LAND AND WATER 
November 7, 1914 
THE ENEMY'S TRENCHES. 
By COL. F. N. MAUDE, C.B., late R.E. 
FROM the course the war is taking, it seema most 
probable that our attention during the next few 
months will be directed to getting the Germans 
out of their trenches rather than to digging ourselves 
in. Now, the best way of getting them out — to 
use an Irishism — is never to give them a chance of making any 
trenches to get into. 
This seems a counsel of perfection, but it is an idea that has 
lain at the base of all ofiensive strategy ever since the days of 
Napoleon. His immediate predecessors knew all about field 
entrenchments and used them on what, in proportion to thrir 
Dumbers, was an even greater scale than their descendants in the 
present war. Even in Marlborough's time the French and 
Austrians faced one another in fortified lines stretching right 
across from the marshes in Flanders to the Rhine at a point a 
little east of the town of Weissenburg, and the lines in those days 
were far more difficult to assault than now, because they were 
of much bigger sections, more deliberately traced, and there was 
then no artillery in existence capable of blowing their parapets 
and breastworks to pieces. 
But Napoleon sacrificed everything to speed of manoeuvre — 
marchiBg his men so much farther and faster than his enemy, that 
the latter found his lines taken up on one day, completely out- 
flanked by the nest morning, and in sheer desperation dropped 
the game of entrenching altogether, and tried to meet his enemy 
by counter-manoeuvring. Incidentally, I may add, both sides 
practically dropped spying altogether as a game hardly worth 
the candle. 
It seems to me that if the Germans had followed Napoleon's 
ideal and spent all the money they had on increasing the mobility 
of their troops by all modem appliances, instead of squandering 
their resources on " black marias," spies, concrete foundations, 
and so forth, they would have come much nearer to success than 
they have been throughout this campaign, and presently when 
we have begun to shift them out of their trenches, the skill of our 
men in repairing roads, devising means even to do without them, 
may prove of the utmost value in bringing the campaign to a 
more speedy conclusion. 
I would suggest to intending inventors that they might 
well concentrate on some sort of steel barge or scow which 
could reduce its own weight by blowing cut compressed 
air on exactly the same principle as an ordinary rocket. 
f^ T^fotbr and. 
( Air Compressors 
^" - ^ 1 I 
^ I 1 m I ■■■■»■ I ■ mL 1 i-^a^ai*— ■ 
1 T 
y^cu 
S) cable Bottom. 
Compressed aic chcunbers 
Something of this description, the whole resting on rollers, the 
axles of which could be raised and lowered by an ordinary 
eccentric axle, such as is still in use on the old garrison gun 
carriage for running the gun back by hand. Our &h. torpedoes 
carry compressed air at 1,000 lb. to the square inch, and it is 
astonishing what a lifting power air at this pressure will develop. 
Meanwhile, we have got to shift the enemy out of his 
trenches first ; and for the moment, thanks to the extraordinary 
manner in which we have learnt to utilise the ground, as described 
in my last article but one, we seem to have got back into the old 
difiSculty which beset our ancesters in the old days when " they 
swore terribly in Flanders." They, aa I have said above, had 
no artillery power adequate to shift their enemy's breastworks. 
We have learnt to get so close up to our enemy that neither ha 
nor we can utilise our artillery power either to cover or to attack 
each other's works, for you cannot drop high explosive shells 
when the trenches are only a coui)le of hundred of yards apart 
without endangering both defenders and assailants alike. It is 
now a frontal duel between rifles and machine guns on either 
side, and neither is adapted for dropping bullets into trenches at 
Buch short ranges. 
For the moment we have no accepted means of achieving 
this end, and must make out by shifts and expedients improvised 
on the spot. 
It is in these circumstances that intelligent men of any rank 
can make their mark. People are only too eager to jump at a 
cunning device in such predicaments. 
It seems to me that it would be well within the scope of any 
man with a workshop training to recreate the old-fashioned 
catapult for throv^dng packets or bombs of high explosives out of 
improvised material to be found at almost any railway station, 
garage, or even a wheelwright's. 
Here is the idea : 
^Projectile 
Radiet wheel 
WocdeiL bed plat^ 
A stout carriage spring with a cup attachment, fixed at A, 
is bent down by a wheel and ratchet, and held by a trigger of the 
simplest design. Such a contraption would easily throw a 
twenty pound weight three or four hundred yards, or for any 
distance that might be needed, using more or less compression, and 
a shower of such bombs, before a rush with the bayonet, would 
maJce all the diiJerence in its chances of success. 
Or an adaptation of the old "sap roller" might be 
improvised out of one of the big bobbins or reels used for electric 
piping, so often seen about the street, and certain to be found 
in any of the manufacturing towns about the frontier. 
Bulletproof dialn, 
or wire from tke 
neax'cst coaZ-mine; 
crevea telegraph 
'Explosive 
You place the explosives inside with an electric fuse and 
field cable. Wind enough wire or chain around it to make it 
bullet proof, then taking the wire from the fuse, wind it outside, 
but between the chains, so as to minimise the risk of getting it 
cut by a bullet, and let the whole thing roll down hiO upon the 
enemy, paying out the electric cable as it goes, and firing it with 
the service dynamo exploder just as it lobs into the enemy's 
trenches. One hundred pound charge fired in this way would 
create a most disconcerting explosion. 
If the ground is level or slopes gently upward, another ropa 
wound round it from above, down, and round thus, would maka 
it run up hill when pulled upon, as in the well-known experiment 
of making a bobbin of cotton run away from you by pulling the 
thread towards you. 
THB DIRECTION OP MOTION Or TEH BOBBIN. 
I merely throw out these suggestions to induce the young 
men joining the New Armies to think, for these things must bo 
done on the spot. There is no time for Headquarters to go into 
them, and settle on sealed patterns. The whole essence of this 
kind of warfare is to " get there " without asking questions or 
waiting for formal authority. If a man makes a blunder, of 
course he must take the consequences, as in any other walk of 
life, but " initiative " is nowadays treasured as a most precious 
possession, and in siege work it has always found its best chance. 
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