Читать книгу Trench Warfare: A Manual for Officers and Men онлайн

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It is my object in this book to give a faint idea and knowledge of the trenches, and to approximately explain the way warfare is carried on, and I offer the information contained herein as a basic foundation on which to use the further knowledge you will gain as an officer, and which, for obvious reasons, I will not and cannot give here.

The notes are all taken from different courses of instruction, and observations made during thirty-one months of service, fifteen of which was spent on the Belgian and French fronts, both as private and officer in the infantry service.

I do not lay down my information as expert and final by any means, but as trench warfare changes from day to day, improvements are made, old ideas discarded, new ones tried, it can be seen that nothing can be laid down as a cut and dried rule, but the principles of trench building, generally speaking, remain the same. This I have endeavored to give, along with a few other notes which will give an idea of the many and varied tasks that a second lieutenant must know before he is fit to take hold of men in a place such as the Western Front, where there is very seldom a chance to rectify mistakes, or to experiment more than once.