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We have already referred to the use of flame projectors by the enemy, and a picturesque account of their development and use in the later stages of the campaign is found in an extract from the Hamburger Nachrichten of the 9th of June, 1918: Their Origin. "Our Flammenwerfer troops owe their origin to a mere incident.
Whereas in January, 1915, Flammenwerfer troops consisted of a group of 36 men, to-day they constitute a formation with special assault and bombing detachments, and are furnished with all requisites for independent action. In reading Army Communiques, we often find mention of these troops.
The great inconvenience which was occasioned to parties engaged in the routine of trench warfare, on ration or engineering duties, and the effect on movement in the rear after an assault, taken cumulatively, represented a big military factor. The Flammenwerfer.
There can be no doubt that this period marks increasing German willingness to live up to their "blood and iron" theories of war, and, in July, 1915, another device with a considerable surprise value was used against us: the flame projector, or the German flammenwerfer.
Further Flame Development. Specimens of a very neat portable German Flammenwerfer were captured in August, 1917. It contained three essential parts: a ring-shaped oil container surrounding a spherical vessel containing compressed nitrogen, which was used to expel the oil, and a flexible tube of rubber and canvas carrying the jet. The whole was arranged to be carried on the back.
Suddenly there was a rushing noise like an escape of air from some blast-furnace. Long tongues of flame licked across to the broken ground where the King's Royal Rifles lay. Some of them were set on fire, their clothes burning on them, making them living torches, and in a second or two cinders. It was a new horror of war the Flammenwerfer.
This arose in front of High Wood, which was a veritable nest of German machine gunners in such a critical tactical position as to hold up our advance in that region. The huge stationary flammenwerfer had recently been used by Major Livens and his company against a strong point in front of Carnoy in the assault of July 1st.
British experience was that the calm use of machine-gun fire soon put German flame throwers out of action, and it is clear that the Germans themselves realised this weakness of isolated flame attacks for, in one of their documents issued by German G.H.Q. in April, 1918, they said: "Flammenwerfer have been usefully employed in combats against villages.
Fresh battalions marching to the front were only more infantry, all of the same pattern, equipped in the same way, moving with the same fixed step. Machine gun rattles had become as commonplace as the sound of creaking caisson wheels. Gas shells, lachrymatory shells and Flammenwerfer were as old-fashioned as high explosives and shrapnel. Bombing encounters in saps had no variation.
Flammenwerfer was all very well, a good German weapon: it could burn a man alive at twenty yards. But this accursed flaming English thermite could catch you at four miles. It wasn't fair. The three German trench mortars were all still firing. When would the English batteries find what they were looking for, and this awful thing stop? The night was cold and smelly.
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