War Diaries Talk

Intelligence summary

  • erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be by erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be

    Who gathered all this information and how did they do it?

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  • marie.eklidvirginmedia.com by marie.eklidvirginmedia.com

    Intelligence gathering ww1 – part of an article Link: http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/espionage

    3 Spies’ Great War - The gathering of military intelligence was first operated on the battlefield. However, the war fought from 1914, quickly altered practices, by its magnitude, its duration and, soon, its mostly static character, at least on the western front. The trench warfare could no longer be based on cavalry reconnaissance, the main source of intelligence of armies in the field for centuries. Moreover, they had shown limited effectiveness during the first weeks of the conflict. On the other hand, the development of aviation, allied to that of photography was of growing importance to aerial reconnaissance, and enabled reports of enemy movements and accounts of its positions...continued article

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  • cyngast by cyngast moderator

    This kind of intelligence report would be compiled from the reports of observers from each battery combined with the battery's own records of targets and rounds fired. The observers usually went forward to the front line or to an elevated spot, such as church steeple, to give them as good a view of the enemy's lines as possible.

    For the Hostile Fire portion of the report, information would be gathered from the location where the shell hit.

    This was a very localized form of intelligence and did not relate to the larger picture of spies and espionage, which is nonetheless rather interesting!

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  • erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be by erik.schaubroeckscarlet.be

    If the dates are correct (firing from 6pm 02/06 to 6pm 03/06) they must have gathered all this information very quickly to have this report ready the next day (next page dated 04/06).

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  • ral104 by ral104 moderator, scientist

    They would have kept records of all activity as they went along, so it would have been a simple enough case of putting it all together. As Cynthia says, this is a local type of intelligence. Where it relates to a wider theatre of operations, it would have been a more complex task.

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