"The men have learnt at last to dig and burrow like rabbits": Entrenchment, Field Fortifications, and the Learning Process in the British Expeditionary Force, 1914-15
Date
2014-05-21
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Abstract
Academic historians have in the past three decades largely dispelled the notion that British generalship in the First World War was plagued with incompetence and have instead explained the heavy casualties of the conflict as the by-product of commanders learning to overcome the tactical difficulties of static trench warfare. Such analyses have inevitably focused on the British army’s offensive role, since it was in the attack that Britain suffered its heaviest losses. The role of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the defensive in 1914 and early 1915 has consequently gone largely overlooked. Trench warfare contained both offensive and defensive qualities, the latter of which revolved chiefly around the construction and employment of field fortifications. In terms of its theories and ideas about how to use earthworks on the battlefield, the BEF was well prepared for war in 1914. Barring some temporary setbacks, most notably during the First Battle of Ypres, the British army between September 1914 and March 1915 continuously adapted its field fortification techniques and gradually improved its methods of training inexperienced officers in new methods, until the change in its operational-strategic posture from defence to offence resulted in the British gradually falling behind the Germans in terms of both defensive theory and field fortification quality.
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History--Military
Citation
Dykstra, B. (2014). "The men have learnt at last to dig and burrow like rabbits": Entrenchment, Field Fortifications, and the Learning Process in the British Expeditionary Force, 1914-15 (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/28247