Trenches – new ways to fight war: World War I

Translation from the French

NARRATOR: (NOISE AND MUSIC) Fifty years ago, in that time of year when nature smiles on all she touches, and life is indulgent for a while, the war was entering a new phase. After the lessons learned at the battle of the Marne, the war by necessity becomes all-consuming, engaging all the human and natural resources that France could muster.

The front crystallises both in space and in time, stretching from the North Sea coast to the Swiss frontier: a war of attrition is beginning that will last three long years. The combatants bury themselves; the battlefield becomes an immense cemetery for the living, where each man protects himself as best he can, behind networks of barbed wire, in trenches, in bomb shelters.

The art of war is crumbling; the rules of engagement are changing. In this war of endless siege, where every moment one is either attacking or else under attack oneself, the enemies are separated only by a narrow strip of ground. Each man must pit his wits against the next, summoning up all his imagination, just to get by.

While the catapult is resurrected, the tank has been invented and makes its first appearance on the battlefield. Every attempt from the main French camp to breach the German front and regain the war of movement is doomed to failure.

With bayonets pitched against machine guns, the lambs are led to the slaughter. At Les Eparges or Artois, or on the banks of the Meuse, hundreds of thousands will be killed for not so much as an inch of territorial gain.

On 22 April 1915, in the region of Ypres, the gentle spring breeze was poisoned by the Germans for the first time with asphyxiating gas. In cleaning out the trenches, they developed a swift and deadly practice destined for a later, more sinister future.

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