View from the trenches

Autumn is approaching. What did it feel like in France one hundred years ago? At the end of September 1916, the German assault on Verdun was stayed, though by no means defeated. The attack in the Somme - which might be regarded as a counter-attack - had chewed off some ground; not much considering the human cost. In a previous blog, I claimed that the Germans learned fast. Tactics which might be successful in terms of trenches overrun and prisoners taken one day ceased to work on the next. The French were also learning. The year before, they might have sent waves of their best troops over open ground to be scythed by enemy fire. (Losses in the Vosges in 1915 hd been truly sickening.) This year, their losses were less and their territory gained was greater compared with the British.

Ruins of Dompierre, just south of the Somme canal, close to Froissy. French soldiers carrying posts and barbed wire to set up new defenses in territory they have gained. From 'Illustration' courtesy M.D. Wright

Slightly earlier, Rudyard Kipling toured the French  Western Front. This is what he heard when he arrived.
'Something bellowed across the folds of the wooded hills; something grunted in reply. Something passed over head, querulously but not without dignity. Two clear fresh barks joined the chorus, and a man moved lazily in the direction of the guns.
"Well, suppose we come and take a look at things a little" said the commmanding officer.
There was a specimen tree. A ladder ran up it to a platform. What little wind there was swayed the tall top, and the ladder creaked like a ship's gangway. A telephone bell tinkled fifty feet (16m) overhead. Two invisible guns spoke fervently for half a minute and broke off like terriers choked on a leash. We climbed till the topmost platform swayed sicklily beneath us. Here one found a rustic shelter, almost of the tea party pattern, a table, a map and a little window wreathed with living branches that gave one a view of the Devil and all his works. It was a stretch of open country, with a few sticks like old tooth-brushes which had once been tree round a farm. The rest was yellow grass, barren to all appearance as the veldt.

Barren grass with a few sticks like old toothbrushes. French soldiers advancing, Somme sector. From 'Illustration' magazine courtesy M.D. Wright

"The grass is yellow because they have used gas here" said the officer. "Their trenches (he meant the Germans') - you can see for yourself"

German 105 howitzer which had originally been concealed in a house. Of prewar design, these were relatively easily transported. They fired a 105mm shell, a nasty response to the French standard 75mm gun. It had an angle of fire of up to 45 degrees; I suspect that improvised positioning has increased this angle! From 'Illustration' Courtesy M.D. Wright

The guns in the wood began again. They seemed to have no relation to the regularly spaced burst of smoke along a little smear in the desert earth two thousand yards away (just under 2000m) - no connection at all to the strong voices overhead coming and going. It was as impersonal as the drive of the sea along a breakwater. Suddenly a seventh wave broke and spread the shape of its foam like a plume overtopping all the others.
"That's one of our torpilleurs - what you call trench-sweepers" said the observer among the whispering leaves.
A little sunshine flooded the stricken landscape and made its chemincal yellow look more foul. A detachment of men moved out on the road which ran towards the French trenches and tehn vanished at the foot of a little rise. Other men appeared, moving towards us with that concentration of purpose and bearing shown in both Armies when - dinner is at hand! They looked as though they had been digging hard'

At the farm of Bois l'Abbe, Somme sector, French troops are digging in. At a rakish angle in the foreground lies a section of prefabricated railway track. The beautiful pressed steel edges of the sleepersproclaim this to be Pachot-designed track. From Illustration magazine courtesy M.D. Wright

Kipling was describing the Verdun sector but there is much that could apply to the Somme as well, the noise, threat of gas and the very present killer explosions and shrapnel. There was relentless digging in and shoring-up of defences by day and long watches of the night, all relieved only by refreshments and humour.
The monotony of killing was deadly. On his tour of the Western Front, Kipling quoted a French officer. "It's the eating-up of a people" He looked at the German lines. "They come and fill the trenches and they die and they die and they send more and those die." He added "We do the same of course."
Yet change was on the way. You, gentle reader, will have noticed all the gunfire in these descriptions. Each French 75mm shell-burst meant two thirds of kilo of high explosive in a metal shell. Each 105mm howitzer had a kilo, also wrapped in a metal envelope ... and these were just the basic guns. Larger ones had shells the size of a person. Proper trench warfare required thousands of tonnes of ammo daily. Thousands of tonnes of ammunition could be dragged in by thousands of pack-animals or worse still humans acting as pack animals. The alternative, given the technology of the time, were trench railways, as originally devised by Colonel Péchot, then seized upon and improved by foe and friend alike. This history is more fully described in 'Colonel Péchot: Tracks to the trenches'
From the top down, Germans learned most quickly. Their trench railways were improving. Petrol-powered locotractors were used at the Front, and a new, sophisticated generation of steam locomotives were on the drawing board. The French, too were learning. To take one example, the supply  of beleagered Verdun was assured not just by the lorries of the Voie Sacrée connecting Bar-le-Duc with Verdun, but by the trains of the narrow-gauge Meusien railway. Quadruple tracks were required for all the traffic. Likewise, bitter experience was raising their game in the trenches.
Meanwhile, the British were just beginning to learn, though we believe the process too far too long.