Human wave attack
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- This article is about the military tactic. For the crowd act associated with sporting events, see audience wave.
Human wave attack is a military term describing a type of assault performed by infantry units, in which soldiers attack in successive line formations, often in dense groups, generally without the support of other arms or with any sophistication in the tactics used. The tactic is usually found in conscript armies, whose poor training leaves them little tactical flexibility. The term has come to be used as a pejorative.
Its modern incarnation is as a tactic that developed out of trench warfare, where artillery or aerial attack often proved ineffective at dislodging the enemy from a firmly held defensive position. In a human wave attack there is no attempt to minimize casualties; on the contrary, part of the tactic involves presenting the defender with the shock value of overwhelming numbers of attackers. This dense concentration of troops in the open tends to lead to very high casualties.
These attacks can also develop in situations where the defensive position is very strong and the attacker's combined-arms team has been broken up, leaving no alternative.
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[edit] Background
What we today call “human wave” tactics were in fact the main tactic used by infantry on the attack prior to the development of modern skirmisher tactics during the Napoléonic Wars. When infantry firepower was very short-range, massed unsupported attacks worked, and were not considered especially costly compared to other tactics. Infantry maneuvered in very tightly-packed ranks and individual soldiers were not expected to maneuver on their own.
An illustrative example from antiquity is the charge of the Athenian hoplites at the Battle of Marathon. With no missile troops of their own the hoplites charging of the Persian lines in massed ranks was the best tactic to neutralize the Persians’ superiority in archers and maximize their own superiority in hand-to-hand combat.
Even with the arrival of firearms this same logic could be found in, for example, the French Napoléonic armies. Massed infantry columns supported by artillery and screened by voltigeurlight infantry(skirmishers) were seen as a way to produce militarily useful formations out of recruits with a minimum of time and training. The theory was that given the range and rate of fire of the muskets of the day, if an infantry column started its charge just outside the effective range of its opponents, the massed infantry column would be able to smash into its opponents before there had been enough volleys of incoming fire to destroy it.
The ensuing bayonet mêlée would then go the way of the attacking column who would have a numerical and morale advantage (the alternative for infantry at this time was to advance to musket range and for the two sides to trade musket volleys until one side broke). Against other conscript armies this theory worked well enough, but was disastrous against British regulars who had had time to hone their musketry. Despite this, the French military were wedded to the ideal of infantry elan, and that the shock effect of attacking infantry supported by artillery could break an enemy well into the First World War.
[edit] Napoléon’s legacy
Despite its shortcomings, the French tactical systems had worked as evidenced by Napoléon’s great victories. In the years that followed his defeat at Waterloo, theorists and tacticians devoted themselves to discovering the secrets to those great victories so as to be able to emulate them. These included the American Dennis Hart Mahan, father of the more famous naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, for many years a senior lecturer at West Point, Napoléon’s general, Antoine-Henri Jomini, and the great Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz. These men would have a great influence on the military leadership, tactical doctrines, and military fortunes of their nations, each drawing different conclusions from the same inspiration.
For a large part, the nature of the American Civil War, tactically, strategically, and organizationally, was colored by the elder Mahan’s influence on the generals of both sides.
When the tactical failures of the Napoléonic system were acknowledged, such failures were put down its misapplication by lesser commanders, and at Waterloo to the failure of subsidiary commanders. To the theorists such failures could be overcome by a little more determination, a little more dash and aggression, by closing with the enemy a little faster. The French developing the doctrine of “l’attaque a outrance” to attack and counterattack at all costs, at the earliest of opportunities, the seed of the massed infantry attacks of World War I.
One interpretation of why the French infantry column worked for Napoléon and failed for others is to remember that Napoléon was an artilleryman. That the value of the infantry column was as much in the threat of its attack as its actual attack, the infantry could be used to fix the line of the enemy infantry, who had to deploy to receive a possible charge. The enemy infantry could then be rolled up from the flank by the cavalry if it deployed linearly, or be bombarded by artillery if it deployed as a square. The infantry attack if made, being an attack against an enemy already weakened or disorganised by the other arms. The failure of others in emulating Napoléon’s success was in seeing the most spectacular part of his combined arms approach—the infantry attack—as its most important element and neglecting the other arms. Or, if they did realize the importance of a combined arms approach, of mistiming the interplay between the different elements of the army.
[edit] Crimean War
The Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, considered an early rehersal for the First World War, saw the opposing armies face each other; hunkered down in trenches and hasty fortifications, artillery duelling to silence each other, fighting to smash the defences of the other, and to pound the opposition into oblivion. The siege saw furious assaults to possess ground answered by equally furious counter-attacks.
At the Battle of Malakoff, an entire French corps assaulted a strong fortified position in three columns, to a timetable governed by synchronised watches. The fortress fell after heavy hand to hand fighting, costing the attackers 10,000 casualties and the defenders 13,000. The loss of the Malakoff, and with it Sevastopol, won the war for the French allies, thus ensuring the place of such tactics in the playbooks of future generals.
[edit] American Civil War
As firepower developed in range and lethality, infantry tactics had to change. Despite a recognition of this, in the American Civil War—a war again fought with hastily assembled armies—attacking infantry often employed human wave attacks, resulting in very high casualties at battles such as Fredericksburg and Gettysburg.
[edit] Franco-Prussian War
There was very little difference between the French and Germans with regards to technology and infantry tactics; the French had better small arms, the German better artillery, and each developed tactics to press their advantage. However, where the Prussians triumphed was in advocating a scientific and an organisational approach to the analysis and execution of war.
In its wars up to the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussians, under their legendary General Staff, had gravitated from a Jominian system of maneuver to Clausewitz’s concept of the “mass of decision” and the idea that nations and armies have a “center of gravity.”
Previously, it had been a commonly held assumption that there was an optimum size for an army (approximately 100-120,000 men). Given the technologies of the day, any larger an army would be impossible to supply, move, or control. What was desired was to be able to create concentrations of force when and where it mattered. This involved moving a number of smaller forces separately, to allow rapid movement without hindering each others’ progress, before concentrating rapidly in overwhelming numbers at a decisive location. Each of these smaller forces being under the command of men trained to operate and think in the same way, so that the briefest of orders from their over all commander would have the same desired results. In this way, the Prussians could achieve a sudden local numerical superiority and dictate where, how and when it fought. Such a “mass” could be on the strategic level strategic, aimed against a nation’s centre of gravity, or tactical aimed at an enemy army’s center of gravity. At whatever level, the very presence and strength of a Prussian army meant it could not be ignored by an enemy, who in being forced to react could be made to fritter away its manpower and thus invite defeat in detail. Conversely, a Prussian army in the field would be strong enough and well enough supplied to decline to fight if it so wished.
Once in the field probing forces would be used to find the Schwerpunkt, the critical center of an enemy, against which the main Prussian strength would be launched, this was neither where the enemy was strongest nor where it was weakest. The Schwerpunkt, had a philosophical aspect, embracing the abstract notion of an enemy’s center in terms of time, of motivation and morale, of ability and of action. For example, the Prussians made use of the French emotional and symbolic attachment for Paris and the route to Paris, seeing beyond its mere geographical and industrial value. The basic Prussian plan therefore, the father and grandfather of those used in the First and Second World Wars, was to march its armies against Paris and to engage and destroy the French armies as they were sent out to stop the occupation of their capital. In doing so the French played into the Prussian hands.
One of the tenets of Clauswitz’s system was the destruction of an enemy’s ability to wage war; this could be done through destroying the populace’s will to fight, disabling its political leadership, disrupting its logistical and industrial capacity or most directly of all, by destroying its armies in the field. The Siege of Metz of a French army served as a military Schwerpunkt leading as it did to the Battle of Sedan and the end of effective French military resistance. Whilst the successful conclusion of the Siege of Paris served as a political Schwerpunkt ending the Government of National Defense’s will to fight, and with it the war.
In the Franco-Prussian War the Prussians, using meticulous planning and its railways, and with a psychological leash on the French were able to achieve and maintain tactical flexibility, and local superiority of numbers. This allowed them with weight of numbers and artillery to encircle and destroy the French armies, despite the fact that the French rifles had twice the range of their own. In return the French attempts to break out lacked the “mass” to punch out off the Prussian sieges and encirclements,and just served to speed their own destruction.
The success of the Prussian system led to its adoption and emulation by the nations of continental Europe. The fundamental assumptions being that victory would go to the nation which could bring the largest possible army to bear upon its enemy in the shortest possible time, and that the only way to resist such an army, was to attack first with an even bigger army. This was to lead to the institution of the large conscript army, mobilized and deployed on an autopilot of rigid timetables. These large conscript armies strained to different extents the ability of the continental nations to train, officer and especially in the case of Imperial Russia to equip and arm all its soldiers, leading to armies of various and sometimes dubious qualities. The French, for example, were only able to match the Germans (who had a larger population) in numbers by lengthening the term of conscription and the upper age limit of men in the reserves. These flaws were to lead to inflexibility and rigidity in thinking from the political, to the strategic, to the tactical levels, the consequences of which were the killing fields of the First World War.
[edit] Russo-Japanese War
[edit] Human wave attacks in the modern era
In the modern era, human-wave attacks are often, but not always associated with mass armies of untrained soldiers. The casualty rate is generally enormous, yet such attacks are often successful and therefore remain an accepted combat technique. When the defender is also poorly-trained or of low quality, the shock value of a human-wave attack may be enough to carry the objective.
[edit] First World War
Early battles of the First World War exhibited both characteristics of human wave attacks, for example the Germans at the Battle of Mons, and incorporated elements of maneuver and infiltration in assaults. There is no contradiction in this as the combatants included both long service professionals and mobilised reservists, troops of differing temperament, ability and training.
With the loss of strategic maneuver after the First Battle of the Marne the latter stages of the First World War degenerated into trench warfare. With trench warfare Human-wave attacks became common, a product of the reappearance of mass conscript armies dealing unsuccessfully with a new combat environment. There was a belief that troops could not handle sophisticated tactics (though counter-evidence was available); means of communication with supporting arms were ineffective; and senior leaders did not always see the battle environment as it really was.
In the British army human-wave attacks were adopted by the new armies because a lack of proficiency in musketry led to the doctrine that in the attack the grenade and bayonet would be the prime infantry weapons and tactics were evolved to accommodate this.To this was added a lack of leadership, due to the dilution of the professional officer and NCO corps, for anything more sophisticated than massed attacks.The classic example of the human-wave attacks would be the Battle of the Somme.
Allied forces suffered over 600,000 casualties during the three months of fighting, for no tangible goals other than the attrition of the enemy. Despite these horrendous casualties, this could still be seen as a success, given that the Germans endured casualties at least as severe and the attack relieved pressure on the French at Verdun.
Only towards the end of the war were skirmisher tactics, infiltration tactics, and new combined-arms approaches, re-discovered and developed in raiding and harassing attacks, allowed to flower; coming to a final, though ultimately futile, realisation in the German Spring Offensive of 1918.
[edit] Firsthand British Accounts
Accounts of receiving and making an attack.
It came with a suddenness that was most startling....A grey mass of humanity was charging, running for all God would let them, straight on to us not 50 yards off....and as I fired my rifle the rest all went off almost simultaneously. One saw the great mass of Germans quiver. In reality some fell, some fell over them, and others came on. I have never shot so much in such a short time.....the whole lot came on again...Twenty yard more and they would have been over us in thousands but our fire must have been fearful....Some of the leading people turned to the left for some reason, and they all followed like a great flock of sheep. I don't think one could have missed at the distance and just for one short minute or two we poured the ammunition into them in boxfuls....
—Captain Harry Dillon,2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.Saturday 24th October 1914 after First Battle of Ypres.
At 6.30 a.m our artillery were bombarding intensely…..At 7.30 we moved to “the attack” by companies at 200 yard intervals in the order C,D,A,B….A battery of artillery was in action….enemy sending heavy shrapnel all over the place…We had a terrible dose of machine gun fire sweeping us through wood …..across the opening I saw the last platoon of A Coy. going over open ground in front of wood….about 120 yards. Half of the platoon were killed and almost all of remainder wounded in the crossing, and I at once realised that some part of the attack had gone radically wrong, as we were being enfiladed by batteries of enemy machine guns…
—Ernest Shepard CSM B Coy 1st Dorsets. writing of the 1st July 1916, the Battle of the Somme.
[edit] The military legacy
Although they had fought the same war, the participants learnt different lessons from the same experience. The French went from the one extreme of idolizing the all-out attack to the idolizing of the ideal of dogged defense, as exemplified by the Battle of Verdun, leading directly to the building of the Maginot Line.
With its first and last throws of the dice the German Army convinced itself that it had almost had victory in its grasp. In its next attempt it married Hutier tactics and mechanization to the Schlieffen Plan,achieving with Blitzkrieg in the May of 1940 during the Fall of France what it could not in August of 1914.
For Britain, the horrors and slaughter of First World War made it the “War to end all wars”, determined never to allow such a conflict again, she spent her efforts between the wars futilely trying to avert future wars. The solution to conflict would be disarmament and arms limitations, the banning of so called offensive weapons, in so doing she threw away her lead in armored and mechanized warfare and many hard-earned lessons.
The United States decided to wash it hands of European wars and reverted to a policy of Isolationism.
[edit] Winter War
In the Winter War, the Finns developed—out of necessity—the motti tactic against the human wave attack. It involved in retreating at the face of the human wave, simultaneously advancing at the flanks and enveloping the wave. Once the onslaught had culminated, the supply lines were cut and encircling becoming complete. The attacking Soviet forces were ordered not to retreat; therefore, encircling them and staging a siege proved a highly lethal maneuver against the Soviets.
[edit] Second World War
When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the Germans reported that the Red Army used the tactic against both advancing and entrenched German soldiers, sometimes using penal battalions or militia units. It is assumed that the Red Army soldiers were ordered to charge directly in a wide berth to strike every possible point in the German lines simultaneously (see Panfilovtsy). In some battles the Soviets defeated the Germans after sustaining battle losses much higher than the German losses. After 1942, the Red Army developed into a more capable force and used modern tactics.
In the Japanese Army, human wave attacks in the form of Banzai charges were common in the early battles of World War II. Japanese units generally had adequate training and were skilled at infiltration tactics, but were very weak in artillery. Even in the constricted terrain of the Pacific War, however, these attacks generally failed. As this lesson was absorbed, the tactic was abandoned except as a tactic of desperation or last resort.
[edit] Korean War
It is widely believed that such tactics were employed widely and successfully by the North Korean and Chinese armies during the Korean War, because to the UN troops, the enemy seemed to be everywhere, for example at the battles of the Chosin Reservoir and the Imjin River.
However, while massed infantry attacks were used, what the North Korean and Chinese forces actually used is more aptly described as infiltration assault. With UN air superiority, any concentration of Chinese armor or artillery, to support the infantry, would have invited instant air attack and almost as instant annihilation. The Chinese employed infiltration tactics to mitigate their inferiority in terms of available artillery and air support,finding it was necessary to bypass their enemies forward lines and complete an encirclement before heavy fighting began. By beginning their attacks at night and only when in close proximity to their targets, the UN could not use its artillery and air power without endangering their own troops.
...The Chinese generally attacked at night and tried to close in on a small troop position — generally a platoon — and then attacked it with local superiority in numbers. The usual method was to infiltrate small units, from a platoon of fifty men to a company of 200, split into separate detachments. While one team cut off the escape route of the Americans, the others struck both the front and the flanks in concerted assaults.
—Bevin Alexander, How Wars Are Won
See the “The Chinese Entry” section of the Korean War article for more details
[edit] Vietnam
During the 1950s, the Viet Minh, under the command of General Vo Nguyen Giap, enjoying the advantage of superior numbers in artillery and manpower, successfully employed the massed infantry tactics against the entrenched French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. However, whether such organized assaults are human wave attacks is debatable. The same tactics failed against U.S. Marines during the Battle of Khe Sanh in similar circumstances.
During the Sino-Vietnamese War, Chinese armies employed a strategy of invading on a broad front, attacking simultaneously with multiple columns in order to hide the main thrusts of attack. The intention was to lure out the defending armies into the open field where they could be annihilated in battles of encirclement and attrition, where Chinese armies' numerical superiority would allow them to prevail. However, Vietnamese forces withdrew to a narrower and more easily defendable front, reducing Chinese freedom of maneuver and forcing them to launch large frontal assaults against enemy positions using artillery and infantry.
[edit] Falklands War
Even today there are at times, even in the best trained and most modern of armies, where a direct unsupported infantry assaults of prepared positions may be needed. Although in no way approaching the massed attacks of previous conflicts, one such example was during the Battle of Goose Green by Lieutenant-Colonel H. Jones and members of 2 Para.
The British in the Falklands had very little in the way of supporting arms, and the fire and movement attack against the strong Argentine positions had broken down and had become stalled. Exposed and somewhat disorganized the British faced the danger of being whittled away by Argentinian machine gun and mortar fire. Colonel Jones’s attack seized back the initiative from the enemy, inspired his comrades and broke the Argentinians psychologically.
[edit] Iran-Iraq War
Human wave attacks were again rampant in the Iran-Iraq War. The Iranian Army was the primary user of these tactics, as it had the less technologically advanced (its advanced U.S. supplied equipment suffering from the U.S. arms embargo) and less well-trained forces. In some cases, the Pasdaran troops had virtually no training.
[edit] Resurgent Taliban 2006
Taliban tactics in Afghanistan September 2006 would appear to have some of the hallmarks of human wave attacks, featuring massed attacks against prepared positions, with apparently little attempt to minimise casualties, and intense close-quarter fighting including bayonet charges. In the words of one source talking to The Daily Mail, "We're talking Waterloo stuff here."
[edit] Countermeasures
Countermeasures to such attacks may also involve extreme firepower superiority, generally of a organizationally or technologically superior nature. For example:
From the Peninsular War onwards, the British Army met the French columns with troops in lines utilizing the reverse slope defence. Where possible these lines were structured to allow the British to rake the sides of the oncoming French columns and not just the head of the column with fire. These tactics clashed so often that “British line against French column” have been used as a shorthand to describe the war.
In the Anglo-Zulu War, the British Army used machine guns and organized rifle volleys to great effect against superior numbers of opposing forces armed only with primitive weapons and a few guns.
In the wars from the end of the Napoléonic Wars leading up to the First World War, field fortifications became increasingly important. Long a feature of sieges both in the attack and the defence, field fortifications from the quick and humble foxhole and shell scrape, to the complex Hindenberg Line became a routine practice to all sides in the Great War.
[edit] Conventional tactics
The term can perhaps best be understood when contrasted with other types of deliberate attacks against well-defended points. In general, attacking forces will attempt to weaken the defender through the use of artillery or close air support before or while launching an infantry attack.
In the modern battlefield, individual soldiers maneuver as individuals and as part of very small teams using “fire and movement” with a high degree of initiative. Their leaders have communications with supporting arms. In effect, all infantrymen are skirmishers, and there is no need for human-wave attacks except in armies based on conscription, which usually profess a very poor level of training.
The infantry attack may be more successful when combined with other supporting arms such as tank support, infiltration tactics, night attacks, flanking attacks, and so forth. All of these alternative tactics require some skill in planning and great skill in execution, since disparate units and weapons must be used in a coordinated manner. Often, human-wave attacks are the unplanned result of a poorly-executed conventional attack.
[edit] References
- The Decisive Battles of the Western World 1792-1944, by J.F.C. Fuller,abridged and revised edition 1970 published by Paladin.
- The Somme 1916, Crucible of a British Army, by Michael Chappell.W&G 1995.
- The Western Front, by Malcolm Brown,published by The Imperial War Museum,1993.
