Infiltration tactics

In warfare, infiltration tactics involve small, lightly equipped infantry forces attacking enemy rear areas while bypassing enemy front line strongpoints and isolating them for attack by follow-up troops with heavier weapons.

These tactics emerged gradually during the later years of World War I, used in various forms by the Russian general Aleksei Brusilov in the Brusilov Offensive of 1916, by the British Third Army at the Battle of Arras in April 1917 (most notably the capture of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps), following the reorganisation of British infantry platoons according to the new Manual SS 143, in the new year and by the German military in the Siege of Riga in September 1917 and the Battle of Caporetto in October 1917.

The tactics became especially associated with the stormtroopers of the German Army, and were also called Hutier tactics, after General Oskar von Hutier, who used these tactics to great effect during Operation Michael in March 1918.

A form of infiltration tactics was proposed by French headquarters on 16 April 1915 in Note 5779, which stated that the first waves of infantry should penetrate as far as possible and leave enemy strongpoints to be dealt with by follow-up waves. These were partially adopted on 9 May 1915, the opening day of the Second Battle of Artois, by the French XXXIII Corps which advanced 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) in the first hour and a half of the attack. The problem was reinforcing and holding the gains against German counterattack.

A young French infantry officer, Captain André Laffargue, put forward similar ideas in a pamphlet written in August 1915 Étude sur l’attaque dans la période actuelle de la guerre ("Study of the Attack in the Current Period of the War"). Laffargue based his proposals in particular on his experiences attacking immediately south of Neuville-Saint-Vaast on 9 May 1915 when commanding a company of 153rd Infantry Regiment. Laffargue was left wounded on the German front line but his regiment advanced another 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi), only to be held up by two German machine guns. Laffargue's pamphlet focused primarily on the small-unit perspective, calling for mobile firepower to deal with local resistance such as machine guns and advocating that the first waves of an attack advanced in the intervals or gaps between centres of resistance, which should be temporarily neutralised on the edges by fire or heavy smoke. They would then be encircled and dealt with by successive waves. Had these methods been followed Laffargue suggests that the attack could have resulted in a complete breakthrough of the German defences and the capture of Vimy Ridge.

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