In a five-day period during the Battle of the Marne, 432,000 shells were fired. On the first day of the Battle of Verdun, the Germans fired more than 1,000,000 shells at French troops. In preparation for the Battle of Messines Ridge, the British expended over 3,500,000 shells.
These numbers are astounding to read, but they were not uncommon during World War One. Intense, high-volume artillery barrages were a distinct feature of the tactics of the time. Each side used artillery to destroy fortifications such as barbed wire and trenches, and to demoralize their opponent.
What do barrages like those do to the land? To the surrounding forests and fields? What was it like to live through one? Artillery could pin whole battalions down for days or even weeks, wounding even more than they killed. Imagine the strength of a weapon that immobilizes thousands of men at a time. Imagine the fear coursing through the veins of Soldiers as they sat helplessly in their trench, or out in No Man's Land, hoping the next shell didn't have their name on it.
Artillery was unrelenting. It was like a hand sweeping across a chessboard, capturing thousands of pieces in a moment. It churned the ground at its target like a till in a garden. At Mont Sec, just before the American Doughboys arrived, the French died in droves from these storms of steel:
The use of artillery and machine guns in this area had been so intense that as many as one thousand men a minute had been killed in action during the ferocious battles for Mont Sec.1
History Advances
At the beginning of the War, no one had yet realized the importance and the power of artillery. Military leadership and theorists had a poor grasp on how effective accurate and well-synchronized bombardments would be. When we analyze the battles of WWI today, with our 20/20 hindsight, the effects are obvious. But during the early months of WWI, they were learning as they went.
The first battle of The Great War opened the eyes of nations to the might of artillery. Everyone was shocked when the Twelve Forts of Liege halted the German advance. The Battle of Liege was disastrous for the Germans. Belgium was a small, comparatively under-militarized country that had never fought a war. The Germans expected to roll right through. But the well-defended forts stopped them in their tracks.
It was only after the Germans incorporated their massive 420mm siege cannons, nicknamed "Big Bertha," into the fight that the forts fell. The engineers who built the forts of Liege promised the Belgium government that the steel and concrete compounds could withstand the meanest guns known to man. In 1891, when the forts were completed, that might have been true. But advances in artillery technology over the course of the next twenty-five years nullified that promise. The German siege cannons disintegrated the Twelve Forts of Liege.
The Sledgehammer
There are endless ways to describe a World War One shell barrage; thunder and lightning, earthquake, roaring ocean, oncoming train. But the best description comes from German officer, Ernst Junger, in his memoir The Storm of Steel. He lived through countless shellings and wrote about them in his diaries. He describes artillery bombardments as such:
It is easier, nevertheless, to describe all this than to go through it, for the brain links every separate sound of whirring metal with the idea of death, and so the nerves are exposed without protection and without a pause to the sensation of the utmost menace. Thus I crouched in my little hole with my hand in front of my eyes, while all the possibilities of being hit passed through my imagination. I believe I have found a comparison that exactly conveys what I, in common with all the rest who went through the war, experienced in situation such as this. It is as if one were tied tight to a post and threatened by a fellow swinging a sledgehammer. Now the hammer is swung back for the blow, now it whirls forward, till, just missing your skull, it sends splinters flying from the post once more. That is exactly what it feels like to be exposed to heavy shelling without cover.2
Bombardments broke men, sometimes over a period of days, sometimes in one moment with a single shell. The helplessness found in each near-miss of the sledgehammer tore apart an army's collective psyche.
The anguish of battlefield artillery began with the construction of fortified gun positions called casemates. A single (American) field casemate consisted of four guns, their crews, camo netting over top, and a stock of shells. The Americans put their casemates in foxholes, which were dug by hand.
If lucky, casemates were plotted on good terrain, where trucks and horses could carry out resupplies. If not, Doughboys would be compelled to haul rations, shells, personal gear, and various equipment over the terrain standing between their gun positions and the nearest road. Author James G. Bilder tells of his Grandfather's experience as an American artillery scout and the exhausting job of manually resupplying a casemate:
a box of artillery ammo consisted of nine shells with each shell weighing fifteen pounds. It took two men considerable effort to carry a one hundred and thirty five pound box the necessary distances. Some fourteen trucks, each carrying sixteen boxes, hauled what turned out to be 234 boxes (2106 shells), or more than 31,000 pounds, of high explosives to men who had to then schlep them manually almost a quarter mile uphill in muddy terrain! The job was completed in two hours, causing Len and every other Doughboy to be racked with pain and fatigue.3
The Stories
From casemates were fired the shells that caused 60% of battlefield casualties during WWI. Shells could kill a man instantly or make them suffer. The fortunate ones likely never saw it coming and didn't feel a thing. The unfortunate were dealt shrapnel wounds and either bled out or died days later of gangrene or some other horrible infection. Others still, were buried alive, maimed, crippled for life, or driven mad.
Shell bombardments are often cited as the worst fear of those who fought in WWI. The whistling of an incoming volley sent British, French, and German troops alike cowering underground. If no cover was available, troops hid wherever they could. They'd dig into the sides of the trenches, lay flat against the muddy floor, or pin themselves to the walls of their battle position.
When shells hit and detonated, they sent dirt, wood, equipment, and everything else in its blast radius, up into the air. Other, more disgusting debris, was tossed up as well. Depending on the condition of their trench, mainly whether or not they had a chance to clear out the dead, troops could find their rotting friends raining down around, and onto, them during a bombardment. WWI British war correspondent, Philip Gibbs, tells of that exact sort of nightmarish scenario at the Battle of Hooge in 1915:
Our men lived there and died there [speaking of the battle of Hooge] within a few yards of the enemy, crouched below the sand-bags and burrowed in the sides of the crater. Lice crawled over them in legions. Human flesh, rotting and stinking, mere pulp, was pasted into the mud-banks. If they dug to get deeper cover their shovels went into the softness of dead bodies who had been their comrades. Scraps of flesh, booted legs, blackened hands, eyeless heads, came falling over them when the enemy trench-mortared their position or blew up a new mine-shaft.4
Shells detonated with so much force they could dislocate enough dirt to bury a man. Soldiers who were at one moment peering over the parapet could find themselves emersed in dirty darkness the next. When they did survive the crushing weight of tons of earth dropping on them at once, they could be stuck, buried alive, for hours or even days.
Accounts of shells burying men alive can be found in several sources. One story from British Captain and physician, Charles S. Myers, tells of a troop who was buried alive for more than 18 hours when his trench collapsed after being struck by a shell. Captain Myers subsequently diagnosed the man with Shell Shock.
Similarly, there are stories of men who narrowly avoided a sudden grave. French Soldier Louis Barthas tells of the lone officer in his company who was partially buried by sandbags:
The company no longer had any officers. The only one left, Sublieutenant Col, had just missed being buried alive by a shell which filled up the trench where he’d been crouching. With much effort, very badly bruised, he dug himself out of the sandbags which had collapsed all around him.5
Bombardments ravaged the surrounding terrain. Entire forests caught fire from shells and fields were left textured with arbitrary craters.
German Soldier Ernst Junger recounts mistaking the crackling of a forest fire started by shells for gunfire:
My comrade, a volunteer names Kohl, displayed that North German cold-bloodedness which seems peculiarly designed for such situation. He bit and squeezed at a cigar that never after all would burn, and he looked very sleepy. His composure was not disturbed when suddenly there were reports as of a thousand rifles behind us. The shell-fire had ignited the forest, and huge flames climbed crackling up the trees.6
A shell bombardment was about the most chaotic thing a WWI Soldier could live through. They were pure madness. Entire forests came crashing down, dirt and mud filled the sky, the air filled with poisonous gases, and ear-splitting explosions repeatedly concussed their victims. Junger described it as being hunted by lightning:
We deployed and, wondering what to expect, took cover in a row of flat pockets hallowed out by some predecessor or other. We were calling out to each other and joking, when we were cut short by a noise that shook us to the marrow. Twenty metres behind us clods of earth were whirled through a cloud of white smoke and rattled through the tree tops. Time after time the explosions rolled through the forest. With glazed eyes we starred at one another, and our bodies clove to the earth in utter impotence and prostration. Shell followed shell. Suffocating gases hung in the undergrowth, dense vapour wrapped the treetops, trees and branches came crashing to the ground, loud cries rang out. We jumped up and wildly, hunted by lightnings and stunned chasing round the great trunks like hunted game. A dugout into which many ran got a direct hit that sent the heavy timber sky-high.7
The randomness of shell fall was a traumatizing characteristic. Soldiers obviously couldn't know where shells would land, but they could sure hear them coming. In seemingly random places, at seemingly random times, shells ripped apart whatever they struck. Where would the next fall? On my head? That's what went through every man's mind during a barrage.
Barrages were inescapable. You couldn't run and you couldn't hide. Even if Soldiers managed to avoid being torn apart by the explosion and subsequent shrapnel, the sheer volume and endurance of a barrage ate away at the mind. The indiscriminate, careless, cold, random way in which shells chose their victims is, perhaps, the most terrifying part of the experience.
Part 4.5 coming soon.
Bilder, James. Artillery Scout. [Edition unavailable]. 2014. Reprint, Casemate Publishers (Ignition), 2014. https://ereader.perlego.com/1/book/2443949/14?element_plgo_uid=ch14__45&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=share-with-location&utm_source=perlego
Junger, Ernst. “The Overture To The Somme Offensive.” Chapter. Page 44. In The Storm of Steel: Original 1929 Translation, translated by Basil Creighton, 3–3. London: Chatto and Windus, 1929.
Bilder, James. Artillery Scout. [Edition unavailable]. 2014. Reprint, Casemate Publishers (Ignition), 2014. https://ereader.perlego.com/1/book/2443949/14?element_plgo_uid=ch14__54&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=share-with-location&utm_source=perlego
Gibbs, Philip. Now It Can Be Told. 2019. Reprint, Good Press, 2019. https://ereader.perlego.com/1/book/1944909/7?element_plgo_uid=ch7__111&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=share-with-location&utm_source=perlego
Barthas, Louis. Poilu. 2014. Reprint, Yale University Press (Ignition), 2014. https://ereader.perlego.com/1/book/2450692/15?element_plgo_uid=ch15__167&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=share-with-location&utm_source=perlego
Junger, Ernst. “Les Eparges.” Chapter. Page 14. In The Storm of Steel: Original 1929 Translation, translated by Basil Creighton, 3–3. London: Chatto and Windus, 1929.
Junger, Ernst. “Les Eparges.” Chapter. Page 15. In The Storm of Steel: Original 1929 Translation, translated by Basil Creighton, 3–3. London: Chatto and Windus, 1929.