Front line

“ Very many of our people never lived to know the result of even the first day's fighting. For then the old front line was the battlefield, and the No Man's Land the prize of the battle. They never heard the cheer of victory nor looked into an enemy trench. Some among them never even saw the No Man's Land, but died in the summer morning from some shell in the trench in the old front line here described. ”

“ The Regimental Headquarters were about 200 yards behind the front line and connected up by telephone and various companies and platoons took it in turn to do their round of duty in the front line. I think in the trenches you come to know men as you can get to know them in no other place, the reserve of civilization is often thrown off and you know a man for what he is, not for what he would have you think he is. ”

“ It is my opinion that an army, leaving the line which leads from the frontiers to the center of the state, with a view of moving to the right or the left, may very well pursue a course nearly parallel to the line of the frontiers, or to its front of operations and its base. It seems to me more rational to give the name of parallel retreat to such a movement as that described, designating as eccentric retreat that where diverging roads are followed, all leading from the strategic front. ”

“ We were then two hundred and fifty miles in advance of our base, dependent on a single line of railroad for our daily food. We had a bold, determined foe in our immediate front, strongly intrenched, with communication open to his rear for supplies and reenforcements, and every soldier realized that we had plenty of hard fighting ahead, and that all honors had to be fairly earned. ”

“ It is, however, enough marked by the war to be bad going. When they are well up the spur, the lines draw nearer, and at the highest point of the spur they converge in one of the terrible places of the battlefield. ”

“ From here companies were employed ration-carrying to the front line and cleaning the trenches. Considerable activity continued to be displayed by the German artillery and aeroplanes, in each of which respect we lacked superiority.
The enemy retreat appeared postponed or cancelled.
Chapter VI. (p. 067) LIFE IN THE FRONT LINE, Winter, 1916-1917. Ignorance of civilians and non-combatants. — The front line posts. — Hardships and dangers. — Support platoons. — The Company Officers. — The Battalion relieved by the 182nd Brigade. ”

“ The preparation for a complicated operation against the formidable defenses in front of us included the assembling of divisions and of corps of army artillery, transport, aircraft, tanks, ambulances, the location of hospitals, and the molding together of all of the elements of a great modern army with its own railheads, supplied directly by our own Service of Supply. The concentration for this operation, which was to be a surprise, involved the movement, mostly at night, of approximately 600,000 troops, and required for its success the most careful attention to every detail. ”

“ As I have written these lines, I have had vividly before me a group of American soldiers. It is three o'clock in the morning, and they have just marched four miles through trenches, shell-obliterated or filled with mud and snow; they have been relieved from the first line. They are men from four companies of a battalion of a division occupying a permanent position on the western front. ”

“ The Front is, indeed, to be visualised not as a straight line but as a fully opened fan, the periphery of which is the fire-trenches, the ribs the lines of communication, and the knob or knuckle is General Headquarters. When we extend our Front southwards and take over the French trenches we just expand our fan a little more. ”

“ Moreover, broad plans commensurate with our national purpose and resources would bring conviction of our power to every soldier in the front line, to the nations associated with us in the war, and to the enemy. ”

“ The compliments above directed are to be paid by the troops, to officers in the service of any power in alliance with the British king, according to their respective ranks.
Turning out of the line. The line turns out without arms, whenever the general commanding in chief comes along the front of the camp.
When the line turns out, the private men are to be drawn up in a line with the colors and standards; the corporals on the right and left of their respective companies, the picquet forms behind the colors, accoutred, but without arms. ”

“ The greater the extent of line proves, which is composed of several battalions and squadrons that advance forward with the same front, the more difficult will be the movement of the several bodies; but as we have already observed, a great part of this difficulty is overcome when the centre is made the directing body. The right and left must be invariably governed by it. ”

“ Most of us who were at close grips with the Great War will remember the habit of speculation about life on the far side of the front. Somewhere beyond the frontier of trenches, we realized, were our opposite numbers—infantrymen, gunners, aviators, staff officers, mess orderlies, generals, captains, lance-corporals—each according to character, rank, and duties, and to the position he occupied by reason of ability, courage, initiative, old age, self-advertisement, or wire-pulling. ”

“ In estimating our strength every enlisted man and every commissioned officer present is included, no matter how employed; in bands, sick in field hospitals, hospital attendants, company cooks and all. Operating in an enemy's country, and being supplied always from a distant base, large detachments had at all times to be sent from the front, not only to guard the base of supplies and the roads to it, but all the roads leading to our flanks and rear. ”

“ Picture him, pipe in mouth, working out the movements of the troops on a large map in front of him. Every moment the Field telephone is at work; dispatch riders breathlessly deliver their messages, the while the Staff are carefully noting every fresh movement reported. Not an unnecessary word is spoken, and all hinges upon one figure whose whole attention is centred, by the aid of his vivid imagination and definite information, upon a battlefield, the ground of which he probably knows, but which at the moment is far out of sight. ”

“ The efficiency of the service of the railways which generally form the Lines of Communication is of the utmost importance to the Army, as on it depends the issue of supplies and ammunition to the troops at the front, and consequently their ability to move and fight. ”

“ Mail, military, aerial and railway services are assigned. The commissary lines are laid and transportation provided for. With marvelous efficiency the full fighting strength, in front and rear, is made ready and co-ordinated.
The psychological effect of mobilization is tremendous. In every household home-ties are broken. The fields are stripped of men. Industry stops. Artillery rolls through the streets, bands play. An atmosphere of apprehension settles down on the country. ”

“ The army’s front is like the front of a dam, vast and impregnable; but behind, that front is bolstered and strengthened and buttressed by many little lines of communication and supply, just as a dam may be buttressed on the lower side. A division may shatter itself in vain against the army’s front; a hundred men may cut one of those little lines behind. ”

“ To transfer a thousand men, with secrecy and despatch, from camp to train, from train to ship, from ship to train, and from train to a spot near the battle line, is a task which calls for the finest organisation and the most skilful administration. ”

“ And upon the roads and beside them was the enormous equipment of a modern army advancing. Everywhere I saw new roads being made, railways pushed up, vast store dumps, hospitals; everywhere the villages swarmed with grey soldiers; everywhere our automobile was threading its way and taking astonishing risks among interminable processions of motor lorries, strings of ambulances or of mule carts, waggons with timber, waggons with wire, waggons with men's gear, waggons with casks, waggons discreetly veiled, columns of infantry, cavalry, batteries en route. ”

“ For instance, the reserve line is not always connected with the firing-lines by a communication-trench. Those persons whose duty it is to pay daily visits to the fire-trenches—Battalion Commanders, Gunner and Sapper officers, an occasional Staff Officer, and an occasional most devoted Padre—perform the journey as best they may. ”

“ For instance, a company marching north in fours is required to suddenly extend facing north-west; or troops lying down firing are required to rapidly line a bank to their right, to forestall its occupation by an enemy; or a company advancing in extended order arrives at an impassable obstacle of limited extent, or perhaps encounters water which can only be crossed by a bridge, and the commander wishes to avoid closing and re-extending. ”

“ Here the professionals meet—the Line, the Gunners, the Intelligence with stupefying photo-plans of the enemy's trenches; the Supply; the Staff, who collect and note all things, and are very properly chaffed ”

“ I have frequently witnessed the whole division marching in this manner through a difficult country, by which means they were always in hand, ready to engage by companies. If a man found himself exhausted between the halts, the senior officer of the company ordered him to have a ticket, which he was obliged to hand over on his arrival in camp, or to shew to any one who questioned him on the road as to his authority for being absent from his corps. ”

“ All men who serve their country are not in the trenches. Many are serving heroically who have not yet heard the roar of the big guns.'
"'What shall I do here?'
"'Help the cooks, do little services for [149] the officers—whatever you may find to do. But, my son, remember you are not to try to go near the firing line. ”

“ The armies in the East and West acted independently and without concert, like a balky team, no two ever pulling together; enabling the enemy to use to a great advantage his interior lines of communication for transporting troops from East to West, re-enforcing the army most vigorously pressed, and to furlough large numbers, during seasons of inactivity on our part, to go to their homes and do the work of producing for the support of their armies. ”

“ When the masses of an army are posted in a zone of operations, they generally occupy strategic positions. The extent of the front occupied toward the enemy is called the strategic front. The portion of the theater of war from which an enemy can probably reach this front in two or three marches is called the front of operations. ”

“ On the quays ships of all nations, except Germany, are pouring out their stores, and on the other side the trucks that are going to the front are loading with the supplies that are wanted for every regiment in the service. ”

“ You can have no idea of the wonderful machine that the German army is and how well it is prepared for war. A chart is made out which shows just what must be done in the case of wars with the different nations. And every officer's place in the scheme is laid out beforehand. There is a schedule of trains which will supersede all other schedules the moment war is declared, and this is so arranged that the commander of the army here could telegraph to any officer to take such a train and go to such a place at a moment's notice. ”

“ And the slender line, near four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it to be attacked by surprise in its flanks, and to be cut like a thread into several pieces, which, from their distance, cannot come up in time to support each other. ”

“ A military organization is needed with an Army in the field, so as to ensure regular postal communication to and from home. This is a modern innovation in war, but one of importance to the comfort and spirits of the troops, and is a service demanded by their friends at home and by the nation in general. ”

“ The service will be light and easy, for the army will scarce march above twelve miles per day, and the wagons and baggage horses, as they carry those things that are absolutely necessary to the welfare of the army, must march with the army, and no faster; and are for the army’s sake, always placed where they can be most secure, whether in a march or in a camp. ”

“ All these lines are now in the hands of the military. At the Washington terminus there is a guard placed to see that no unauthorised person or [285] unwilling volunteer is going north; the line is watched by patrols and sentries; troops are encamped along its course. The factory chimneys are smokeless; half the pleasant villas which cover the hills or dot the openings in the forest have a deserted look and closed windows. ”

“ Finally, the unification of control, the co-ordination of the many different services involved, and the harmony of working established between all the various sections on the line of communication linking up the interior of the country with the troops in the fighting line should assure, not only the nearest possible approach to complete efficiency in the transport conditions, but the conferring of great advantages on the armies concerned, with a proportionate increase of their strength in the field. ”

“ The army operating against the South, on the contrary, had to protect its lines of communication with the North, from which all supplies had to come to the front. Every foot of road had to be guarded by troops stationed at convenient distances apart. ”

“ If brilliant, the troops are marching toward you, otherwise they are probably marching away from you.
Enemy in Position. (a) If an outpost line, the patrol locates the line of sentinels, their positions, the location and strength of the outguards and, as far as possible, all troops in rear. The location of the flanks of the line, whether in a strong or weak position, is of the utmost importance. Places where the line may be most easily penetrated should be searched for and the strength and routes of the hostile patrols observed. ”