Was there much change in the fighting methods employed by the British Army on the Western Front in the years 1915-1918?

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Was there much change in the fighting methods employed by the British Army on the Western Front in the years 1915-1918?

        

During the period of 1915 to 1918 ordinary infantry soldiers existed in a barbaric and hostile atmosphere where they were cold, infested, malnourished and wet, and always living with the fear of sudden death. Intermingled with the intense periods of boredom that the soldiers faced were often gung-ho attempts to capture enemy trenches, which would often result in very little territory gained and huge losses of life.

And with the depressing reality faced there was the increasingly nagging belief on the soldiers’ minds that they were “lions led by donkeys.”

It is not difficult to see why this perspective might be taken.

The main battles fought by the British in 1915 were failures. At both Neuve Chappelle (13,000 casualties) and Loos (115,000 casualties) British attacks had begun promisingly, then failed due to casualties caused by machine guns and artillery fire on troops who had been caught up on the uncut barbed wire.

And it was the same story in 1916: Second Ypres (60,000 casualties), The Somme (420,000 casualties), and even worse in 1917: Even the Canadian triumph at Vimy Ridge and the victory at Messines Ridge were overshadowed by the vast numbers of casualties suffered in Arras and Third Ypres (250,000 casualties).

Therefore, many changes had to ensue in the fighting methods employed by the British army.

Firstly, the British army expanded from 164,000 men in 1914 to 5,363,352 men in 1918.

The small and professional British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that was the make-up of the entire British army at the start of the war was quickly consumed by 1915.

This meant that a huge campaign of recruitment began in Britain, which resulted in 2.5 million new recruits that were known as Kitchener’s New Armies.

Secondly, the equipment used by the British army went under considerable change and modification.

Based on experience in the Boer was, the British stating that that the main role of artillery was as direct support fire for the attacking infantry.

As a result the majority of the BEF’s guns were mainly light, shrapnel firing weapons. The number of heavy guns in use was small. In contrast, the Germans made good use of heavy artillery, each army corps being supported by thirty-two 5.9-inch guns, and they were much better supplied with shells.

This was an excellent advantage that the Germans were able to maintain until 1916, and can partly serve as an explanation for the problems faced in battles such as Second Ypres, where they were simply out-gunned.

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However, in 1918, despite the severe losses at the hands of the German Spring Offensives, British artillery strength was fully made up by August and they began their final offensives with more guns than they had before the Germans attacked.

A comparable transformation was obtained in the supply of ammunition. Initially Kitchener restricted the orders of munitions to a small number of firms who had supplied the pre-war BEF. Therefore the army was short of shells all through 1915. At Neuve Chapelle shells were in such a small supply that there was only enough ammunition for three to four days ...

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