Trench life

Trench Life
As no one expected the war to last as long as it did, the first trenches were hurriedly made. They were holes in the ground dug by soldiers to protect themselves from the enemy. These constructions were hastily made and often flooded and collapsed. As the front line movement began to slow down these trenches became deeper and more sophisticated.
Trench construction was difficult. It took nearly six hours for 450 men to construct 250 metres of trenches. After the initial trenches were built the soldiers would have to add other materials. These included: barbed wire, board walks and sand bags. The British used three methods of constructing trenches. These were: entrenching, sapping and tunnelling. Entrenching is the simplest and most efficient method. Entrenching was where you would stand above ground and dig downwards. Although it was efficient it left men exposed to the enemy. The second method the British used was sapping. Sapping involved digging at two ends of the trench inwards. The final method the British used was tunnelling which was like sapping but soldiers left ground overhead that was removed later.
Each trench was generally about two metres deep and two meters wide. The trenches were never built in straight lines. Normally the trenches zigzagged. This layout prevented enemy troops from being able to infiltrate and fire along the length of the trench. It also helped prevent gas attacks from spreading down the trench lines.
Armies typically built three lines of trenches. The first trench, also known as the front line, was the trench closest to No Man’s Land (the territory controlled by neither side of a battle.) and the most dangerous. The front line was connected to communication trenches. The communication trenches were used to move supplies, equipment and men forward without being exposed to the enemy fire. The second line which was usually about 75 metres back, was the support trench. This line of trenches was a sort of back up for the front line. For example if the front line was occupied by the enemy the troops would retreat to the support trench. Finally the third trench was around about 300 metres away from the front line and contained supplies and reserve troops. If the first two trenches were occupied the reserve troops would group together and start a counter-attack.
The trenches in world war one were a horrible place to be. They were extremely unhygienic. Pests roamed free throughout all the trenches. Men could not wash themselves in the trenches. They had limited access to running water and often didn’t have the time to think about personal hygiene. The toilets in the trenches were usually just large buckets in a side trench. Even though the toilets were there some soldiers opted out of using them as it left them vulnerable to attacks from the enemy troops.

Instead the soldiers would relieve themselves where they were. As a result of this dysentery was a common illness in the trenches.
Death was a daily occurrence in the war and dead bodies littered the trench. Often burials did not happen at all for the dead. This was because the soldiers didn’t have time to bury their many dead comrades. Bodies would lie in No Man’s Land for long periods of time and even when the front lines moved forward, these bodies were sometimes not buried and were often unrecognisable. Soldiers would bury their known companions first. They would then bury their fellow countrymen. They rarely buried the enemy but if they did it would be last. On some battlefields, bodies were not buried until after the war.
In the cramped trenches rodents and pests thrived. The worst were the rodents. Rats would eat human remains and grew to massive sizes, some as big as domestic cats. The rats would sometimes eat the rations of soldiers and if the soldier was wounded sometimes they would nibble at the soldiers themselves. The rats were a terrible problem. One pair of rats can produce as much as 880 offspring a year and before soon the trenches were crawling with millions of them.
Another pest of the trenches was lice. Lice are parasites that are extremely hard to get rid of. They bred in the soldiers uniforms and caused the soldiers to itch. Trench fever was a dreaded disease in world war one. Trench fever was caused by a bacterium which the lice spread. They did not discover this until 1918. Trench fever was a painful disease that began as severe pain and a high fever. Many soldiers succumbed to the disease and only twelve weeks away from the trenches would cure it.
Another terrible aspect of the trenches was the weather conditions. Most trenches were muddy, cold and overall depressing. Many soldiers simply died from exposure to the cold, as the temperature within a trench was often below zero in the winter. Soldiers would lose fingers and toes to frostbite. Trenches were often filled with rain and sometimes the trenches would fill up with water up to the soldier’s waists. This water submersion caused a terrible fungal infection called ‘Trench foot’. The feet of soldiers with ‘trench foot’ would turn gangrene and often needed to be amputated. As conditions improved, ‘trench foot became less frequent, however some cases continued. Good socks and boots were an essential part of a soldier’s equipment.
Luckily, troops were not expected to serve entirely in the front line. They would rotate between the three lines of trenches. They would then spend a short period in rest before beginning the cycle again. The time spent in each line of trenches varied from time to time. In busier times of the war, soldiers would spend far longer in the front line than usual and less in rest. In a year only around two months would be spent at rest.

A day in the trenches would begin with the Stand-to-Arms. This was practised by both sides on the Western Front. Before dawn, the soldiers would be woken up by their commanding officers. They would then climb onto the firestep to guard against raids by the other side. Afterwards, British troops would fire in front of them into the early morning mist to ensure their safety.
After this the soldiers would clean their rifles. Officers inspected the rifles and then breakfast would be served. In quieter times of the war, the two sides would have a ‘breakfast truce’ in which breakfast could be eaten in peace.
After breakfast the men’s uniform would be inspected and then they would be assigned duties. These may include repairing duckboards, refilling sandbags and draining trenches using pumping equipment.
At dusk, stand-to-arms was repeated again as it was thought that enemies launched surprise attacks at dusk and dawn. After that, supply and maintenance duties were undertaken, such as the fetching of rations and water, or the patrol of No Man’s Land. Some soldiers were put on sentry duty: standing on the fire step and observing the enemy. At night time, the army would sometimes rotate their troops. This could take several hours.
Food was another horrible thing in the First World War. The soldiers had very little variety in food. The food they had mostly came in tins or cans. If a soldier was lucky they might get a bottle of rum or they might receive a food packet from the Red Cross. However most of the time, soldiers had to eat stale crackers and salted meat (corned beef).
For most of the troops not serving on the front line, boredom was a common problem. Sometimes the soldiers had lots of chores to do like filling sandbags, mending barbed wires and rebuilding trenches. They often didn’t sleep because if you were caught asleep by your commanding officer, you would be severely punished. As a result of this sleep deprivation was common. The soldiers had to be on the constant lookout for bombardments. Many soldiers also had a bit of leisure time, in which they could play cards and read and write letters to or from home.
Letters were critical to some soldiers. Receiving and writing letters helped keep the soldiers sane and gave them hope of returning home to their families. Every week an average of 12.5 million letters were sent to soldiers by family, friends and girlfriends. In letters some soldiers would try to hide the horrors of the trenches. However for others the horror of the trenches was their inspiration and some soldiers wrote stories and poems in the trenches. These accounts became essential for our understanding of World War One today. One of the most famous poems of World War One was In Flanders Fields; there is a copy of this poem below.

In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The poem ‘In Flanders’s Fields’ was written by Major John McCrae in May 1915. Lieutenant Alexis Helmer was killed on 2nd May, 1915 in a gun position near Ypres. An exploding German artillery shell landed near him. He was serving in the same Canadian artillery unit as McCrae and they were friends. As the brigade doctor, McCrae was asked to conduct the curial service for his friend. It is believed that after the service, John McCrae sat down and began the draft of his famous poem.

If you were a soldier in world war one here are some of the traumas you may have endured in the trenches.
Sanitary conditions of the trenches were poor and many soldiers became ill. There were some illnesses that were unique to trench warfare such as Trench Foot, Trench Mouth and Trench Fever. Soldiers also became infected with other diseases like dysentery, typhus and cholera these were caused by the poor conditions endured by the soldiers. Despite the stories of gas attacks and gunfire, illness was the number one killer of soldiers during the First World War.
It was extremely unlikely that any soldier that served on the front line would survive the war without being injured. Some soldiers received wounds which were not serious enough to kill them but were serious enough to send them home. At the time of the war medical services were quite basic and many lifesaving antibiotics had not been discovered. As well as the physical harm of war, soldiers often had to deal with psychological damage as well. Soldiers who faced constant bombardment would suffer ‘shell shock’. This is now recognised as post-traumatic stress disorder. The symptoms of shell shock included fatigue, irritability, headaches and lack of concentration. All of this eventually lead to mental breakdowns and the soldiers could not continue in the front lines.