Before an infantry advance during the First World War, it was a common strategy to bombard enemy defences with all available heavy artillery. The idea was that this preliminary bombardment would either kill the defending soldiers or would at least force them to retreat. Although used throughout the First World War on the Western Front, this strategy was largely unsuccessful. Even after a three-week bombardment at the Somme in the summer of 1916, the defenders were able to return to their positions by the time the infantry advance took place.

Heavy bombardment was unable to destroy a sophisticated trench-system that included deep dug-outs and concrete machine-gun posts. Preliminary bombardment also had the disadvantage of informing defenders that an infantry attack was imminent. This gave military commanders time to call up reinforcements to that part of the front-line. In 1916 both sides employed creeping barrage as a means of capturing enemy trenches. Although this was sometimes successful when the commander had limited objectives, it failed to provide the means to end the stalemate on the Western Front.