The First World War

by John Keegan

In the first, he ordered that the active sectors were to consist of strongpoints sited to cover the ground to the front and to the flanks with fire. The passive zones in between were to be garrisoned only with lookouts, and to be heavily wired but held by fire from the active zones. Across the whole front, active and passive, two belts of wire were to be constructed, twenty yards or so apart and about ten yards deep, with gaps for patrols to pass through. Behind the line of strongpoints there were to be secondary positions with shell-proof shelter for counter-attack companies.11 A survey of the fronts of the eight French armies revealed that most of the work Joffre required had already been done. In his second January letter he therefore stipulated that the front be strengthened by the digging of a second line some two miles to the rear, resembling the first, as a precaution against local break-ins. Such work had already been completed in the Verdun and Rheims sectors. Joffre added the general instruction that fronts were to be held as thinly as possible, to economise manpower and avoid casualties, and that local commanders should avoid pushing outposts too close to the enemy’s positions, a practice he thought wasteful of lives.