Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914-1918, Second Edition

by Bill Rawling

The horrors of the First World War were the product of a new and unprecedented type of industrial warfare. To survive and win demanded not just new technology but the techniques to use it effectively. In Surviving Trench Warfare , Bill Rawling takes a close look at how technology and tactics came together in the Canadian Corps. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from interviews to staff reports, Rawling describes the range of new weapons that the Canadians adopted, including tanks, trench mortars, and poison gas, making it clear that the decisive factor in the war was not the new technology itself but how the Canadians responded to it. Only through intensive training, specialization, and close coordination between infantry and artillery could the Canadians overcome the deadly trinity of machine-guns, barbed wire, and artillery. Surviving Trench Warfare offers a whole new understanding of the First World War, replacing the image of a static trench war with one in which soldiers actively struggled for control over their weapons and their environment, and achieved it. Released to coincide with the centenary of the First World War, this edition includes a new introduction and afterword reflecting the latest scholarship on the conduct of the war.

Genres: War, Canada, Nonfiction, History

336 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1992

Reviews

[Michael Dorosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book on not just the technologies employed by the Canadian Expeditionary Force but also the tactics the men employed in the field. Well written and scholarly, best read in conjunction with books such as Desmond Morton's WHEN YOUR NUMBER'S UP for a complete picture of life in the trenches.

[Kim Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book explaining more in depth a out the Canadians movement in WW1. The reason for the 4, is I was a little blinded by numbers. A hell of a lot of information is given in short paragraphs, and often I found things being repeated. But still, very interesting.

[Alexandre Carette]

lu en français.

[Martin Samuels · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Canadian Corps has the reputation for being one of the most effective units within the BEF of 1914-1918. In part, this reputation is associated with the Canadians' greater reliance on technology, in that most industrial of wars, as a means to reduce casualties and increase impact on the German enemy. Rawlings has, for the first time, explored this issue in some detail.

Drawing on a wide range of original source material, both first hand accounts and also (especially) the after action reports regularly written by the various formations in the field, Rawlings provides a chronological account, showing how the Canadians sought to understand what was going on in the battles they participated in, and how to improve their performance. The result is a unique account, which avoids the usual narrative in order to delve deeper into causes and consequences. Through these means, Rawlings shows how the Canadians, especially under Sir Arthur Currie, became masters of the set-piece attack, using thorough preparation of infantry units, complex artillery arrangements to cover a range of carefully specified tasks, and an interdependent system of infantry support weapons (mortars, grenades, rifle grenades and machine-guns), operated by tightly-centralised command for the guns and tactical flexibility for platoons and companies.

Despite these very real strengths, Rawlings in several ways falls between two stools. His focus on technology rather than the details of tactics means that the description of how the technology was used in practice is sometimes a little thin, yet the description of the technology (other than of the unsuccessful Ross rifle) is also less deep than might have been hoped. Similarly, while reference is made to the experience of the British and German Armies, again the comparison is not taken very far, thereby losing the opportunity to explore the relative success of different approaches.

These weaknesses, however, are not such as to diminish from the very real contribution made by Rawlings in developing this new perspective on the reality of trench warfare and, thereby, demonstrating further that the picture of mindless generals sending masses of infantrymen to walk to their doom against ranks of machine-guns is a wild distortion of most of the First World War.