There are 1504 users online
You can register for a user account here.
Login
Military Photos
Main Menu
Online
Past Articles
Military Quotes
More than one general has redeemed faulty dispositions and won fame by a suitably glorious death. -- James Lawton Stokesbury |
Military actions designed to take control of enemy trenches were called attacks or offensives. Whereas an attack usually involved a division (16,000 men), an offensive was much larger and would use at least one corps. The main objective of an attack was to break the enemy line but an offensive was an attempt to hold any positions that were taken during the operation. This meant sustained fighting in forward positions and raised serious problems of supplying soldiers with ammunition, food and water.
Before attacks and offensives took place, heavy artillery was used to soften up the enemy trenches. At the offensive at the Somme in the summer of 1916 General Douglas Haig ordered an eight-day preliminary bombardment before sending 750,000 men (27 divisions) to attack the German trenches. The following year, Haig decided on a ten day bombardment during the offensive at Ypres (the Battle of Passchendaele). This barrage involved 3,000 guns firing 4,283,550 shells at the German defences. |
Military History
Forum Posts
This Day in History
1865:
Confederate General Joseph Johnston officially surrenders his army to General William T. Sherman at Durham Station, North Carolina.
1865: John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. 1865: Joseph E. Johnston surrenders the Army of Tennessee to Sherman. 1937: The ancient Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain is bombed by German planes. 1952: Armistice negotiations are resumed. 1971: The U.S. command in Saigon announces that the U.S. force level in Vietnam is 281,400 men, the lowest since July 1966. 1972: President Nixon, despite the ongoing communist offensive, announces that another 20,000 U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam in May and June, reducing authorized troop strength to 49,000. |