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Updated: May 21, 2025
All the barbed-wire entanglements in front of the first-line trenches appeared to be cut, mangled, twisted into balls, beaten back into the earth and exhumed again, leaving only a welt of crater-spotted ground in front of the chalky contour of the first-line trenches which had been mashed and crushed out of shape. "Yes, the Boche's first line looks rather messy," said the officer.
We will not be able to relieve them, or get supplies to them, much before next April." And it was then only the middle of December! In the Carnia and on the Upper Isonzo one finds the anomaly of first-line trenches which are perfectly safe from attack. I visited such a position.
By February 15, 1916, the British first-line trenches on a 600 to 800 yards' front fell to the Germans in assaults on the Ypres salient, carried by a bayonet charge after artillery preparation. Most of the defenders were killed and forty prisoners taken. The assaults extended over a front of more than two miles.
They succeeded in gaining a foothold at certain points in the French first-line trenches, but were thrust out later by counterattacks. The only other important event on this date was the strong bombardment by the Germans of the new French positions south of St. Quentin.
The Turkish high command would not view with equanimity the bottling up of close upon 200,000 of its first-line troops. With the example of Przemysl, and Metz in 1870 in its mind, it decided upon a, perhaps, temporary abandonment of the position immediately it became apparent that the Russian advance from the northeast and southeast could not be successfully opposed by the troops available.
De Verne accompanied him back to the fire trench, where Dick was glad to find Captain Ribaut with the other three American officers, that party having returned from a trip down the line. De Verne soon after took his leave, hastening rearward to begin his rest. Bang! sounded a field-piece back of the German line. Between the French first-line and second-line trenches the shell exploded.
Excepting a dash in Champagne, not since trench warfare began had the cavalry had any chance. The thought of action was an hypothesis developed from memory of charges in the past. Aeroplanes took the cavalry's place as scouts, machine guns and rifles emplaced behind a first-line trench which had succumbed to an attack took its place as rearguard, and aeroplane patrols its place as screen.
The German first-line defenses, prepared with days of hard labor, and formed of deep ditches, of concrete and pure earth, offered no difficulties to the British tanks. Straight up to these emplacements they crawled, shoved their noses into the walls, and uprooted them; then crawled calmly over the debris.
Well, the first-line trench, very remarkably swept and dusted and spotless as were all the trenches beyond the communication trench was not much like a trench. It was like a long wooden gallery. Its sides were of wood, its ceiling was of wood, its floor was of wood.
Here, then, in front of Verdun, the French had but a mere handful in their first-line trenches a mere handful upon whom that torrent of shells was rained. Just a scattered, yet noble band, ready to hold up the assault which would most certainly follow.
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