War Diary Terminology re Artillery

[David Lea]

I am researching my Gt Uncle's WW1 army service with the RFA, leading upto his death on 4th Oct 1917 with 'C' Battery 74th Brigade RFA, whilst 'operating his gun'.

Thanks to the kindness of a Forum member, I've obtained copies of the Brigade War Diaries for the period leading upto and including his death, which certainly give me a flavour of the type of activity he must have been involved in.

Whilst I can have an 'educated guess' about the meaning of some of the terminology used, I would like an 'expert opinion' as to what these phrases actually mean in practice:-

1. Harassing fire

2. Practice barrage

3. Desultory shelling

4. Box barrage

5. SOS went up & was taken up by all batteries

6. Creeping barrage

7. Artillery demonstrations

Many thanks in anticipation

David

[squirrel]

Here's my two penn'th FWIW. I'm sure other can expand further:

1. Harassing fire – A fire mission to hamper movement to the front, hinder the conduct of operations and reduce enemy morale.

2. Practice barrage – A live firing exercise.

3. Desultory shelling – occasional light shelling

4. Box barrage – A barrage effectively “boxing in” a section trench.

5. SOS went up & was taken up by all batteries – batteries in support of the front line had SOS targets on fixed lines and fired when the SOS was requested.

6. Creeping barrage – barrage that moved slowly forward.

7. Artillery demonstrations – depends on the context in which used but suggest that this means artillery firing on a fixed target as requested.

Mostly taken from Royal Artillery Glossary of Terms & Abbreviations by Philip Jobson.

[David Lea]

Many thanks squirrel, just what I was after!

Kind Regards

David

[pjjobson]

Just to expand on Squirrel's explanations:

Harassing fire – A Fire Mission designed to hamper enemy movement to the front, hinder his conduct of operations, force him to deploy early, thus losing time and to reducing his morale. Harassing fire missions are usually predicted, whilst avoiding stereotyped methods which permit the enemy to predict when and where the next burst will fall.

Box barrage – A type of barrage initially developed by the Germans during WW1, and later adopted by the Royal Artillery. A Box Barrage consisted of a heavy artillery or trench mortar concentration on a designated piece of the German trench system, it was intended to considerably softening up the front line defences in anticipation of an infantry raid. Following the initial bombardment, fire was shifted to subsidiary lines together with, and more importantly onto the linear flanks of the area to be raided with the intention of preventing reinforcement of the softened up front line. As a result an open box was created surrounding the raids objective on three sides, thereby allowing the raiders to enter the opposing defences and carry out their work, whilst being shielded by both offensive and defensive artillery concentrations. Once the objectives of the raid had been accomplished a pre-agreed signal to retire would be given, and the artillery barrage would be shortened to close the box and aid the raiders in retiring across No Mans Land.

Creeping barrage – The creeping barrage was a later development of the lifting barrage. In a creeping barrage the lines of fire moved across the landscape, irrespective of identified enemy locations, at a rate calculated to stay just ahead of the advancing friendly troops. More ammunition was required, than for the lifting barrage, but the creeping barrage was technically simpler to fire and covered all enemy positions, even those not located in trench lines.

Phil

[David Lea]

Cheers Phil for your very detailed and helpful response, much appreciated.

Could I also ask what might sound like a daft question... when 'an SOS went up' or an 'SOS was requested' would this usually be by way of a flare of some kind, coming from the front or advancing line?

David

[Old Tom]

Another small item re SOS. SOS fire was usually, perhaps always, requested by firing a prearranged series of very lights. Hence the SOS went up. I gather that if not engaged guns were loaded and laid on the SOS traget and, for at example at night, if an RA sentry observed the lights he would fire one or more guns thus alterting the detachments.

Old Tom

[SilverFox100]

Some of the war diaries I have read include copies of the orders issued for various of the actions the particular unit were involved in and they would list things like "creeping barrage at 50 yard intervals - then give a time , generally expressed zero +1min for example. Does make interesting reading. This is also where some of the casualties came from, as the troops were not pushing forward on the times allocated, due to whatever circumstance, and word could not be got back to the artillery to cease firing fast enough.

[AndyMacdonald]

Pop quiz! In Oct. 1917, the artillery also used Chinese barrages, I joke not. Although not consistently used by every corps' artillery, they were deployed here and there by both Second and Fifth Armies at that time. Any takers for that starter for 10?

A

[squirrel]

From John Milner in response to the same question January 2004:

A barrage would commence in preparation for an infantry attack, then it would cease and the infantry would prepare to attack, as normal, but the infantry attack was a feint to get the Germans to man their parapet, once manned the attacking infantry would take cover in their own trenches, and the artillery would open up again on the, now manned, enemy trenches.

John Milner

[nigelfe]

It's useful to remember that with opportunity targets, SOS, concentration, etc, the guns in a battery normally fired with their barrels parallel and all with the same range set on their sights. This was not the case for a barrage. Each battery had its own 'lane' in each line of the barrage, this meant that the guns were aimed at regularly spaced aimpoints in the battery lane and barrels were not parallel, and unless the lane was parallel to the layout of the battery guns each gun had a different range. In a moving barrage there could be up to a couple of dozen lines. Hence barrages took a certain amount of time to prepare, in WW1 they were typically issued overprinted on maps.

This page http://nigelef.tripod.com/fireplan.htm gives detail about UK barrages in WW2. I don't think rolling barrages were used in WW1, block barrages may have been used for standing barrages but I don't think they were used for moving ones.

[David Lea]

Thanks everyone for all your replies which all all relevant and helpful to my research!

Kind Regards

David

[John(txic)]

SOS missions were sometimes called for by rockets fired by the infantry in the trenches: ISTR seeing a photo where about half a dozen "Nov 5th type" - but bigger - rockets were at the side of a trench. Must have been a devil keeping the blue touch-paper dry; maybe the Verey light was more reliable?

[AndyMacdonald]

From John Milner in response to the same question January 2004:

A barrage would commence in preparation for an infantry attack, then it would cease and the infantry would prepare to attack, as normal, but the infantry attack was a feint to get the Germans to man their parapet, once manned the attacking infantry would take cover in their own trenches, and the artillery would open up again on the, now manned, enemy trenches.

John Milner

[Mk VII]

[Mk VII]

The creeping barrage required some technical ability to get it right, one which most of the artillery did not acquire until about 1917. The previous compromise had been a series of pre-timed lifts to the next target which all too often the troops were unable to keep up with.

It was better to keep up close to the creeping barrage and accept some casualties from drop-shorts than fall behind and give the enemy time to react.

[John(txic)]

Where did I put those matches?

[nigelfe]

As this page shows http://nigelef.tripod.com/fc_1914-18.htm the technical development of artillery in WW1 was complex and rapid. CB was another aspect of rapid learning. It's useful to note that moving fire ahead of attacking troops was used at least once in the Boer War (by Colonel Parsons IIRC), but doesn't get a mention in the pre-1914 editions of Field Artillery Training. Of course learning to 'lean' on the barrage was an infantry training problem that also took time to fix.

In 1915 the vagaries (or extensive lack of) arty ammo quality coming out of the new factories did led to some somewhat random performance. By 1916 these had mostly been fixed and ammo performance was back to the laws of probability only, often exacerbated by excessive barrel wear.