Initially this was highly effective: the Allied troops against whom it was deployed, taken completely by surprise, temporarily abandoned an 8,000-yard stretch of the front line. But the Allies rapidly improvised antidotes and embodied the weapon in their own arsenals, making the conduct of the war yet more complex and inhumane. Since this new ‘frightfulness’ was added to the German record of barbarism and was to be one of the most valuable items of Allied propaganda both during and after the war, more was probably lost than gained by this innovation. For the rest, the German armies perfected their defensive positions, usually on ground of their own choosing—digging systems of trenches with deep and often comfortable dug-outs, protected by barbed-wire entanglements and defended not only by pre-registered artillery but by machine guns, which now came into their own in the kind of defensive warfare that no European army had expected to have to fight.
These defences the Allied armies felt compelled to attack. For one thing, they lay deep inside French territory, and for the French at least it was unthinkable that they should remain there unchallenged. For another, the disasters on the Eastern Front made continuing pressure in the west appear essential if the Russians were to be kept in the war at all. Strategic direction was still largely in the hands of the French, with the British very much as junior partners. There was still heavy pressure within the British Cabinet in favour of limiting the British contribution on the Western Front and seeking a more traditional maritime strategy—a view to which Kitchener himself was strongly sympathetic. Even the most enthusiastic ‘westerners’, as they came to be called, would have preferred to delay any offensive until 1916, when they hoped that their new armies would be properly trained and equipped. But the failure of the Dardanelles campaign, the pressure of their allies, and above all the weight of a public opinion anxious to come to grips with the Germans, meant that by the end of 1915 the British were irrevocably committed to a ‘western’ strategy, and looked forward to its consummation the following year.
So throughout 1915, in a succession of attacks of increasing intensity, the French and British armies learned the techniques of the new kind of war at very heavy cost. Their early attacks in March were easily repulsed. It became obvious that the key to a successful assault lay in sufficient artillery support, but the Allied armies did not as yet have either enough guns of the right calibre or the industry capable of manufacturing them, while the guns they did possess did not have the right kind of ammunition. Before 1914 artillery shells had consisted mainly of shrapnel, whose airbursts were effective in mobile warfare. But what was now needed was high explosive, heavy enough to flatten barbed-wire defences, pulverize enemy infantry in their trenches, catch enemy reserves as they moved up to support the defenders, and neutralize enemy artillery by counter-battery fire.
Further, infantry attacks had to be carefully coordinated with artillery barrages, which demanded not only first-rate staff work but reliable communications; and the only communications available, in the absence of mobile radiosets, were runners, carrier pigeons, and telephone lines that were usually the first casualties of an enemy counter-barrage. Finally, even if an attack was initially successful, it could seldom penetrate beyond the first line of the German trench system, where it remained vulnerable to bombardment and counter-attack from the flanks. Further advance was then delayed by the need for artillery to re-register its targets. At this stage of the war gunners had to fire ‘sighting shots’ to ensure accuracy before opening a bombardment. This took time and forfeited surprise. Later (as we shall see) they developed techniques of ‘pre-registration’ that made this unnecessary. Finally the difficulty of communication between the attacking forces and the reserves needed to complete the breakthrough made command and control on the battlefield almost impossible.
For the British the problem was complicated by the fact that their forces consisted of almost untrained volunteers commanded by officers often promoted far beyond their level of competence; but it must be said that the French, trained as they were for a completely different kind of warfare, did little better. Nevertheless by September the desperate state of the Russians demanded a major effort in the West. The Allies therefore launched a major joint offensive that Joffre promised would ‘compel the Germans to retire to the Meuse and probably end the war’.
The British sector centred on the mining region of Loos. The attack was launched with massive artillery support, which now included heavy as well as field guns, and gas was for the first time turned against its inventors. The British indeed actually breached the German front line to a width of five miles and a depth of two. But the Germans had also learned lessons, and constructed an entire second defensive position in rear of the first. On the British side faulty staff work, confusion of command, and the sheer friction of war meant that no reserves were on hand to exploit the breach. The operation dragged on for another month, by the end of which both sides had lost some 200,000 men.
None the less the Allies reckoned that they had now found the formula for victory: more guns, longer preliminary barrages, better communications, and better staff work. All this they hoped to put into effect in 1916 in a great joint offensive from east and west planned by the Allied High Command at the French Headquarters at Chantilly in November. Joffre remained securely in the saddle as commander-in-chief of the most powerful allied army in the west, but Britain was becoming an increasingly important partner, as the size of the British Expeditionary Force swelled from its original six to fifty-six divisions, in six armies. It was widely, and rightly, assumed that its commander, Sir John French, was no longer up to the job, and his performance at Loos had proved it. He was replaced by the dour, inarticulate, and iron-willed Sir Douglas Haig; and preparations began for the Battle of the Somme.
The Eastern Front in 1915
