TRAINING FOR THE TRENCHES
A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK

BASED UPON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
DURING THE FIRST TWO YEARS
OF THE WAR IN FRANCE

BY
CAPTAIN LESLIE VICKERS
LATE LIEUT. SEAFORTH HIGHLANDERS
LECTURER IN TRENCH WARFARE,
DEPARTMENT OF MILITARY SERVICE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

INTRODUCTION

Since the Great European War broke out, printing presses have been busy producing text books, handbooks and guides for soldiers. Military authorities and civilians alike have come to realise that this war has changed many of our old conceptions of strategy and that it has introduced conditions that are entirely unprecedented. New methods have had to be devised—sometimes on the field itself in the midst of the greatest difficulties—for meeting new and novel methods of warfare. Every deadly engine of destruction has called forth some new invention to cope with it. Soldiers have had to live and fight under conditions that to the lay mind, or to the mind of the military men of a few years ago, would seem to be impossible. It is reasonable to assume that the inventive genius of the world will be turned more and more in the direction of the problem of how to construct still more terrible machines of destruction. The next war, if there be one, is not likely to be any less fearful than the present, so that the soldier who is called upon to engage in it will require to know the lessons that have been learned in this war. The author hopes that from a fairly long training in England in preparation for work in France, and from some months in the trenches on the Western British front, he may be able to offer suggestions that will be of value to men who are training themselves with a view to becoming efficient soldiers. He sends this little book forth, not as a treatise on war, nor yet as a scientific handbook. He merely desires it to serve to bring home lessons that are sometimes too dearly bought. "Experientia docet" is the proverb that we used to write in our copy books, and he will feel that he is repaid if, from his experience, others are enabled to learn. While he trusts that there will be many veteran soldiers and instructors who will be glad to have this information in convenient form, he intends this little book primarily for the use of those who are civilians in the process of becoming soldiers.

L. V.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS