the latter could retrieve it, thereby adding an additional step to the

supply process.71 Reports of wire shortages ceased once I Corps’ front had begun to

stabilize after 31 October. In fact, the 26th Field Company had enough wire to erect

entanglements in Polygon Wood behind the 1st Brigade’s front-line positions.72

With two million new sandbags in Flanders as of the 28th and more time to spend

digging cover trenches and dugouts, the BEF’s field defence systems in early November

began to compare in complexity to those constructed on the Aisne, but they nevertheless

remained incomplete by 10-11 November. The 26th Field Company reported to the 1st

68 Terraine, The First World War, 42; “Questions asked of Brig.-General R.M. Owens, C.M.G., as to doings of 1st Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment at YPRES in October and Nov. 1914. Together with Brig.-General Owen’s Replies,” TNA: CAB 45/141. 69 Ms Diary of W.H. Long, 3-8 November 1914, IWM: Long Papers. 70 23rd Field Company War Diary, 1-7 November 1914, TNA: WO 95/1252. 71 26th Field Company to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers, 25 October 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 72 26th Field Company to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers, 1 November 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244.

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Division Commander Royal Engineers on 6 November that it had nearly completed digging

for the 1/South Wales Borderers “17-man shelter pits” linked to the battalion’s fire trenches

with 80 foot (25 metre) long, zigzagged communications trenches.73 Owing to increased

supplies of sandbags, dugouts also began to appear in greater number in November. Troops

in the 2/Grenadier Guards, for example, completed work on “quite good” splinter-proof

dugouts with overhead cover for battalion headquarters on the 2nd. Gordon-Lennox even

wrote that the when the battalion rotated out of the front lines of the 4th, it went into

dugouts.74 The 23rd Field Company constructed two dugouts for the staffs of the 1st and

6th Cavalry Brigades on 5 and 6 November, respectively.75 The full field defence system

necessary to adequately shelter troops and promote the safe movement of infantrymen

between cover and firing trenches therefore began to emerge. However, heavy German

shelling on 10 November in preparation for the assault of the Guards Division on the 11th

still caused significant damage. Captain E.J. Pike of the 2/Grenadier Guards recalled that

enemy gunners had ranged the battalion’s line “pretty well” and “there were a few direct

hits” which resulted in heavy casualties. Another officer noted that trenches on the

battalion’s right were “destroyed” and that the unit lost “a lot of men.”76 In spite of their

best efforts in early November, then, the Grenadiers were unable to completely make up for

lost time caused by Sir John French’s offensives and the heavy fighting thereafter in late

October.

The BEF, particularly Haig’s I Corps, also began adapting to the intense nature of

the fighting in Flanders by adding a degree of depth to defences in the form of redoubts.

The primary lesson of late October was that some form of elasticity was necessary to repel

tactical breakthroughs and prevent enemy infantry from exploiting gaps in defensive lines.

In cases where German troops broke through a position, usually the result of the troops

evacuating their trenches on account of heavy shell fire, men situated adjacent to the breach

would be at risk of being enfiladed. On 22 October, for instance, the retreat of the 22nd

Brigade left the 2/Wiltshire Regiment on its right in a “very precarious” position with its

73 26th Field Company to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers, 6 November 1914, TNA: WO 95/1244. 74 Diary of George Jeffreys, 2 November 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 127; Diary of Bernard Gordon-Lennox, 4 November 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 128. 75 Ms Diary of W.H. Long, 2-3 November 1914, IWM: Long Papers; 23rd Field Company War Diary, 5-6 November 1914, TNA: WO 95/1252. 76 Diaries of E. Pike and E. Ridley, 10 November 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 134-5.

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left flank completely “in the air.”77 Worst case scenario, German troops could exploit a

breach and surround adjoining troops. In the 1st Brigade on 29 October, a “very heavy”

shell fire opened a gap beside the 1/Scots Guards near Gheluvelt. German troops broke

through, made their way behind the battalion, and struck the stunned defenders from

behind.78 In late October, launching counter-attacks to recapture lost positions was the

preferred method of combating tactical breakthroughs. The 2/Worcestershire Regiment’s

counter-attack and recapture of Gheluvelt on 31 October, for example, helped close the gap

between the 1st and 7th Divisions and prevented large-scale withdrawals on either side of

the Menin road.79Alternatively, withdrawing adjacent units to new lines of defence

conceded ground and forced troops to dig fresh trenches. Counter-attacks were costly and

not always easy to initiate, however, particularly if a position lacked adequate supports or

withdrawing troops had no place to rally behind the front lines.

Haig quickly recognized that redoubts placed 100 to 150 yards (about 90 to 135

metres) behind the front lines were the solution to repairing breaches and on 3 November

he ordered his chief engineer, Colonel S.R. Rice, to oversee their construction in the 1st and

2nd Divisions.80 The redoubts constructed by I Corps in November, and later by the entire

BEF in the winter of 1914/15, were referred to as “strong points” by contemporaries, but

their designs closely resembled those described in prewar military engineering manuals.

One strong point constructed for the 1/Black Watch comprised a traversed trench dug

around a rectangular garden. The entire enclosure was screened with barbed wire. Dubbed

Black Watch Corner by its garrison, this strong point differed from a proper redoubt only in

that it lacked internal shelters, likely because it was constructed in a relatively short period

of time. Indeed, Royal Engineers reportedly completed Black Watch Corner only one hour

before the Germans attacked in the morning of 11 November. Besides the absence of

additional shelters for infantry, Black Watch Corner was, like a prewar redoubt, constructed

behind the battalion’s front line trenches for the purpose of engaging enemy troops who

77 “Information from COL. FORBES, 2nd Wiltshire Regt. about operations Oct. 1914,” CAB 45/140. 78 “Statement made by R.H. FITZ-ROY, Lieutenant, 1/Scots Guards: Captured at Gheluvelt, Belgium, 29.10.14,” TNA: CAB 45/140. 79 Gardner, Trial by Fire, 222. 80 Ts Diary of Sir Douglas Haig, 3 November 1914, TNA: WO 256/2; 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers to 1st Brigade, 3 November 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244.

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had broken through, and to act as a point from which defenders could launch counter-

attacks on lost positions.81

The strong points in I Corps proved highly effective at wearing down German

infantry as they broke through the first-line trenches in front of Nonne Bosschen and

Polygon Woods on 11 November. According to one senior staff officer, strong points “were

the saving of the day. The [German] attackers blundered on them after they had broken

through our line, and were taken in enfilade and broken up and driven into woods and

hollows for shelter. They were a lesson in defensive tactics for all time.”82 When about 900

men of the German 1st and 3rd Foot Guards Regiments broke through the 1st Brigade’s

firing trenches, retiring British troops and supports rallied to form a new defensive line

centered on Black Watch Corner and a strong point held by the 1/Scots Guards. In the case

of the former, Captain Andrew Thorne recalled that enemy troops did not see Black Watch

Corner until they had past it, at which point the garrison of some forty riflemen “did

considerable execution by firing into their backs” as they entered Nonne Bosschen Wood.83

A lieutenant in the 1/Northamptonshire Regiment told Edmonds after the war that “scarcely

one of the Germans” who broke through the 1st Brigade’s lines on 11 November “ever got

back.”84 Haig’s I Corps, reduced to one quarter of its full strength as a consequence of

continuous and heavy fighting since 22 October, had almost no reserves to follow up on its

success behind the 1st Brigade’s lines, however, and the German Guards Division retained

possession of some British trenches north of Polygon Wood. Nevertheless, strong points

served their primary purpose of blunting the German breakthrough on 11 November by

limiting the size of the breach and preventing large-scale withdrawals in adjacent sections

of the line.85

81 Military Operations 1914, vol. 2, 426-7; War Office, General Staff, Notes from the Front Part III and Further Notes on Field Defences (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, February 1915), 55. See Appendix D, figures 2 and 3 for diagrams of strong points. 82 Quoted in Military Operations 1914, vol. 2, 426. Edmonds did not provide the name of the speaker. See Chapter 1 for a description of redoubts. 83 “Account of the attack by the Prussian Guard on November 11th, as given by Captain Thorne, Staff Captain, 1st Brigade,” TNA: CAB 45/141; Military Operations 1914, vol. 2, 426; Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 169. 84 “Account of the fighting on November 11th as related by Lieutenant Farrar who took command of the Northamptons after the C.O. and 2nd in command had been killed,” TNA: CAB 45/141. 85 Gardner, Trial by Fire, 226. Gardner gave the strength of the 3rd Cavalry, the 1st, 2nd, and 7th Divisions, and the reinforcements from II Corps as 16,000 on 6 November. A full-strength infantry division comprised some 12,000 infantry; Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 32.

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Historians have generally overlooked both the tactical importance of strong points

and Haig’s role in their development and application. Edmonds viewed the redoubts of

1914 as rudimentary and unremarkable relative to the larger British redoubts or the

Germans’ concrete pillboxes that emerged on the Western Front in 1916-7. In fact, he only

acknowledged their defensive value in a footnote.86 Like the field fortifications on the

Aisne, Edmonds assessed the first redoubts not as an important adaptation to the conditions

of the First World War, but rather as early progenitors of more sophisticated structures.

Later historians similarly glossed over redoubts in their analyses of the first Ypres battle.

Farrar-Hockley confused I Corps’ redoubts with dugouts reinforced with overhead cover,

and Beckett simply cited Edmonds, indicating that I Corps had in fact constructed some

around Nonne Bosschen and Polygon Woods.87 Haig and his staff at I Corps deserve some

credit for adapting to combat in Flanders with their successful application of redoubts.

Because enemy pressure on the Aisne was at no point substantial enough to warrant the

construction of redoubts as appendages to existing defences, they did not appear until the

heavy fighting in Flanders made them advantageous. Haig and Rice championed strong

points and their potential to combat enemy breakthroughs, making Haig the first formation

commander to instigate their widespread and organized construction. Edmonds credited

neither Haig nor Rice in the official history. As evidenced in a letter to Edmonds after the

war, Rice viewed redoubts as an important Royal Engineer accomplishment.88 Indeed, that

he and Haig so eagerly endorsed them and ensured their prompt and timely construction in

early November indicates that they were among the first senior officers to find a workable

solution to the tactical challenges of the Flanders battle.

The BEF’s problems in late October were a temporary interruption in the

development of its field fortification abilities early in the First World War. The offensive

ethos combined with Sir John French’s optimism put the army in a position of disadvantage

from which it could not recover when infantry and engineers encountered problems digging

in wet soil under constant enemy pressure. Furthermore, as evidenced by Rawlinson’s

failure to inform his tactical officers about the dangers of forward slopes, dissemination of

improved methods to inexperienced formations remained incomplete. Nevertheless, a

86 Military Operations 1914, vol. 2, 426. 87 Farrar-Hockley, Death of an Army, 175; Beckett, Ypres: The First Battle, 1914, 169. 88 S.R. Rice to Edmonds, 6 November 1922, TNA: CAB 45/141.

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return to the defensive combined with I Corp’s application of strong points in early

November meant that the BEF had largely corrected its earlier mistakes and advanced its

knowledge on how to construct robust field fortification systems. In this way, the failures

of the Flanders battles were the source of new lessons. Fighting continued until 22

November but Falkenhayn’s failure to break through the Allied lines with the Guards

Division signalled the effective end of the First Battle of Ypres. With the line now

stabilized across the entire Western Front, the BEF had ample opportunity to improve its

field fortifications, confront new dangers in the form of aerial observation and German

trench mortars, and develop ways of adapting positions to the water-logged terrain of the

Flanders plain. Furthermore, the arrival of new formations in early 1915, namely the three

divisions of General Herbert Plumer’s V Corps, meant that the General Staff had to diffuse

the lessons of the Aisne and Flanders to a growing number of “green” officers.

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Chapter 4

Consolidation and the Test of Second Ypres

The bloody battles that produced the static Western Front thoroughly exhausted all

of the participants, and the winter of 1914/15 was a period of relative calm in which both

sides recuperated and reinforced their depleted ranks. The BEF, organized into two armies

in late December, fought only one major engagement, a First Army offensive at Neuve

Chappelle in March 1915, before the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres on 22 April.1

The stabilization of the front afforded the army the opportunity to absorb the lessons of La

Bassée and First Ypres, consolidate and improve its defensive positions, and respond to the

new threats of trench warfare in Flanders. The General Staff simultaneously adapted the

most current methods into existing thought with a series of new tactical pamphlets. The

27th and 28th Divisions, the last two regular army formations, and the 1st Canadian

Division, organized as V Corps under the command of General Sir Herbert Plumber,

arrived in Flanders in February 1915 and bore the brunt of renewed German offensives.

Second Ypres therefore serves to illustrate both the durability of improved British field

fortification theory and how well the army disseminated the lessons of 1914. Introduced to

the most current methods during field training before taking over their own sections of the

line, these newly-arrived divisions performed reasonably well despite engineers siting some

trenches on the forward slopes of Frezenberg Ridge in early May. In short, the progress

made during the winter and the largely successful transmission of new techniques to V

Corps prior to Second Ypres indicates that the failures of late October were indeed a

temporary setback in an otherwise continuous process of adaptation and improved training

in 1914-15.

Development of field defences during the winter was far more coordinated than it

had been in September or October. On the Aisne, the quality of works and the number of

1 First and Second Armies were commanded by Haig and Smith-Dorrien, respectively. Historians commonly use the term British Army rather than British Expeditionary Force after the re-organization of the four British corps and the Indian Corps into two armies. For stylistic purposes and because only one additional corps (V Corps) arrived during the period covered in this chapter, the two terms are used interchangeably.

77

communications trenches, dugouts, and barbed wire entanglements varied considerably

between battalions. Officers above the brigade level of command had little to do with their

construction. Conversely, beginning in late November the corps took more interest in

ensuring satisfactory quality and played a greater role in the design and growth of trench

networks. For example, the reconstituted IV Corps, commanded by Rawlinson, issued a

memorandum on 24 November instructing its divisions on how to plan their defences.2

Haig went further and held a conference with the senior staffs of the 1st and 2nd Divisions

on 24 December in large part to discuss the state of field works in I Corps and to determine

how best to improve them.3 Smith-Dorrien took a more direct approach. After having

provided his divisions with instructions in late November, he followed up with a tour of the

trenches on 24 December to see their progress first-hand. He found them lacking in a

number of respects and drafted a memorandum to his unit and formation commanders

detailing the necessary improvements.4 These efforts differed from “Tactical notes” and

“Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position” in that they were designed to produce

specific results rather than merely familiarize officers with new methods and techniques.

For this reason, the nature of field defence development during the winter differed from the

Aisne in that corps commanders clearly defined what they expected their infantry and

engineers to accomplish. This new “hands-on” approach further ensured that officers

responsible for overseeing construction projects were informed of the most current

entrenchment and fortification methods.

The most obvious lesson of La Bassée and First Ypres was that hastily-constructed

shelters were insufficient to protect troops from heavy shell fire and that withdrawing them

from the front lines during periods of heavy bombardment was the best method of reducing

casualties. This concept was not new, but the frequency with which German artillery

destroyed British trenches during the Flanders battles underscored its growing importance.

In addition, bombardments were so regular and so continuous that officers recognized their

cessation invariably meant an infantry attack. Holding troops in better-sheltered support

positions with revetted or sandbagged recesses and then rushing them forward when

2 Memorandum regarding entrenched positions, 24 November 1914, IV Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/706. 3 I Corps to 1st and 2nd Divisions, 23 December, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1217. 4 Memorandum from II Corps to 3rd and 5th Divisions, 25 December 1914, Appendices to II Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1630; Memorandum from II Corps to commanders of divisions, brigades, and battalions, 27 December 1914, Appendices to II Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/630.

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artillery fire terminated could both prevent casualties from exploding shell and fill the front

line with rifles during infantry attacks.5 Doing so required good cover and communications

trenches, a point which senior officers emphasized. Smith-Dorrien instructed his divisions

on 27 November to link their firing trenches to supports and reserves with communications

trenches in order to facilitate the safe and speedy reinforcement of the front line. He later

found during his inspections that his corps had neither enough communications nor cover

trenches and stressed to his commanders the need to construct more.6 Haig reinforced the

importance of abundant communications trenches in his 24 December conference. “Every

effort,” he remarked, “should be made to construct communications trenches so that men

can be moved back if shelling is heavy.”7

The other principal lesson of the Flanders battles was that strong points constructed

100 to 150 yards (about 90 to 135 metres) behind the front line were tremendously effective

at blunting tactical breakthroughs and repairing breaches in the line. In an amended version

of “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position” drafted for the 1st Division,

Colonel H.S. Jeudwine argued that “It was largely due to the resistance made by [strong

points on 11 November] that the enemy’s formations were broken, his further advance

stayed, and our line ultimately re-established with little loss of ground.”8 The principal

difference between a proper prewar redoubt and the strong points constructed in Flanders

continued to be the absence of internal shelters in the latter.9 Designs varied between

formations and depended largely on the nature of the terrain and the size of the garrison,

but all strong points shared two common characteristics. First, a strong point was either

completely enclosed or screened on three sides with barbed wire so that enemy troops

could not rush the defenders with the bayonet. Second, strong points needed to be laid out

so as to maximize their capacity to enfilade attacking infantry. Hexagonal or octagonal

5 Amended version of “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position” prepared by Colonel H.S. Jeudwine, 1 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227; Memorandum regarding entrenched positions, 24 November 1914, IV Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/706. 6 Memorandum from II Corps to 3rd and 5th Divisions, 25 December 1914, Appendices to II Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1630; Memorandum regarding entrenched positions, 24 November 1914, IV Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/706. 7 Notes from I Corps’ 24 December conference, I Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/589; See also “Notes on Trench Warfare,” 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227. 8 Amended version of “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position” prepared by Colonel H.S. Jeudwine, 1 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227. 9 1st Division to I Corps, 5 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227. See Appendix D, figures 2 and 3 for diagrams of strong points.

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designs were preferred because numerous sides allowed more rifles to bear on approaching

troops at one point.10 Although I Corps was the first to apply strong points, by early 1915

they had appeared in all formations. Engineers in II and IV Corps, for example, finished

constructing strong points in early December and early January, respectively.11

Stabilization also gave the BEF the opportunity to apply proper machine-gun

emplacements on a large scale for the first time in the war. In spite of the static nature of

the Aisne battle, machine-gun emplacements resembling those described in the Manual of

Field Engineering never appeared, likely since German infantry pressure was not

substantial enough to warrant their construction. The 23rd Field Company reported on 28

September that it constructed a machine-gun “pit” on the left of the 1/Black Watch’s

trenches to enfilade any attacking infantry, but made no further notes about its capabilities

or design.12 At La Bassée and Ypres, infantry and engineers were preoccupied laying wire,

shoring up hastily-dug trench positions, and, in early November in I Corps, constructing

strong points. In contrast, the 2/Grenadier Guards in the 2nd Division and the 12th Field

Company in the 4th Division both constructed machine-gun emplacements by the end of

the second week of December.13 Designs of emplacements, like those of strong points,

were diverse. Sketches in the war diary of the 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers,

for example, closely resembled prewar designs in that the emplacement was an appendage

to a fire trench and equipped with head cover.14 On the other hand, a sketch sent from the

1st Division to I Corps differed in that the emplacement was entirely enclosed by trench

and linked to the firing line via a short communications trench.15 The primary purpose of

any emplacement was to give the machine gun a wide radius of fire so that gunners could

enfilade attacking troops. For this reason engineers typically constructed emplacements in

10 1st Division to I Corps, 5 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227; 2nd Division Commander Royal Engineers to 2nd Division, 5 December 1914, TNA: WO 95/1283; Amended version of “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position” prepared by Colonel H.S. Jeudwine, 1 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227. 11 14th Brigade to 5th Division, undated, 5th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1510; Rawlinson to Kitchener, 3 January 1915, IWM: Rawlinson Papers. 12 23rd Field Company to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers, 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 13 Lord Cavan to regimental lieutenant-colonel, 8 December 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 161; Ms Diary of F. Souton, 11 December 1914, IWM: Southon Papers. 14 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers to 1st Division, 4 December 1914, Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. See Appendix B, figures 1 and 2 for diagrams of prewar machine-gun emplacements. 15 1st Division to I Corps, 5 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227.

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front of fire trenches. Concealing them, either behind brushwork or in the natural folds of

the ground, was of paramount importance, so much so that one memorandum claimed that

as long as an emplacement was properly hidden, almost any design would be effective.16

Besides applying the most recent lessons of La Bassée and First Ypres and

enhancing field defences with machine-gun emplacements, the BEF encountered a number

of new challenges to which it had to adapt during the consolidation period in December and

January. One was enemy aerial observation. Concealing trenches from direct observation

on reverse slopes was, as the Aisne demonstrated, relatively straightforward and rather

effective. However, by late November both sides had begun frequently employing aircraft

to spot batteries and trench positions. The less subtle method of preventing aerial

observation was to shoot down enemy aircraft. Since aeroplanes were not usually equipped

with wireless radios at this early stage in the war, shooting them down would ensure that

precise positions remained unknown to the enemy.17 With field artillery pieces unable to

target aeroplanes, troops were encouraged to fire on them with their rifles. As one

memorandum from December testified, shooting down aircraft in this way was extremely

difficult. Troops’ inability to aim at fast-moving aeroplanes was considered the primary

cause.18 Furthermore, firing at an aeroplane and failing to disable it could potentially reveal

otherwise hidden trench positions to spotters.

The more effective method of combatting aerial observation was simply to disguise

defences so as to make them indiscernible from the surrounding terrain when viewed from

above. Overhead cover camouflaged with soil or brush was the preferred technique.

However, it mostly applied to dugouts and machine-gun emplacements.19 Fire trenches

were not equipped with overhead cover since it interfered with troops’ ability to freely aim

and fire their weapons.20 Infantry and engineers could do very little to effectively conceal

fire trenches from aerial observation and thus enemy gunners had a greater chance of

successfully ranging them than cover trenches or dugouts with overhead cover.

Conspicuously placed dummy trenches could confuse aerial observers and draw fire away

16 1st Division to I Corps, 5 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227. 17 Falls, The Great War, 1914-1918, 104-5; Holmes, Tommy, 371. 18 1st Division to I Corps, 23 December 1914, TNA: WO 95/1227. 19 1st Division to I Corps, 5 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227. The memorandum also recommended laying a blanket over the machine gun. 20 See Chapter 1.

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from real positions, but attempts to conceal trenches from aerial observation were

ultimately only partly successful. Hence, the army continued to rely on thinly garrisoning

the front line to ensure that potentially ranged positions did not suffer heavy casualties from

accurate artillery fire.21

Adapting defences to protect troops from German trench mortars, or Minenwerfer,

was another new challenge. Originally designed as a siege weapon, Minenwerfer proved

well suited to static trench warfare since they combined high-trajectory fire with better

mobility than a field howitzer, thereby allowing German infantry to push them forward into

positions where they could observe and accurately target enemy trenches. A German

Minenwerfer concealed in a sap close to British lines, for example, directly hit and

destroyed a section of the 2/Grenadier Guards’ trenches on 24 December.22 The BEF first

addressed the danger of trench mortars in late November. A memorandum titled

“Protection against Minen Werfer” described a net “stretched” over trenches at such an

angle that incoming bombs rebounded off them and fell a safe distance to the front. The

memorandum credited the idea to French engineers and there is no evidence to indicate that

Royal Engineers actually constructed any of these adjuncts. Besides such nets being highly

conspicuous, the chief problem was that they, like overhead cover, would have inhibited

riflemen from using their weapons.23 In December, Haig requested the 1st and 2nd

Divisions provide recommendations on how to defend against Minenwerfer. The latter

suggested constructing a system of advanced observation outposts from which troops could

attempt to detect hostile trench mortars before they opened fire. Outposts were not a new

concept. The Manual of Field Engineering described outposts as useful for forward

observation, and some battalions built them on the Aisne to warn defenders of impending

infantry attack and to help locate enemy artillery positions. Nevertheless, outposts were a

practical adaptation of prewar ideas to the new problem of trench mortars.24

21 1st Division to I Corps, 5 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227. 22 Diary of George Jeffreys, 24 December 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 166. Saps were short lengths of trench which extended out from a fire trench toward enemy lines. They served as sheltered approaches to hostile positions and were also used as launching points for trench raids. 23 “Protection against Minen Werfer,” Appendices to 1st Division Commander Royal Engineers War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1244. 24 1st Division to I Corps, 23 December 1914, TNA: WO 95/1227; 2nd Division to I Corps, 23 December 1914, TNA: WO 95/1283; Diary of George Jeffreys, 18 September 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 93; Manual of Field Engineering, 30.

82

The army’s biggest challenge in the winter was learning how to deal with water in

the trenches. Troops experienced some difficulty with water and mud during the first

Flanders battles, but heavy precipitation beginning in late November and continuing until

January transformed trenches into veritable quagmires. Maintaining them was extremely

difficult. By the end of November, “considerable lengths” of the 7th Division’s fire

trenches had fallen in where infantry had dug recesses.25 A late December report from the

4th Division to III Corps remarked that trench work was a “very difficult matter” and that

trenches left unattended for even a couple of days were liable to collapse.26 In addition,

movement through muddy and flooded trenches was slow and potentially hazardous. An

anonymous observer in the 4th Division’s 1/Somerset Light Infantry reported that the mud

was so thick that it took him “about an hour” to walk 200 yards (approximately 180

metres). The 2/Grenadier Guards also encountered difficulty moving in mud. Lieutenant-

Colonel Wilfred A. Smith related the plight of his battalion in a letter to his wife:

[The trenches] were so wet and muddy, you cannot approach them without being shot at, so all communications has to be by trenches, which are sodden and mostly under water. On our way [to the fire trenches], four men sank [into the mud] up to their hips. It took nearly four hours to dig them out and they all fainted several times from cold.27

The war diary of the 2/King’s Royal Rifle Corps similarly recorded on 31 December that

one man fainted from the cold after being stuck in mud for 1.5 hours.28 According to Major

George Jeffreys, movement was so difficult in the Grenadiers Guards’ new trenches that

when the Germans attacked with a Minenwerfer on 24 December, the result was a “general

scramble” in which two companies suffered losses because troops could not get to safety

owing to the depth of the water and the thickness of the mud.29

One solution to flooding was to adjust or modify defensive lines. General Thomas

Capper’s 7th Division, its trenches inundated in late November beyond the point of infantry

or engineers being able to recover them, requested IV Corps approve a withdrawal to new

positions on drier ground. Rawlinson complied, but adjusting the 7th Division’s lines

affected the right flank of the 6th Division and thus the whole junction between III and IV

25 7th Division War Diary, 29 November 1914, TNA: WO 95/1627. 26 4th Division to III Corps, 31 December 1914, III Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/688. 27 Wilfred R.A. Smith to his wife, 26 December 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 169. 28 2/King’s Royal Rifle Corps War Diary, 31 December 1914, TNA: WO 95/1272. 29 Diary of George Jeffreys, 24 December 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 166.

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Corps had to fall back.30 Further north, the 4th Division’s response to flooding was

considerably more innovative. According to General J.P. Du Cane, III Corps’ Chief of

Staff, water had rendered the division’s trenches “useless for the purpose for which they

[were] intended.” However, he concluded that the flat, muddy terrain of the Flanders plain

was not conducive to offensive action, and thus in his opinion the Germans would be

unable to develop a rapid attack. Rather than withdraw the 4th Division’s lines to new

positions on drier ground, Du Cane instructed the division to abandon its flooded trenches

and hold the front line with a series of disconnected outposts in the form of strong points or

fortified buildings. These outposts were to be arranged in two lines, with a third line of

reserves organized to the rear. Defence of this type, Du Cane claimed, would necessarily

“be distributed in some depth and would rely on the strength of defended posts and

localities and on counter-attack, rather than on holding a continuous trench line.” He

recognized the principal weakness of this system was an increased vulnerability to artillery

fire since strong points and redoubts were not intended to provide its garrisons with

extensive shelter.31 However, abandoning continuous trench lines in favour of outposts and

strong points meant that the front lines would consequently be more lightly garrisoned and

fewer men exposed to shell fire. The 4th Division began applying Du Cane’s system in

early January.32

The army also modified the design of its trenches in order to lessen their

susceptibility to flooding. Sandbags and wooden revetments helped to shore up muddy

trench walls, but the quantity of available material was insufficient for the amount of trench

in British lines. Lieutenant-Colonel L.R. Fisher-Rowe, commander of the 1/Grenadier

Guards in the 7th Division, estimated in early December that although his battalion held

only 1,200 yards (or just under 1,100 metres) of front, communications trenches and

traverses in firing lines amounted to nearly two miles (3.2 kilometres) of total trench.

Shoring up the entire network would have required thousands of sandbags which, in spite

of the two million that arrived in late October, remained in short supply.33 As late as April

1915, V Corps complained that it lacked enough sandbags to improve the positions it had

30 IV Corps to III Corps, 30 November 1914, IV Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/ 706. 31 III Corps to 4th Division, “Memorandum regarding defence,” 22 December 1914, 12th Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1501. 32 4th Division to III Corps, 1 January 1915, 4th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1441. 33 L.R. Fisher-Rowe to his wife, 5 December 1914, IWM: Fisher-Rowe Papers.

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recently taken over from the French.34 Furthermore, although revetments reinforced trench

walls, they did not prevent the trench from filling with water. Wooden duckboards helped

troops move through trenches with muddy floors and although engineers quickly began

laying them in early December, the deep trenches that were so effective at sheltering troops

on the Aisne were wholly impractical in Flanders.35 Instead, shallow trenches shielded with

high parapets or breastworks became the norm by the end of 1914. Units began

implementing trenches of this design soon after the Flanders battles. For instance, the 14th

Brigade reported to the 5th Division in late November that it had constructed a number of

new trenches which were only 2.0 feet (0.6 metres) deep but equipped with a 2.5 foot (0.8

metre) high parapet. These trenches offered the same 4.5 feet (1.4 metres) of cover as a

standard subterranean trench and made a “considerable difference in the health and comfort

of the troops.”36 The main disadvantage of a shallow trench shielded with high breastworks

was that it made a conspicuous target for enemy gunners. Thus, as Haig reinforced to his

divisional commanders in late December, positions with breastwork fire trenches required

good cover trenches reinforced with sandbags and wooden revetments to which front-line

troops could retire during heavy shelling.37

Although constructing breastworks in lieu of digging deeper was largely successful

in reducing the impact of flooding, troops continued to suffer from the cold induced by

long-term exposure to water and so the army aimed to limit the amount of time battalions

spent in the trenches. Snow first fell in the BEF sector in mid-November and drops in

temperature over the next month put troops, sometimes standing in water up to their ankles,

at risk of illness and hypothermia.38 Brigades had on their own initiative instituted rotation

cycles as early as the Aisne battle and continued to do so during La Bassée and First Ypres,

but the poor condition of many trenches in late November and early December prompted

formation commanders to intervene and formalize the rotation process. The 5th Division,

for instance, instructed its brigades on 27 November to ensure that no battalion spent more

34 27th Division trench report, 14 April 1915, V Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/743. 35 Ms Diary of Private F. Southon, 9 December 1914, IWM: Southon Papers. 36 14th Brigade to 5th Division, undated (from late November), 5th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1510. 37 Notes from I Corps’ 24 December conference, I Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/589. 38 Jeffreys recorded the first snowfall as being on 15 November. See Diary of Goerge Jeffreys, 15 November 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 141.

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than three consecutive days in the front lines.39 Haig emphasized the importance of short

rotations in his 24 December conference. Indeed, Jeffreys of the 2/Grenadier Guards

reported at the end of the month that owing to the “awful conditions” in the trenches, 2nd

Divison headquarters had limited front-line tours to a mere forty-eight hours.40 On the

Aisne, in contrast, the Grenadiers Guards occupied the front lines almost continuously

between 15 and 28 September, spending only two nights in reserve. Although the

battalion’s companies rotated between fire and support positions on a regular basis, the unit

as a whole nevertheless remained in the front lines.41 Removing troops from the trenches in

regular cycles was an important adaptation to the cold and wet conditions of the winter

which, combined with more shallow trenches reinforced with breastworks, helped keep the

men healthy and physically fit to fight.

The lull in operations during the winter and early spring also gave the General Staff

the opportunity to digest the lessons of the war and adapt its tactics accordingly. Between

late November and the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres in late April 1915, the War

Office published a series of “Notes on Field Defences” and three tactical pamphlets titled

Notes from the Front to foster dissemination of the most current methods to both new and

experienced officers. The first edition of Notes from the Front, a verbatim copy of III

Corps’ Aisne report to GHQ, appeared in November 1914. Parts 1-7 of “Notes on Field

Defences” surfaced in early December and were published later that month as the

entrenchment section of Notes from the Front Part II. The General Staff issued Notes from

the Front Part III, contained in which were an additional seven field defences notes, and

“Notes on Field Defences No. 15” in February and March 1915, respectively. The Notes

from the Front series was broad in its subject matter and tackled a number of tactical issues

which included entrenchment. As their name implied, the “Notes on Field Defences”

focused exclusively on field works and fortifications. Thus, the General Staff and War

Office considered digging and trench work important enough in late 1914 and early 1915 to

warrant special attention.

39 5th Division to brigades, 27 November 1914, 5th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1510. 40 Notes from I Corps’ 23 December conference, I Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/589; Diary of George Jeffreys, 30 December 1914, in Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 171. 41 See Fifteen Rounds a Minute, 90-104.

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Taken as a whole, the three volumes of Notes from the Front and fifteen “Notes on

Field Defences” successfully incorporated all the major entrenchment- and fortification-

related lessons of 1914 and early 1915. Methods of concealing positions from enemy fire

and observation were principal points. Notes from the Front Parts I and II and the

December 1914 series of “Notes on Field Defences” emphasized the advantages of siting

trenches on reverse slopes in spite of the relatively shallow fields of fire they afforded.

Furthermore, being a copy of III Corps’ Aisne report, the first volume of Notes from the

Front also highlighted how reverse slopes denied the Germans the ability to rely

exclusively on their artillery and in turn forced them to expose their infantry.42 Notes from

the Front Part III went one step further and recommended using advanced observation

posts to keep enemy artillery observers “at bay.” Since entrenching reverse slopes conceded

control of the high ground and allowed German observers to occupy it, thereby giving them

a potentially clear view of British positions beyond the hillcrest, advanced outposts

constructed on the heights or forward slopes and garrisoned with a few rifles could help

limit enemy incursions onto the high ground by bringing sections of it under effective

infantry fire. As the 2nd Division suggested, advanced posts could also be used in this way

to spot Minenwerfer.43 Notes from the Front Part III was also the first in the series to

describe concealing trenches from aerial observation. Based on troops’ lack of success

shooting down aircraft with their rifles in late 1914, it recommended the more practical

solution of using earth, brushwork, natural folds in the ground, or dummy trenches to

disguise trench works.44

The concept of withdrawing troops from front-line trenches to safer cover positions

during bombardments, the tactical value of strong points, and how to construct trenches so

as to limit flooding were three other important lessons articulated in the “Notes on Field

Defences” and Notes from the Front. The third volume of the latter echoed Jeudwine’s

amended version of “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position” and noted that

since German artillery typically ceased firing “just before” the infantry attacked, troops

42 War Office, General Staff, Notes from the Front (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, November 1914), 2, 8-9, 15; “Notes on Field Defences,” parts 1-7, in War Office, General Staff, Notes from the Front Part II (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, December 1914), 5-6. 43 “Notes on Field Defences,” parts 8-14, in War Office, General Staff, Notes from the Front Part III and Further Notes on Field Defences (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, February 1915), 43-4. 44 “Notes on Field Defences,” parts 8-14, in Notes from the Front Part III and Further Notes on Field Defences, 44.

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could leave the fire trenches largely vacant during bombardments.45 Notes from the Front

Part III also described the advantages of strong points and included a sketch of Black

Watch Corner as an example of an effective design. Strong points, the pamphlet remarked,

were “found valuable in arresting an attack on the trenches which has been successful and

also in supporting the counter-attack.”46 Entrenching in winter conditions was the focus of

“Notes on Field Defences No. 15.” It recommended that infantry and engineers construct

trenches when possible to conform to natural drainage so as to limit flooding, but it also

recognized that doing so was rarely possible on the Flanders plain and therefore included a

diagram of a breastwork fire trench. The breastwork itself was shown as reinforced with

sandbags or wooden revetments. In addition, “Notes on Field Defences No. 15”

recommended filling flooded trenches with barbed wire and constructing new breastworks

behind them.47 Rawlinson’s IV Corps had done this as early as late December. In a 3

January 1915 letter to Field Marshal Horatio H. Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War,

Rawlinson wrote that in cases where “the ground permits [infantry and engineers] use the

old trench as a wet ditch [and] fill it with barbed wire.”48 Wire laid in this way would be

both largely invisible to advancing enemy infantry and shielded from the effects of enemy

artillery fire.

The system described in the “Notes on Field Defences” and Notes from the Front

was linear and highly rigid. Trenches, dugouts, strong points, machine-gun emplacements,

concealment, and withdrawing troops during bombardments were all meant to allow the

infantry to defend its forward positions, or else speedily reclaim them with a minimal loss

of ground if captured by the enemy. Beginning in early February 1915, GHQ ordered the

First and Second Armies to begin constructing “auxiliary” lines to the rear of their main

positions. These so-called GHQ lines would be in addition to the “subsidiary” lines

constructed on the initiative of individual formations. By the spring of 1915 British

defences therefore consisted of the front line, itself composed of fire and cover trenches,

subsidiary lines, and finally the GHQ lines. Smith-Dorrien, the commander of Second

45 Notes from the Front Part III and Further Notes on Field Defences, 6-8. 46 “Notes on Field Defences,” parts 8-14, in Notes from the Front Part III and Further Notes on Field Defences, 53-5. 47 “Notes on Field Defences No. 15,” in Notes from the Front Part IV and Further Notes on Field Defences (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, May 1915), 51-2. 48 Rawlinson to Kitchener, 3 January 1915, IWM: Rawlinson Papers.

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Army since late December 1914, clearly summed up the function of these lines in a

memorandum to his corps commanders. In the event of “a long series of misfortunes,” he

remarked, “it should be possible by means of these subsidiary lines to reconstitute the

defensive line over and over again before a general retirement to the GHQ [reserve] line

becomes inevitable.”49 In theory, the infantry was to hold its forward trenches unless forced

back on a large scale to a secondary line, at which it would mount another defensive. Work

on subsidiary lines and the GHQ line was often neglected, however, with the result that

they were considerably weaker than forward trenches and often filled with water. The

Commander Royal Engineers of the 27th Division, for example, informed Sir James

Edmonds after the war that although in early May 1915 the GHQ line was well wired, it

consisted of shallow trenches with no dugouts, support trenches, or covered

communications. In practice, then, only the front lines were strong enough to allow British

troops to mount an effective resistance.50

Du Cane described some points which the Germans later implemented as part of

their defence-in-depth tactics, namely populating the front lines with outposts in place of

trenches and relying on counter-attack to contain enemy advances, but his system was a

solution to a local problem and he did not intend that it replace traditional trench lines on a

large scale. Strong points afforded field defence networks an element of elasticity, but they

remained a contingency. Whereas German infantry in 1916-18 lightly held forward

outposts and gradually retired in order to pull the enemy into zones swept with enfilading

machine-gun and artillery fire, British formations were to strongly defend front-line fire

trenches and hold them until forcibly expelled.51 In late 1914 and early 1915, linear

defensive tactics of this nature were not unique to the BEF. Assuming the strategic

defensive after having failed to break through the Allied lines at La Bassée and First Ypres,

General Erich von Falkenhayn ordered the German armies in France and Belgium to

strongly fortify their front lines. Forward positions, he announced, “must be retained” since

“even our relinquishment of totally useless objectives is considered a major

accomplishment by the enemy and is then exploited accordingly.”52 The German army was

49 Second Army to corps, 9 February 1915, Second Army War Diary, TNA: WO 95/268. 50 G. Walker to Edmonds, 7 March 1925, TNA: CAB 45/141. 51 Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 247-8.

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not introduced to the concept of defence-in-depth until the late spring of 1915 and did not

begin to apply it before the summer of 1916. By the Second Battle of Ypres, the German

army employed a field defence system of comparable depth and elasticity to that described

in Notes from the Front and the “Notes on Field Defences.”53

The principal weaknesses of the winter and spring pamphlets were that they did not

replace prewar manuals and appeared a considerable time after the methods they described

were already standard practice at the front. The General Staff intended the “Notes on Field

Defences” and Notes from the Front to be read “in amplification” of prewar training

manuals, and while it acknowledged that some aspects of pre-1914 entrenchment theory

required revision, namely siting regulations, it did not overwrite outdated tactics with new

methods.54 Its neglect to do so may have caused some confusion among V Corps engineers

who carelessly entrenched the forward slope of Frezenberg Ridge in early May (see below).

In addition, the “Notes on Field Defences” and Notes from the Front did not reflect the

most current techniques. For example, infantry and engineers on the Western Front began

experimenting with breastworks and shallow trenches almost as soon as the fighting in

Flanders subsided in mid- to late November, but these new designs did not appear in any

tactical memoranda until the publication of “Notes on Field Defences No. 15” in March

1915. Strong points, the effectiveness of which corps commanders immediately recognized

after their successful application on 11 November, were first described in Notes from the

Front Part III in February 1915. In short, there was a delay of about two or three months

between corps commanders adopting a method and the General Staff codifying it in tactical

pamphlets. Consequently, during training in the United Kingdom, troops in the 27th, 28th,

and 1st Canadian Divisions did not study and rehearse all the same techniques that infantry

and engineers were employing in the front lines.

The experience of the infantry in the 1st Canadian Division demonstrates how the

training of new formations during the winter of 1914/15 did not reflect the new

entrenchment requirements of the war. For engineers, more than half of their training

53 “Falkenhayn’s Standing Orders for the Defence in the West, 1914,” in Mark Osborne Humphries and John Mahr, eds, Germany’s Western Front: Translations from the German Official History of the Great War Volume II (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier Press, 2010), 384-7; Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 165. The Germans captured a French document outlining the concepts of defence-in-depth in May or June 1915. 54 “Notes on Field Defences,” parts 1-7, in Notes from the Front Part II, 1.

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consisted of studying the 1911 Manual of Field Engineering, most of the points in which,

namely the designs of redoubts and the importance of thinly garrisoning the front line,

remained relevant in 1915. Canadian infantry, on the other hand, had very little time to

practice digging. Of the 144 hours allocated to individual training, only two hours were

earmarked for entrenchment.55 The war diary of the 5th Canadian Battalion mentioned that

the unit only practiced digging proper trenches on two occasions between November and

February. Moreover, the trenches it constructed were only 3.75 feet (1.14 metres) deep and

lacked a substantial parapet or breastwork. Although the trenches it constructed were

apparently traversed, their specifications conformed to neither the deep subterranean

trenches called for in prewar manuals nor the shallow breastwork trenches being

constructed at the front.56 The latter did not appear in tactical memoranda until the release

of “Notes on Field Defences No. 15” in March 1915, so Canadian troops were likely not

familiar with this new design. The relatively shallow trenches may therefore have stemmed

from the fact that the men still had to fill them in after digging. General Edwin Alderson,

commander of the 1st Canadian Division, informed his formation on 22 December that any

battalions that had yet to fill in their trenches were to “do so as soon as possible.”57

Classroom training for infantry officers included readings and discussions of Notes from

the Front, but by the time the division was preparing to leave Salisbury Plain for Flanders

in early February, the War Office had only published the first two volumes.58

Although the Notes from the Front volumes presented in classroom training during

the winter did not reflect the most current lessons of the war, field training at the front for

inexperienced infantry officers ensured that they were familiarized with at least some of the

newest techniques. Whereas IV Corps deployed straight into battle and suffered heavy

losses as a consequence of its officers’ ignorance of revised siting regulations, officers in

Plumer’s V Corps had the opportunity to learn first-hand about trench warfare before taking

55 Orders from General E.A.H. Alderson, 3 November 1914, 1st Canadian Division War Diary, LAC: RG9, Militia and Defence Records, Series III-D-3, Volume 4823, Reel T-7182; “Syllabus of Training,” 14 November 1914, 1st Canadian Division War Diary, LAC: RG9, Militia and Defence Records, Series III-D-3, Volume 4823, Reel T-7182; Andrew Iarocci, Shoestring Soldiers: The 1st Canadian Division at War, 1914-1915 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 43-4. 56 5th Canadian Battalion War Diary, 14 November and 1 December 1914, LAC: RG9, Militia and Defence Records, Series III-D-3, Volume 4916, Reel T-10708. 57 Orders from General E.A.H. Alderson, 22 December 1914, 1st Canadian Division War Diary, LAC: RG9, Militia and Defence Records, Series III-D-3, Volume 4823, Reel T-7182. 58 Andrew Iarocci, Shoestring Soldiers, 51-3.

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over their own section of the line. The commissioned and non-commissioned officers of the

27th Division, representing along with those of the 28th Division the final cohort from the

pre-1914 regular army, arrived in Flanders for field training with the 4th Division at the end

of December. Each officer only spent twenty-four hours in the trenches, but also received

further instruction from the veteran officers behind the lines. Trench work and reliefs were

the bulk of the curriculum. “Every facility,” 4th Division headquarters relayed to its

brigadiers, “will be given to [the officers of the 27th Division] to learn everything that they

can about trench work and the system of relieving battalions in the trenches should be fully

explained to them.”59 Field training for officers of the 1st Canadian Division with the 7th

Division in February 1915 similarly focused on entrenchment and field fortification.

According to the Canadians’ training syllabus, British regular officers were to cover “all

subjects of trench warfare,” namely how to construct proper trenches, lay obstacles, and

limit flooding.60 Field training therefore fostered the direct transmission of information

from veteran officers to inexperienced “green” officers. It consequently compensated for

the War Office and General Staff’s delay in codifying new methods in Notes from the Front

and the “Notes on Field Defences,” and helped prevent officers from making old mistakes

like those in IV Corps had at First Ypres.

The Second Battle of Ypres tested both the effectiveness of the BEF’s field defence

system and the army’s capacity to diffuse the entrenchment-related lessons of 1914 and

early 1915. The German Fourth Army’s use of asphyxiating chlorine gas, however,

complicates any assessment of British defensive performance. Gas caused French

Territorials and colonial troops to panic and flee on 22 April, thereby opening a 4 mile (6.4

kilometre) wide gap on the northern side of the Ypres salient and exposing the left flank of

the 1st Canadian Division. The Canadians’ retirement to St. Julien and their heavy losses

from renewed fighting on the 24th, which included a second gas attack, were therefore not

the consequence of poor field defences.61 The BEF’s consolidation of its trench systems

59 4th Division to brigades, 29 December 1914, 4th Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1140. 60 “Course of Instruction for Canadian Infantry with British Regulars on the front lines,” 1st Canadian Division War Diary, LAC: RG9, Militia and Defence Records, Series III-D-3, Volume 4823, Reel T-7182. 61 See Iarocci, Shoestring Soldiers, Chapters 5-8. For more on the BEF and its responses to gas after Second Ypres, see Alberrt Palazzo, Seeking Victory on the Western Front: The British Army and Chemical Warfare in World War I (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), 41-53; For a Canadian perspective, see Tim Cook, No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999), 11-58.

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during the winter aimed to protect troops from weapons like artillery, machine guns, and

even trench mortars. Gas was new and unexpected. Deep entrenchments offering riflemen

protection from shell fire were in fact a liability during gas attacks since chlorine vapour,

being heavier than the air, sank and suffocated men seeking shelter near the bottom of

trenches or in subterranean dugouts.62 With the 1st Canadian Division thrown back and V

Corps’ left flank largely up in the air as a result of French retreats, on 27 April Plumer

requested Sir John French permit him to withdraw to a shorter and more defensible line.

French agreed and on the night of 3/4 May, the 27th, 28th, and 1st Canadian Divisions

withdrew to new positions on Frezenberg Ridge. Unlike the fighting in April, the first

engagement on Frezenberg Ridge between 7 and 13 May did not feature gas attacks and

was therefore more indicative of the how durable the BEF’s field defence system was

against traditional weapons. Moreover, because V Corps had to construct a new defensive

line, the battle also revealed how successfully its infantry and Royal Engineer officers had

absorbed the lessons of the Aisne, La Bassée, and First Ypres.

The new positions of the 27th and 28th Divisions on Frezenberg Ridge remained

incomplete when the Germans attacked on 7 May. The underlying cause, however, was a

dearth of time rather than an absence of knowledge. Captain J.E. Munby noted that on the

eve of the German attack the 83rd Brigade’s trenches were shallow, too narrow, and in

many places “very wet.” The wire in front of the position remained weak.63 Royal

Engineers in V Corps recognized all of these problems before the brigade occupied the

position. Engineers stated in a 3 May report that they were in the process of both deepening

and widening the 83rd Brigade’s trenches, and intended to construct revetments to keep

them from collapsing in the wet weather. Wire to screen positions and sandbags for

breastworks or revetments were in short supply, however, and the engineers evidently did

not receive a sufficient amount of either before 7 May.64 Thus, the problems that Munby

identified with the defences were not the product of ignorance. Furthermore, engineers

working on the 83rd Brigade’s positions dug long communications trenches to rear areas

62 “From experiences in the 2nd Army of the recent use by the enemy of Asphyxiating Gases round Ypres,” Second Army to V Corps, early May 1915, V Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/749. This document also described an early respirator in the form of a cotton pad soaked with a solution of hypo-sulfate and glycerin. 63 “Description of the trench like taken up near FREZENBERG on the 3rd May, by Capt. J.E. Munby,” 83rd Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/2273. 64 28th Division to 83rd Brigade, 3 May 1915, 83rd Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/2273; L.D. Whitehead to Edmonds, 19 April 1926, TNA: CAB 45/141.

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and Plumer ordered the 27th and 28th Divisions on 3 May to construct “numerous” strong

points “with as little delay as possible” when they arrived at the new line.65 How many

strong points the corps managed to build before the German attacks is not clear.

Nevertheless, infantry and engineer officers knew what was required to improve the

position, but they were simply unable to satisfactorily complete the work in the ten days

between breaking ground on 27 April and the beginning of the renewed German attacks on

7 May. Indeed, the Commander Royal Engineers of the 27th Division argued after the war

that the new positions remained relatively weak because of “time and time only.”66

The biggest problem with the Frezenberg line was not the shallow trenches or poor

wire entanglements noted by Munby, but rather that V Corps engineers carelessly sited

some of the 28th Division’s trenches on forward slopes. Most trenches followed the back

side of the ridge, but where it bent sharply toward Ypres between the Zonnebeke-Ypres

railway in the south and Weiltje in the north, the line “hung down like a loop” onto the

forward slope.67 The most affected unit was the 83rd Brigade, particularly the

3/Monmouthshire Regiment. The battalion’s shallow and poorly traversed fire trenches

were in full view of enemy guns and subjected to accurate fire. Its support trenches were

concealed behind the hillcrest, but since German gunners could clearly observe the

movements of British troops on the ridge, rushing men forward to the front line to meet

infantry attacks simply invited more artillery fire. German shelling began the day after the

83rd Brigade took up their new positions. According to Lieutenant L.D. Whitehead, many

of the Monmouthshires’ trenches were “blown away” by artillery fire. On 8 May, “heavy

bombardment … and the serious cost of attaining any reinforcement of the front line in

daylight made the front line as it was indefensible. A few hours bombardment was

sufficient to annihilate the garrison.”68

With the Monmouthshires’ trenches “practically obliterated” and many of the

defenders killed or wounded from heavy shelling, advancing German infantry tore a hole in

65 28th Division to 83rd Brigade, 3 May 1915, 83rd Brigade War Diary, TNA: WO 95/2273; Plumer’s Force to 4th, 27th, and 28th Divisions, 3 May 1915. 66 G. Walker to Edmonds, 7 March 1925, TNA: CAB 45/141. 67 L.D. Whitehead to Edmonds, 19 April 1926, TNA: CAB 45/141. 68 “Additional information from Capt. Seddon,” TNA: CAB 45/141; Comments on 28th Division, 84th Brigade at Second Ypres by Colonel W.B. Wallace of the 1/Suffolk Regiment, TNA: CAB 45/141; L.D. Whitehead to Edmonds, 19 April 1926, TNA: CAB 45/141; L.D. Whitehead to Edmonds, 28 April 1926, TNA: CAB 45/141.

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the 83rd Brigade’s line, compelling the left of the neighboring 27th Division to fall back so

as to avoid being enfiladed. A counter-attack by the 4th Division on 13 May helped restore

the situation and prevent further withdrawals, but once German troops had captured fire

trenches on forward slopes, it proved difficult to dislodge them. From the perspective of

British gunners, enemy infantry occupying the 83rd Brigade’s former firing trenches were

on the reverse slope and thus shielded from direct fire by the crest of the ridge. As a result

of British guns being unable to target the backside of the ridge and the heavy casualties

from days of bombardment, the 83rd Brigade did not recover its former positions. Its losses

were so substantial that the 28th Division was withdrawn and replaced in the front lines by

the 1st and 3rd Cavalry Divisions on 12-13 May.69 Fire trenches sited on the reverse slopes

of Frezenberg Ridge, although similarly shallow and lacking substantial breastworks, better

withstood German bombardments. For example, Munby’s unit on the far right of the 83rd

Brigade was dug in behind the hillcrest and only withdrew to conform to the movements of

retreating units to the north.70 In the 27th Division, the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light

Infantry Battalion, similarly entrenched on the reverse slope, also held on until the 83rd

Brigade’s retreat compelled it to retire on 10 May.71

Sir James Edmonds was highly uncritical of the 28th Division’s trench sites despite

Whitehead insisting after the war that the 83rd Brigade’s position on the forward slope was

dangerously vulnerable. In his assessment of the Frezenberg line, Edmonds merely weighed

the comparative advantages and disadvantages of forward and reverse slope sites.

Entrenching the reverse slope of the ridge, he argued, would have conceded ground and

made it difficult for British gunners to find enemy batteries.72 However, experience on the

Aisne and Messines-Passchendaele Ridge in September and mid-October, respectively,

made explicitly clear that observation and fields of fire should be sacrificed for better

concealment from enemy artillery. Whitehead adamantly sought to convey in his edits of

the official history the dangers of forward slope sites and the indefensible nature of the

3/Monmouthshire Regiment’s positions on Frezenberg Ridge. He argued that the line either

69 “5th Corps Summary of Operations, from 7th to 15th May (inclusive),” V Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/743; “Notes on the Second Battle of Ypres” by Brigadier-General F. Lore Anley, TNA: CAB 45/141. 70 “Description of the trench line taken up near FREZENBERG on the 3rd May, by Capt. J.E. Munby,” TNA: CAB 45/141; “Additional information from Capt. Seddon,” TNA: CAB 45/141. 71 Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Battalion War Diary, 8-9 May 1915, LAC: RG 9, Militia and Defence Records, Series III-D-3, Volume 4911, Reel T-10703. 72 Military Operations 1915, vol. 1, 312.

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should have been situated entirely on the reverse slope, thereby conceding the high ground

and limiting observation, or the forward slopes held with lightly-manned observation posts

while the main trench lines remained concealed behind the hillcrest.73 The latter solution,

articulated in Notes from the Front Part III, would have both shielded infantry from direct

artillery fire and given the defenders a view of enemy positions beyond the ridge. Edmonds

declined to include Whitehead’s suggestions in the final edition of Military Operations

1915 and thus incorrectly implied that forward slopes were not the cause of the 83rd

Brigade’s problems on 8 May.

The engineers who sited and constructed the Frezenberg line between 27 April and

7 May were ultimately responsible for the forward slope sites. Whereas units in the 3rd

Cavalry and 7th Divisions entrenched forward slopes at First Ypres because Rawlinson

failed to relay revised siting regulations to their commanders, engineers in V Corps were

clearly aware of the dangers of exposing trenches to enemy artillery observation since they

dug most of the trenches behind the hillcrest. The General Staff’s decision not to overwrite

the old siting regulations in prewar manuals may have led to some degree of confusion

among engineers. The “Notes on Field Defences” and Notes from the Front pamphlets

made explicitly clear that they were to be used in “amplification” rather than in lieu of

training manuals. Field companies digging trench lines on Frezenberg Ridge, relatively new

to the Western Front and not having experienced intense defensive fighting prior to Second

Ypres, may have been under the impression that forward slope sites were still acceptable.

Another plausible explanation is that engineers dug trenches on the forward slopes so as to

keep the line relatively straight. Since Frezenberg Ridge bowed west toward Ypres where

the trench positions ended up on forward slopes, engineers may have attempted to avoid

creating a large salient in the 28th Division’s lines that was susceptible to enfilading fire.

Colonel R.D. Petrie, V Corps’ chief engineer, oversaw the construction of the Frezenberg

line and was accountable for the manner in which his field companies sited positions. His

role in the precise placement of trenches is not clear, but he either endorsed entrenching

portions of the forward slope or neglected to intervene and correct it. Regardless, in each

case Petrie failed to ensure that his engineers properly concealed trenches from enemy

73 L.D. Whitehead to Edmonds, 19 April 1926 and 28 April 1926, TNA: CAB 45/141.

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artillery, and he therefore must bear a degree of responsibility for V Corps’ difficulties on

Frezenberg Ridge.

Overall, V Corps engineers’ entrenching of forward slopes was the only interruption

to an otherwise productive period of learning and adaptation between November 1914 and

early spring 1915. After having failed to apply the lessons of the Aisne, La Bassée, and

First Ypres the BEF capitalized on the cessation of the mobile war, and sought to

consolidate its defensive position and adjust its methods and entrenchment tactics. Prewar

theory remained relevant into 1915. Strong points, for example, served the same tactical

purpose as redoubts and continued to share many of their key design characteristics.

Shallow breastwork trenches, on the other hand, although ultimately the product of building

higher parapets, had no clear analogue in engineering manuals.74 In addition, officers at the

divisional and corps levels of command grappled with how to deal with the new threat of

German Minenwerfer and, in the case of Du Cane, began to think in terms of increased

depth and elasticity, if only as a way of combatting the effects of flooding. The Germans’

reduction of the Ypres salient in late April and early May 1915 was therefore more the

product of the effects of gas than British defensive ineptitude. Only a relatively short

section of the Frezenberg line was on forward slopes, suggesting that the cause was

negligence on the part of Petrie and his field companies rather than ignorance of proper

siting regulations. In short, as a consequence of tactical adaptation and better methods of

dissemination in the form of field training, V Corps performed better in its first defensive

engagement than IV Corps had in mid-October.

74 Prior to the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, field fortifications were primarily constructed above ground in a manner similar to breastworks. However, trenches of this type did not appear in any military engineering manuals and although Royal Engineers may have been broadly familiar with their design, constructing them does not appear to be part of the prewar training syllabus. See Murray, The Rocky Road to the Great War, 7-9.

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Postscript and Conclusions

Second Ypres marked the last real test of British field fortifications and their

capacity to defend against full-scale enemy attack until the German offensives in the spring

of 1918. With the Germans occupying parts of northeastern France and most of Belgium,

and Falkenhayn having assumed the defensive on the Western Front in November 1914, the

Entente switched to the operational-strategic offensive in early 1915. British commanders

therefore began turning their attention away from developing defences to devising new

ways of breaking through them. This process began with the First Army’s offensive at

Neuve Chappelle in March 1915, which demonstrated that thoroughly planned and

meticulously-executed attacks could succeed with limited objectives, ample artillery

support, and sufficient reserves. The enormous losses and meagre gains along the River

Somme in July 1916 confirmed that breaking through enemy lines on a wide frontage was

likely not possible. Early failures also led to innovations in artillery tactics. The

introduction of the rolling (creeping) barrage, devised to keep enemy defenders hunkered

down in their trenches or bunkers for as long as possible and prevent them from firing on

advancing troops, signalled a move toward using artillery to neutralize resistance rather

than destroy defensive positions and kill the defenders. The Battle of Arras in the spring of

1917 revealed that the army had absorbed some of the lessons of the Somme, as evidenced

by the Canadian Corps’ capture of the well-defended Vimy Ridge. Offensives in Flanders

in the summer and autumn of that year failed to produce similar results, largely due to poor

planning and the difficulties of attacking over water-logged and muddy terrain. However,

the BEF partially compensated for these failures in the autumn when it achieved a degree of

surprise with the mass use of tanks in lieu of preliminary artillery barrages at Cambrai.1

The army’s offensive posture from late 1915 to early 1918 offered British officers

very little experience from which to derive lessons on how to improve defence systems. A

1 For a narrative of British operations from late 1915 to early 1918, see Bourne, Britain and the Great War, 1914-1918, 49-80.

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March 1916 tactical pamphlet titled Notes for Infantry Officers on Trench Warfare

described a field defence system virtually indistinguishable from that in Notes from the

Front and the “Notes on Field Defences.” Heavily traversed fire trenches continued to serve

as the main line of resistance. In front of the fire trenches, advanced outposts warned

defenders of attacks or enemy movements and machine-gun emplacements wore down

advancing troops with enfilading fire. Barbed wire entanglements would both impede the

attackers’ movements and funnel them into zones swept with defensive infantry and

artillery fire. Support trenches, similarly traversed but potentially also recessed to provide

riflemen with added shelter, situated 70 to 100 yards (approximately 65 to 90 metres)

behind the fire trenches and linked to them via communications trenches served to shelter

front-line garrisons during bombardments. When artillery fire ceased, the majority of troops

would move forward to meet the impending infantry assault. Strong points and redoubts

behind the support trenches would “break up a hostile attack” which succeeded in

penetrating the front two lines and help “prevent its further development” by presenting

large obstacles for attacking troops to overcome, delivering enfilading fire on hostile

infantry, and acting as a point at which withdrawing defenders could rally for the counter-

attack. Sited 400 to 500 yards (about 365 to 450 metres) behind the strong points and

redoubts was a third line for reserves. Composed of dugouts and good shelter trenches, this

third line, connected to the rest of the system with communications trenches, would house

reserve battalions and unit headquarters.2

Any points in Notes for Infantry Officers that were not described or differed from

those in Notes from the Front or the “Notes on Field Defences” were simply clarifications,

added detail, or logical extensions of the lessons of 1914-15. The entrenchments described

in Notes for Infantry Officers were fundamentally no different than those constructed on the

Aisne and in Flanders between September 1914 and May 1915. Rather, experience in the

trenches during and after the Second Battle of Ypres made clear which design

specifications and construction methods worked best and provided the most effective

shelter. The pamphlet described the ideal dugout as having two exits and a thick roof

covered with a thin “bursting layer” of brick or stone to explode shells close to the surface.

2 War Office, General Staff, Notes for Infantry Officers on Trench Warfare (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, March 1916), 15-17.

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Breastworks were to be a minimum of ten feet (three metres) thick at the top and were best

constructed by erecting two revetments of sandbags or gabion and then filling the space

between them with earth.3 New points in Notes for Infantry Officers were not the product of

new lessons. For instance, in addition to the strong points and redoubts behind the support

trenches, the pamphlet suggested constructing similar defences behind the reserve line. The

idea was that additional strong points, sited to create overlapping fields of fire, would wear

down enemy attacks in cases where defenders were compelled to abandon the front lines

and retire to subsidiary defensives lines. Using strong points behind reserve lines was no

different than employing them closer to the front; their role in a defensive battle remained

contingent on infantry withdrawing from positions further forward.4 Other entrenchments

not depicted in any volumes of Notes from the Front or the “Notes on Field Defences” were

new responses to old lessons. Fire bays, small “T” or “L” shaped entrenchments jutting out

toward enemy lines from the fire trenches, served the same purpose as traverses in that they

were devised to help localize the effects of exploding shells. The introduction of hand

grenades in late 1914 and early 1915, moreover, led Notes for Infantry Officers to advocate

constructing “bombing trenches” immediately behind fire trenches. Described as an

earthwork large enough to garrison only a few men, bombing trenches would house

infantry whose task was to toss grenades into positions taken by the enemy. Bombing

trenches were, in addition to strong points, another way to help facilitate the speedy

recapture of lost fire trenches.5

Entrenchment and field fortifications did not exist in a vacuum and were affected by

the army’s switch to the offensive in autumn 1915. One consequence was a decline in the

preference for reverse slope trench sites. Notes for Infantry Officers declared that the

purpose of field fortifications was first to “facilitate the preparation and launching of an

unexpected assault” while also serving to defend against “sudden attack by the enemy.”6

That the pamphlet placed developing offensives ahead of sheltering men and resisting

infantry attacks is highly indicative of both the army’s new operational-strategic posture in

1916 and the senior command’s changing attitude toward field fortifications. Prewar

3 Notes for Infantry Officers, 23, 29. 4 Notes for Infantry Officers, 18-19. 5 Notes for Infantry Officers, 15-17. 6 Notes for Infantry Officers, 6.

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training manuals spoke of field fortifications in similar language, but experience on the

Aisne and at La Bassée and First Ypres clearly demonstrated that the power of German

artillery made necessary concealing trenches on reverse slopes, even if it meant conceding

the high ground.7 Advanced outposts could exert some degree of control over the high

ground and act as observation posts for gunners, but Notes for Infantry Officers feared that

they were liable to be rushed and taken by enemy infantry. Trenches on forward slopes, on

the other hand, dominated the high ground and therefore afforded good observation points

and more favourable positions from which to launch attacks. Notes for Infantry Officers,

like Field Service Regulations 1909 and Infantry Training 1914, tended to favour forward

slopes for these reasons. Furthermore, Notes for Infantry Officers argued that the Germans’

employment of aeroplanes and observation balloons to range British positions largely

negated the advantages of reverse slopes. However, the revival of forward slopes as the

favoured site for fire trenches was closely linked to the argument that field fortifications

needed to facilitate offensive action. The comparative safety of reverse slopes was therefore

sacrificed for better launching points for attacks.8

Another consequence of the switch to the offensive, and related to the restoration of

forward slope trench sites, was the proliferation of active defence in 1916-17. Notes for

Infantry Officers declared that attacking and overcoming enemy defences required “dash

and gallantry of a very high order,” and expressed concern that the “comparative inactivity”

of life in the trenches fostered among the troops a “passive and lethargic attitude.” The

pamphlet argued that “minor local enterprises” in the form of trench raids would furnish the

“offensive spirit” required in larger attacks and would help the army maintain the

initiative.9 Stabilization on the Aisne in mid- to late September caused similar concern

about the negative effect of static trench warfare on the offensive spirit of the men. Like

Notes for Infantry Officers, II Corps’ report to GHQ in early October concluded that the

best method of preventing a decline in the offensive spirit was to “insist on small local

attacks and enterprises.”10 Although active defence was encouraged from the outset, the

7 See Appendix C, figures 1 and 2. 8 Notes for Infantry Officers, 10-12. 9 Notes for Infantry Officers, 8. 10 “Notes, based on the experience gained by the Second Corps during the campaign,” II Corps War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1629; See also Gardner, Trial by Fire, 94-5. The birth of trench raids as a method of encouraging the offensive spirit in troops was a key component of Gardner’s concept of the “hybrid officer.”

101

army’s defensive attitude on the Aisne and the need to solidify positions during the winter

of 1914-15 in order to recover from the losses of the autumn meant that developing good

field fortifications was of more immediate importance than raiding enemy trenches.

Furthermore, trenches sited on reverse slopes favoured a passive defensive approach. The

experience with German heavy artillery in September 1914 led commanders to

acknowledge that concealing trenches behind hillcrests effectively denied the Germans the

ability to rely solely on their guns, thereby making it possible to sit largely idle, and lure the

enemy into using his infantrymen and exposing them to defensive fire. Siting positions on

forward slopes meant that troops could not simply wait indefinitely in the safety of their

concealed trenches for the enemy to attack. It was therefore no coincidence that Notes for

Infantry Officers downplayed the advantages of reverse slopes while simultaneously

lauding active defence.

Finally, the prospect of moving the line forward in an attack meant that British

commanders tended to regard their field fortifications as more temporary than their German

counterparts in 1916-17, with the consequence that the BEF fell behind the Germans in

terms of the quality and complexity of their earthworks. British military leadership in the

First World War never regarded field defences as permanent features of the battlefield. On

the other hand, the German army, having assumed the strategic defensive in 1915 and

resigned itself to holding its positions on the Western Front, had good reason to make their

defences as robust and habitable as possible. The Germans’ use of concrete for blockhouses

and redoubts, in particular, blurred the distinction between permanent fortifications and

temporary field works. German troops were reportedly astonished at the relative

“shoddiness” of captured British trenches. Conversely, British troops advancing on the

Somme and at Ypres in 1916 and 1917 expressed amazement at the comfort of German

entrenchments. Edward Underhill reported in November 1916 that one German dugout

reportedly had a ceiling more than six feet high, and was equipped with a large mess hall

ordained with tapestry and a stencilled frieze of an iron cross and a shield. In addition,

British dugouts were typically not as deep or well-revetted as those of the Germans, and

were therefore more vulnerable to shell fire and collapse.11

11 Holmes, Tommy, 245-64; Sheffield, Forgotten Victory, 123-5; For a similar but more crudely-articulated assessment of British field defences in 1916-17, see Ferguson, The Pity of War, 350.

102

Historian Alexander Watson claimed that British earthworks were inferior to those

of the German army because the dominance of the offensive spirit in the BEF “burdened”

troops by depriving them of the materials, such as concrete, to construct the same quality of

defences as their opponents.12 The offensive meant that field fortifications in the BEF were

more temporary in nature than in the German army, but British troops did not stop digging

in late 1915. In spite of the growing disparity in the quality of British and German field

fortifications in 1916-17, earthworks in the BEF were nevertheless more habitable during

the middle years of the war than in 1914 for the simple reason that formations inhabited the

same positions for many months and had ample opportunity to improve them. Indeed,

Notes for Infantry Officers considered trench work a good way to keep men busy during

operational lulls.13 Indicative of this growth was the development of British dugouts. In

1914 and early 1915, dugouts typically consisted of a shallow trench or recess reinforced

with overhead cover. By 1916, dugouts were in many cases fully subterranean with as

many as four entrance points. Furthermore, unlike at the Aisne and during the early phases

of the first Flanders battles, trenches later in the war were continuous as long as the

topography and the water table permitted, and defensive systems comprised numerous

support and communications trenches, redoubts, and machine-gun emplacements.14 When

assessed independently and without comparisons to German defences, then, British field

fortifications continued to develop after Second Ypres in spite of the army’s emphasis on

active defence and the revival of forward slope trench sites. Because the BEF had no

experience fighting large-scale defensive battles, however, the system remained largely

unchanged for almost three years. In other words, Britain’s strategic objective of ejecting

the Germans from France and Belgium meant that developing means to attack

understandably took precedence over defensive development, with the result that the army

employed for much of the war a system designed to deal with the close-order infantry

tactics of 1914 and early 1915, not the advanced combined arms tactics of 1917-1918.

When the Germans launched their final bid for victory on the Western Front in the

spring of 1918, the BEF, particularly Sir Hubert Gough’s Fifth Army, was caught without a

12 Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 13-14. 13 Notes for Infantry Officers, 8. 14 Holmes, Tommy, 245-72.

103

field fortification system capable of defending against concentrated attacks and new

German assault methods. Until the summer of 1916 the British and German armies both

employed linear defensive tactics designed to hold the front lines at all costs, but after

General Erich von Falkenhayn’s resignation as chief of the German General Staff in

August, the German army began organizing its defences in three zones arranged in depth.

The forward zone, a series of outposts and strong points up to three miles (about five

kilometres) deep, served to wear down advancing infantry and break up attacks. The main

point of resistance was the battle zone, one to two miles (1.6 to 3.2 kilometres) deep and

composed of multiple lines of trenches, redoubts, machine-gun posts, and dugouts. A

reserve zone beyond the range of hostile artillery housed supports assembled for counter-

attacks.15

The British unsuccessfully attempted to emulate this system in early 1918. In the

case of the Fifth Army, infantry and engineers, challenged by a shortage of labour,

neglected to construct a reserve zone. Furthermore, Haig, the British Commander-in-Chief

since Sir John French’s dismissal in late 1915, consented to French requests that the BEF

shoulder a greater responsibility on the Western Front and took over additional positions

south of the Somme, thereby overextending Gough’s forces, particularly III Corps. Gough

had neither the necessary field works nor sufficient reserves to fully employ a true defence-

in-depth, and as a result British troops were concentrated in the forward and battle zones.

The outposts and strong points in the forward zone were not meant to shelter infantry from

artillery fire and, in addition, were often too far apart to create overlapping fields of fire,

which allowed some German troops to slip through unmolested.16 Besides a shortage of

labour and reserves, the Fifth Army likely failed to develop defence-in-depth because

Gough and his senior infantry and Royal Engineer officers did not fully understand how to

apply it. Indeed, the army had no experience using defence-in-depth before the Germans

mounted their offensives in the spring of 1918.

The result was that the Germans scored a series of initially stunning tactical

successes against the BEF. With Bolshevik Russia having capitulated in late 1917, General

15 Herwig, The First World War, 247-8. 16 Historian Gary Sheffield argued that Haig was aware of Fifth Army’s relatively weak position on 21 March but did not reinforce Gough’s formations because the necessary reserves were simply not available for the BEF to be strong along the entire line. Leaving the Fifth Army stretched thin was therefore a conscious decision for Haig. Sheffield, The Chief, 266-8.

104

Erich Ludendorff, the effective commander of the German army since Falkenhayn’s

resignation, aimed to win the war in the west before the United States amassed sufficient

manpower in France to definitively tip the balance in favour of the Entente. Operation

Michael, the first of four primary offensive thrusts, was aimed at the British Third and Fifth

Armies and opened on 21 March 1918. A brief but intense German artillery bombardment

stunned the Fifth Army defenders in the forward zone and attacking German forces quickly

advanced to the main line of British trenches. Troops in the battle zone held out until mid-

afternoon before being overwhelmed and thrown back, exposing the right flank of General

Julian Byng’s Third Army. In the first two days of the Michael offensive, the British Third

and Fifth Armies suffered almost 200,000 thousand killed, wounded, or missing. The

Germans captured another 93,000 prisoners and over 1,000 artillery pieces. By early April,

Michael had pushed the front line nearly forty miles (sixty-five kilometres) west and placed

German forces in a position to capture the critical British-controlled rail junction at

Amiens. A second offensive, Operation Georgette, aimed to break through the British front

straddling the Lys. Between 9 and 29 April, the German Fourth and Sixth Armies advanced

more than ten miles (six kilometres) toward Hazebrouck. Despite these relatively large

territorial gains by First World War standards, problems supplying foot soldiers advancing

a considerable distance beyond their railheads and the absence of a mobile arm to exploit

breakthroughs meant that the German attacks suffered from a lack of sustained momentum

and eventually petered out. The British, in spite of their initial defensive failures,

particularly in March, were therefore able to re-establish their lines and counter-attack in

August.17

The BEF enjoyed far greater defensive success early in the war and most of what

the British learned about field fortifications occurred during its comparatively short stint on

the operational-strategic defensive between September 1914 and May 1915. The

fundamentals of the British field defence system were clearly articulated before the war,

mostly as a product of the experience in South Africa, but also, although to a lesser extent,

in response to observations of the fighting in Manchuria. The Battle of the Aisne was the

first test of the BEF’s field fortification capabilities. British infantry and engineers dug

deep and established a system capable of resisting infantry attacks and, largely because of

17 Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 400-6.

105

the fire trenches having been sited on reverse slopes, effectively sheltering troops from

artillery fire. Aiming to improve the army’s fighting methods in late September and early

October, the General Staff adopted reverse slopes as the recommended site for fire

trenches. It did not, however, acknowledge that the robustness of the army’s field defences

on the Aisne was the product of troops having sufficient time to construct them. The

proliferation of the offensive spirit at GHQ denied the BEF this same advantage in

Flanders, and infantry did not have the opportunity to dig the earthworks necessary to

defend against what amounted to be biggest defensive challenge of 1914. In addition,

Rawlinson neglected to relay the importance of siting trenches on reverse slopes to the

tactical officers in his newly-arrived IV Corps. Consequently, the German Fourth and Sixth

Armies exacted a heavy toll on the poorly-entrenched BEF in late October. Nevertheless,

Haig and his chief engineer, Colonel S.R. Rice, learned to adapt and constructed strong

points in time for renewed German attacks on 11 November. The winter of 1914/15 was a

period of recuperation in which the BEF consolidated its defences and adjusted to digging

on the water-logged Flanders plain. Field training for the inexperienced officers in Plumer’s

V Corps meant that his formations were better prepared than their counterparts in IV Corps

who deployed straight into battle. Although Plumer’s engineers sited some trenches on the

forward slopes of Frezenberg Ridge in early May 1915, they also attempted to equip the

position with good communications trenches, barbed wire, and strong points, indicating

that they had absorbed the majority of entrenchment-related lessons to date.

The BEF was largely equipped in August 1914 with the necessary knowledge of

field fortifications to meet the requirements of the First World War. Infantry and engineers

employed a number of prewar methods to good effect in 1914-15 without making any

major modifications. The deep and narrow trenches adopted in the 1902 Instruction in

Military Engineering as a direct response to observations of Boer entrenchment practices in

South Africa proved highly effective at protecting infantry on the Aisne. Barbed wire, a

salient feature of First World War trench systems, was extolled in military engineering

manuals before 1914 as the most effective type of obstacle. Even though field companies

faced barbed wire shortages on the Aisne and Frezenberg Ridge, concentrating wire where

fields of fire were extremely shallow partly compensated for limited quantities. The

practice of withdrawing troops from the front lines and sheltering them in better cover

106

trenches 50 to 100 yards (45 to 90 metres) to the rear during enemy artillery

bombardments, initially described after the Russo-Japanese War in the 1905 Manual of

Military Engineering, remained an important method of protecting infantrymen throughout

the war, particularly in cases where the Germans controlled the high ground and could

clearly see British defensive positions.

Because the BEF was well prepared, radical innovation was not required in 1914-

15, and so when existing techniques proved to be insufficient, prewar methods only need to

be adapted to suit First World War conditions. Prewar siting regulations, although they

ultimately demonstrated an underestimation of the power of artillery in 1914 and favoured

good fields of fire over concealment from enemy guns, endorsed siting support trenches on

reverse slopes for the superior cover they afforded. Thus, siting fire trenches on reverse

slopes was straightforward for infantry officers because they were familiar with the

advantages of concealing trenches behind hillcrests. Redoubts served as the framework for

the strong points largely responsible for I Corps beating back German attacks on 11

November. The development of dugouts, moreover, stemmed directly from an appreciation

of overhead cover. Military engineering manuals expressed concern that overhead cover in

front-line trenches would impede riflemen from freely using their weapons, and after this

had proven to be the case early in the Aisne battle, field companies focused on adding it to

reserve positions and unit headquarters instead, which, when covered with earth, evolved

into the shell-proof shelters described as dugouts in later tactical pamphlets.18 Forward

outposts, originally intended to provide artillery observers points from which to look for

enemy defensive positions and give defenders advanced warning of infantry attack, were

found useful in spotting German Minenwerfer crews and exerting a degree of control over

the high ground forfeited by siting fire trenches on reverse slopes.

Many of the weaknesses affecting the BEF’s preparedness for the First World War

did not severely handicap its capacity to construct field fortifications. As evidenced by the

adoption of reverse slopes and the recognition that relatively shallow fields of fire were

sufficient for defending infantry, tacticians’ ultimate underestimation of firepower before

18 The term “dugout” did not appear in official General Staff memoranda or War Office publications until Notes for Infantry Officers in March 1916. Notes from the Front and “Notes on Field Defences” referred to dugouts as “bomb-proof shelters.” However, “dugout” was used among infantrymen, tactical officers, and in Royal Engineer units from at least late October 1914. See, for example, the Ms Diary of W.H. Long, 31 October, IWM: Long Papers.

107

1914 proved to be of little concern on the defensive. Training deficiencies had similarly

little impact. On the Aisne, development was uneven in that some battalions were more

thorough and dug better quality earthworks than others, but commanders’ growing interest

in field defences in late 1914 and early 1915 meant that systems became increasingly

standardized. The infantry’s dependence on Royal Engineers for their tools and technical

expertise, although causing digging to proceed more slowly during the first few days of the

Aisne battle than the Manual of Field Engineering had anticipated, was largely negated

once lines stabilized and field companies could spend the majority of their time assisting

combat units. Furthermore, attaching field companies to infantry brigades during the

Flanders offensives in mid-October helped alleviate tool shortages at the front. The army

never fully overcame the difficulty of keeping the front lines well supplied with tools

during mobile or semi-mobile operations, but the issue became largely inconsequential

after the Western Front became static since infantry units were no longer in danger of

advancing ahead of their tool carts. The one weakness that did have serious consequences

was the offensive in British military ethos. The proliferation of the offensive spirit,

particularly among Sir John French and his Sub Chief of Staff, General Sir Henry Wilson,

almost produced a disaster for the BEF in mid- to late October when the army was, for all

intents and purposes, still on the strategic defensive.

That so many features of the prewar system were successfully implemented in 1914

and early 1915 without the need for serious innovation reinforce historian Spencer Jones’

argument that the British army was more intellectually prepared to fight a trench war than

historians like Shelford Bidwell, Dominick Graham, and Tim Travers have argued. Indeed,

in 1914 the BEF possessed neither the heavy artillery that came to dominate combat on the

Western Front nor the combined-arms attack tactics that eventually contributed to the

defeat the German army in 1918. British commanders did, on the other hand, appreciate the

importance of entrenchments and grasped how to use them. In this sense, they largely

anticipated the role that field fortifications would play in the First World War. Fixation

with the offensive in British military ethos, however, meant that extensively using them

was analogous to conceding the initiative to the enemy, a line of thinking that was the

major cause of the BEF’s defensive setbacks. Nevertheless, when British infantry units

were afforded the opportunity to dig, they, with Royal Engineer assistance, dug quite well.

108

The system that emerged was better developed and more capable of sheltering troops and

defending against infantry attacks than Sir James Edmonds and, by extension, many

subsequent British military historians have suggested. Edmonds viewed the earthworks of

1914 and early 1915 purely in the context of the First World War and did not acknowledge

that they were an improvement over those dug in the South African War. In other words, he

appraised the quality and effectiveness of early defences using the British trenches and

permanent German field works of 1916-17 as his primary points of reference rather than

assessing them in terms of how far they had come since 1902. Moreover, Edmonds either

ignored or failed to realize that the field defences constructed on the Aisne, in the latter

stages of the First Battle of Ypres, and during the winter of 1915/15 were largely identical

in terms of their arrangement and function to those established later in the war. Therefore,

the system that Edmonds used as one of his baselines for assessing early defences differed

from the works of 1914-15 mostly in the sense that the trenches were simply more

habitable, a direct consequence of troops having occupied and worked on the same

positions for many months.

That formation commanders absorbed new lessons and the General Staff adapted

entrenchment tactics in 1914 and early 1915 reinforce the now well-documented argument

that British generalship in the First World War was not comprised of incompetent

“donkeys.” Additionally, it also indicates that the British were not uninterested in field

fortifications and negligent on the defensive as Edmonds and Niall Ferguson have implied.

Wilson instigated the learning process in late September when he requested the BEF’s three

corps provide information on the most recent tactical lessons of the war for the purpose of

informing new formations prior to their arrival on the Continent. The later Notes from the

Front and “Notes on Field Defences” pamphlets, although they did not necessarily reflect

the most up-to-date technical changes, represented a genuine effort to improve tactics and

educate new and inexperienced officers. At the corps level of command, Haig and his chief

engineer, Colonel Rice, were largely responsible for implementing strong points and should

thus receive some credit for the British army adapting to the conditions of heavy defensive

fighting in Flanders. General J.P. Du Cane, III Corps’ Chief of Staff, devised a solution to

flooding in the trenches which shared some characteristics with what the Germans later

employed as defence-in-depth. Even if his somewhat radical solution to a common problem

109

was not adopted throughout the BEF, Du Cane nevertheless exemplified the British military

leadership’s capacity to innovate and “think outside the box,” even in the early stages of the

war.

Learning to implement an effective field defence system was not a completely linear

process and paralleled the sort of “learning curve” experienced with the development of

offensive tactics in 1915-18. The first Flanders battles represented a temporary, albeit

costly, setback in the use of earthworks. Sir John French expressed concern as Inspector

General of the Forces that training in entrenchment between 1908 and 1912 did not reflect

its vast importance in modern war, but he failed to heed his own advice in mid-October

1914, and ordered the BEF to attack when it should have been digging in and preparing for

what intelligence reports indicated was an large and impending German attack. The army

also experienced setbacks in training and dissemination. Rawlinson’s failure to impart the

lessons of the Aisne to his tactical officers was the most significant, and although the

General Staff improved the way in which it transmitted new information with field training,

it did not make explicit enough to V Corps engineers that all fire trenches needed to be

sited on reverse slopes. Thus, the learning process led to gradual improvement in the BEF’s

capabilities between September 1914 and May 1915, but improvement was in many cases a

consequence of initial mistakes. It was after the failures of First Ypres, for instance, that

Haig ordered I Corps to construct strong points, formation commanders began to assert

control over field defence construction, and the General Staff instituted field training for

new officers.

Further research into British field fortification theory during the offensive phase of

the war would yield important insight into the relationship between the offensive and the

defensive in the BEF, and would shed light on how the offensive spirit affected

commanders’ perception of defences and their influence on morale. Furthermore, the

historiography of the British army in the First World War would benefit from a more

detailed study of the defensive battles in the spring of 1918. Although historians like Gary

Sheffield have asserted that Gough was not prepared to arrange his defences in depth, they

argued that his primary deficiency was a shortage of labour to construct positions and a

lack of reserves. To what extent did Gough and his senior staff truly understand how to

employ defence-in-depth? Lastly, comparative studies of the use of field fortifications in

110

the French and German armies in 1914 and early 1915 would help to contextualize the

British experience and indicate if the British application of field works was unique. If it

was not unique, a comparative study would illustrate how well the BEF performed relative

to the other armies fighting in the same conditions. British defensive theory, that field

fortifications served to allow defenders to hold the front line at all cost, closely resembled

the German system until the summer of 1916, but what was the precise point at which the

quality of earthworks in the two armies began to diverge? Was the German army innately

better-prepared to fight a defensive trench war or were its superior fortifications in 1916-17

the sole consequence of it being on the strategic defensive?

In the wider context of the Western Front in 1914-15, the BEF played an ultimately

indecisive role. Historian J.M. Bourne, referring specifically to 1914, correctly asserted that

the British military contribution was “puny” compared to that of the French. Even in

Flanders in late October and early November 1914, where the BEF made its most

significant contribution to Allied defensive victory in the first year of the war, French

forces held a front twice as long as the BEF.19 The impact of British field fortifications on

the overall outcome of the war in the west, then, was largely negligible. Bourne’s

characterization of early British engagements as “soldiers’ battles,” in which most of the

important command decisions were made at or below the company level, however, was not

entirely accurate.20 Senior officers at GHQ or in charge of corps and divisions played an

active role in improving the army’s field fortification system and training tactical officers in

new entrenchment techniques. Whereas historians interested in the offensive phase of the

war, such as Paddy Griffith, have often focused on the period of learning after Second

Ypres, the development of British field fortifications during the first ten months of the war

suggests that there was an important degree of continuity between the offensive learning

curve of 1916-18, and the adaptation of entrenchment tactics in 1914-15. In other words,

the British army’s experience on the defensive, although not strategically decisive, was

valuable in that it contributed to the process of institutional learning that proved essential to

the development of attack tactics in 1916-18.

19 Bourne, Britain and the Great War, 26-7; Terraine, The First World War, 44-5. 20 Bourne, Britain and the Great War, 28.

111

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Appendix A

Prewar Trench Designs and Specifications

Figure 1 – Standard fire trench. Drainage channel (A), fire step (B), and parapet (C) to shield rifleman from shell fragments and rifle fire. Figure 2 – Recessed cover trench. Pardos (D) to shield rifleman from shells exploding behind the trench, undercut recess (E), and revetments (F) to help prevent E from collapsing. Figure 3 – Head cover. Head cover (H) is composed of sandbags stacked so that there is space through which the rifleman can aim his weapon. Earth (shaded) is thrown in front for camouflage. Figure 4 – Overhead cover. Overhead cover (I) composed of corrugated steel and camouflaged with earth (shaded). A sandbagged loophole (J) allows riflemen to use their weapons without exposing themselves. Figure 5 – Traversed trench. Standard fire trench with traverses (K) built of earth to protect against enfilading fire and localize the effects of exploding shells. * Adapted from War Office, General Staff, Manual of Field Engineering (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1911).

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Appendix B

Prewar Designs of Machine-Gun Emplacements and Redoubts

Figure 1 – Machine-gun emplacement (top view). Machine-gun platform (C) extends toward enemy lines as an appendage of trench D. Head cover (A) is supported by sandbags (B).

Figure 2 – Machine-gun emplacement (profile view). Machine-gun platform (F) extends toward enemy lines as an appendage of trench E. Head cover (G), supported by sandbags, protects the machine-gun crew from rifle fire and shell fragments.

Figure 3 – Standard redoubt. The redoubt is enclosed with traversed trenches (H). Shelters (I) within the enclosure provide garrison troops with some cover from shell fire.

* Adapted from War Office, General Staff, Manual of Military Engineering (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1905) and War Office, General Staff, Manual of Field Engineering (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1911).

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Appendix C

Forward and Reverse Slope Trench Sites

Figure 1 – Siting on a forward slope. Fire trenches (C) are in view of enemy guns (D) whereas cover trenches (A) on the reverse slope are not and can only be hit with indirect fire. Trenches at position C afford a long field of fire and protect defensive guns at position B on the crest of the hill, which has a view of D and attacking enemy infantry. However, position C is in the direct line-of-sight of D and troops both reinforcing A from C and withdrawing from C to A are exposed to direct fire from D. Trenches at C hold more ground than trenches at G, and maximize observation of enemy positions from the high ground at B while simultaneously denying him view of friendly positions behind A . Fire trenches could also be sited further toward the base of the forward slope to make them less conspicuous to enemy observers.

Figure 2 – Siting on a reverse slope. Both fire trenches (G) and cover trenches (F) are on the reverse slope. Trenches in positions G and F are concealed from the direct fire of enemy guns at position H and troops can reinforce G or withdrawal from G to F without coming into view of H. Fire trenches at G have a far more shallow field of fire than those at C and defensive guns must be placed to the rear at position E without a direct line-of-sight to H. Guns at E, however, can still directly target attacking enemy infantry as they advance over the crest of the hill toward G. Trenches at G concede the high ground and do not offer good observation of the enemy.

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Appendix D

Field Fortifications, September 1914 – May 1915

Figure 1 – Dugout constructed on the Aisne. Deep recess in which men take shelter (A) supported with overhead cover (B). Pardos (C) to protect troops in A from shell fragments exploding behind the dugout.

Figure 2 – Strong point. Enclosed section of traversed trench (D) screened with barbed wire (E).

Figure 3 – Black Watch Corner. Traversed trench (F), built around a garden, enclosed by barbed wire (G).

Figure 4 – Breastwork fire trench. Breastwork of sandbags or wooden revetments (J) constructed behind the abandoned trench (K). Drainage channel (H) helps keep water from eroding fire step (I).

* Adapted from “Notes on the preparation of an entrenched position,” Lahore Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/3911; 1st Division to I Corps, 5 December 1914, 1st Division War Diary, TNA: WO 95/1227; War Office, General Staff, “Notes on Field Defences No. 15,” in Notes from the Front Part IV and Further Notes on Field Defences (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, May 1915).