The Horrifying Reality of World War I

If you paid attention in your high school world history class you might remember that World War I, the Western Front particularly, was just one long stalemate where waves of men fruitlessly ran towards the opposing trench just to get cut down by machine guns. Even if they somehow made it to the opposing trench, brutal hand-to-hand combat ensued until the attackers either took the trench or the defenders held on. This is an oversimplification obviously, but there is a reason why the war is remembered as such a bleak, utter waste of human life. So why was WWI so brutal?

The short answer is the use of several new advancements in never-before-used military technology that had far surpassed the tactics of the armies that began utilizing them. Military forces were still being drilled in infantry tactics that weren’t far off from what was done during the Napoleonic Era. The ginormous issue with this is these armies were now no longer using single-shot rifles where everyone just lined up and sent volleys toward one another. By 1914, machine guns were now being routinely utilized, artillery had made leaps and bounds in its capacity for destruction, airplanes in both reconnaissance and combat roles were starting to appear, and the deployment of tanks was not far down the road.

So, in a nutshell, at the war’s outset, you had infantry forces armed with multi-shot repeating rifles, the new machine gun as a deadly efficient defensive weapon, and modernized artillery with more range and explosive power than ever. At the same time, you had generals who still thought a cavalry charge or sending a wall of men forward to take on an opposing position would work as it always had. You can imagine how well this would go when a dug-in opponent just had to lay down some barbed wire to slow down your advance and place a few machine guns capable of spewing out more bullets than you have men before you can even reach their line.

Because of this, a formula began to take shape rather quickly after the war’s outset; it would remain almost completely unchanged until the armistice was signed in 1918. Because machine guns and artillery had become such effective weapons against the line infantry that every general was so used to relying on, trench warfare, on the Western Front particularly, became the tactic that would define the war.

Digging lines and lines of trenches was the only way to protect your infantry from the enemy’s raking machine guns and give them better cover from incoming artillery barrages. However, when both sides start digging trenches, it is challenging to move the front line because each is forced to remain behind their defensive positions unless they get torn to shreds. This is why the frontline would hardly change from the outset to the end in many places.

Now, the only way you could attempt (emphasis on attempt) to get the frontline to move required you to leave the safety of your trench and assault and clear out the enemy’s trench. Because of the immutability that remained on both sides, the tactics didn’t have much room for updating or changing. There’s very little you can do except send wave after wave of your infantry to try and route out the enemy’s trench when it stands in front of the town or railroad hub you want to take. Artillery and maybe aircraft can help soften the defenses, but that leaves just your infantry to go and take it the old-fashioned way. It’s worth mentioning that tanks would become very useful support for this purpose, but they wouldn’t show up until the later stages of the war and wouldn’t be implemented nearly on the same scale as they would in WWII or in later conflicts.

What the battlefield would come to look like is almost impossible to describe with just words. The landscape, especially the so-called “no man’s land” in the middle of the opposing trenches, would look more akin to the face of Mars than the European countryside. Trees, bushes, and shrubs would be long gone from the consistent shelling, and craters pocketed the entire landscape. Rainfall made everything wet and muddy — the trenches were muddy, no man’s land was muddy, and even the shell craters were often filled with a stagnant, watery sludge that was sometimes deep enough to drown men. Barbed wire was set everywhere, especially as you approached the trench lines.

Bodies lay everywhere between the trenches. With it being nearly impossible to collect the dead and wounded from previous failed assaults, lest you too be cut down by a machine gun, the cries of the abandoned echoed across no man’s land while the rotting corpses were strewn about as far as the eye could see. The putrid stench from the mud and the rot would have been inescapable.

With this being said, a typical trench assault went something like this: An artillery barrage would commence, with the intent of softening up the enemy defenses such as barbed wire, machine gun emplacements, and enemy manpower. After the artillery finished, wave after wave of infantry would go up and over the top of their trench, into “no man’s land,” and charge out in the open towards the enemy.

Hundreds and hundreds of men would fall to the left and right of you, that is if you were lucky enough to remain alive on the approach to the enemy lines. Most assaults failed here. There often weren’t enough survivors to make an effective trench assault, and by this point, those few who remained would do their best to retreat to their lines. If enough men made it to the trench, rifles would start to fire, and grenades would be thrown. If the enemy still refused to give up, the result would be ferocious hand-to-hand combat. Bayonets, spades, knives, rifle butts, and even the occasional makeshift club were all used as melee weapons to cut, chop, stab, or bludgeon anyone in the way. If the enemy was successfully driven out, only a few hundred yards of ground was captured at the cost of thousands of men — One of the worst benefit-to-cost ratios in history.

This same process went on… for almost four years straight. There’s a reason it is given the name “The War to End All Wars.” It was apocalyptic. It was on a massive never-before-seen scale. To see so many men die in a nightmarish hellscape over much of the same ground left those on the frontlines who were still alive hopeless. Many never expected to return to their homes. Most didn’t. World War I is often regarded as one of history’s biggest tragedies because it cost the lives of so many to the benefit of almost no one. It would set the stage for a far larger and even more deadly global conflict.