Field Notes
- Crouch. Ctrl or C drops you behind the sandbags. Rifle fire that would hit you standing passes overhead, and the sandbags soak up most of a shell’s splinters. The parapet is the whole point of a trench.
- Listen for the whistle. A flash on the far ridge, then a rising scream, then a shadow on the ground where the shell will land. Get away from the shadow.
- Keep moving. Stand in one place and the German gunners walk their fire onto you, each shell closer than the last. Move along the trench and they lose your range.
- Know your enemy. Riflemen in the Stahlhelm hold back and shoot. Stormtroopers in puttees, grenade sacks slung, close fast and throw stick grenades — a grenade that hits your parapet drops outside it. Armoured sentries in Sappenpanzer plate shrug off body hits: go for the head or the legs.
- A head shot does three times the damage and drops most men at once.
- The gun is slow and it jams. Four rounds a second, the Chauchat’s real rate, and about one shot in twenty-five ties it up. Hold R to clear it.
- Clear a wave for fresh magazines, a medic, and a few seconds of quiet.
Controls
| Move | W A S D, or the arrow keys |
|---|---|
| Aim | Mouse |
| Fire | Hold the left button |
| Reload / clear jam | R |
| Crouch | Ctrl or C |
| Run | Shift |
| Pause | Esc |
A word on the history
The gun in your hands is built from the Society’s plate of the Fusil Mitrailleur Mle 1915 CSRG, measured from a photograph of a real one: the half-moon magazine, the long tubular receiver the barrel recoils inside, the vented barrel jacket, the turned wooden knob grip and the bipod. Its rate of fire and its jamming are drawn from what the weapon actually did.
The men coming at you wear what German infantry wore from 1916: the Stahlhelm, field-grey tunics, jackboots or puttees, and the Gewehr 98. The armoured sentries are real too — the Sappenpanzer was issued to sentries and machine-gun crews. Everything else is arcade invention, and no disrespect is meant to the men on either side of the wire.