re: 101 years ago today: America officially enters World War I

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Great podcast, but I wish I could have edited it. He went on about mud so many times, it was ridiculous. I get it. There was mud. Lots of mud. Bad mud.

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I haven't heard this particular podcast, but, I hope that he mentioned a couple of things WRT to the mud. First, the primary reason for the mud was because the delicate system of drainage that was in place in peacetime was ruined by the digging and artillery terrain damage of the war. In the British sector in particular, because of the geographic location of this sector, the mud problem was worse because the delicate and easily damaged drainage system was destroyed. Second, there were some "low-mud" sectors and times on the Western Front.

Final thought for the day: think about the term "Trench Warfare." What made it "trench warfare" wasn't the trenches, because we used trenches in war before WWI and we use them now.

What made it "trench warfare" was the on-going process from 1914 through 1918 of finding a way THROUGH trench defenses. In the summer of 1914, the solution was to use Maneuver and nothing else. If you find a trench defensive system, flank it. Boom. Problem solved. You weren't forced to find a tactical solution to take you THROUGH the trench defenses -- just flank it.

The Great War's Western Front nullified that tactical solution by October, 1914 when the enemy's front could no longer be flanked! By then it was mostly entrenched, too, so, the military thinkers were forced to develop tactical solutions to get THROUGH trench defenses.

How to get THROUGH the enemy trench lines? Imperial Germany focused on new infantry tactics. The Allies focused on a technological solution using new equipment that looked like a big tank of some kind when covered with tarp.

Then, during the 1930s, to get ahead of ourselves, the really best military thinkers began to improve on a tactical system that would combine the technological developments with the innovative "infiltration tactics" that the Germans perfected in 1918.

And a word of advice for today's US high-ranking military officers whose job it is to figure out things like military solutions to military problems:

DON'T WAIT UNTIL OCTOBER, 1914, to finally realize that you MUST find a way THROUGH the enemy's trench lines. Find the military solution TODAY to the military problem what will smack you in the groin TOMORROW. You'll save our manpower resources that way AND you won't look like such an IDIOT.

We know that you are all idiots, but, please, for the sake of appearances, try to HIDE it.