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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Only 500, 000 rounds were there to support the offensive at Loos, which is only one round in 16 minutes for heavy guns and one round in 10 minutes for field guns each day.

Haig was then forced to resort to untried gas weapons, and even when shells were available there was prevalence of shrapnel, which was which was designed to wipe out troops that were in the open rather than being effective against trenches.

However, by 1916 the situation had changed drastically and at the Battle of the Somme the 3rd army alone was allocated 3 million rounds. The preliminary artillery bombardment of Third Ypres used 4.3 million rounds.

The development of better shell supply, weapons and equipment also allowed the fighting methods to change, as different attacking styles could be used.

Before Third Ypres, shells only exploded after a certain time period, which meant that cratering of the ground often occurred due to the shells forcing themselves into the ground due to the force of impact, which meant that an uneven landscape was produced.

Therefore tanks couldn’t be used, and a serious obstacle was created for soldiers to cross. Also, if the shell did not explode directly on the barbed wire, then instead of being cut, the wire could only be lifted into the air, and would fall with worse tangles for instance Aubers Ridge in 1915.

In 1917, a fuse called ‘No. 106’ was developed, which was an extremely sensitive fuse that could detonate shells on immediate contact with wire or ground, therefore reducing the amount of cratering that occurred, and increasing the amount of wire that was cut.

The British Army entered the war with basically no practical hand grenade or mortar design, as the early versions of these weapons were often as dangerous to the user as they were to the enemy for instance the ‘jam-pot grenade.’ However, the ‘Mills bomb’ and ‘Stokes mortar’ were manufactured by the British and took away the German grenade/mortar advantage.

There were several major changes that took place on the Western Front in the First World War.

One of the main ones was the introduction of the tank. A tank was an armoured vehicle that was capable of crossing difficult terrain, crushing wire, destroying strongpoints and generally demoralising the enemy.

However in many battles (e.g. the Somme in 1916), they were not used to their full capability. This was illustrated significantly by the ‘Mark 1’ (the first design of tank), which had all round caterpillar tracks that gave it an excellent performance over rough ground, and weapons that were mounted at the side of the tank.

But it was an extremely slow tank, with a top speed of 15 yards a minute. It wasn’t bullet proof, even though it was meant to be, and was mechanically unreliable. Also, the engine had no cooler so the tank heated up to extremely high temperatures, and became full of corrosive gasses and consequently were very unpleasant for the crew also, these tanks were prone to breaking down spontaneously, which meant that the Germans could attack men while they were stuck in their tanks. The Germans did not take the tank seriously and thought that the British could never use it as a great advantage.

At the battle of Cambrai (November 1917), however, the ‘Mark 4’ tank showed the Germans the full capability of the tank. 378 were used in total, and this design was quicker and more bullet proof than before, and for once was used effectively with fresh tactics.

The ground that they were used on was not cratered by a preliminary bombardment, and was also slightly downward sloping, which was the best landscape for their all round caterpillar tracks to be used on.

Due to their new advantages, the ‘Mark 4’ tank was not only used as a fighting tank, but as a supply tank, a gun carrier, a bridging tank, a telephone cable-laying tank or a tank for transporting wireless equipment.

After three days of fighting at Cambrai, the tanks had driven eight kilometres deep into the Hindenburg Line, and for only a fraction of the casualties. This greatly boosted British troops’ moral.

By 1918, the ‘Mark 5’ tank and the ‘Medium Mark A’ tank had been designed.

The ‘Mark 5’ outclassed the ‘Mark 4’ with a more powerful engine and therefore a higher speed of 4.6 mph. It had a better bullet proof outer shell, so the crew stood a better chance of survival.

The ‘Medium Mark A’ tank (also called ‘The Whippet’) exceeded the ‘Mark 5’ tank’s speed, with a speed of 8.3 mph and this tank was specifically designed for exploitation of breakthroughs in conjunction with cavalry.

Tactics greatly changed between 1915 and 1918. Before 1917, soldiers were sent into battle in linear formations so as everybody could see their companions to the front and sides of them and would know what they needed to do.

This was proven a failure in the battle of the Somme, as the lines of men were just mowed down by the machine gun fire.

Non-linear formations were then recommended after the huge failure of the Somme such as the ‘blob’ or ‘worm’ formation. By the end of 1916, a training manual was produced, which incorporated the lessons learned on the Somme.

Another tactical modification was the ‘creeping barrage.’ The artillery and mortars would send a barrage of explosives at the enemy trenches.

As this happened, the infantry would be advancing less than 100 yards from the barrage. As the infantry advanced the artillery and mortars would creep further into the German lines, and this would continue until a breakthrough was reached. So the artillery would destroy or delay machine gun posts and enemy fire, as they would not be set up due to exploding shells, and then the infantry would easily be able to storm all of the German trenches, and kill Germans.

On some occasions, the ‘creeping barrage’ was extended to include smoke and gas fired by the artillery in shell form. This was quite effective as the barrage protected the infantry, and the Germans were killed or reduced to cowering in their trenches by the bombardment. This was the new way of artillery attack (to reduce the enemy to cowering in their trenches and lower enemy morale), and this was decided in 1917, as previously the idea of artillery was to kill the enemy with heavy bombardments, which took away any chance of surprise attack. The creeping barrage allowed this surprise attack, so a breakthrough was more easily reached, as the enemy didn’t have time to call for reinforcements, or to prepare for the attack.

The trouble with this method of attack were the amount of shells used up by the constant barrage, as there were only a limited amount available; this method was extremely slow, and therefore could not be used all of the time, otherwise it would take too long to annihilate the enemy; and finally if one shell was not fired far enough, then it would explode on own troops, therefore causing many casualties.

In conclusion, there were numerous changes in the fighting methods employed by the British on the Western Front between 1915 and 1918, yet on they’re own, they were not war-winning changes.

Only when combined with other new tactics or already existing strategies did they lead to important, sometimes war-winning changes.

For example, tanks could not win the war on they’re own, yet when combined with infantry tactical advancements, and artillery tactical advancements like the ‘creeping barrage,’ did the tanks really get through to do the damage they were capable of.

However, the reason for the continuing stalemate in this period was because for every fighting advance the British made, the Germans made a defensive counter, which meant that it was hard for the British to achieve any sort of breakthrough. For instance, at the start of the war, the Germans used a ‘crust defence’, which meant that they used trench systems with a hard outer layer (hard defence), yet a soft inner layer (little defence).

This meant that once the outer layer was penetrated it could not be fixed and the British could destroy the whole defence system from the inside. However, the Germans recognized this problem and, in 1916, the defence was modified to make a superior defence that could not so easily be broken.

This was a more elaborate trench system, with large counter-attack formations held in reserve, and ready to re-take any ground lost by the troops in the front line.

But there were more Allied force troops than German troops, as well as the British’s possession of better and more developed fighting equipment.

So in 1917 the Germans changed there defence to a ‘rear-facing slope defence.’

The aim of this was to allow the enemy to exhaust itself, yet husband its own forces. A ‘Killing Ground’ was set up as the forward zone, which prevented the enemy of being able to shell the first and second lines at the same time. The rest of the ground was used to occupy reverse-facing slopes to deny accurate observation. But this defence was no match for the British ‘creeping barrage’ fighting technique, so in the end the Germans were forced to improvise defence, and eventually couldn’t hold on any longer and lost.

There was a good deal of change in fighting methods from 1915-18, but most of these changes were indicative to the actions of the enemy.

If one side made a change, then the other would have to react to it accordingly.