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Trench raiding was a feature of trench warfare which developed during World War I. It was the practice of making small scale night-time surprise attacks on enemy positions.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2020) |
Trench raiding was a feature of trench warfare which developed during World War I. It was the practice of making small scale night-time surprise attacks on enemy positions.
Typically, raids were carried out by small teams of men who would black up their faces with burnt cork before crossing the barbed wire and other debris of no man's land to infiltrate enemy trench systems. The distance between friendly and enemy front lines varied but was generally several hundred metres. Any attempt to raid a trench during daylight hours usually would have been pointless because it would have been quickly spotted: enemy machine gunners and snipers had a clear view of no man's land and could easily shoot anyone who showed their head above the trench parapet.
Standard practice was to creep slowly up on the sentries guarding a small sector of an enemy front line trench (looking for the glow of cigarettes in the dark or listening for conversations) then kill them as quietly as possible. Having secured the trench, the raiders would complete their mission objectives as quickly as possible, ideally within several minutes. Raiders were aware that the longer they stayed in the trench, the greater the likelihood of enemy reinforcements arriving. Grenades would be thrown into dugouts where enemy troops were sleeping before the raiders left the enemy lines to return to their own.
There was a risk that returning raiders could be shot in so-called friendly fire incidents. Therefore, it was a typical procedure to notify sentries along the line whenever raiding parties were sent out, and to use some form of password system so that returning raiders could identify themselves when challenged in the dark.
Trench raiding had multiple purposes. The intention would commonly be one or more of the following:
Despite the fact that World War I was the first conflict to be fought by mechanized means, trench raiding was very similar to medieval warfare insofar as it was fought face-to-face with crude weaponry. Trench raiders were lightly equipped for stealthy, unimpeded movement. Normally, raiding parties were armed with deadly homemade trench raiding clubs, machetes, bayonets, entrenching tools, trench knives, hammers, hatchets, pickaxe handles and brass knuckles. [1] The choice of weaponry was deliberate: the raiders' intention was to kill or capture people quietly, without drawing attention to their activities, and this would have been impossible if they had routinely used firearms during raids. Trench raiders were also armed with more modern weapons such as pistols, shotguns, submachine guns, and hand grenades, though these were only intended to be used in an emergency i.e. if the enemy discovered their activities and raised the alarm.
Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising military trenches, in which combatants are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. It became archetypically associated with World War I (1914–1918), when the Race to the Sea rapidly expanded trench use on the Western Front starting in September 1914.
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Close-quarters battle (CQB), also called close-quarters combat (CQC), is a close combat situation between multiple combatants involving ranged or melee combat. It can occur between military units, law enforcement and criminal elements, and in other similar situations. CQB is typically defined as a short duration, high intensity conflict characterized by sudden violence at close range.
The Battle of Arras, also known as the Second Battle of Arras, was a British offensive on the Western Front during the First World War. From 9 April to 16 May 1917, British troops attacked German defences near the French city of Arras on the Western Front. The British achieved the longest advance since trench warfare had begun, surpassing the record set by the French Sixth Army on 1 July 1916. The British advance slowed in the next few days and the German defence recovered. The battle became a costly stalemate for both sides and by the end of the battle, the British Third Army and the First Army had suffered about 160,000 casualties and the German 6th Army about 125,000.
Stormtroopers were the only elite shock troops of the Imperial German Army that specialized in commando style raids, infiltrating the trenches and wiping out the enemy quickly, maneuver warfare, reconnaissance, and shock tactics. In the last years of World War I, Stoßtruppen were trained to use infiltration tactics – part of the Germans' improved method of attack on enemy trench warfare. The German Empire entered the war certain that the conflict would be won in the course of great military campaigns, thus relegating results obtained during individual clashes to the background; consequently the best officers, concentrated in the German General Staff, placed their attention on maneuver warfare and the rational exploitation of railways, rather than concentrating on the conduct of battles. This attitude made a direct contribution to operational victories of Germany in Russia, Romania, Serbia and Italy, but it resulted in failure in the West. Thus the German officers on the Western Front found themselves in need of resolving the static situation caused by trench warfare on the battlefield.
A trench knife is a combat knife designed to kill or incapacitate an enemy at close quarters, such as in a trench or other confined area. It was developed as a close combat weapon for soldiers attacking enemy trenches during the First World War. An example of a World War I trench knife is the German Army's Nahkampfmesser.
The Gas Attacks at Hulluch were two German cloud gas attacks on British troops during World War I, from 27 to 29 April 1916, near the village of Hulluch, 1 mi (1.6 km) north of Loos in northern France. The gas attacks were part of an engagement between divisions of the II Royal Bavarian Corps and divisions of the British I Corps.
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Trench raiding clubs, or trench maces were improvised melee weapons used by both the Allies and the Central Powers during World War I. Clubs were used during nighttime trench raiding expeditions as a quiet and effective way of killing or wounding enemy soldiers. The clubs were usually made out of wood. It was common practice to fix a metal object at the striking end in order to maximize the injury inflicted. Another common design comprised a simple stave with the end drilled out and a lead weight inserted, with rows of large hobnails hammered in around its circumference. Most designs had some form of cord or leather strap at the end to wrap around the user's wrist. Bosnian soldiers serving in the Austro-Hungarian army were fond of using maces. They were also used by officers to finish enemy soldiers wounded by poison gas attacks.
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Barbed wire was one of the attacker's great problems. There were cutters, but not enough, and men were often killed before they could cut a way.
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The Regiment of Riflemen was a unit of the U.S. Army in the early nineteenth century. Unlike the regular US line infantry units with muskets and bright blue and white uniforms, this regiment was focused on specialist light infantry tactics, and were accordingly issued rifles and dark green and black uniforms to take better advantage of cover. This was the first U.S. rifleman formation since the end of the American Revolutionary War 25 years earlier.
Where can you find troops more efficient than Morgan's riflemen of the Revolution or Forsyth's riflemen of the last war with Great Britain?
The Gas attacks at Wulverghem were German cloud gas releases during the First World War on British troops at Wulverghem in the municipality of Heuvelland, near Ypres in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The gas attacks were part of the sporadic fighting between battles in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front. The British Second Army held the ground from Messines Ridge northwards to Steenstraat and the divisions opposite the German XXIII Reserve Corps had received warnings of a gas attack. From 21 to 23 April, British artillery-fire exploded several gas cylinders in the German lines around Spanbroekmolen, which released greenish-yellow clouds. A gas alert was given on 25 April when the wind began to blow from the north-east and routine work was suspended; on 29 April, two German soldiers deserted and warned that an attack was imminent. Just after midnight on 30 April, the German attack began and over no man's land, a gas cloud drifted on the wind into the British defences, then south-west towards Bailleul.
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