The Australians, as the historian Bill Gammage has put it:. They had an uncomplicated attitude towards the Hun, conditioned largely by propaganda and hardly at all by contact, and they hated him with a loathing paralleled, at least in the British Army, only by some other colonial troops. Accordingly many killed their opponents brutally, savagely, and unnecessarily.
It was not only the Germans who became acquainted with the Pattern Another Australian, Nigel Ellsworth, noted that in advance of a night attack on Turkish lines:. In a similar vein, another Australian wrote boastfully to his family of the short work he made of Germans:. They get it too right where the chicken gets the axe … I … will fix a few more before I have finished. The Queenslander Hugh Knyvett recalled a case where a fellow Australian drove his bayonet through a German and into a hardwood beam, from which it could not be withdrawn.
In recalling his own role in that battle in the night from 24 April to Anzac Day, Walter Downing wrote:. Bayonets passed with ease through grey-clad bodies, and were withdrawn with a sucking noise … Many had tallies of twenty and thirty and more, all killed with the bayonet, or bullet, or bomb. Some found chances in the slaughter to light cigarettes, then continued the killing.
Sober analysis showed that the vast majority of deaths and casualties were put down to machine-guns and artillery. As for the Australians themselves, more than half of those admitted to field hospitals in France suffered injuries from shells and shell-shock, and more than a third from bullets. It might have been helpful for certain mundane tasks like opening tins, chopping firewood or perhaps roasting meat over a fire, but in a charge across open land in the sights of German machine-gunners, it was at best an unwelcome burden.
In close quarters, too, it had its drawbacks. Fixed in readiness to the end of a Lee Enfield and lugged along a trench, its most likely victim was a comrade in arms, who might receive a prod to the buttocks or a poke in the eye. Nonetheless, by , the bayonet still had its place in every army.
That was true in two ways. The most feared weapons in war are not necessarily the most dangerous. For instance, the young captain Charles de Gaulle was wounded in the thigh by a bayonet in the Douaumont area in However, the myth of bayonet charges still needs to be relativized. The Lebel rifle, with its adjoining bayonet, measured 1. After , the forms bayonets took were regulated. The notched models used by the German army were forbidden by the Geneva Convention, as was any type of blade that compromised healing, such as triangular or cross-shaped bayonets.
Western armies favoured short bayonets. Less frequently used attached to a rifle and increasingly used directly by hand, the bayonet continued to have a devastating effect, such as during the sack of Nanking The last bayonet charge of the French army took place in February , during the Korean War against the Chinese.
This was not at all the case, with the weapon even seeing improvements. Modern bayonets are equipped with a concave groove that reduces their weight and lets air pass into the wound, thus making it easier to pull out the blade. The Sawback U. M9 bayonet, put in use in , is one illustration. Its sheath can be used as cutting pliers to sever barbed wire.
The Afghanistan War still saw a few instances of bayonet combat. One advantage of using a bayonet in close crowded combat, as opposed to a rifle or hand-gun , was its avoidance of risk in injuring one's fellow soldiers.
A bullet fired at close range into an enemy could well pass through his body and enter a friend standing or fighting behind him. Of course there were still many occasions when close combat fighting was necessary. This was the ideal scenario for the use of the bayonet. Nevertheless, while it was seldom actually used, experienced soldiers generally preferring other methods, carrying improvised clubs, blades or knuckledusters.
Curiously the official British bayonet training manual gave poor advice regarding the bayonet's usage. Soldiers were instructed to direct the bayonet at the vulnerable points of the enemy's body: the throat, left or right breast and left or right groin. Aiming the bayonet blade at the breast ran the risk of driving into the breastbone, making removal of the blade highly problematic.
Similarly, aiming the blade at the groin inevitably resulted in excruciating pain to the victim, such that they would often grab the bayonet in an attempt to pull the blade out. In such cases soldiers often had to remove the blade from the rifle simply in order to continue with the attack.
The soldier in the trenches holding his bayonet rifle is one of the most evocative, lasting images from the First World War. The earliest mention of the bayonette dates back to the late 16 th Century, and may have simply referred to a type of knife. It may have originated as a hunting weapon, allowing the hunter to fend off their prey in the event of a missed shot. The weapon was developed from the pike by the French in the 17 th century, whose socket bayonet had a sleeve that fitted around the barrel, and was locked with a stud.
This enabled the gun to be fired with the bayonet firmly secured in place, and it was adopted by armies throughout Europe. The bayonet later developed into a defence weapon for the infantry soldiers. The development of breech-loading rifles in the 19 th century provided infantrymen with the firepower capacity to beat off a cavalry charge.
It may have seemed a rudimental weapon against the technological progress of shelling, machine guns, and rapid-fire artillery, however, bayonet training remained a major part of frill training, even into the Second World War. It was even employed by the US in training armed forces in Vietnam.
Its use was thought by the army generals to be more for psychological benefit than practical. The first requirement of the infantry soldier is confidence in these weapons, based on his skill in their use. The British soldier had a 17in sword bayonet attached to the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield, whereas the bayonet of the average French infantryman was somewhat different; instead of a sword he had a 52cm rapier-like epee bayonet.
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