Military attack

“ The deadly accuracy of the enemy's artillery fire, its wide distribution, blasting holes in the roads, loosing on infantry as it deployed, on convoys of artillery ammunition, and raking our front-line positions, only made it more important that the next attack should be well delivered and in force. ”

“ The attack was a little late, as we heard after from prisoners—perhaps the Night Bombers, and their upsetting of road and rail transport timetables with high-explosive bombs and showering machine-guns, had some word in that lateness—and our fire caught it in the act of deploying. And when such a weight of guns as was massed on that front catches solid battalions on the roads, or troops close-packed in trenches, the Lord ha' mercy on the men they catch. ”

“ Huge day and night bombers will assemble at the declaration of war to penetrate into the enemy's country for the attack of his centres of population, his mobilization zones, his arsenals, harbours, strategic railways, shipping and rolling stock. ”

“ Nieuwe Gazet, August 8th:—"After the German artillery had set some houses on fire, the infantry marched to the attack. This was not only directed against the soldiers, but also against the civilian population who took part in the combat. People shoot from the houses, small boys and women bombard the assailants with stones, and even some old men from behind the doors fire on the advancing soldiers." ”

“ It seemed impossible that any living creature should survive such a hellish turmoil. When the firing ceased abruptly, or when its direction was changed to give the French infantry a chance to attack us, then our brave fusiliers, musketeers, grenadiers crawled out of the funnels and pockets into which the enemy's grenades had ploughed the earth, made their way from among broken foundations, crumbling cement, trickling sand bags, and, grabbing their guns and wiping the dirt from their eyes, they repulsed the French attack. ”

“ True, a mere fire at a distance may finally destroy him. But an insuperable objection to this mode of attack is, that while we are killing or disabling his men, he is killing or disabling as many of our own. ”

“ At every step is war, and this is enough: soldiers black with powder; bayonets bent with the violence of the encounter; the earth ploughed with cannon-shot; trees torn and mutilated; the dead and dying; wounds and agony; fields covered with broken carriages, outstretched horses, and mangled bodies; while disease, sad attendant on military suffering, sweeps thousands from the great hospitals, and the multitude of amputated limbs, which there is no time to destroy, accumulate in bloody heaps, filling the air with corruption. ”

“ A slow bombardment may also precede the active cannonade which prepares for an assault, or the systematic artillery attack of a regular siege.
DEFENCE AGAINST BOMBARDMENT. 8. The defence against bombardment is frequently, from necessity, strictly passive, and consists in so disposing 11 the troops and materials as to protect them under bomb- and splinter-proofs, repairing damages to the latter and to magazines and parapets as occasion offers; saving the ammunition of the place by firing only such shots as promise to pay for themselves by the effect produced ”

“ When it is decided to make an open assault, to do so by day, if there is no portion of the fire of the defences which bears upon the point to be carried that is not completely kept under by the fire of the batteries and trenches ”

“ The biggest chunks had either been completely disintegrated or splattered along the ground in all directions from the target area. It had been a direct hit. It only took one blast, but that didn't mean it was the only one in the country. When the attack came, every big city had probably been marked for destruction. ”

“ Then all along their fronts the deep-mouthed guns [107] opened their well-directed fire, and the infantry responded to the furious attack with their rapid volleys, as they closed around the head of the advancing columns, enveloping them in one sheet of flame, that streamed like billows along their sides. It was too much for human courage to endure ”

“ However successful a naval attack of a fortress, or arsenal may be, the work of destruction can never be effectually accomplished by ships. The sea defences may be silenced, guns dismounted, parapets ruined, magazines blown up by mortar shells, and habitations devastated by the cruel process of bombardment ”

“ Not only will there be the battles when the enemy tries to come ashore, but afterwards there will fall upon his lodgments very heavy British counter-attacks, and all the time the lodgments will be under the heaviest attack by British bombers. ”

“ Very accurate when, before an infantry attack, with bursts of shrapnel bullets they cut to bits the barbed-wire entanglements in front of a trench! The power of chaos that they seem to possess when the firing-trench and the dug- outs and all the human warrens which protect the defenders are beaten as flour is kneaded!
Blind and groping they seem when a dozen shells fall harmlessly in a field; when they send their missiles toward objects which may not be worth shooting at; when no one sees where the shells hit and the amount of damage they have done is all guesswork ”

“ The surging masses of human beings intent on each others destruction with the death dealing artillery with its terrific roar and the more destructive missiles of small armies with their hateful hissing sounds, together with the deafening cheers of the moving armies, and the heartrending screams and moans of the wounded and dying make the scene agonizing to the extreme. ”

“ Deluged by high explosives, shrapnel and gas shells, seeing their comrades mowed down by machine gun fire, bombed from the sky, alternately in pouring rain and burning sun, hungry half the time, their eyes burning from want of sleep, half suffocated from long intervals in gas masks, undergoing all the hardships of a bitter campaign against a determined, vigorous and unscrupulous enemy, yet their only thought was to push on—and on—and on. ”

“ The resources of the enemy in men seemed endless, their persistence remarkable, their recklessness in the face of sure death almost unbelievable. The noise was terrific; the constant rattle of the machine guns, the spitting of rifles, the booming of the artillery, the whining and crashing of shells, the yells of the charging troops, the shrieks of the wounded. In the British trenches the men were assembled, ready to pour out at the whistle and repel the assault on open ground ”

“ This siege warfare is a war of force against force, the force of machinery dealing ponderous, mighty blows against a wall of steel, smashing, smashing, smashing, always in the same place, until the line is bent, then broken, then the force of man coming into play in a wild onrush of storming infantry, with their primitive passions aflame, surging forward amid clouds of green and yellow and red smoke, bombing and slashing their way through the breach their machines have made. ”

“ By a bombardment, technically speaking, is meant a more or less continuous shell-fire upon a place with a view to destroying magazines, buildings, materials, and supplies of all kinds, in addition to inflicting the greatest possible losses upon the garrison and producing among the inhabitants a state of terror and unrest, frequently extending to mutiny, and finally causing the surrender of the place. ”

“ They were impatient for battles, charges, the kind of fighting that is done between great armies on the open field, when there is the roar and smoke of cannon, the rattle of small firearms, the clash of steel, the cries of captains, the shrieks and groans of wounded, the plenteous spilling of blood. ”

“ Here and there the invaders have forced their way into the long corridors; and you hear the musketry rattling inside, the crash of glass, and the shouts and yells of the combatants, as little jets of smoke curl out of the closed lattices. Lying amid the orange-groves are dead and dying sepoys, and the white statues are reddened with blood. Leaning against a smiling Venus is a British soldier shot through the neck, gasping, and at every gasp bleeding to death. Officers are running to and fro after their men, persuading or threatening in vain. ”

“ When all these arrangements have been completed, and a combined attack is made with shells, machine-guns, rifle fire, trench mortars, poison gas, liquid fire, etc., the attack is almost certain to succeed at some point or other, and once the defender's line is broken his whole line is threatened, and if the reserves are brought up and poured quickly enough into the breach, so as to get a wedge in between the enemy's forces, his army can then be smashed up in detail and a great victory won. ”

“ The people goaded to fury by opposition rushed madly upon them, strove to wrest away their weapons by brute force, and when that failed tore up the pavement and hurled the massive stones furiously into their midst. Many were wounded, more than one dropped down dead, crushed beneath the deadly missiles which filled the air. The sweet breath of morning was made terrible by the groans and cries and harsh sounds of hot-blooded men, goaded to fury and fierce with a thirst for strife, which threatened to deluge the torn pavements with blood and carnage. ”

“ Assault is the rush of an armed force upon enemy forces in the battlefield, or upon intrenchments, fortifications, habitations, villages, or towns, such rushing force committing every violence against opposing persons and destroying all impediments. Siege is the surrounding and investing of an enemy locality by an armed force, cutting off those inside from all communication for the purpose of starving them into surrender or for the purpose of attacking the invested locality and taking it by assault. Bombardment is the throwing by artillery of shot and shell upon persons and things. ”

“ Trains of Artillery, cannon, ammunition—all that belong to our army fell into the hands of the enemy, for the dispersion was horrid. Our loss in dead, wounded and dispersed, is reckoned at six thousand men. The loss of the enemy is said to be greater, but you know that this way of expression among us is the fashion. ”

“ The din of yells and screams, mingled with the crash of arquebuses and the sharp clang of steel cross-bows, was, in itself, infernal; while the peals of artillery, served with such skill and constancy, that, every half-minute, there was one or other discharged from some quarter of the palace, leaving, at each discharge, a long avenue of death among the crowds, converted what might have seemed a scene of elysium into a spectacle of hell. No man could reckon, no man could imagine, the slaughter made by the besieged army, among their foes, in the short space of half an hour. ”

“ This very darkness, in concealing the danger, and the loss, doubtless did its share in permitting the men to cross the lines of dead that marked the halting-place of previous troops. Still onward they advanced,—the thunder of artillery above them,—the groans of the wounded rising from below;—frightful gaps are made in their ranks by exploding shells, and many a brave boy staggers and falls to rise no more, in that storm of spitefully whizzing lead. ”

“ What the public already knows of armies, guns, trenches, etc., has little to do with the suffering that the people of an invaded country endures, when the white-hot flame of the enemy invasion sweeps over the land scorching every flower and leaving in its wake only desolation and pain and despair. ”

“ Sometimes a wounded man would be picked up by two passing companions, and carried tenderly forward—for the sweet impulses of humanity were not all lost in that wild retreat.
Then came the artillery—for much was saved—thundering through the panic-stricken crowd, crushing everything as it went, dragged recklessly along by horses wild as the men that urged them on. Rifles, bayonets, pistols, blankets, haversacks and knapsacks were flung singly or in heaps along the way. ”

“ The fire of the fronts directly attacked, both machine-gun and infantry, will be directed principally at the assaulting columns and working parties, the collateral works and fronts will, in addition to pouring a cross-fire upon the assaulting columns, direct a large part of their machine-gun fire upon the supports and reserves, 8 while the more powerful guns will generally direct their fire upon the hostile artillery. ”

“ The collection of information, the destruction of important enemy equipment or supplies, the neutralization of enemy positions, the severing of physical means of communication and transport, and the like, are suitable objectives. The attritional effect of repeated raids may be very great. Skillfully executed raids frequently produce panic among the populace and thus, by political pressure, cause a change in the existing apportionment of fighting strength to the extent of upsetting military plans in other theaters. ”

“ I saw men in their madness bayonet each other without mercy, without thought. I saw the hot life’s blood of German and Englishman flow out together, and drench the fair soil of France. I saw men torn to fragments by the near explosion of bombs, and—worse than any sight—I heard the agonised cries and shrieks of men in mortal pain who were giving up their souls to their Maker. ”

“ We advanced across a field covered with thousands upon thousands of torn and bleeding human bodies.
No shot was fired. Only the enemy's artillery was still bombarding the battery positions. We were still receiving no fire from the artillery; neither did the [Pg 96] enemy's infantry fire upon us. That looked suspicious; we knew what was coming. We advanced farther and farther without being molested. Suddenly we found ourselves attacked by an army of machine-guns. An indescribable hail of bullets was poured into us. We threw ourselves to the ground and sought cover as well as we could. ”