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- Herausgeber: Uniform
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Geology controls the outcome of battle and no more so than during the trench warfare of the Great War; this new book by expert Peter Doyle takes us through the details. An understanding of terrain has been the mark of a great commander from at least the time of Sun Tzu, and most campaigns can be interpreted and understood from this standpoint. It is the Great War, a war of trenches and dug-outs, of mines and mud, that epitomises the struggles of commander and soldier alike in the prosecution of battle against the obstacles set for them by terrain. This book, based on twenty-five years of study, takes the geology of northern France and Flanders and examines such issues as: What created Flanders mud? How were the Germans able to dig deep dug-outs to resist the British on the Somme? and, Why were the British successful at mine warfare? These and other issues are dealt with in this volume illustrated throughout with maps and photographs.
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Military geology may be defined simply enough as the application of geology to the art of war.
C.E. Erdmann, 19431
Notes
1 C.E. Erdmann (1943) Application of geology to the principles of war. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, v.54, p. 1174.
DISPUTED EARTH
Geology and Trench Warfare on the Western Front 1914-1918
Peter Doyle
The military history of any country is largely determined by its Topography, that is, by the nature of its soil: where run its ranges of hills: how high, steep or barren these may be: the situation of its better lands, with their chief towns: the position, depth and rapidity of its rivers, etc., etc. The importance of such features lies in this: that such features aided or impeded the march of armies.
H. Belloc, 19142
Notes
2 Hilaire Belloc (1914) Warfare in England. Williams and Norgate, London, p. 9.
The consideration of the manner of occurrence, behaviour, and adaptability of earth materials is essential to the effective and intelligent conduct of military operations. Earth materials are dealt with in the tunnels and mines under ‘No Man’s Land’ and in the trenches, gun pits, and dug-outs along the front. The nature of the materials that make up the surface of the ground determines the form and size of shell craters and in a measure the effect of shell fire. Earth materials form the foundations of heavy artillery… They are in many places the source of water supply.
H.E. Gregory, 19183
Notes
3 Herbert E. Gregory (ed., 1918) Military Geology and Topography. Yale University Press, New Haven, p. 1.
CONTENTS
NOTE ON GEOLOGICAL TERMINOLOGY
Geological terms are explained in text where they first appear. Older stratal terms are used in preference to newer ones, established by the modern geological surveys of France and Belgium; this is to avoid confusion with historical literature; equivalence to the new units is given where they are first mentioned, however. Geology is governed by a geological time scale which has two components, relative time, marked by named time periods, and absolute time, given in millions of years before present. The relative intervals, Mesozoic, Cretaceous, Ypresian, and so on, are agreed upon by international convention, and allow rocks to be assigned to them using tools like the recognisable fossils that belong to them. Absolute time estimates will vary, as these are dependent upon the accuracy of the method. A Geological Time Scale relevant to the interval covered is supplied, to assist the reader.
NOTE ON FLEMISH PLACE NAMES
During the war, most place names in Belgium were in French, used widely by the Allies on their maps. Today, where those places are in Flemish speaking Flanders (Vlaanderen), the Flemish equivalent is used – with Ypres being Ieper, Passchendaele becoming Passendale, and so on. However, given that the French spellings were used during the Great War, these have been retained in this book to avoid complication.
Echoes of the past: excavated trenches in the chalk soils of the Champagne region of France. Soldiers’ instincts were to draw them close to the earth. (P. Doyle)
1 THE GREAT WAR
Belgium
Mud: and a thin rain coming down to make more mud. Mud: with scraps of iron lying in it and the straggling fragment of a nation, lolling, hanging about in the mud on the edge of disaster.4
The Great War. One of the bloodiest wars in history, and one that has become irrevocably linked with trench warfare, a species of war that favours the defender over the attacker. And in this war of position the science of geology played its part, right from the point where the first soldiers broke the surface of the earth with their spades in 1914. In so doing they made an intimate connection with the ground, the earth, the soil, in a bid to escape the rapid artillery fire and the hail of machine gun bullets. It was at this point that a link with the earth’s embrace was forged strongly – an instinctive urge to return to the protective succour of the land – that would not be easily broken.
Digging in; use of the pick (Manual of Field Works, 1921)
The idea of digging trenches was sound, of course, and it was not just to satisfy the soldiers’ desire to ‘go to ground’ under fire. Trenches would stop invading armies in their tracks, and create a barrier against further progress. It would not only protect the infantry from the attentions of the artillery, it would also create a linear fortress that was ultimately so difficult to destroy. Yet with all the advantages of digging trenches, all too often it was a matter of circumstance – rather than planning – that led to their construction. This was to be expected, as the British manual Military Engineering (Part 1) Field Defences noted in 1908:
No precise rules can be laid down as to the manner in which a defensive position is to be occupied or intrenched5, as so much depends on the character of operations, the physical features of the ground, and the composition of the troops engaged. The only reliable guides are a thorough knowledge of the effects of fire, and a practiced eye for ground.6
Such ‘practiced eyes’ demanded experience, and in 1914 this experience had yet to be earned. The opening of the war saw the invasion of the German armies through Flanders, in an open attack that swept across the fields in a manner that had much in common with the battles of Napoleonic times. But by 1918, in these same fields, there had evolved a war that was, as historian John Horne has noted, the ‘polar opposite of the war that had been imagined’.7 A new term emerged, ‘the front’, which embodied the stalemate conditions of a new type of warfare, of mutual siege, where matters of ‘microgeography’ assumed great importance. Here the ‘practised eye for ground’ would attempt to pick out the most suitable conditions for the lines of trenches that snaked across Europe – though opportunities to choose the ground where trenches could be dug, and where barriers could be created were not always available. (All too often the defender had limited time to choose ground, and the attacker less inclined to yield ground won.) By 1918 the war of position assumed immense importance and levels of great sophistication.
It was on the Western Front that this new warfare was prosecuted, as in the east, the vast geography and challenging conditions dictated more variable outcomes. And the war was not confined to these fronts alone; it spread worldwide, with perhaps lesser-known land campaigns in Alpine Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, Asia and Africa (not to mention the extension of those land engagements to a naval war that raged from the South Atlantic to the North Sea). Though siege conditions would also appear on some of these fronts, they were variable and spasmodic in form, defined by tactical issues and geographic constraints, all of which would test their commanders.
The Western Front, 1914–1918: showing the line of maximum penetration, the line of siege (the main front line), and the Armistice line.
Throughout history, the most effective military commanders have been those who have understood topography and the nature of terrain, with records at least back to 512 BC recorded in the Chinese text attributed to Sun Tzu, in the Art of War.8 Of its 13 chapters, some seven of them refer explicitly to the use of terrain in battle and manoeuvre, the need to understand terrain types, and of the pitfalls and advantages of defensive positions: ‘How to make the best of both strong and weak – that is a question involving the proper use of ground.’ This doctrine would still apply centuries later. Tellingly, the first English translation of this classic of military literature appeared in 1910; the Great War that followed its publication provided ample opportunities to test Sun Tzu’s assertions.
The ‘nature of ground’ has so often controlled the outcome of battle and the planning of campaigns, that it is taken for granted that ‘a reading’ of the terrain is fundamental to the outcome of battle.9 Yet the details of the impact of ground, of the many nuances of nature, are not always fully appreciated. As C.E. Erdmann put it, on the eve of the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944, ‘The mutual relationship between geology and terrain, or, as the soldier sees it, the landscape, is axiomatic. There is an equally close connection between land warfare and terrain. Without some good earth the terrain factor would not exist.’10 The definition of ‘good ground’ or ‘good earth’ is all too often overlooked or dismissed by some historians, simply forming a backdrop to battle that, in some circumstances, have been seen primarily as a product of fate. Instead there deserves to be specialist considerations of the effect of terrain on the outcome of battle, even post facto, to understand that it is so. As an example, in a now classic case-history of military geology studies, the Battle of Gettysburg (1863), the pivotal engagement of the American Civil War, has been scrutinised in some detail.
Since at least the early 1960s geologists have attempted to examine the role of geology in the battle, to deconstruct its main events from a military perspective, and to examine the way in which geology contributed to them, particularly in providing the essential framework – the stage – on which it was fought. The first major study to examine Gettysburg from this perspective was Andrew Brown of the Pennsylvania State Geological Survey.11 Publishing an article in the early 1960s, Brown examined the campaign that led to the battle, the movement of the Union Armies from the south, and the progression of the Confederates along the Great Valley from Virginia into Pennsylvania – part of General Robert E. Lee’s plan to invade the north, putting pressure on the Union in its own territory. Subsequent studies have explored the detail of the battle more fully, with terrain – geology in its roundest sense – rightly held up by all concerned as a major influence in the outcome of battle.12 The Round Tops, the Seminary and Cemetery ridges, the Devil’s Den – all famous features of the battlefield topography – are surface expressions of the outcrop of harder rocks (a crystalline rock known as ‘diabase’) which had been forced into softer sandstones and shales. The battle hinged on geology, the Union forces holding the so-called ‘topographic fishhook’; a curving ridge formed by distinctive rocks that the Confederacy assaulted in vain over the three days of the battle. Brown’s work led the way in demonstrating that such forensic dissection of battlegrounds could be applied to other campaigns.
Battle of Gettysburg, July1st–3rd, 1863. The outcome of the pivotal battle of the American Civil War was largely determined by geology; view of the ‘Devil’s Den’ from Little Round Top. (P. Doyle)
Confederate sharpshooter in the Devil’s Den; the use of geological features by soldiers is a common feature of most battlefields. (Library of Congress)
In the Great War, the most obvious aspects of the impact of terrain were not only to figure on the Western Front, but in all other theatres too. Perhaps the first analysis of the impact of terrain in the war overall was that of D.W Johnson, Professor of Physiography [physical geography] at Colombia University in New York. Writing in 1917, at the point of America’s involvement, Johnson commented on the war that was then raging on many fronts. ‘If the surface features of Europe control in important measure the issues of the various campaigns, contributing to success in one field and imposing failure in another, then obviously a knowledge of the topographic elements peculiar to each front is essential to an intelligent understanding of the war…’13 Johnson followed this up with a more detailed examination in his book Battlefields of the World War, published in 1921.
Johnson’s studies were focused primarily on the European fronts, drawing out the details of their physiography and commenting upon how they were influenced by it. He considered the geology of Europe and the landforms that resulted from it; he examined the distribution of lowlands and uplands, the nature of the soil, the influence of watercourses. He considered barriers to manoeuvre and obstacles to fortification. His conclusions were that even in the ‘modern warfare’ of the Great War, terrain was master, for ‘despite the enormous improvement in the artillery and other arms of the service, it is still the infantry which must drive back the enemy and conquer the ground on which he stands, and that whatever affects the movement of infantry remains a vital element in the fighting.’14
Notably, Johnson did not consider those theatres in which the fighting had ended before his work had commenced in 1917. One such battlefront was the ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign of 1915; yet a study of the campaign is especially rewarding in this respect, especially when examining the features he identified as worthwhile on other fronts. At Gallipoli, such features are the effects of the coastal geography on the failure of the Allies to push inland, the difficulty of the terrain once bridgeheads had been established, and the total inadequacy of the landscape to provide sufficient water for men or animals.15 Examination of all these aspects would take another volume, as would indeed the study of many of the other theatres that Johnson did consider, such as the Alpine warfare of the Italo–Austro-Hungarian Front, the supply, terrain and medical problems of the Salonika Front, and the desert warfare in Mesopotamia and Palestine. Echoing Johnson’s studies, and drawing upon some of the detailed examinations of the battlefield of Gettysburg, this book examines what was seen arguably as the principal front of the Great War, then as now, and indeed that sector where it was felt the war could be ended: northern France and Flanders.
The ‘badland’ topography of the Anzac Sector of the Gallipoli Battlefield; the nature of the topography made it difficult to capture, and its arid nature meant it provided little sustenance to the men entrenched here in 1915. (P. Doyle)
It was in this part of northern Europe that the war started, a function of the Schlieffen Plan of 1904. The intention was to despatch recent enemy France – losers in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 – before an attack could be mounted against Russia, with its countless millions, and its vast territories. The plan predicted that in a future war there would be an early exit for France (and its allies) as the armies of von Moltke pivoted their ‘swinging door’, forcing everything ahead of them en route to the French capital. The idea, of course, was to prevent the horror of a conflict fought simultaneously on two fronts, with Germany caught in a vice-like grip between its enemies, the plan predicated on geographical principles.
The plan was enacted in the wake of the Kaiser’s backing of Austria-Hungary, in its bid to subjugate Serbia following the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June, 1914. With Russia bound to follow, supporting the smaller Slavic nation, it followed that France would become embroiled, and the Schlieffen Plan brought into play. Germany declared war on France on 3 August 1914, and started the door swinging. Yet that door would inevitably move slower through ‘friction’, a concept first introduced by the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, ‘Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war.’16 Friction is made up of those simple aspects of a campaign that cannot be planned for, but which will inevitably slow down any advance. Not surprisingly, geographical and geological factors feature significantly in this, and helped slow the German advance.
Still from the 1933 film La Bataille de la Marne: German officers discuss the failure of the Schlieffen Plan.
The Schlieffen Plan also ensured that Britain would be part of the story – as with the German troops streaming across neutral Belgium’s borders, then it followed that the British could not simply stand aside and allow this to happen. Not only had Britain guaranteed Belgium’s sovereignty in the Treaty of London in 1839, but with the Entente Cordiale of 1904 had also agreed to take France’s interests into account. And in the light of the pre-war naval arms race played out between Britain and Imperial Germany (with the Kaiser vying to equal or outdo the power of the Royal Navy) the prospect of hostile Germans occupying the Channel ports, just miles away from the English coast, was not to be relished – or accepted.
On that point, in an address to London’s Royal Geographical Society in January 1915, the military and political geographer Vaughan Cornish set out why occupation of the Channel Ports would be unacceptable to the British.
The conception of there being lands on the Continent of Europe which are part of a British military area may be illustrated by reference to the Monroe Doctrine of the United States. The foreign policy of that power is based upon the declaration that the acquisition of territory on the American continents will be regarded as a casus belli…The importance of the Low Countries, with the harbours of the Rhine and the Scheldt, is as great for us now as it was in the days of Marlborough and Wellington; but the French departments of Nord and Pas de Calais have an increased importance to us owing to the development of marine mines and submarine craft…A German occupation of the opposite shore of the Straits of Dover would entail imminent danger of invasion.17
It was clear, then, that conditions for an Allied response to the Schlieffen Plan were in place, and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) arrived in France in early August. The BEF was soon embroiled a battle of movement, retreating in the face of German pressure alongside their French allies, stopping where they could to delay the onslaught. Yet the weight of the German invasion that commenced on 4 August 1914 was such that the French and British troops fell back, retreating to take up a position along the line of the River Marne before Paris. In the battle that ensued from 6–12 September 1914, the German advance was stopped in its tracks. The Schlieffen Plan’s ‘swinging door’ had met the doorjamb of the Marne, just in front of Paris. From this point on, and until the end of 1914, the battles that would become known as the ‘Race for the Sea’ would witness the two sides trying to turn the flank of the other in the traditional ‘cockpit of Europe’ – Flanders – the flat manoeuvring ground of European armies for centuries.
This distinctive region of northern Europe had seen warfare since the Middle Ages. Low-lying, as a region Flanders stretches from the chalk uplands of Artois and Picardy in northern France to the coastal strip of sand dunes between Dunkirk and Ostend. Squeezed between the rugged Ardennes mountains and the North Sea, it is not surprising that Flanders has throughout history been the main route for countless invading and retreating armies intent on east-west movement, and vice versa. Later in his 1915 lecture to the Royal Geographical Society, Dr Cornish reflected on this point, centring on its importance to Britain:
Contemporary topographic map of Northern France and Belgium; this shows the flat plain of Flanders, the uplands of the Ardennes (and the Vosges mountains to the south), and the position of Paris at the centre of a bowl; it also demonstrates the main east-west rail routes across Europe.
Belgium between the line of the Lys and the lower Scheldt on the one hand and the line of the Sambre on the other is a strip of country not too broad to be correctly described as a ‘defile’ [a pass between mountains] between Germany and France, a character which…is moreover enforced by the locality of such battles as Ramillies, Ligny, Mons, Waterloo, Oudenarde and Fontenoy. The fact that the country stands in a somewhat similar relation between Metropolitan England and the Cologne district of Germany was not obvious to the general reader…18
Replete with rapid communication lines, and squeezed between natural barriers, it is no surprise that Flanders would once again be the target of intense military activity. The reasons were plain to the military geographer Douglas W. Johnson:
The Champagne region of France; the region lies in front of Paris and the plateau of the Marne. (P. Doyle)
In 1914, the Flanders Plain offered the German General Staff something more than the smoothest pathway between mountains and sea along which to launch its enveloping movement designed to crush the French armies in the space of a few weeks. The plan was provided with that abundant network of roads, railways and canals which is the natural product of a dense population inhabiting a region of very little relief.19
If Flanders was to be the through route to Paris, then it was the line of the River Marne that would be the roadblock. Here, in September 1914, French commander Joseph Joffre held the Germans, as they attempted to move from the chalky lowlands of the Champagne region to the heavily dissected plateau of the Marne, beyond the river. The Champagne is a rich, verdant and open landscape, perfect for rapid manoeuvre with just a few hills to disturb its flat chalk lands. But the Marne – that plateau that commences with slopes that had nurtured countless generations of grapes for the most special of all wines – was a different proposition altogether. This plateau of the Marne is capped with hard limestone, and softer marls (a type of lime-rich clay), creating positions that are easy to defend, a last bastion before the French capital.20 Planning an assault on Paris, the German intentions were compromised by the fact that the city sits squarely within a bowl; a bowl formed of successive strata that dip into the ground to the west. While these layers descend below the capital, they present a series of scarps in their wake, cliffs and steep slopes that are easy to defend, and difficult to attack. It was a challenging prospect for any enemy of France, as Douglas Johnson recognised:
Block diagram showing the topography of the Western Front, showing the Flanders Plain between the Ardennes mountains and the North Sea, and the location of Paris in a basin, with successive strata dipping down beneath it. Scarp slopes are presented to any invader from the east. (D.W. Johnson, 1917).
Every enemy movement would be open to observation from the crest of the scarp, and could be broken up by fire from artillery concealed in ravines back from the plateau face. Assaults on intrenched positions on the slopes and crest of the scarp would be made with every advantage on the side of the defending troops. The level plain below offers little opportunity for the offensive to secure concealed artillery positions from which to make preparation for the uphill infantry charges.21
Ypres was a focus of endeavour for the British; here the Medieval Cloth Hall is under bombardment in 1914. The Salient that surrounded the city on three sides gave superb vantage to the Germans.
With the topography of the Marne plateau acting to multiply the difficulties for the attacking forces, the Germans were held. A counterattack followed on another river line, the Aisne, and out-flanking positional warfare developed as both sides attempted to trap their enemies, and to ‘turn their flanks’ – literally to surround them and force them to retreat or surrender. From 17 September to 19 October 1914 the Allied and German armies attempted to outflank each other in what has become known as the ‘Race to the Sea’. With the armies locked into a fierce struggle to find open flanks, the battles moved inexorably closer to the Belgian Coast, and the line became a static one. By November 1914, both armies in the west had ground to a halt in parallel lines that stretched from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier.
For the British Expeditionary Force, sandwiched between what remained of the Belgian armies (reinforced by the French) at the coast, and the French armies in Artois, Flanders would become the place of battle for another four years of a hard war. Ypres became a centre of British endeavour, with battles there from late 1914 right the way through to the end of the war in 1918. The First Battle of Ypres, in November–December 1914 was an outcome of the ‘Race to the Sea’, with British troops holding on grimly in the face of a determined German army. Here there would be waterlogged ground, hasty scrapes in the earth, and the birth of the legend of the old BEF and its fire rate of fifteen-rounds-a-minute from Lee Enfield rifles. With the German line held by the close of the year, the early part of 1915 saw the development of the tradition of trench warfare that has come to represent the Great War to so many people. Grimly holding on, the British toiled in and around the clay plain of Ypres, while the Germans set about holding the high ground that faced the town on three sides, in what became known as the Ypres Salient.
The Ypres Salient, after the Second Battle of Ypres, in 1915. The German line followed the trace of the high ground to the east of the city.
A ‘salient’ is a bulge in the front line, usually jutting forward into enemy held territory. Such bulges are dangerous as, over extended, they are easier to attack and observe, and at certain points they even allow the enemy to fire into the rear of the line. The Ypres Salient was particularly dangerous, formed in the early days of the German drive towards the coast. The Salient had been born in November 1914, when the German attacks from Armentières to Nieuport ran out of steam. ‘The Germans had driven in wedges towards Ypres until our lines had fallen back closer to the city, and the ground was a bastion thrust out dangerously in a wide arc, like an English bow full-drawn, and encompassed by the enemy whose skill and strength had seized the high ground everywhere’.22
The Noyon Salient. Joffre’s plans for 1914–15 were to drive in the line to the north (in Artois), and east (on the Champagne) of Noyon. The line is anchored at the Fortress of Verdun, and the city of Ypres.
Following the low rising hills to the east of the town, the Salient defined an arc of trenches with a long axis running approximately north–south, facing east–west. Running around the hills, the German line, and British line following it, passed southwards over its saddle back, and down to the damp valley of the Lys and on to Armentières. Farther south, the line passed through French Flanders to the canal of La Bassée, in that flat tract of land between the Lys and the Scarpe rivers. South from this the line was in French hands and ran towards Noyon, before tracking westwards to Verdun and the St Mihiel Salient, from there arcing around to the Swiss Frontier. Stabilised in late 1914, this line would form the linear fortress of the Western Front, scene of the titanic battles of 1916–18, and successive attempts to break the line and sweep to victory.
For the French, the occupation of home soil by the Germans was a national disgrace. General Joffre, Commander in Chief of the French armies, and hero of the Marne, was a strong character. Joffre enacted plans in late 1914 and 1915 that would throw the might of the French Tenth Army at the Germans in Artois, close to the city of Arras, and particularly the natural stronghold of Vimy Ridge; while committing the French Fourth and Second armies in the Champagne. In attacks that commenced in the winter of 1914–15 Joffre hoped that the right-angled dogleg of the German front around the town of Noyon would be driven in, thereby allowing for mobile warfare to be resumed. This plan would form the basis of French planning throughout 1915, and would figure again as the centre of General Nivelle’s ill-fated plans for a rapid knock-out blow in 1917. All would contribute to a vast toll of French casualties that mounted up in these war-blighted areas. Artois was challenged with its chalk uplands and ridges; while the Champagne, a vast area for manoeuvre, was one that was difficult to defend, or dominate.
In this way, and at other points in the line, the Great War in the west of 1914–1918 became largely static: a fortress war that bears comparison with the siege warfare prevalent centuries before. Trench warfare in the west began when the race for the sea came to its abrupt conclusion. Despite all the protestations from the military manuals that trench warfare was just a passing phase, a temporary halt in the proceedings of open battle, it had become the norm.23 It would last until the breakthrough battles of 1918, when first the Germans and then the Allies found a way to punch through the defensive lines.
The form of the Western Front was decided, as a static line with little change of ‘turning a flank’, when the sluice gates of the canal system in the low ground near the Flanders town of Nieuport were opened in 1914. Stopping the advancing Germans by flooding, for almost four years the armies of the Western Front to the south of the polders endured a troglodyte existence as artillerymen vied with engineers to weaken the line and provide opportunities for advance. ‘Understanding the ground’ was an important task in the development of this underground war, and a sophisticated science of ground engineering was deployed in its development.
For the British and the Germans facing them, the impact of geology was particularly significant along the line of the largely static front, from the coastal town of Nieuport Bains along the line of the Yser River to Dixmude, crossing the Flanders plain to Boesinghe on the outskirts of Ypres, then following the Passchendaele and Wytschaete–Messines ridges, before dropping down onto the clay plain of the River Lys near Armentières in northern France. From here the line passed southwards through French Flanders (close to the cities of Armentières and Lens) and on to Arras and Albert in Artois-Picardy. All these places had differences in ‘ground’, differences that would be felt directly by the infantrymen who marched through its fields or dug trenches into its soil, and to all the Generals who stared at the maps and plans in front of them in those four years of war.
This book examines the role that geology and terrain had to play in the operations fought on the Western Front, and particularly in the area of Flanders, Artois and Picardy. Though many other fronts and sectors could have been considered, it is the section of the Western Front in France and Flanders that arguably saw the most important applications and implications of the science of geology in warfare. It examines geology’s role in the creation of trench warfare and its many innovations for defence, and explores its impact on those new means of breaking the status quo that developed at the front, on artillery, mining, gas and tanks.
Notes
4 Belgium. From Mary Borden (1929) The Forbidden Zone, William Heinemann, London, p. 1.
5 ‘Intrenched’, the position whereby an army is ‘dug-in’ to face an enemy; this spelling, used in most British army manuals of the period, is also encountered as ‘entrenched’. Both spellings are used, as they appear in original quotations.
6 General Staff, War Office. Military Engineering (Part 1) Field Defences, 1908, p.4
7 Professor John Horne, Public Lecture, King’s College London, 1 November 2016.
8 Sun Tzu, The Art of War
9 See Doyle, P. & Bennett, M.R. (eds) 2002. Fields of Battle, Terrain in Military History. Kluwer, Dordrecht
10 See C.E. Erdmann (1944) Military geology: applications of geology to terrain analysis. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, v. 55, p. 785.
11 Brown, A. 1962. Geology and the Gettysburg Campaign. Pennsylvania Topographic & Geologic Survey Educational Series n.5, pp.1–15.
12 Cuffey, R.J., Smith, R., II, Neubaum, J.C., Keen, R.C., Inners, J.D. & Neubaum, V.A. 2004, Lee vs. Meade at Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863): The influence of topography and geology on command decisions and battlefield tactics. Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, v.36, n.2, p.48; Inners, J.D., Cuffey, R.J., Smith, R.C. II, Neubaum, J.C., Keen, R.C., Fleeger, G.M., Butts, L., Delano, H.L., Neubaum, V.A. & Howe, R.H. 2004. Rifts, Diabase, and the Topographic ‘Fishhook’: Terrain and Military Geology of the Battle of Gettysburg – July 1– 3, 1863. Pre-Meeting Field Trip 4, Guidebook. Geological Society of America Northeast/ Southeast Sections, 105pp; Doyle, P. (2006) Military geology and the Battle of Gettysburg, July 1863. Geology Today, v.22, 142–149.
13 Johnson (1917) Topography and Strategy in the War, Henry Holt, New York, pp. iii–iv.
14 Johnson (1921), Battlefields of the World War, Oxford University Press, New York, p. xvi.
15 See in particular Doyle, P. & Bennett, M.R. 1999. Military geography: the influence of terrain on the outcome of the Gallipoli Campaign, 1915. Geographical Journal, 165, 12-36; Ekins, A. 2001. A ridge too far: military objectives and the dominance of terrain in the Gallipoli Campaign, p. 7. In: Celik, K. and Koc, C. (eds) The Gallipoli Campaign, International Perspectives 85 years on. Cannakale Onsekiz Mart University, Cannakale, 5-34; Doyle, P. and Bennett, M.R. 2002. Terrain and the Gallipoli Campaign, 1915. In: Doyle, P. & Bennett, M.R. (eds) Fields of Battle, Terrain in Military History. Kluwer, Dordrecht, 149-169; Chasseaud, P. and Doyle, P. 2005. Grasping Gallipoli. Terrain Intelligence, Maps and Failure at the Dardanelles, 1915. Spellmount, Staplehurst, pp. 26–28; Doyle, P. 2008. ‘Six VCs before breakfast’, terrain and the Gallipoli landings, 1915. In: Nathanail, C.P., Abrahart, R.J. & Bradshaw, R.P. (eds) Military Geography and Geology,History and Technology, Land Quality Press, Nottingham; Doyle, P. 2016. An unfortunate accident of geography: badlands and the ANZAC Sector, Gallipoli, April–September 1915 In MacDonald, E.V. & Bullard, T. (eds) Military Geosciences and Desert Warfare, Past Lessons and Modern Challenges, Springer, Dordrecht, 3–18.
16 Carl von Clausewitz (1832), On War, Chapter 7.
17 Vaughan Cornish (1915) Notes on the historical and physical geography of the theatres of war. Geographical Journal, v. 45, pp373–374
18Ibid, p. 379
19 Johnson (1921), Battlefields of the World War, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 7
20Ibid, p.216; see also Anon (1916), The Geography of the Battle of the Marne. Scottish Geographical Magazine, v. 32, pp.31–35.
21 D.W. Johnson (1918), Topography and Strategy in the War, Constable, London, p. 5
22 Lt-Gen Sir William Pulteney and Beatrix Brice (1925) The Immortal Salient. John Murray, London, p. 4.
23 General Staff War Office, March 1916, Notes for infantry Officers on Trench Warfare, p. 5: ‘The importance assumed by trench warfare and the progress made in the application of field fortifications and in the science of the attack and defence of elaborate systems of trenches, have rendered necessary special instruction in the details of trench construction and trench fighting. It must, nevertheless, be clearly understood that trench fighting is only a phase of operations…’.
2 GEOLOGY, GEOLOGISTS AND WARFARE
The work of the geologists in the Great War was of a great many different kinds. There was, of course, the problem of water-supply, and there were the finding of rock materials for roads and concrete and the selection of sites for bridges and trenches, and, perhaps most important of all, for dug-outs and mine galleries.24
From the foregoing discussion it can be seen that geology has had a major role to play in most campaigns – though whether commanders were aware of this at the time is another matter. Certainly, the evaluation and use of terrain – the ‘ground’ – was the preoccupation of many great soldiers, with specific paths and gateways figuring often in the course of history, where ‘certain characteristics of terrain have spelled the difference between success and defeat in particular battles or campaigns.’25
With such factors obviously significant, what are meant by the terms geology, ground, relief, terrain? Geology is the study of the Earth, its origin, structure, composition, history – and the nature of the processes that have shaped it. Geologists are those scientists who are committed to this study, as well as its application in human endeavour – including warfare. The term ‘ground’ is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the surface of the Earth or part of it’. This surface clearly creates an arena for human activity, once again, including warfare. Relief, used by some, is an expression of the variation in elevation shown by landforms and topographical features (with topography the detailed features of a region). Terrain is more complex. Once again the OED provides ‘a tract of country considered with regard to its natural features, configuration, etc.; in military use…as affecting its tactical advantages, fitness for manoeuvring, etc’; when first used, it was in a military sense, in 1766. Terrain has also been described as ‘the common denominator of land warfare and geology’.26
Though the use of the term ‘terrain’ in military matters has grown to dominate analysis of battlegrounds in the post Second World War era,27 all of these terms have been used, interchangeably, through history, when military commanders have striven to grasp the significance of the surface over which they were fighting. As Erdmann put it in 1943, ‘Military literature of all ages, from Sun Tzu (500 BC) to Foertsch (1940), is replete with references to terrain, or ‘ground,’ or ‘country’ (they all mean the same), and they convey such a definite picture to the soldier that he seldom bothers to define it.’28
Terrain ‘as affecting its tactical advantages, fitness for manoeuvring…’, at Pointe de Hoc, Normandy. In June 1944, on D-Day, this site had to be assaulted from sea, the Jurassic limestone cliffs scaled. Aerial and naval bombardment had left the terrain broken and cratered, easier to defend. (P. Doyle)
With terrain the arena of battle, understanding how it came to be, its characteristics and features, and knowing how to use those effectively, provides the military commander greater opportunity to fight a war. It can be argued that geology had a major role in this way in campaigns as diverse as the Battle of Poitiers (1356), when Edward the Black Prince drew the heavily armoured French knights onto boggy ground; the Battle of the Plains of Abraham (1759), when General Wolfe outflanked the French in Quebec by an appreciation of the cliffs and ravine for his landings, or Napoleon’s ‘ignorance of the sunken road at Waterloo’ (1815) that allowed Blücher to achieve surprise over his enemy.29 The most astute commanders recognised that knowledge of ground, as complete as possible, was a desired result. Marshal Foch, advocate of the offensive, wrote in his Principles ofWar, first published in 1903:
Plains of Abraham, Quebec. General Wolfe outflanked his French opponent, Montcalm, in 1759, scaling the steep cliffs of the St Lawrence River to face the French general on the Plains, outside of the city. (P. Doyle)
Before coming to the combined use of troops of all arms, you have to know them, to be able to handle them. The same is true of the ground, a fourth arm at your disposal; it is necessary to master everything it contains in order to be able to find in it what you have made up your mind you must be looking for.30
The landscape of Waterloo; part of the plain of Flanders, the traditional fighting ground of Europe, and the scene of Napoleon’s defeat in 1815. (P. Doyle)
While these and other achievements underline the role a successful commander has in the ‘appreciation of ground’, the first considered use of geological knowledge in warfare is tracked back to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century.31 Despite the fact that he was later defeated at Waterloo (1815), arguably for the want of geological knowledge, Napoleon reportedly took two geologists with him on his expedition to Egypt in 1798. But it was Professor K.A. von Raumer’s analysis of terrain in Silesia that permitted the defeat of his forces at the Battle of Katzbach River (1813) that stands as the first actual documented use of geological information in war.32 Nevertheless, it took some time for geology – a science that had grown in stature throughout the eighteenth century – to become fully accepted in military circles.
Geology became part of the syllabus of engineer or artillery officers in the mid to later part of the nineteenth century.33 The famous British geologist and soldier, Major-General J.E. Portlock, RE, was one of the first to give serious consideration of the application of geology to warfare, though he may well have met with resistance, or at least ignorance in promoting his science in these early years.34 Nevertheless, writing in 1868, as the science of geology gathered some acceptance, Portlock was alive to its military possibilities:
Geology is now a true science, being founded on facts and reduced to the domination of definite laws, and in consequence has become a sure guide to the practical man… The soldier may also find in geology a most valuable guide in tracing his lines both of attack and defence.35
By the latter part of the century, geology was finding more favour in military circles. This was certainly the case for geologist O. Barré, commandant du genie, who lectured at l’École d’application de l’artillerieet du genie at Fontainebleau in the latter part of the century.36 In Britain, Lt Col Charles Cooper King RE similarly gave lectures on military geology at the Camberley Staff College, another man credited as ‘the first professional soldier to recognise the wide application of geology to military problems’.36 His obituary noted that ‘Col King drew a large class to geology, both in the lecture-room and the field; for, being a military expert himself, his explanations of the science in relation to military tactics and battle-fields were well appreciated.’37
Arguably, though, it was the development of the largely static conflict on the Western Front that was to see the first large-scale use of geology and geologists in war (though there were many examples in the trench-warfare battles of the American Civil War of 1861–65 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05).39 Just prior to the war, in 1913, military fortification engineer Hauptmann Walter Kranz,40 coined the phrase Militärgeologie – later, with the outbreak of war, transmuted to Kriegsgeologie.41 Kranz’ original idea – that geology would have a large role to play in warfare, and particularly in the type of fortress or static warfare that would be enacted just a year later – was taken seriously only when war broke out in Europe.42
Walter Kranz, the ‘father’ of modern military geology (Geologische Vereinigung, Universtätsbibliothek Freiburg/Breisgau)
It was natural that Kranz’s approach should take root, however. After all, geology dealt with the nature of the land surface over which men, animals and machines travelled; it gave answers to the kind of obstacles that they may face; it controlled the way in which fortifications were built, above and below ground, and it provided answers for resourcing armies – particularly in the supply of that vital liquid, water.43 A review of Kranz’s work in 1915 laid down the basic principles of Militärgeologie.44 Kranz also recognised the significance of expertise in wartime ‘It is of utmost importance that all geologists under arms, and geological trained personnel or miners should be drawn in for these uses.’45 These principles were built upon and expanded in a wartime lecture – Kriegsgeologie (1915) – by W. Salomon of Heidelberg University, once again recognising the most important activities for geologists:
Geology is practical and necessary: to prove the stability of parapets and trenches and the stability of dug-outs; to identify the speed of digging excavations; to identify water supplies; to assist in rain water and waste water removal; to supply building materials; and to identify mineral raw materials.46
As the world would very soon experience, all of these factors would have a pivotal role in the successful prosecution of trench warfare.
From the foundations that Kranz built came the evolution of a subject that would help define the way that the second war that followed the first would be fought. Once again Kranz was at the forefront of this; his 1938 manual Wehrgeologie would be a standard text for the German army, and identified the fundamental principles of the subject. Many of the other nations would have to catch up with German expertise as the Second World War dawned, and it would not be until 1941–42 that British and US geologists got the chance to bring their knowledge to bear, working in the Western Desert, but also working towards the invasion of Europe and the opening of a ‘second front’ against Germany.48 These experiences would influence the future generation of post-war military geologists, with new threats, but with the same challenges remaining.49
Wehrgeologie: a 1938 text that would be carried by German military geologists in the Second World War.
What are these challenges? First identified by Kranz, they soon found application and use in world war, by both the practical experience of men in battle and the needs of the military to gain a tactical advantage over their enemy, and they remain pertinent today. Geologists under arms are engaged in a diversity of activities that would be familiar to the progenitors of Kriegsgeologie, namely:
Provision and interpretation of geological information in the planning and development of military operations (terrain intelligence and evaluation); Consideration of observation, concealment and cover of military forces and personnel; Trafficability, the capability of troops and materiel to move over terrain; Military engineering geology, the influence of geology in the construction or excavation of military fortifications, fieldworks and infrastructure, in both offensive and defensive operations; Water supply; and The provision of construction materials and other resources.50US Chief Military Geologist, Lt-Col. A.H. Brooks, summarised the work of military geologists in the Great War in this influential paper, published in 1920.
Terrain analysis, in particular, is a major role, with geologists being recognised as people who can ‘analyse a terrain, appreciate its topography and understand its contours. This ability is a function of…particular training and with it a geologist is equipped to make complete and rapid analyses of the ground’.51 Such activities would become an established part of military operations in the wake of the Second World War;52 but this was long before they would dawn on the military of all nations in 1914. Though Walter Kranz had first advised that a geological service for the Imperial German Army be established in 1912 (prior to his ground-breaking article published in 1913), it took the outbreak of war for this to be considered in detail.53 As noted by chief US military geologist Lt.-Col. Anthony Brooks in 1920:
Kranz’s recommendations published a year before the war, attracted little attention among geologists and apparently none at all among the military authorities. Therefore, when the war came German geologists were mobilised with their unit without regard to the possible value of their services in their own profession.54
This was certainly true. As late as April 1914 the Inspector General of the Imperial German Engineer Corps wrote to the Prussian minister of war:
The Inspector General sees no need for the establishment of military geologist positions. In the field, events proceed so rapidly that even in trench warfare the employment of a geologist is out of the question. Moreover, his expertise would be worthless in most cases because it is tactical knowledge requirements that count…55
Fortunately, by 1915, many German press reports picked up on the point – that geologists really should be employed in the service of the army, and that officers should receive additional training as a matter of course (rather than as an optional component of their syllabus).56
A year later, the geological support provided to the German Army after its slow start grew to be impressively organised, and was embodied directly into the army structure by 1916.57 Then, each of the twenty-eight field survey companies contained geological sections (Geologen Stellen), and requests for geological assistance would be made directly to them. 58 There would be some ~250 geologists employed in the German army by the end of the war (and a further 60 with the Austro-Hungarian army).59 Though the actual number of geologists in German service during the Great War grew to be relatively large, their impact was reduced, as many served in lowly positions; they were expected simply to advise, but not supervise. But at least they were actively engaged on the ground.
