![]() Machine-gunners and riflemen protected the front lines.Barbed wire slowed or stopped infantry advances. ![]() Deep trenches and dug-outs protected against artillery.The riddle of the trenches was to find a way to overcome the power of the defender. The British turned to armoured vehicles as one way to cross No Man’s Land and break through the enemy trench system. This entry is part 3 of a 10-part series on World War I.Barbed wire and machine-guns stopped many Allied attacks with heavy casualties in 1915 and early 1916. I've gathered photographs of the Great War from dozens of collections, some digitized for the first time, to try to tell the story of the conflict, those caught up in it, and how much it affected the world. New scientific work resulted in more lethal explosives, new tactics made old offensive methods obsolete, and mass-produced killing machines made soldiers both more powerful and more vulnerable. Massive listening devices gave them ears in the sky, armored vehicles made them impervious to small arms fire, tanks could (most of the time) cruise right over barbed wire and trenches, telephones and heliographs let them speak across vast distances, and airplanes gave them new platforms to rain death on each other from above. Each side did its best to build on existing technology, or invent new methods, hoping to gain any advantage over the enemy. Any romantic notion of warfare was bluntly shoved aside by the advent of chlorine gas, massive explosive shells that could have been fired from more than 20 miles away, and machine guns that spat out bullets like firehoses. By the end of the war, rapid-fire guns, aerial bombardment, armored vehicle attacks, and chemical weapon deployments were commonplace. When Europe's armies first marched to war in 1914, some were still carrying lances on horseback. ![]()
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