1916: the year of Verdun and the Somme

Extract from Fortifications of the Western Front 1914–18
(Fortress 24)

Aviator’s view of a textbook British trench system on the Somme, May–June 1916

In February 1916 the Germans launched a carefully planned offensive against Verdun, which encountered two distinct layers of defences. In the front line there was a system of fieldworks that had been built to a high standard in 1915, including some early concrete shelters. Resistance continued for some time along this line, but so powerful was the German assault, especially in terms of artillery, that the front eventually succumbed. Behind it lay the fixed pre-war forts, some of which had been almost 'state-of-the-art' in 1914, and capable of resisting even the now-ageing super-heavy howitzers that had reduced Liège and Namur. Unfortunately by 1916 these forts had largely been stripped of their garrisons, and even much of their artillery, due to the pressing needs of the front line. Thus is was that just nine German infantrymen, who had fought their way through the advanced fieldworks, were able to wander unopposed into Douaumont, 'the strongest fort in the world', on 25 February. Douaumont had been all but undefended, and in German hands it would quickly become a stalwart bastion against French counter-attacks. The second and last of the Verdun forts to fall was the considerably smaller Fort Vaux; but in that case the French had been forewarned and were able to put up a ferocious resistance – mainly in gas-filled, lightless underground tunnels – which lasted for almost a week, from 2 to 7 June. It was an epic of defensive warfare that would inspire the post-war Minister of War, the ex-sergeant André Maginot, to build the ultra-modern fortified line along the whole Franco-German frontier that would forever bear his name.

After the German impetus had been halted, the initiative passed to the now numerous, but still inexperienced, British on the Somme from 1 July onwards, and then eventually to the French at Verdun , who began to counter-attack on 19 October. What the British encountered was a system of fieldworks that was even stronger than any that had so far been seen. Not only were they laid out in depth, all the way back up the slope from the original front line, in low ground, to the overwatching features of High Wood and Delville Wood, but each line of German trenches was dotted with deep shelters, or Hangstellung, often well over 20ft below ground level. Large numbers of troops could rest within them in complete security from all but the very heaviest shells, whereas at only 6 or 8ft deep the trenches and light shelters on the surface were always vulnerable to artillery and trench mortars. They would be very thinly held, and usually very poorly maintained in normal times. At moments of crisis, however, a seemingly endless file of fresh troops could emerge from their deep shelters to strengthen a threatened point, or launch counter-attacks. At first the allied troops were awed and bewildered by the presence of these unexpected German reinforcements and then, once the secrets of the deep dugouts had been uncovered, they allegedly became angered that their own engineers had not provided them with similarly secure accommodation.

It soon became clear on the Somme that this new generation of German defences could not be physically destroyed by shell fire, as they had been at Neuve Chapelle, since there simply were not enough guns available to bring down a sufficient weight of HE per square yard. Instead, it was realised that the best tactic was to use artillery merely to neutralise the German defenders for the relatively short period needed for attacking infantry to get in among them. This concept became crystallised as the 'creeping barrage', which had been poorly understood on 1 July, but which was being used widely from 14 July onwards. As it developed in late 1916 through 1917 the mature British creeping barrage would become a fearsome weapon indeed, with up to seven successive lines of bursting shells, mortar bombs and machine-gun barrages, ranged up to one and a half miles in depth, advancing regularly by 100 yards every four minutes in step with the advance of the infantry line. The aim was to make it so dangerous for a defending infantryman to raise his head above the parapet that he would prefer to stay sheltered in underground burrows. He would then be unable to bring fire to bear against attacking infantry until it was too late.

By the end of the Somme battle in November, the Germans had been forced to build no less than seven successive defensive lines in depth, which had eventually stymied all of the many attempted breakthroughs to Bapaume, whether by infantry, cavalry or even, on 15 September, by tanks. It still remained true that a well-organised and well-prepared attacker could always capture the first line of trenches – especially when he was following a creeping barrage, and using Laffargue-style platoon tactics whenever the barrage broke down. However, once the allies had captured the first defensive line, the Germans at both Verdun and the Somme were adept at re-capturing it by an instant counter-attack, or at least at falling back to their next position in depth, to pose a huge new logistic problem to a would-be assailant.

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