Environmental factors play a massive role in warfare, and terrain is a major aspect of any land
environment. Some terrains are more favourable than others, and most change drastically
depending on the climate, season, and even time of day. While terrain can certainly affect other
military branches, it's the army that's up close and personal with the ground, which is to say that
soldiers, beasts of burden, and ground vehicles suffer the most while traversing or fighting
on crappy terrain. In this second instalment of our videos on battlefield terrains, we're
going to discuss five more of the worst terrains endured by the soldiers of the Second World War.
Bocage
is a particularly interesting one. Roughly, bocage is a terrain of mixed woodland and pasture
defined by narrow rivers, sunken farm lanes, and hedgerows grown on made-made embankments.
It is, so to speak, unnatural. Bocage is common in Northern France, mostly notably the French
region of Normandy. While bocage country might be beautiful during times of peace,
it was a verdant hell during the Battle of Normandy, especially for the Allies. Generally,
the hedgerows were around two to six feet wide and three to fifteen feet high,
and composed of a virtually impassable tangle of trees, prickly brambles, and shrubs. Most fields
the hedgerows enclosed were small, no larger than — quote — "an American football field."
Together, these factors created compartmentalized battlefields which greatly reduced visibility,
making it difficult to deploy large forces, maintain a sense of direction,
observe the enemy from a safe distance, and train mortar and artillery fire. For the Allies,
the bocage of Normandy was essentially a maze, made even more difficult to navigate by the German
defences woven tightly throughout the region. The Germans dug machine-gun positions into the
embankments on the opposite corners of the fields to lay waste to any Allied forces unfortunate
enough to get stuck in the crossfire. The fields were, in general, kill-zones. The Germans wrecked
the Allies with pre-set mortars here, with mortar-fire being responsible for as much as 75%
of American casualties throughout the battle. The Germans sewed the hedgerows with mines and booby
traps, too, and were especially fond of trip-wire explosives. This encouraged the attacking forces
to head for natural breaks in the terrain; these were essentially kill-funnels. Allied
tanks struggled to break through the hedgerows, and often enemy tanks or infantrymen with
panzerfausts were waiting around the corner to blow them to smithereens anyway. In the words
of historian Stephen Ambrose, "No terrain in the world was better suited for defensive action."
While forests can provide cover and open up surprise-attack opportunities,
forest warfare is not without its issues. As with bocage countryside, forests can lend a
helping hand to a defending force, which can weave its defences through the trees, setting
up camouflaged positions, knots of barbed wire, well-concealed minefields, and other fun traps.
Forests can also render air support impossible and stop ground vehicles in their tracks,
meaning more soldiers are on their feet and thus vulnerable to traps. A great example of forest
warfare from World War II is the infamous Battle of Hürtgen Forest. This dense forest terrain was
made even more atrocious by the freezing muddy, snowy conditions. The Americans had a seriously
tough time pushing their way through the trees towards a deeply entrenched German position, only
to take immense casualties and lose out in the end anyway. As per American historian Robert S. Rush,
"The Hurtgen Forest was a horrible place in which to fight. Dark and dense, even the sun's
rays produced only a twilight effect at noon." One of the worst things they faced, though,
were mines. In the words of American veteran George Wilson, "It was there in that green forest
that we ran into the most frightening weapon of the war, the one that made us almost sick
with fear: antipersonnel mines. [...] They were vicious, deadly, inhuman. They churned our guts."
Speaking of dense vegetation, among the very worst terrains you can probably imagine are tropical
jungles. Thick jungles make large-scale movements and vehicular transport virtually impossible.
The heat and humidity can drain soldiers of their fluids and exhaust them. With stagnant
puddles and ever-present mud, jungles are breeding grounds for insects and disease.
The trees can provide cover, but this goes for the enemy too, making ambushes a serious issue.
The Kokoda Track campaign, fought mostly between the Aussies and Japanese in Papua New Guinea,
illustrated the horrors of jungle warfare pretty well. While 625 Australians lost their lives on
the Kokoda Track, a further 4,000 became casualties of tropical disease. Malaria
was the big one, but soldiers suffered dengue fever, beriberi, scrub typhus, tropical ulcers,
and dysentery, among a range of other terrible afflictions. While we don't know exactly how
many Japanese succumbed to disease, they copped it even harder than the Aussies due to limited food,
limited medicine, and poor sanitation. According to a journal article by researcher Steven Bullard,
"Of the [...] 13,000 Japanese soldiers who died during the campaigns in Papua in 1942 and 1943,
more perished from sickness and disease than from battle." There was also evidence
that the Japanese resorted to cannibalism to make up for their dismal supplies. Overall,
in the words of Australian veteran Alan "Kanga" More, "It was a terrible
place. [...] We and the Japanese were both living in disgusting conditions."
In reality, the Kokoda Track campaign was fought over jungle-covered mountains, so the soldiers who
served there really got the worst of both worlds. This brings us to our next terrain: mountains.
Ignoring the climates often associated with higher altitudes,
mountains are generally difficult to traverse. With steep, craggy slopes, troop movement can be
slow and exhausting, while vehicular transport may be impossible. Falls, rockslides, and avalanches
are also worthy of concern. Naturally, mountains lend themselves to defence, as defenders can dig
in at higher elevations and shred their enemy from above. The Battle of Monte Cassino might
come to mind when you think of mountain warfare. Here, a highly diverse Allied force staged an
assault on the German-held Gustav Line in Italy, with much of their focus on the hilltop abbey.
Clambering up to the abbey, and the mountains behind it, was no easy thing. The Germans had a
superior defensive position, and the Allies had to negotiate jagged mountain slopes
strewn with boulders, ravines, and gullies. As the ground was all stone, they couldn't dig in
and were thus exposed to enemy fire from higher up. Rockslides were common, and shellfire caused
the stone to detonate and spit rock shrapnel everywhere. The Allies eventually broke through,
but they paid for it dearly, taking 54,000 to 55,000 casualties. Some of the units that proved
most crucial in that victory were composed of Moroccan Goumiers specialised in mountain warfare.
Fighting a little closer to sea level, as in on a beach, is no easy thing either,
especially for the side trying to land on said beach. Wading through the shallows and running
on sand is difficult enough, let alone scaling coastal cliff-faces concealing enemy positions.
The Normandy landings are perhaps the most famous example of this, but the US Marine landings on
Iwo Jima were horrible too. The Japanese forces defending that sulphur-reeking island had dug in
deep and concealed their artillery emplacements in the mountain. Exiting their amphibious
landing vehicles, the marines trudged through soft volcanic ash up a steep shore, all without a peep
from the enemy. When they had made it a way up the shore, the Japanese opened fire, ruining them
with small arms, mortars, and artillery. Due to the composition of the ash and sand, the marines
couldn't dig in. As with the D-Day landings, they had nowhere to go but forward. Tanks
and armoured vehicles were similarly bogged down, sometimes just beyond the reach of the waves. In
the words of historians Derrick Wright and Gordon L. Rottman, "Marines were trained to move rapidly
forward; here they could only plod. [...] [M]any [...] decided to dump their packs [...]; the most
important pieces of equipment at that moment were weapons and ammunition." And as per The Battle for
Iwo Jima by Robert Leckie, "Shells screeched and crashed, every hummock spat automatic fire
and the very soil underfoot erupted with hundreds of exploding land mines. There were few places to
hide ... Iwo's peculiar sands ... slid back into the foxholes and filled them in again."
As we said in the first installment on battlefield terrain,
it's important to remember that the horror of these terrains was,
to an extent, a subjective thing, with most terrains favouring the defender,
and with training and equipment making a massive difference. In other words, soldiers trained and
equipped to fight in a specific terrain are almost always going to perform better in that terrain.
We're interested to hear what you think, though. Which of the terrains we've covered in this video
do you think would have been the absolute worst? Can you think of any other terrains
we didn't cover in these videos? Lastly, do you know of any great stories or quotes
to do with the terrains of World War II? Please share your thoughts in the comments.