The mindset was different in those days. I've heard it said that to survive -- without going to pieces mentally -- you had to consider yourself already dead from the time you entered the ranks. Merely surviving a battle was an unexpected bonus.
This attitude persisted through WW1. That's why people were willing to go "over the top" into certain death. The meaningless slaughter of WW1 finally discredited that thinking. By the time of WW2, the generals -- at least of the Western powers -- were trying to find ways to minimize casualties. The mindless waste of lives was not accepted any more.
Well the mind set was different, but more from the top ranks on down, and there was a lot of ignorance....
See the last known "war" for the Americans was the Napoleonic Wars which were just "reading" not experience, and the relatively small Mexican American War. BOTH were still with smoothbores. So it's the same old story as was the AWI, aka the "Revolution". You might be unlucky and get hit, but most of the men in your company would not be shot during a battle, and the bayonet charge would decide the outcome. Same ****, different uniforms.
Then they gave everybody a rifled musket. Nobody had any idea of what that would really do in large numbers. Nobody. So you get the
1st Battle of Bull Run and the men are in three waves, spaced at proper smoothbore musket distance...100 yards or perhaps less, apart.. The bullets that don't hit the men in the chest in the first wave, hit the men in the thighs in the second wave, and those that have still missed continue on, drop into or even bounce and hit the men in the third wave in the shins. The carnage was totally unexpected. They still tried to deal with the battles with massed bayonet charges.
Remember this as it happens again....
Chain shot, or bar shot, really wasn't employed against infantry. Those were anti-ship projectiles. At the ACW you had solid shot or explosive shells, and cannister or grape. Get too close to artillery (and they did) and if you didn't knock out the crews, since the previous wars had used a lot smaller, more mobile artillery in smaller numbers (except Napoleon but that was only in books for the Americans), but now they were facing "batteries" of multiple guns.... too close and your infantry got hit with cannister or grape. and often iron not lead balls so it carried a bit farther than an old style musket volley or the old style canister. (see Gettysburg day 3)
Same thing with WWI and "over the top". The Europeans didn't learn from the Crimean War, and the Boer War for the British was vs. guerillas, not a standing, national army. So by WWI the machine gun had been introduced in large numbers. Thinking didn't change. The French, for Pete's sake, were still wearing Kepi's and planning on massed bayonet charges. At least the British were going to charge at "extended open order", but remember the British professional army had been dealing with colonial uprisings under Queen Victoria for almost 60 years when WWI hit. So no real idea of what was going to happen.
They did have an idea from the first two years of WWI, that up against machine guns straight on was stupid, but thought they could handle them.
Casualties had been bad but not staggering up until July 1916.
So..., on June 25th, 1916 the British artillery started a 7 day pounding of the German lines at a place called the
Somme. The idea was to kill off the Germans in the trenches, and cut the barbed wire to bits....Tommy and his SMLE rifle with a fixed bayonet would dash across a couple hundred yards of "no man's land" with huge gaps in the wires from the shelling, and only a few if any Germans left alive in the trenches. Once into the German trenches, the Brits would move using the German trench system to the rear trench, where they'd find more dead Germans. Casualties would be moderate to light...for the Brits.
What the Brits didn't understand is that the Germans had implemented heavy artillery in large numbers first. They knew what the guns would do, SO..., they also knew how to construct artillery proof bunkers in their trenches where their soldiers would wait out the barrage....even for 7 days.
The Hun wasn't supposed to be able to hide out for that many days, and so those that did would have to come out to get food and water from the rear, as the barrage continued, and that would get them killed too.
On July 1st, 1916, the Brits went "over the top" as the artillery barrage lifted. They expected a tough but manageable day. The Germans heard the artillery lift, and out from each bunker went the unlucky guy picked to be the first guy out to "check" and when he saw the advancing line of infantry, he alerted the rest. Out came the machine guns, because....It's one thing to dash across 300 yards of football fields, and quite another to cross through something akin to the surface of the moon, with wire obstacles not quite as destroyed as the British and thought would be the result. German machine guns cut the Tommies to pieces.
As the wounded and dying made it back to British lines, they clogged the connecting trenches trying to make it back to medical aid. The additional waves of infantry in the second trenches could not move up to the front trench under cover, So (remember 1st Bull Run) they had to go out over the ground between the front trench and their trench, and the 8mm Mauser bullets being fired at the first wave, carried beyond, and slammed into the lads moving forward to the forward British trenches. Add to that very slow communication, and by the time the nature of the disaster was known, it was too late to stop it.
60,000 men died in the first day of that battle. It was the worst day in the history of the British Army, ever, and still is.
Moral of the story.....don't expect to fight the next war as you fought the last war.
LD