Paul Nash

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Paul Nash
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The Western Front
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Schlieffen Plan
This plan was a reaction to the German notion of
encirclement. Any war for Germany would be a
two front war. This plan would ensure a quick,
42 days, victory over France before Russia could
mobilize. Four armies, one million men would
comprise the arc to sweep to Paris. The weak
part of the plan was the Intentional violation of
Belgian neutrality, agreed to by Germany and
Britain in 1839. Bismarck had warned that this
violation would be folly for it would
drag Britain into the conflict.
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French Plan XVII
The French, never able to dispel the humiliating
defeat of the Franco- Prussian War, put first and
foremost in their plan the retaking of the lost
provinces of Alsace-Lorraine. This plan was of
the School of Attack. The Plan was based on
the notion of elan, the utter spirit to win. The
plan, full of flaws, had one major flawit massed
the French Army to the south, away from the brunt
of the German attack.
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Battles of the Western Front

• Marne Sept. 5-9, 1914
• Ypres April 22 , 1915 , Germans used chlorine
  gas
• Verdun Feb. 21-Dec.19, 1916
• Somme July 1-Nov. 1916
• Passchendaele/ 3rd Ypres July 16-Nov. 10, 1917
• 2nd Marne July 15-sept. 16, 1918 last German
  offensive

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William Orpen
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Aurthur Guy Empey
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Aurthur Guy Empey
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The white area is no mans land
German trenches
View of trenches from the air
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Trench Terms

• No Mans Land between the trenches, heavily
  bombed
• Over the Top mounting a charge over the
  top of the trench into no mans land to
  attach the enemy trench
• Front Line Trenches usually 7 deep, 6 wide,
  the Allies trenches were in lower ground and
  usually flooded, laid in a zigzag manner to help
  protect their men, sandbags were used to absorb
  bullets and barbed wire used to protect from
  enemy attack
• Communication Trenches linked Front Line
  trenches with reserve/support trenches, allowed
  movement of men, supplies and equipment

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Trench Terms

• Parapet side of trench facing the enemy,
  protected by sandbags
• Parados rear side of the trench, protected by
  sandbags
• Duck Board wooden planking on the bottom of
  trenches because of mud
• Dug Outs protective holes dug in side of trench
  wall

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No Mans Land

• During this period the area of No Man's Land
  scarcely varied although its width would vary
  widely from sector to sector, from one kilometre
  to as little as a few hundred yards (as at Vimy
  Ridge for example).  In the latter instance
  troops would be able to overhear conversation
  from their opposing trenches or readily lob
  grenades into their midst.
• No Man's Land was not however barren of
  activity.  During nightfall each side would
  despatch parties to spy on the enemy, or to
  repair or extend barbed wire posts. 

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No Mans Land
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End of the Line, the North Sea
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View from the Front
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Felix Vallotton
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Ypres

• The first battle of Ypres in Oct 15.-Nov.22, 1914
  resulted in the BEFs loss of 75,000, most of its
  professional army.
• The second battle of Ypres April-May 25,1915 the
  Germans used chlorine gas, Germans held the
  higher ground and the city was demolished by
  German shelling

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John Lavery
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In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the
crosses, row on row,That mark our place and in
the skyThe larks, still bravely singing,
flyScarce heard amid the guns below.We are the
Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw
sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we
lie,In Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel
with the foeTo you from failing hands we
throwThe torch be yours to hold it high.If ye
break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep,
though poppies growIn Flanders fields.
John McCrae
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• He was a Canadian physician and fought on the
  Western Front in 1914, but was then transferred
  to the medical corps and assigned to a hospital
  in France.  He died of pneumonia while on active
  duty in 1918.

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Gas Shells
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Poison Gas

• Battle of Ypres 1915 first use of poison gas by
  Germans
• April 22 1915 Germans used chlorine gas, a 5mile
  wide cloud
• 520 cylinders(168 tons of the chemical)
• Sept. 25, 1915 British released chlorine gas
  against the
• Germans.
• Lachrymator (tearing agent)tear gas, mace,
  temporary blindness
• gas mask was good protection
• Asphyxiates (poisonous gas) chlorine, phosgene,
  diphosgene
• Blistering Agent mustard gas attacked any
  exposed moist skineyes
• Lungs, armpits, groin gas mask not effective,
  oily agent would hang
• Low areas for hours.
• 1918 1 of 4 artillery shells fired contained gas
  of some type

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John Singer Sargent
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Bent double like old beggars under
sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we
turned our backs And towards our distant rest
began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had
lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All
went lame all blind Drunk with fatigue deaf
even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped
Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas!Gas! Quick,
boys! An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy
helmets just in time But some still was yelling
out and stumbling And floudring like a man in
fire or lime Dim, through the misty panes and
thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw
him drowning.
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In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He
plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If
in some smothering dreams you too could
pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And
watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His
hanging face, like a devils sick of sin If you
could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come
gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene
as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable
sores on innocent tongues,-- My friend, you would
not tell with such high zest To children ardent
for some desperate glory, The old Lie Dulce et
decorum est Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen
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• Owen was injured in March 1917 and sent home
  he was fit for duty in August, 1918, and returned
  to the front.  November 4, just seven days before
  the Armistice, he was caught in a German machine
  gun attack and killed.  He was twenty-five when
  he died.

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Battle of Verdun

• Feb. 21-Dec. 19, 1916
• Falkenhayn determined to defeat France by
  attacking a target so important to French that
  they would be forced to deploy every man for the
  defense of that target and thus bleed the French
  army to death

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French troops waiting to advance
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French and German dead
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German dead
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Verdun, before and after
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Before and After
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Witnesses of Verdun

• A French captain reports ...I have returned from
  the most terrible ordeal I have ever witnessed.
  Four days and four nights ninety-six hours
  the last two days in ice-cold mud kept under
  relentless fire, without any protection
  whatsoever except for the narrow trench, which
  even seemed to be too wide. I arrived with
  175 men, I returned with 34 of whom several had
  half turned insane

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• An eye-witness ...One soldier was going insane
  with thirst and drank from a pond covered with a
  greenish layer near Le Mort-Homme. A corpse was
  afloat in it his black countenance face down in
  the water and his abdomen swollen as if he had
  been filling himself up with water for days
  now....

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• A witness tells ...We all carried the smell of
  dead bodies with us. The bread we ate, the
  stagnant water we drank Everything we touched
  smelled of decomposition due to the fact that the
  earth surrounding us was packed with dead bodies

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Attack by a flamethrower

• Louis Barthas also describes such an
  attack...At my feet two unlucky creatures
  rolled the floor in misery. Their clothes and
  hands, their entire bodies were on fire. They
  were living torches. The next day In front of
  us on the floor the two I had witnessed ablaze,
  lay rattling. They were so unrecognisably
  mutilated that we could not decide on their
  identities. Their skin was black entirely. One of
  them died that same night. In a fit of insanity
  the other hummed a tune from his childhood,
  talked to his wife and his mother and spoke of
  his village. Tears were in our eyes....

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• A German eye-witness ...The losses are
  registered as follows they are dead, wounded,
  missing, nervous wrecks, ill and exhausted.
  Nearly all suffer from dysentery. Because of the
  failing provisioning the men are forced to use up
  their emergency rations of salty meats. They
  quenched their thirst with water from the
  shellholes. They are stationed in the village of
  Ville where every form of care seems to be
  missing. They have to build their own
  accommodation and are given a little cacao to
  stop the diarrhoea. The latrines, wooden beams
  hanging over open holes, are occupied day and
  night the holes are filled with slime and
  blood...

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• A French eye-witness mud, heat, thirst, filth,
  rats, the sweat smell of corpses, the disgusting
  smell of excreta and the terrible fear it seems
  we will have to attack, and that when nobody has
  any strength left...
• A German soldier and during the summer months
  the swarms of flies around the corpses and the
  stench, that horrible stench. If we had to
  construct trenches we put garlic cloves in our
  nostrils

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Cost of the Battle

• Battle field of a square ten kilometres
• French losses337,231of which 162,308 dead or
  missing
• German losses337,000of which 100,000 dead or
  missing
• Total714,231of which 262,308 dead or missing

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Battle of the Somme

• July 1- Nov. 18, 1916
• The attack was preceded by an eight-day
  preliminary bombardment of the German lines,
  beginning on Saturday 24 June.
• The expectation was that the ferocity of the
  bombardment would entirely destroy all forward
  German defences, enabling the attacking British
  troops to practically walk across No Mans Land
  and take possession of the German front lines
  from the battered and dazed German troops.  1,500
  British guns, together with a similar number of
  French guns, were employed in the bombardment

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• The attack itself began at 0730 on 1 July with
  the detonation of a series of 17 mines.  The
  first, which was actually exploded ten minutes
  early, went off at 0720

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• Six days before the attack 1.6 million shells
  fired at Germans
• July 1, the British set off 2 mines containing
  200,000lbs. Of explosives under the German lines,
• The explosions were heard in London.
• The Pals or Chums Regiments.
• Sir Henry Rawlinson was so sure the Germans
  could not respond
• that he sent troops over in parade formation
• Germans had survived the artillery and their
  barbed wire entangled
• the British so that German machine guns
  massacred the British.
• First Day the British lost 19,240 dead 35,494
  wounded
• 2,152 missing57,470 casualties

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British troops marching to the front
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British troops going over the top the first day
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Good-morning good-morning! the General
said When we met him last week on our way to the
line. Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of
em dead, And were cursing his staff for
incompetent swine. Hes a cheery old card,
grunted Harry to Jack As they slogged up to Arras
with rifle and pack. But he did for them both
by his plan of attack. Siegfried Sassoon
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German advancing to Bapaume Battle of the Somme
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Watching the Battle of the Somme
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Cost of the Battle

• During the attack the British and French had
  gained 12 kilometres of ground, the taking of
  which resulted in 420,000 estimated British
  casualties, including many of the volunteer
  pals battalions, plus a further 200,000 French
  casualties.  German casualties were estimated to
  run at around 500,000.

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1st Newfoundland Regt.

• It was a terrible experience. Because the forward
  trenches were clogged with bodies and debris, the
  advance of the Essex regiment was delayed and the
  Newfoundlanders were forced to cross 900 metres
  of exposed front independently. Few made it to
  the beginning of the Allied barbed wire
  entanglements, 230 metres beyond their starting
  point. Those who did had to follow the zig-zag
  lanes between pre-cut, highlighted openings in
  the wire which were well covered by the enemy
  machine-guns. If they managed to emerge through
  these gaps, the men of the 1st Newfoundland
  Regiment then discovered that at least 500 metres
  of open ground lay between them and the fully
  intact first line of German defences.

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• One of our Sapper officers slept beside a
  several-days-old corpse without noticing any
  unpleasantness. All about us the air was heavy
  with the reek of the dead in Mametz Wood.

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One days action

• When approximate casualty reports were made up it
  was found that 150 of all ranks of the small
  number in action had been killed or wounded.
  Every officer who took part in the attack was a
  casualty. Heastey, the last of the likeable
  gallant trio of youngsters who joined from
  Sandhurst in June, was killed at night his
  platoon carried him back two miles for burial.
  Bowles, who came home from Argentina to serve,
  was brought out smiling, dying. As O.C. High Wood
  the C.O. was dismayed on learning that the other
  units were in no better case than we. The
  Cameronians had lost their Adjutant, all four
  company commanders and eight other officers, and
  a great many rank and file. The 5th S.R had only
  one officer left. The R.F, were disorganized
  their losses were nearly two-thirds of the
  strength with which they began the day.

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• I had to pass by the corpse of a German with his
  back propped against a tree. He had a green face,
  spectacles, close shaven hair black blood was
  dripping from the nose and beard. He had been
  there for some days and was bloated and stinking.
  There had been bayonet fighting in the wood.

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July 1 1916

• To go back for a minute. The scene that met my
  eyes as I stood on the parapet of our trench for
  that one second is almost indescribable. Just in
  front the ground was pitted by innumerable
  shell-holes. More holes opened suddenly every now
  and then. Here and there a few bodies lay about.
  Farther away, before our front line and in No
  Man's Land, lay more. In the smoke one could
  distinguish the second line advancing. One man
  after another fell down in a seemingly natural
  manner, and the wave melted away. In the
  background, where ran the remains of the German
  lines and wire, there was a mass of smoke, the
  red of the shrapnel bursting amid it. Amongst it,
  I saw Captain H__ and his men attempting to enter
  the German front line. The Boches had met them on
  the parapet with bombs. The whole scene reminded
  me of battle pictures, at which in earlier years
  I had gazed with much amazement. Only this scene,
  though it did not seem more real, was infinitely
  more terrible. Everything stood still for a
  second, as a panorama painted with three colors
  the white of the smoke, the red of the shrapnel
  and blood, the green of the grass

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Cost of the Battle

• The Statistics are appalling. The battles of The
  Somme, gained a crescent of shattered,
  uninhabitable land about 16 miles deep at its
  widest point all of which was later lost again.
  This 'gain' cost 420,000 British casualties,
  200,000 French casualties (the French having
  supported the battles on the southern tip of the
  front around the River Somme) and an estimated
  500,000 German casualties. The first day of the
  main offensive on 1st July 1916 resulted in more
  than 60,000 British casualties alone almost
  20.000 of them killed more than any other day
  in British military history.

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Trenches on the Somme, 1919.
Mary Riter Hamilton
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Trenches at the Somme today