What did fighting in the early days of World War 1 look like?

On 14 August the Second Army of Gen. Edouard de Castelnau entered western Lorraine – open countryside interspersed with coal- and salt-mining districts –led in the accustomed French manner,by mounted officers, colourbearers and bands. The Germans did not seriously dispute their passage, because they had prepared an elaborate reception some twenty miles eastwards.

On the plateau north-west of Morhange 150mm howitzers were emplaced, with lines of 77mms and machine-guns on the tiered lower slopes of the same heights. French aviators warned their commanders of the strength – indeed, near-impregnability – of the German position, but they were ignored.

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>>1625693
>but they were ignored.
oh God, help us.

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>At around 6:00 am on 2 August 1914, Leutnant Albert Mayer and his small cavalry patrol illegally crossed the French border. They did not meet resistance, as the French had moved their troops back 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from the border, to avoid provoking the Germans and to show good faith in their attempts to avoid war.

>At 9:50 am Mayer slashed with his sabre at (but did not injure) a French sentry, who was on lookout at the entrance to Joncherey. Jules Andre Peugeot and four other soldiers were at their billet eating breakfast at the time. The daughter of the owner of the house came back inside from fetching water and reportedly said "The Prussians! The Prussians are coming!"[1]

>Around 10:00 am, Peugeot and his four comrades went to arrest the Germans. Upon meeting Mayer, he fired three shots at Peugeot. One hit his shoulder and Peugeot fired back as he was falling. Peugeot's comrades opened up on the patrol with pistols.

>Mayer was shot in the stomach but seconds later was killed by a shot to the head. Peugeot stumbled back to the billet house where he died at 10:37 am.[2] Three more Germans were injured and one managed to escape for a few days by hiding in the woods but was eventually captured. One of the German soldiers was never seen again and two escaped to Germany.[1]

More like the Franco-Prussian war than the fighting of 1915 onwards. Now the written doctrines were modern enough, but battlefield realities often warped them. Still it would be nowhere near the Napoleonic or ACW close order formation. Infantry on the battlefield would deploy in vaguely loose formations of riflemen several of feet apart, taking cover, one formation stopping to cover another that would advance, and so on. In a way similar to the skirmishers of earlier eras, only entire regiments would deploy in this way, not just specialized units, with several loose lines supporting each other/being held in reserve.

Elan and the spirit of the offensive were still major factors at that point, so quickly advancing to close combat range under the supporting fire of field guns and other companies was still often the order of the day. On the defensive, the importance of fieldworks and the volume of fire bolt-action rifles (and machine guns) could put out was greatly appreciated, in fact already in the Fr-Pr war saw this being employed.

Now the conscripted nature of much of the manpower as well as the inexperience of low level commanders often meant that the men would, instead of deploying in a fairly widespread formation, stay closer than they were supposed to. But still we aren't talking employing line infantry in close order onto the battlefield against machineguns or anything of the sort. The records of such incidents aren't only greatly exaggerated, but they pretty much invariably describe a unit on a march being ambushed, as in not maneuvering in a column on an actual battlefield.

>>1625962
Incidentally this is also what gets me when people go about the Civil War and "hurr durr y didn't dey lerrrrrn from us", the Europeans didn't have much to learn from the ACW. Certainly very little or next to nothing from the battlefield, perhaps something in the logistics or build up to a total war of sorts, but even then the heavy use of railroads and war between industrialized powers was something already known to them.

But on the tactical level, the ACW was for the most part about the Americans trying to grasp onto a Napoleonic model of warfare complete with muskets, except without key elements such as the decisive use of cavalry, at a time when the Europeans have been switching en masse to loose order with breech loaders.

Early on people were actually enthusiastic and optimistic because nobody had experience with industrialized warfare yet. Europe was still in a Napoleonic mindset. Lots of aggressive tactics, charges, people thought they could end the war quickly just by striking decisively. But the efficiency of modern weapons just turned these offensives into bloodbaths. The first couple months of the war were horrifically bloody.

>>1625962
The BEF tended to employ more manoeuvre and small-unit tactics due to the experience of fighting the Boer. This stopped (until 1916-17) once the lines solidified but the war was pretty mobile to start with