trench warfare definition us history

trench warfare definition us history

The Evolution and Impact of Trench Warfare in U.S. History

1. Introduction to Trench Warfare

Soldiers of all nations learned quite quickly that the destruction of actual war was very different than the great tales of derring-do and martial honor which they had heard growing up in the years leading to the conflict. Most men at the start of World War I were filled with the same youthful ideals that had made young warriors of millennia past, believing war was a grand and sometimes noble affair. They carried those hopes with them even across the miles of utter devastation which lay in waste where once had been homes, fields of grain, and the lifeblood of nations. However, upon arrival at the front, the dream soon turned to the nightmare of reality, and men started to see instead what trenches and trench warfare were really about. And it was appallingly not pretty. But better some chance of survival and continued exposure to blind chance than the quickly-acknowledged futility of the human wave or mass frontal attack. That was suicide. Indeed, the knowledge of the hopelessness of such easy-to-aim-at targets and the dread of the orders to attack without cover turned mere courage into a mortal contest and nightmare of the soul.

Massive, deadliest, and most destructive war the world had ever seen. Over the next three years, as U.S. forces moved forward, they sought to shatter the stalemate once and for all and bring the long and terrible conflict to a close. In the meantime, though, trench warfare became a situation which was, in common parlance of the time, a “living hell” for those who had to face the horrors before them. Men lived for weeks in conditions that are nearly impossible to conceive of today, if we have not been exposed to them ourselves.

2. Origins and Development of Trench Warfare in U.S. History

U.S. militiamen defending against Indian attacks during the colonial period often took shelter in short lengths of trench protected by a semicircular or V-shaped breastwork of logs. In 1779, a British-published edition of Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, which was based on army reforms by Nathaniel Greene, included detailed instructions for constructing trenches and forming defensive positions. Their purpose, like those used during the colonial period, was to provide shelter from enemy fire.

An essential aspect of understanding trench warfare is the relationship between the nature of an area and the purposes of the trenches. The earliest trenches in U.S. history date from the European colonization of the continent. In the Netherlands, specifically Fort Nassau, which was established on the Delaware River in 1611, the fortifications included trenches. Defensive trenches were also used in the attacks of Native American Lenape villages such as the 1643 massacre at Swanendael. During another conflict, Dutch soldiers built a trench to protect their compound at Fort Orange near Albany in 1644. Thus, these examples are not a separate “trench warfare” mentality but demonstrate how America’s use of trenches was part of practices with very deep roots in European history.

3. Tactics and Strategies in Trench Warfare

The fundamental feature of trench warfare was the immobility of the large units fighting in contact over extended fronts. This immobility was made possible because it was possible for entrenched defenders to receive supplies of food, ammunition, weaponry, and other crucial materials. These items could not, however, be brought up to fighting units that moved across trench lines protected with barbed wire and forbidden with artillery and rifles.

Men lived in the dirt and filth alongside huge rats that became so fat that a danger existed of them chewing through the sandbags, which were used to reinforce the trenches. They ate when they could, and they slept when they could, and sometimes they could study their letters from home and believe in their dreams. But every day and night in the rifles, the machine guns, and the mangling artillery bombarded them unceasingly. In their battlefront trenches, Americans experienced the common physical environment of trench warfare that was common to all the fractious co-belligerents in the war: British, French, German, and numerous other national armies, colonial subjects of empires, at the sites of the pretense greatest war in history.

4. Impact and Legacy of Trench Warfare on U.S. Military Doctrine

Trench warfare and the concept of the front line, or the Western Front in the case of fighting in Europe, were such a defining thought for many of the generals and soldiers who served during this period that it would be difficult to make the further case for the impact of trench warfare and the lessons learned from it. Trench warfare has had an unparalleled impact on future training, operations, and the development of Army doctrine. Additionally, lessons learned from this unusual form of warfare led to many innovations at the start of World War II and some are still features in how we fight and train today. Finally, it provides a useful lens through which to examine the impacts of technological changes on infantry tactics and combined-arms warfare. Trench warfare was not the end of warfare as many have branded, nor was its impact strictly negative. Its impact lay in the ability of the soldier and their senior leaders to recognize, adapt, and exploit the security and protection it provided to achieve both local and theater objectives.

Trench warfare has had a lasting impact on U.S. military doctrine. While the immediate post-war experiences of American soldiers and many of the senior leaders who directed operations were critical in formalizing the U.S. Army’s position on trench warfare, important lessons from the war were initially overlooked. It took greater immersion in European trench warfare and combat with German Stormtroopers in the closing weeks of the war to integrate more of these lessons into how the American Expeditionary Forces would fight on future battlefields. Naturally, these increasing combat experiences positively influenced the U.S. Army’s view on the use of trench warfare-like tactics for both assault and defense. It also provided valuable insight into associated equipment development demands that the Army would face.

5. Conclusion and Reflections on the Significance of Trench Warfare in U.S. History

In addition to these material changes, the experience of soldiers’ daily combat life in these factories of death also raised new and difficult ethical challenges. International humanitarian laws and the rules of war, which had been enforced and obeyed during the nineteenth century because of the ability of military commanders to control the battlefield, collapsed during World War I due to the confusion and carnage that trench warfare spawned. Rifle-armed combatants often killed other men up close and personally, and the fear, hatred, and shame that soldiers felt led them to commit war crimes and indiscriminately violate the Geneva Protocol by firing exploding and gas-filled artillery and trench mortars. Soldiers in contact and in close combat developed an intimate relationship with death, which led to both a desensitization of and a deep personal connection to dying and killing. As a result, soldiers often found comfort in and drew moral support from their personal relationship and understanding of the supernatural powers of warrior-saints, who were reshaped to reflect modern secular perceptions of heroes. As Willmott’s title Gilgamesh, however, reminds us, the result of both the military and personal tragedy that trench warfare inflicted on soldiers, civilians, and the delicate animating spiritual force that breathes life into the communities that they protect at home and the states that they defend was a war without either heroes or victors.

The 35,000 miles of trenches and 70,000 miles of wire, which defended these fortifications, not only represented the unprecedented scale of the conflict that World War I Americans faced, but these physical entrenchments also symbolized the challenges of the military and ethical quagmire that U.S. involvement in the war initiated. This chapter reflects on the significance of trench warfare in U.S. history. The first section recounts the significant impact of trench warfare and how it revolutionized both offensive and defensive military tactics and military-industrial strategy. The revolution that the rise and endurance of trenches and the onslaught of tactics and technologies that the combatants devised to break or blunt their defenses touched soldiers, civilians, and the governmental and non-governmental entities that sought to manipulate this new brutal battlefield of the first total war.