What was the importance of the Battle of Nueve Chappelle in world war one?
It was the first battle of the ‘static war’ where the opposing armies faced their enemies over a long front from well fortified positions and was largely brought about because the Germans were fighting on two fronts.- the Russians in the East and the Franco British alliance in the west. This caused them to dig deep secure defensive positions – their trench lines were vastly superior and, for a large portion of the front were on higher ground. In essence this dictated the battle plans of both sides for the remainder of the war. It also started the demise of horse mounted cavalry. What both sides initially expected was a war of large scale manoeuvres involving the rapid deployment of many small(ish) cavalry units fighting for the high ground and any other tactical advantage became a ‘fort to fort’ battle. Both sides showed little insight of the effectiveness of, first, the repeating rifle and, second, the machine gun when used against horse mounted troops. The pattern was thus set for th
