Geology and the war on the Western Front, 1914–1918

Peter Doyle

doi:10.1111/gto.12066

Abstract

The First World War started a hundred years ago this year. On 4 August 2014 the United Kingdom marked the anniversary of involvement in this war with a remembrance event at Mons, and over the next four years there will be new museums and exhibitions, services and events, conferences and colloquia world‐wide. The aim of this collective recognition of a major event in world history is to pick over the impact and effects, innovations and consequences of a war that claimed the lives of at least 16 million people and left the world with geopolitical issues that still reverberate today. One of its notable innovations was the use of geology in warfare. As is well known, compared with the open war fought against the Russians on the eastern front, the war in the west very quickly became positional, with opposing trench lines locked into a position that would dictate the war's approach. And with trench warfare, came the need to understand the geology of the land over which the men were fighting.

Highlights

The First World War was fought principally on two fronts in Europe – described as the Western and Eastern fronts respectively – from July 1914 to November 1918
In Europe, the ‘Triple Entente’ (France, Britain and Russia), faced the Central Powers, but other countries took their place in the developing battlefields, with Serbia and Belgium embroiled from the outset
The origins and early development of the war are too complex to enter into here, but with Germany committed to the war, the Schlieffen Plan of 1904 was enacted, a plan which dictated an assault on France through neutral Belgium, in order to knock its enemies of 1870–71 out of the war – before taking on the might of Russia

Summary

Introduction

The First World War was fought principally on two fronts in Europe – described as the Western and Eastern fronts respectively – from July 1914 to November 1918. Many of the wooded areas of the Somme battlefield lie in soils developed in clay with flints, with the chalk forming most of the valleys in the region, with the loess and loam capping the hills and forming the intermediate slopes.

Results

Conclusion