Eye Deep in Hell - Piradian Null Device Co.

(Something I wrote for Western Civ. II, after reading Remarque and Ellis on World War I.)

In Eye Deep In Hell, author John Ellis gives another account of trench warfare in World War I. While his account is similar to Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, it offers some additional and valuable viewpoints. For instance, Remarque wrote from the foot soldier’s point of view, but Ellis additionally includes accounts from commanders and generals.

Ellis describes the universality of the soldier, how he is not convinced that his enemy is all that different from him. In the chapter on patrols and raids, he writes about a system that was adopted by both sides so patrols could stay alive during routine missions outside the trenches. The “live and let live” system involved enemy soldiers propping up a rifle and placing a helmet on top of it. When both sides were on patrol, they would look for this sign, so they knew that they were not alone and that there was an understood gentleman’s agreement to not exchange fire. Reconnaissance patrols used this, and so did the wiring patrols. But when one wiring patrol had finished and returned, the firing began again in earnest, so it became something of a race between wiring patrols to see who could finish and return to their trenches first.

Ellis believes the high casualty counts from the trenches can be squarely blamed on the generals. Higher allied ranks (at least for Great Britain and France) were still the privilege of the aristocracy. The generals viewed the war in outmoded terms, often not appreciating the changes in technology and adapting their strategies accordingly. Ellis describes the old ideas, where two enemies face each other until one charges the other. The defender puts up a brief defense before retreating. He describes how the machine gun changed the “charge, defend, retreat” paradigm. With a machine gun and its untiring accuracy, there was never a need to retreat. A three-man machine gunner crew could mow down even the biggest charge. Ellis asserts that generals should have responded to this innovation and stopped ordering charges, but their aristocratic education had never covered warfare of this sort. If they had considered the American Civil War, they might have looked at the success of the Gatling gun. Still, there was tremendous pressure to “do something,” and lacking other options, the charges continued. In short, defensive weapons had become much better, and offensive tactics had not.

Generals were disconnected from the realities of the front-line, and though they knew God was on their side (irrespective of their side), the front-line soldier knew that God had no presence in the trenches. Ellis underscores the disconnect, quoting General Rawlinson at zero-hour with his foot-thick volume of research:

What the actual result will be, none can say, but I feel pretty confident of success myself....That the Boche will break and that a debacle will supervene I do not believe, but should this be the case I am ready to take full advantage of it... The issues are in the hands of Bon Dieu.

In other words, “God only knows what’s going to happen.” Ellis provides several other generals’ journals and private writings to similar effect.

Casualties were plentiful and grim. Advancing troops were not allowed to help their fallen; they would have to wait for the stretcher-bearers. These were four-man teams who would search the battlefield looking for wounded. If a soldier fell, it was likely that no one saw him. After the smoke cleared and the stretcher-bearers arrived, there was a good chance that fallen soldier would go unnoticed again. For those who sought refuge in a shell hole, eventually (possibly after several days) they would be too weak to prop themselves up from the mud, and they would drown. For a soldier who was picked up, it took four men to haul him into the aid post, where only the worst cases would get surgery. The goal of the aid post was to get a man conditioned to travel to the advanced dressing station as quickly as possible. This station wasn’t altogether different from the aid post. Only the most necessary surgeries were performed, and its general purpose was to prepare the wounded man for his travel to a casualty clearing station. This is where he might finally get surgery or an amputation. The physicians and nuns in these stations could attest that it was possible for a soldier to have any part of his body blown off or mutilated and still live to understand what the war had made of him.