<P> Similar tactics were developed independently in other countries, such as French Army captain André Laffargue (fr) in 1915, and Russian general Aleksei Brusilov in 1916, but these failed to be adopted as any military doctrine . </P> <P> The German stormtrooper methods involved men rushing forward in small groups using whatever cover was available and laying down covering fire for other groups in the same unit as they moved forward . The new tactics, intended to achieve surprise by disrupting entrenched enemy positions, aimed to bypass strongpoints and to attack the weakest parts of an enemy's line . Additionally, they acknowledged the futility of managing a grand detailed plan of operations from afar, opting instead for junior officers on the spot to exercise initiative . </P> <P> The Germans employed and improved infiltration tactics in a series of smaller to larger battles, each increasingly successful, leading up to the Battle of Caporetto against the Italians in 1917, and finally the massive German Spring Offensive in 1918 against the British and French . German infiltration tactics are sometimes called "Hutier tactics" by others, after Oskar von Hutier, the general leading the German 18th Army, which had the farthest advance in that offensive . After a stunningly rapid advance, the offensive failed to achieve a breakthrough; German forces stalled after outrunning their supply, artillery, and reinforcements, which could not catch up over the shell - torn ground left ruined by Allied attacks in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 . The exhausted German forces were soon pushed back in the Allied Hundred Days Offensive, and the Germans were unable to organise another major offensive before the war's end . In post-war years, other nations did not fully appreciate these German tactical innovations amidst the overall German defeat . </P> <P> Tanks were first introduced by the British as a means to attack enemy trenches, by combining heavy firepower (machine guns or light artillery guns), protection from small - arms fire (armour), and battlefield mobility (tracks). These tanks were designed with rhomboid - shaped tracks to easily crush barbed wire lines and cross trenches . They were first deployed in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme in limited numbers, proving unreliable and ineffective at first, as mechanical and logistical issues overshadowed implementing a coherent tank doctrine, with the additional challenge of traversing ground torn apart by years of shell fire . At the First Battle of Cambrai in 1917, improved tanks in larger numbers demonstrated the potential of tank warfare, though German improvised anti-tank tactics, including using direct fire from field artillery, also proved effective . </P>

Where were the two systems of trenches located