Trench Raiding

[armourersergeant]

A topic that cropped up in another thread in a similar light.

Trench raiding, was it seen as an important part of the military exisistance on the western front. I have seen various nationals trying to claim they were the best, they perfected it etc (all in a nice way) and yet as another pal said. You would hardly win any awards for saying you were the instigator of it.

So was it an important factor and necessery?

Who were great components of it, Generals and nations/units?

I know Haking was a great one in the belief that unless you raided you had not arrived on the western front.

How much info could really be gained in the normal quiet times on the front as aposed to just prior to an attack when i can see that info and intel would be crucial?

curiously

Arm.

[Desmond7]

From what I've read it depended on :-

1. Div. commander and how he 'saw' his Div.

2. Brig. commanders and how much they wanted to live up to that reputation.

3. Btn. commanders - just obeying orders?

RJ Whitehead can back me up on this ... a huge number of trench raids were aborted in NML because they met up with the opposition setting out with the same intent.

When an aggressive btn./brigade/div. was opposite same, the feuding was hectic.

You know my 'thing' is 12RIR/108Brig./36 Ulster Div. .... I have read in so many accounts of the top brass setting out their stall when they arrive in a sector .... orders go down the chain: 'Dominate No-Man's Land'.

That's my thinking.

des

[Robert Dunlop]

From what I can make out, the Intel people were constantly after information about German units. Partly it was to keep track of them. Charteris' book gives a good impression of this. There was also the need to track who was in the German units. Which class of recruits were now present in the front lines? From this information, Charteris derived the sense of how successful the war of attrition was going.

Some units certainly seemed to have a taste for it. The Australians loved to dominate no man's land, or more particularly gain psychological dominance over the Germans thereby. The New Zealanders were the same, especially if a new unit turned up next to them or they arrived in a new part of the line.

I'm not into the 'who was best at it' thing. The above examples happen to be the ones I have read most about.

And least we forget, Haig wanted the men to maintain their offensive spirit at all times.

Robert

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

From my experience studying the XIV Reserve Corps the trench raid was seen in several different lights. First, there was the need to obtain details regarding the opposite numbers, regiment, trench disposition, design, etc. Night patrols also obtained much of the same information regarding trench sentries, routines, etc.

The main reason for sending out many of the raids was to maintain the offensive spirit among the men given the deterioration of static trench warfare. Many of the men saw raiding as an excitement and volunteeers were never in short supply.

Later in the war, around late 1915/early 1916 the listening devices used by the Germans such as Moritz Stations obtained quite a bit of detail about the enemy down to the names of the company commanders of the opposing side and in a few cases warning of a British raid was used to set an ambush.

Studying the numerous raids is like studying the war in miniature, a short, violent fight with limited participants, quite fascinating.

Ralph

[Guest bonza]

By knowing which units were opposite you gave an indication of the enemy's intentions. Finding the Prussian Guards in your area meant not only that you'd better tell the generals to prepare for an attack, but that you might have trouble getting home to tell anyone. Both sides seem to have recognised the units most likely to be used as the other sides shock troops, later storm troopers, and their presence in an area, perhaps suggested by the white horse in the top paddock, or the washing in acertain pattern on the clothes line, could be verified by a raid. The same rationale led to great efforts not to disclose troop accumulations prior to Hamel & Amiens.

There was the other consideration that changes in the frequency of your raids could telegraph your intentions. So if you restricted these to pre-attack info gathering, your opponent was warned equally as well as by the traditional bombardment.

Raiding was of course pretty unpopular with most raiders, but there are also stories of those who preferred it to the confusion of an actual battle or the monotony of trench existence.

As for nerves, I consider those required to man listening posts many miles in front of their own lines in the night of the middle east deserts, deserve some recognition.

Arm

I personally don't think too many Australians thought they "invented" the raids. In fact the AIF appear to have been extremely pithed off when the Germans raided them in the Nursery Sector and made off with the then top secret Stokes Mortars.

If interested, you will find details of mid-1916 raids by the Australians & New Zealanders around Page 273 of Vol III of the Official History, online at awm.gov.au

[haven't read it, just have the reference]

regards

Pat

[Captain Dave]

Trench raiding formed a very important part of the battle lines of WW1. A unit that carried out (successful) raids on the enemy, put them on the back foot. By having the enemy on the back foot, they domintated the ground to the front of their trenches and were more able to carry out routine maintinance on their wire, leave listening posts and OP's out and such forth with less obstructions than a unit that was living in fear of a sortie by the enemy.

If you dominated the enemy, your troops had a higher morale as they believed they were at less risk of being attacked unexpectedly. Also by taking the fight to the enemy, you proved that they were not supermen and able to be taken out when you wanted to. This obviously had a positive effect when lining up for a major attack.

Add to that the int geeks always wanted more info, so taking prisoners, or more simply their shoulder straps once killed, was an easy and efficient way of identifying who were opposite you and what they might be doing.

Trench raiding was really the only way to do business!

[Ken Lees]

A unit that carried out (successful) raids on the enemy, put them on the back foot. By having the enemy on the back foot, they domintated the ground to the front of their trenches and were more able to carry out routine maintinance on their wire, leave listening posts and OP's out and such forth with less obstructions than a unit that was living in fear of a sortie by the enemy.

But, since a raid on the enemy trenches was likely to lead to high casualties for the attackers, followed by sever reataliatory bombardments plus the likelihood of a retaliatory trench raid, it is likely that raids had a significantly higher positive impact on the 'brass' than on those in the line.

At least, that's the impression I get from reading various accounts of trench raiding. Dominating No Man's Land seems much more closely related to aggressive patrolling of No Man's Land itself rather than entering the enemy trenches.

Regards,

Ken

[Robert Dunlop]

Dominating No Man's Land seems much more closely related to aggressive patrolling of No Man's Land itself rather than entering the enemy trenches.

Ken

This is a good point. Later in the war, there was less distinction the boundary of no man's land and the enemy front line. Often the latter did not constitute continuous trenches but forward posts, perhaps shell holes linked together, etc. So there is a blurring between aggressive patrolling and 'trench' raids.

Robert

[Borden Battery]

Trench Raids

The popular Canadian writer, Pierre Berton, in his book VIMY [McLelland & Stewart-1986] devotes a full chapter [pp 112-135] to Canadian trench raiders. This book, perhaps, creates the myth, that Canada was the first to initiate such actions on 28 February 1915 in the Ypres Salient. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry [PPCLI] gets credit in the Berton book.

In a review of the PPCLI War Diaries from there is a reference to a small trench raid at 0400 on 28 February 1915 and destruction of an enemy sap position.

http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/e/e043/e001072383.jpg [W/Diary notation]

http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/e/e043/e001072398.jpg [W/D intelligence comment-part]

http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/e/e043/e001072400.jpg [W/D - mention of Papineau's action]

http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/e/e043/e001072401.jpg [W/D comments]

http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/e/e043/e001072405.jpg [Gen Plumer Congrats]

http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/e/e043/e001072403.jpg [ W/D Commander in Chief congrats]

Can Forum readers come forward with any earlier manuscript notation regarding a recorded trench raid? Let us also remember that not every action is recorded in a W/D.

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Desmond Morton, a respected Canadian military historian discounts Canada as likely the first to conduct a formal trench raid - however - he states the Canadians appear to have been credited in the minds of others - this appears to contradict Berton - if one discounts the direct W/D references.

"Raids were sudden hit-and-run attacks on enemy trenches, designed to seize prisoners and documents, destroy defences, and demolish the "live and let live" atmosphere that often developed on both sides. Despite a common myth, Canadians did not organize the first raids, but they garnered the credit-or the blame for what Guy Chapman termed "the costly and depressing fashion of raiding the other side. At Riviere Douve on the night of November 16-17, 1915, one of two raids launched by a couple of Currie's battalions scored a brilliant success. Through careful planning and rehearsal, artillery, snipers, bombers, even the handlers of a light bridge worked as a team and escaped with German prisoners, information, and a single fatality. Newly installed as British commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig expressed delight about the Canadian success. He decided that this was how he would impose his will on the Germans and his mark on his own troops. Others soon learned that they must emulate the Canadian feat: generals and colonels found that holding their jobs thereafter depended on doing so. Certainly raiding gave Canadians and other raw soldiers in Haig's army the chance to hit back and, in their commander's view, to establish moral ascendancy on the battlefield.

Canadian, Australian, and Scottish divisions seem to have taken to raiding with more relish than others. Clad in their oldest uniforms, stocking caps, and running shoes, their faces blackened, and armed with a wide assortment of weapons, the raiders brought some individuality and adventure to an otherwise "industrialized" war, but at a high price. Success in the dark, barbed wire-strewn morass of no man's land depended as much on luck as on skill and planning. The Germans were by no means helpless. They lit up the ground with superior pyrotechnics and used their plentiful stock of munitions to bathe it in shells if they suspected a raid was imminent. They also responded in kind. As might be expected, raids wore down front-line troops and exhausted any man's finite stock of courage. Between December 15,1915, and May 15, 1916, a period of no significant battles, the BEF lost 83,000 men, most of them in actions associated with raids. These heavy losses included the infantry's most enthusiastic officers and soldiers in operations that often seemed to lack any higher motive than a colonel's or a general's ambition. "That short and dry word 'raid'," Edmund Blunden recalled, "may be defined in the vocabulary of the war as the word which most instantly caused a sinking feeling in the stomach of ordinary mortals." Soldiers prepared for them with a deep foreboding, grimly conscious that the efforts put into a raid were usually futile. Increasingly, senior officers demanded more evidence-a prisoner, or at least a fragment of German uniform, or the characteristic German barbed wire-to prove that the troops had not simply huddled on the friendly side of no man's land until it was time to crawl back to the comparative safety of their own trenches.

Haig could boast that a raid at Hooge in 1917 captured two German officers and some of their wine and cheese, without adding that, of the 650 men who set out, only 194 returned intact. When the 4th Canadian Division failed to meet all its objectives on Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917, Lieutenant E.L.M. Burns, a future lieutenant-general, laid part of the blame on costly raiding, and a particularly disastrous attempted raid on March 1 that cost two good battalions their colonels and many of their best men. Survivors of such tragedies had trouble trusting generals or their orders."

"When Your Numbers Up, Desmond Morton, Random House of Canada (1993), pp125-126

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The third person accounts of the actions of regular soldiers, provided their comments could be recorded and not censored, generally have a better true account of an local event. They are not writing or re-writing history to promote or cover their actions - something that generals and politicians are not above. The following account is from a valuable personal journal of Pte. Fraser - a must-read book in my opinion.

Sunday, January 30, 1916

"The 28th and 29th Battalions made a bombing attack on the enemy last night. The former in front of the Gs and the latter in front of the Fs. The 28th is the battalion which relieves us. Eighteen of the 28th took part in the attack. They crept out over "No Man's Land" in the dark, minus all identifications, equipped with bombs, revolvers, knobkerries [small club], all the paraphernalia necessary for raiders who have desperation written over their features. Reaching the wire, they had to cut a passage, right under the nose of the German sentries, who were only a few yards away. The wire clippers were set to work but it was a slow process as the clippers could only be brought into action once in a few minutes and then quietness till another favourable opportunity presented itself. Flarelights were being thrown up and our men had to lie immovable during the illumination. After a couple of hours a passage was eventually made. The bayonet men hopped over into the trench and landed beside a sentry."

The Journal of Private Fraser, pp 88-89, CEF,Edited by Reginald Roy, CEF Books 1998

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Finally, were trench raids important and necessary. Again in the Pierre Burton book VIMY, on page 125 there is the following concluding piece on the purpose of a trench raid …

"To Arthur Currie, the main - indeed, the only - purpose of a trench raid was to get information that would help prepare for the battle to come. He thought nothing of cancelling one raid at the last moment when he discovered that he already had the information the raid would have brought in. "I'm not sacrificing one man unnecessarily," he told his disappointed officers on that occasion.

But if a raid didn't give him the needed information he could be ruthless with his senior commanders, as W.A. "Billy" Griesbach, the one-time "Boy Mayor of Edmonton," discovered after his brigade had failed on several occasions to capture a single German.

"I want a prisoner, not for curiosity's sake, not to see what he looks like," Currie told Griesbach acidly. "I want to get from him information that will be of some use in the preparation for the forthcoming operation, so naturally I want a prisoner before Zero Day." If the battalions weren't successful that very night then, Currie ordered, they would mount raids every three hours until they were successful. "I want results and I want them now! " He got them.

But Arthur Currie thought the big raids took too large a toll. He clearly believed that most of the purposes could be achieved by the smaller raiding parties that his own division mounted.

This brought him into open conflict with Byng, who was convinced that the large raids contributed to the morale of the troops. Currie's stubborn refusal to bend caused the first violent row between the two. Byng claimed that the I st Division "was losing its go" and told Currie off. Currie held his ground as he vainly tried to search for a match to light his pipe; he was clearly shaken by Byng's tongue-lashing. None- Byng, who believed in giving his divisional commander- their head, let him have his way with his division."