Handouts

Trench Warfare

From the end of 1914 through 1918, the warring armies of the Western Front faced each other from a vast system of deep trenches.  There millions of soldiers lived out in the open, sharing their food with rats and their bed with lice.  Between the oppossing trench lines lay “no man’s land”.  In this tract of land packed with shell holes, every house and tree had long been destroyed.  Sooner or later soldiers would go over the top charging into this manmade desert.  With luck the attackers might overrun a few enemy trenches.  In time, the enemy would launch a counterattack with similar results.  The struggle continued back and forth over a few hundred yards of territory. 

Technology of Modern Warfare

The enormous casualties suffered in the western front proved the destructive power of modern weapons.  Two significant new or improved weapons were the rapid-fire machine gun and the long-range artillery gun.  Machine guns mowed down waves of soldiers.  The shrapnel, or flying debris from artillery shells, killed or wounded even more soldiers than the guns.   Artillery allowed troops to shell the enemy form more that 10 miles away.

Tanks

During WWI, advances in technology, such s the gasoline-powered engine, led by opposing forces to use tanks, airplanes and submarines against each other.  In 1916 Britain introduced the first armored tank.  Mounted with machine guns, the tanks were designed to move across “no man’s land” ( area of land between the trenches of opposing sides).  Still, the first tanks broke down often.  They failed to break the stalemate—deadlock in which neither side is able to defeat the other--on the western front. 

Poison Gas

In 1915, first Germany and then the allies began using another new weapon—poison gas.  Poison gas blinded or choked the victim or caused agonizing burns or blisters.  It could be fatal.  Thought soldiers were eventually given gas masks, poison gas remained one of the most dreaded hazards of the wars.   Poison gas was an uncertain weapon.  Shifting winds could blow the gas back on the soldiers who launched it.  One British recalled the effects of being gassed:

I suppose I resembled a kind of fish with my mouth open gasping for air.  It seemed as if my lungs were gradually shutting up and my heart pounded away in my ears like the beat of a drum.  To get air into my lungs was real agony.

--William Pressey, quoted in people at War 1914-1918

Airplanes, and Submarines

Both sides used aircraft.  The first planes were utilized simply to observe enemy troop movements.  In 1915, Germany used zeppelins, large gas-filled balloons to bomb the English coast.  Later, both sides equipped airplanes with machine guns.  Pilots known as flying aces confronted each other in the skies.  These dogfights were spectacular, but had little effect on the course of the war on the ground d.

Submarines proved much more important.  German u-boats, nicknamed from their German word for submarine, Unterseeboot, did tremendous damage to the Allied side, sinking merchant ships carrying vital supplies to Britain.  To defend against the submarines the Allies organized convoys, or group of merchant ships protected by warships.