ENEMY’S NEW TACTICS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 30, Issue 22, 19 March 1918, Page 4

ENEMY’S NEW TACTICS.

“CRATER NESTS” INSTEAD OF TRENCHES.

A German Army Order of recent date, which has come into the possession of the French (writes H. Warner Allen in the Daily News recently), provides a.key not only to the new de-. fensivc tactics which the enemy is opposing to the Anglo-French offensive in Flanders, but to the reasons which have compelled him to resort to them. The Germans have found, says the order, that the continuous linos constituting their front position arc regularly and methodically destroyed by our artillery before an attack begins. Subterranean shelters, especially in the first and second lines, have simply proved to be traps enabling the Allies to swell their lists of prisoners. The power of defence in a defensive battle depends essentially on the precautions taken to conceal the machinery of battle from the enemy’s view. This machinery —trenches, subterranean shelters, machine-gun centres,' and batteries —if recorded by the photographs taken by the enemy from the air will certainly be destroyed by the enemy artillery. “Unfortunately the violence of the enemy fire prevents us from repairing our trenches. Any attempt to do so merely exhausts the fighting force of our men prematurely. From the outset of a battle another method of construction must be applied. A defensive zone extended in depth must be substituted for the old system of positions, which can be destroyed by the enemy. This system, with its organisation concealed as far as possible from the enemy’s observation, and with the troops holding it echeloned in depth so that their numbers, scanty in front, increase progressively towards the rear, should enable us to pass from the defensive to the offensive with the troops from the rear.

“During the battle all. idea of having a continuous front trench line must be abandoned. This must be replaced by shell-crater nests held by groups of men and isolated machine-guns, disposed like the squares on a cness-board. The shelter provided by the shell-crat-ers will bo extended by tunnelling into the sides or by linking them to adjacent craters by means of tunnels supported by timber props.” Machine-gun centres and shelters for storm troops ready to make the first counter-attack are to be placed behind the first line of fortified shell-craters.

Admittedly, the object of all this is to enable the enemy to hide ail trace of his presence from our airmen’s cameras. His front is to show no sign of his existence. No eye must be able to distinguish it from No Man’s Land. The thin, spidery lines across the aviator’s photographs, which show the lie of his trenches, are to disappear. The camera in the air—the eye which guides the guns—is what the Hun has chiefly learned to fear during the summer campaign of 1917.