The period from the early 1800s to mid 20th century when the dominance of the defence was an unsolvable problem
June 2017. Chlum Village, just outside modern Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. I visited Chlum during my exploration of the Königgrätz battlefield in 2015 and again in 2017. I explored Sadowa, Rozběřice, Chlum, the Svíb Forest, and the southern sector around Nechanice. The modern battlefield is quiet, agricultural, and deceptively open. It takes some effort to reconstruct the scale of what happened here.
November 2024. Verdun, northeastern France. This is my second time exploring the battlefields of Verdun. The first impression is the massive scale of the fortification complex. Large and small forts with interlocking and mutually supporting fields of fire cover several hundred square kilometres. The ground is still broken by overlapping shell craters, stretching in all directions. Even after more than a century, the terrain remains uneven, cratered, and difficult to walk on. It is not a single battlefield, but a vast zone of destruction.
July 2012, Belleau Wood, near Château-Thierry, France. I am exploring the site of the legendary US Marine battle in June 1918. The first impression of ‘Bois Belleau’ is confinement. The ground is enclosed by dense woodland, with limited lines of sight and little sense of distance.
The Battle of Polygon Wood is significant to me. My grandfather served in 5th Australian Division Signal Company and fought at Polygon Wood with the Division.
The Battle of Polygon Wood was fought between 26 September and 3 October 1917, as part of the Third Battle of Ypres. The aim was to seize the German-held high ground around the Ypres salient. The battle demonstrated the brutal effectiveness of the Allied limited-objective ‘bite and hold’ tactics, and forced the Germans to reassess their ‘Eingreif’ tactic of immediate counterattacks.
By capturing Aqaba, Lawrence and the Arab Army had closed off the last Turkish-held port on the Red Sea, threatened the entire length of the Hejaz Railway, and made the many Turkish garrisons in the Hejaz vulnerable to being cut off. They had also eliminated a potential source of threat to the right flank of General Allenby’s army