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trench warfare
Sign in to saveAlso known as trench war, trench battles, combat trenches, static warfare
land warfare involving static fortification of lines
Trench warfare is a form of combat where soldiers fight from defensive lines that are dug into the ground and heavily fortified, rather than engaging in mobile, open-field battles. This type of fighting became historically significant because it allowed defenders to hold territory against larger attacking forces, fundamentally changing how wars were fought.
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Encyclopedic overview
Frontline trenches, 1916; British (upper) and German (lower). German soldiers of the 11th Reserve Hussar Regiment fighting from a trench, on the Western Front, 1916 Plan of Ruapekapeka Pā 1846, an elaborate and heavily fortified Ngāpuhi innovation, which James Belich has argued laid the groundwork for or essentially invented modern trench warfare.
Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising military trenches, in which combatants are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. It became archetypically associated with World War I (1914–1918), when the Race to the Sea rapidly expanded trench use on the Western Front starting in September 1914.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “trench warfare” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.