![]() Anywhere beyond this point was potentially within range of the devastating effects of long distance artillery shelling. The problems really began about 7 miles behind the front. Getting close to the front was the relatively easy part of the process. War material had to be railed to a Channel port and, until special ferries were built to carry wagons, loaded onto a ferry, reloaded onto a French train or barges and carried forward to the main supply dumps behind the British lines. For the British the challenge was complicated by the English Channel. Railways were the only way of shifting this volume of material overland and a very sophisticated transportation and supply system was developed, especially after a major reorganisation in 1916. When an offensive was being planned, even larger quantities of material had to be concentrated in preparation for the operations that might last for months. By 1918 each Division of about 12,000 men needed about 1,000 tons of supplies every day - equivalent to two supply trains each of 50 wagons. Every bullet, blanket, bandage, artillery battery or tin of bully beef had to be manufactured and transported where and when it was required. ![]() Maintaining these huge forces in the field - up to 2 million men were serving on the Western Front - required vast amounts of supplies. By Christmas 1914, defensive lines of trenches stretched from the Channel coast to the Swiss border. The Entente and the Central Powers agreed upon one expectation at the outset: that there would be a rapid, offensive war which would be over quickly. This theme - of the momentum of an initially successful advance faltering as supply lines were outrun, while defending forces were rapidly concentrated to fill the breech - was to be replayed many times during the next four years. Meanwhile British forces were rushed across the Channel and deployed with the French and Belgian forces. The increasingly exhausted German troops were short of food and ammunition, and also faced stiffening resistance as the French used their well-developed rail network around Paris to assemble a new army to protect the capital. They were soon up to 80 miles ahead of their nearest railhead, and horse-drawn transport could not adequately bridge the gap. ![]() The rapidly advancing German troops far outran their supply lines once they entered France. Even a month after the occupation of Belgium, barely 15 per cent of the railway network was operating despite 26,000 workers being drafted in. In the event, strong Belgian resistance, including extensive demolition of railway infrastructure, delayed the advance and the use of the network to supply German forces. Following a French surrender, expected within six weeks, the forces could then face the Russians. It was expected that the Russian Army would be slow to mobilise, so the strategy was to sweep rapidly through Belgium and Luxembourg, invade northern France and encircle around the north and west of Paris. Germany's 'Schlieffen Plan' provided for concentrating forces by rail rapidly along both the eastern and western boundaries. Nowhere was the planning more developed than in Germany and France. ![]() Each nation had developed very sophisticated schedules for concentrating troops and equipment at key depots and then despatching the forces rapidly to designated positions on their frontiers. Consequently the main belligerent nations of Europe built their plans for mobilising and supporting their armies in war primarily around railways. Motor vehicles had yet to seriously threaten the railways, except for local traffic, while aviation was at an embryonic stage. At the turn of the twentieth century railways dominated land transport.
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