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Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
STEEL AGAINST FIRE: THE BAYONET IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Rob Engen
Abstract
The modern mind has demonized the bayonet as a weapon of war. Of all the popular images of the First World War, the most poignant is that of brave soldiers being sent “over the top” of their trenches with fixed bayonets for another futile charge on an enemy machine-gun emplacement. The bayonet has become, in some ways, a symbol for the frustration and futility of the war, as it seemed to be a weapon that should not have been there in the first place. Popular historians such as Pierre Berton have denounced it, claiming it to be, “as useful as a cutlass” on the modern industrialized battlefields of the Great War.1 What place could or should the direct descendant of the medieval pike have in the battle order of twentieth-century armies alongside weapons such as the machine gun? Why had this simple weapon not died out alongside the Napoleonic musket or the muzzle-loading cannon, yielding to the realities of technological progress?