Industrial Revolution (1800’s-1940’s)
27
Bryce Humbert and Joseph Bailey
Introduction
Imagine your sergeant emphatically screaming to all the soldiers in you vicinity causing you to recognize a string of dark silhouette figures in the distance. As you try to raise your rusted weapon, you struggle to pull the trigger due to the accumulation of frost on your fingers. You quickly duck down to avoid bullets flying through the sky faster than any creature known to man. As you glance to your left then right, all that is coherent is the surplus of rat infested corpses that lay limp on the flooded, swampy ground. This was the inevitable life of trench warfare in WW1.
What is trench warfare? Ultimately, location and circumstance affect the denotation of trench warfare; however, it is most often defined as a tactical war strategy “in which opposing armed forces attack, counterattack, and defend from relatively permanent systems of trenches dug to one another” (Trench Warfare, 2019). The origin of this tactical strategy can be traced back to French engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban in the 17th century, where he designed them to aid in approaching fortifications’ artillery fire without casualties. The structure of these trenches was “dug parallel or concentric to the perimeter of the defense
and connected by radical zig-zag trench designs” (Trench Warfare, 2019). Despite its origin, the prominence of this war tactical strategy was not introduced until the First Battle of the Marne in WW1 by German forces as Germany’s push on Paris was halted. General Erich von Falkenhayn, fearful of losing the German-occupied parts of France and Belgium, instructed his troops to “dig in”, which led to allied forces implementing the same tactic. This sparked the beginning of the formation of the famous Western Front. The successful use of trench warfare in this battle led to its popularity and spread throughout Europe during this time, resulting in other countries taking on this innovative war tactic. This approach to battle can be examined in the context of Science, Technology, and Society because it was an innovative practice that came from “the social, political, legal, economic, and cultural environment” (Stanford University, 2017) at that time and was a “creative and systematic work undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge – including knowledge of humankind, culture, and society – and to devise new applications of available knowledge” (UNESCO, 2017). In order to understand the innovative practices involved with trench warfare and its impact on society; one must take into consideration its practical uses, its impact on the physical and mental health of the soldiers, and how it impacted the overall forecast of the first world war.
Trench Construction, Strategic Use, and affordability
Prominently in the Western Front but also in other parts of Europe, there were three rows of trenches at any given point: the front-line trench, the support trench, and th