Trench warfare
Old weapons were revived or re-invented to wage trench warfare effectively. Mortars, which offered frontline troops a portable means of lobbing high explosive bombs into enemy trenches, began to proliferate. Hand grenades offered similar firepower on a smaller scale to individual soldiers. To the horror of many commanders, the grenade threatened to supplant the rifle as the infantryman’s chief weapon. Finally, the most primitive weapons of all, clubs and knives, were used in the grisly business of hand to hand combat during trench raids, or when ‘cleaning’ – to use the French Army’s euphemism – a captured position of enemy survivors.
But the armies also sought to break out of the trench deadlock. Innovations such as poison gas – initially released