Staying One step Ahead of the Enemy

We often take the mundane in our lives for granted. Take for example breathing: most people don't walk around thinking, "Boy, it sure is great to be able to breath". That is, until you have a runny nose, and the one thing you wish for is to be able to breath normally. In our modern world, we are saturated with the ability to communicate. We can send a text, blog, snapchat, call, facetime,skype, and interact with anyone at the touch of a screen. Communication is a mundane task for us, that was incredibly important to those in the gilded age leading up to WW1. So important that a single miscommunication between the Czech drivers and the security of Archduke Ferdinand led to  his assassination and the start of World War 1.

Field Telephone

In the days leading up to world war one, mass real time communication was a luxury. The telephone was just catching on, and wireless radio sets were bulky and unpredictable.  It was only as the reality of a grueling stalemate in WW1 set in that the British realized they needed better communication to win. They designated a core of Signal Engineers to lay down telephone wires, in order to communicate with the front lines. The price to do so was tremendous however. The Signal Core had an attrition rate of nearly 50% because they were so exposed on the front lines. This loss of life shows just how critical the British thought it was to have communication. 

In our day, we take this ability as routine. We complain when we have to move to grab our phone. We gripe about bad signal, moan about loading times, and grouse when when we don't hear back from a friend instantly. For the soldiers in world was one, communication was life or death. In the battle of Loos, communication to wireless radios in Ally vehicles saved the day. They warned of friendly fire, a trap, and reinforcements on the way (Gannon). For us, the ubiquity of communication may have destroyed its significance. We forget the person that we are talking to face to face in favor of the one on the screen. We give half our attention, and a quarter of our effort into understanding what is being said. 

In a time past, communication was rare, but valued, and that made all the difference.

Picture: wikicommons: image has been released as "CCBY" by Auckland Museum

Gannon, Paul. “WW1: First World War Communications and the 'Tele-Net of Things'.” RSS, Engineering and Technology, 16 June 2014, eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2014/06/ww1-first-world-war-communications-and-the-tele-net-of-things/.