Fear of German miners and Stormtrooper attacks
According to historian Anthony Clayton, ever present in the minds of the front-line troops were four principal dreads. The first and most insidious of these was a fear of being buried alive as a result of German subterranean mining. German miners, in an attempt to force a breakthrough of enemy lines, would dig under the French soldiers’ position and place explosives underneath them.
The second principal dread according to Clayton, concerned the threat posed by the German Special Assault Detachment soldiers, more commonly known as Stormtroopers. These were small groups of elite soldiers who could operate independently without waiting for orders from a higher unit. Among their principal objectives were to cut barbed wire and to use one of the wars newest innovations, the flamethrower, to eliminate resistance from concrete machine gun outposts. Ironically, most flamethrower crews were made up of men who had been firefighters in their civilian lives.
