How common was close quarters fighting in WWI?
Are there any accounts weapons like clubs and pic related actually being used often?
How did men survive the sprint across no man's land?
Enlighten me /his/
>>841977
trench clearing operations were a big part of the western front.
if I recall, the germans made a big fuss about the Winchester 1897 as it was too effective at sweeping up trenches.
>>842010
how did they get across no mans land?
>>842030
By walking, dashing, running, taking cover, shooting their guns to cover others, advancing behind barrages, advancing with armor support, advancing with field gun support, advancing with mortar support, advancing behind smoke, advancing against lightly defended lines and so on and so forth.
Literally the same way people have conducted assaults for about a hundred years now.
>>842030
You're really overestimating how dangerous no-man's land is on the offensive--after 1915, it wasn't really that hard to capture the first line of trenches--the issue was holding it or further advancing forwards.
People on the front lines weren't idiots either--units like Hutier's infantry and Petain's tenth army were figuring out squad-based infiltration, suppression and assault tactics as early as spring 1915. The Somme was an outlier, largely because most of the British participants were unseasoned men who had just left training as part of Kitchener's Army.
>>841977
Sharpened entrenching tool.
Reading the OP let me just get this out of the way, the way you phrase your post makes me think you seem to imagine the war in the west as an unbroken line of dudes sitting XXX yards from each other in trenches and trading sniper shots / machine gun bursts / sometimes getting ouf ot a trench and instantly getting killed, and the lines literally not shifting an inch or whatever.
That is not what happened.
Not only was the front not an unbroken line of trenches, in fact past 1916 you would see a major shift towards things like defense in depth, foxholes and outposts rather than trenches and the like, and guess what, assaults across the no man's land succeeded fairly often.
These people were not stupid, after the lessons of the opening months of the war they knew how to advance in broken ground, taking cover, receiving covering fire, supporting assaults and so on. In fact, reaching the other side was more successful than not. Because of a variety of reasons ranging from the front defenses being usually only lightly manned to highly sophisticated operational plans or the use of newly developed methods.
What was hard, however, was holding the ground you gained. With limited motorization and mechanization, successes could not be exploited. Tired and spent and low on supply troops could not be relieved easily. Unlike the defenders who could mount an easy counterattack from their rear areas - now conveniently close to the ground gained by the attacker.
>>842066
Any good books/lectures on the topic? Or just WWII in general.
>>842066
That's really interesting. I find it sad how the wwi battles are never really explained properly.
>>842113
WWI*
>>842113
I really like Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front by Holmes for a well rounded (complete with diaries and stuff) overview of the war (and life on) the western front. It talks about all the things going on basically, from training to life in trenches to rotation to fighting etc.
The Great War by Hart and World War 1 Trench Warfare by Bull are more about combat and the strictly military/fighting side of things.
>>842113
Storm of steel is amazing
>>842137
I don't think there is a historical event that would be as... mangled or misunderstood or warped by "popular" (but wrong) history perception as WW1.
Especially when you consider how relatively recent (and well sourced) it is. I could be more forgiving about people having a poor (or even completely wrong) understanding of something happening several centuries ago, after all that is a long time and the sources are rare and so on.
But you have this vague and more or less accurate representation of history throughout the ages... and then BLAM WW1 happens and the popular perception of its history goes waaayyy off from what was happening.
Eastern Front in WW2 also gets some of this poor treatment (thanks, Enemy at the Gates!) but nowhere near WW1.
It's dope that you know so much. Is it just a hobby or are you studying it more intensively?
>>842181
My entire entire formal education on the First World War was reading two poems and watching the last episode of Blackadder Goes Forth with no context.
This was early 2000s. Hopefully with the anniversary, things have improved.
>>841977
>this kills the Tommy
>>841977
>very common in trench raids
>yes
>by by sprinting and luck
I'm pretty sure Verdun had a lot of hands to hand combat. Soldiers were trained to walk, not run through no man's land. It was simply to long a distance to run through the shitty terrain and have enough energy to fight when you got to the enemy. By the time you got to the other side of no man's land soldiers were usually low or out of ammunition.
I'm sure it would only take a quick Google but iirc, Verdun had a lot of hand to hand combat or fighting with weapons of opportunity (like rocks).
>>842512
>Soldiers were trained to walk, not run through no man's land
The "walking across no man's land" and the connotations of walking into gunfire or something is pretty much a myth (especially with Somme where it rears its dumb head often). Not only was there no unified doctrine at the time which would prescribe it, but we have accounts of, well, of everything from crawling to rushing to slowly advancing. I mean yeah they definitely walked as well, but as a result of circumstances, not doctrine (i.e. because they were walking behind a barrage or were not getting shot at). Not surprisingly, again, people in the past were not retarded.
>>842472
>this removes the kraut
>>841977
*teleports behind you
*unsheath bolt action
>>842610
thats unfair though. pls ban.
>>841977
>enfield obrez
noice
>>842512
Walking and walking in formation was abandoned fairly quickly after the start of the war.
At least half of the fighting on the wesrern front was close quarters. Every morning there would be a charge of storm troops from one side, usually paired with gas, and they would fight in the trenches with bayonets.
>>842783
>>>>>/ou/
>>842783
Don't forget the 24/7 artillery bombardment and everyone getting SHELLSHOCK. Oh, and before that even happened they had sat in the trench waiting to die for six years.
>>842174
"In Stahlgewittern werden wir gereinigt"
A powerful sentence but it also shows how much of a lucky fuck Jünger was. Most people I imagine didn't feel very clean after the war.
>>842797
>shows how much of a lucky fuck Jünger was
That shit was unbelievable. For everyone that hasn't read it, at several occasions Jünger gets hurt just enough to be put into a hospital, while his unit fought the big battles. Sometimes it reads like he's on vaccation, visiting a friend in the trenches, getting drunk and while trying to find his way back to his dugout he lost his way almost to the british trenches, so he could throw some granades at them.
It all changes in the second half of the book.
>mfw the Spring Offensive
>>842066
This. No man's land wasn't impassible, it's just that you'd take heavy losses, then get counter-attacked and then pushed back again. Also there was a lot of bayonetting going on. And grenades. Grenades were great for clearing trenches.
The Germans employed a strategy later on where they would purposely station a lower amount of troops on the frontline and slowly have more and more with tougher defences the more trench lines you'd go back. So the allies would stretch themselves out, tire themselves out, and then be extremely easy to counter attack.
Also in the last few months of WW1 they had basically developed enough technologically and in terms of tactics for their offensive capabilities to beat trench defences. The British were basically employing WW2 level tactics in the last few months, coordinated attacks with rolling barrage of artillery, using tanks to replace cavalry and as personnel carriers, and using warplanes at the same time. It was open warfare by the end, hence why the casualty numbers skyrocketed compared to the attrition game that 1915-1917 was.
>>842610
>Kraut
>Not Jerry
Come on lad
>>841977
Those rifles were for firing trench mortars, not close quarters, you would have better accuracy with a pistol. For tunnels if you fired any firearm you would probably miss and blind and make yourself deaf. You would be much better using clubs or bayonets.
>>842437
That's honestly all you need. Have you seen how fucked up CQC gets with hand grenades? Ample environment to fuck someone up with a shovel.
>>842982
>hearing Floyd but seeing Jerry!
>>842030
They sent people to crawl through no mans land at night to secretly cut wires at night. They would use artillery to shell both the enemy line and no mans land in order to clear more barb wire. They then sent thousands of young men running at the enemy line such that they couldn't mow down all of them. Some got to the enemy trenches and fighting became close quarters and even hand to hand. It was difficult to secure entire trench networks because successful assaults on trenches were intermittent and it's hard to hold on to the little that you take.
Eventually they started adopting different tactics, like creating special teams for raiding enemy trenches to take prisoners and look for intel. At the battle of Verdun the idea was to build a shittone of artillary shells, attack Verdun in hopes the French would try to hold it at all cost no matter the body count, and then shell them until there were no young French men left to fight the war.
Awful business, World War One.
>>842982
>Not Jerry
I'm american you tea nigger.
>>844885
>They then sent thousands of young men running at the enemy line such that they couldn't mow down all of them.
why do you have to include this bullshit in an otherwise reasonable post
>>844897
Bullshit how?
Taking the offensive and securing enemy trenches was all down to the artillery.
For example Britain. The 1915 battles are clusterfucks of the highest order as Britain experimented with the number of artillery per yardage of the attacking front. You also have to weigh in factors of timing, communication with the infantry and the effectiveness of the artillery.
1915:
Numbers per yardage of front: Too few
Ammunition required: Limited
Communcation with attacking troops: Highly restricted.
Effectiveness of artillery at destroying defences/wire: Very limited.
It is no surprise that by the time Britain had a war industry capable of supporting the sheer volume of artillery needed to conduct a total war, the resulting attacks tended to improve.
Add to this the improvements in communications via wireless, the effectiveness of the creeping barrage, the introduction of planes and tanks as well as smaller scale objectives and you have a recipe for success. This meant that by 1918, Britain was able to overcome the Hindenburg line and the German strategy of defence in depth.
It is all about the attackers learning a combined arms strategy where all elements are used in tandem to give a greater chance of success.
>>842030
Shitton died before reaching the enemy trench, but a mass charge is bound to have some survivors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ciq9ts02ci4
>>844893
>I'm American.
Oh. My condolences.
>>842113
Forward into battle. Also explains why America lost in Vietnam
>>844893
>american
>>841977
Somewhere between 70 to 95 percent of casualties in WW1 were due to fragments (artillery and mortars).
The miners who dug both beneath the enemy lines to lay explosives and counter-mine the enemy miners would also dig fighting tunnels out into no mans land. Since the miners didn't have military training you'd have soldiers guarding the fighting tunnels and if a breach was detected it was essentially hand-to-hand combat by lantern light. That is, unless they heard you first in which case they'd just blow your tunnel and bury you alive.
>>846047
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc9s3ZMYIec
>>841977
I don't have any sources, and it may just be a popular myth here in the states, but didn't the Brits have shocktroops that mainly led night rights that often resulted in close quarters combat?
>>841977
http://nitroflare.com/view/1CBFF0E5826FD50/1848844859.epub
>>842113
Dan Carlin did a great job at covering both the main events and some in depth stuff about the actual fighting in his series "Blueprint to Armageddon". Five parter, about 20hrs of content, very entertaining. Keep in mind he couldn't cover everything though and sometimes was a bit general in his statements. Still a solid and well researched lecture nonetheless. He points out a few good sources too.
>>841977
man imagine shooting that
fuck up a dude in the hallway right fast
>>841977
The general flow of a battle on the western front was that the first two or three lines of trenches would get taken by the attackers, who would then lose momentum as they took casualties and overstretched their line of communications (coordinating attacks with command, other attacking units, and artillery, was a huge problem). As soon as the attackers stalled, the defenders would counter-attack and drive the attackers back to their own lines.
Meaning that a lot of combat took place in the trench itself. So yes, hand-to-hand combat was a very common feature of WW1. Only the officers had pistols (which only had maybe six or eight rounds anyway). All the troopers, at least for most of the war, were issued with rifles which had originally been designed with long-range combat in mind.
Bayoneting was common, but even then it was quite ungainly to try to fight with what was essentially a spear in the confines of a trench. So the favoured tool for trench combat became the spades soldiers carried with them to dig the trenches - to the point where both sides ended up sharpening their entrenching tools as standard. Apart from that, there was always the knife, of course. It's a strong indication of how common close-combat was in WW1 that a wide variety of specialist trench knives were developed by all the armies on the western front.
Stormtrooper with his MP18 submachine gun.
>>842677
Wilhelm pls leave
>>842113
Alistair Horne's Verdun is a classic, almost a must read on WWI.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Glory-Verdun-1916/dp/0140170413
>>844903
I dont think he is saying the concept itself is bullshit, but the way you said it makes you sound like a pretentious fuckwad
>>846047
It's amusing if you read the soldier diaries
there are numerous accounts of how much artillery was shelled that soldiers knew exactly what type of round was being used and where it would go by sound and the situation. They knew if they needed to take cover, they knew if they were pretty much dead, if gas was being fired etc
Or the first battles between the french and the germans, where french soldiers had no idea who they were firing at, if they were friendly. Was 100 guys bumping into 100 guys in the woods and everyone tried to go call of duty on each other.
>>846867
>they knew if they were pretty much dead
then how did they get to write in their diaries about it?
>>846890
necromancy
Thanks to everyone for contributing lets keep this tread going in the interest of education.
It's fucking depressing how one of the darkest times in modern history is basically sidelined, so many of these men's stories will never be told.
>>846805
Since when does acknowledging war is shit make one pretentious? Sounds like said anon has been playing too much CoD.
