Professional Custom Accounting: Artillery vastly more lethal than in the 1870s,
· Trench warfare is a type of land warfare with occupied fighting lines consisting largely of trenches in which troops are significantly protected from the enemy’s small arms fire and sheltered from artillery. The most famous use of trench warfare is the Western Front in World War I.
· Trench warfare occurs when a revolution in firepower is not matched by similar advances in mobility, as in the first two decades of the 20th century when advances allowed the creation of strong defensive systems that out-of-date military tactics could not break through for most of the war.
· Barbed wire was a significant hindrance to massed infantry advances. Artillery vastly more lethal than in the 1870s, coupled with machine guns, made crossing open ground extremely difficult.
· Commanders on both sides failed to develop tactics for breaching entrenched positions without heavy casualties, resulting in such major battles as the Battle of the Somme, which cost the British Army some 420,000 casualties, the French an estimated 200,000 casualties, and the Germans an estimated 500,000.
· In time, however, technology began to produce new off
