Trench Warfare
Everyday life in the trenches.
Many of the soldiers who served in the trenches in the First World War were not much older than people in a modern sixth form. None had experienced anything like it before, and a large number of men kept diaries or accounts of their life at the front. Some of the accounts have been made into books and films which tell us about conditions on the Western Front. We can also read the diaries themselves and can look at old photographs.
One of the worst problems of living
in a trench was the weather, the heat in the summer and the cold and wet
in the winter.
In winter, deep mud was everywhere, and great numbers of rats
lived off empty bully beef tins and dead bodies. It was not possible to
bring back all the dead and wounded: so we are able to bring in the wounded
who do not lie too far off But many have long to wait and we listen to
them dying. For one we searched for two days in vain
Poor living conditions gave rise to health problems apart from
wounds caused by gunfire and gas. The noise of the heavy guns was go great
that many men suffered from some degree of deafness. A nervous condition
called shell-shock was common, caused by living in an almost constant state
of tension. The result was a trembling of the limbs or the whole body,
and stammering. Many soldiers realised that the experience of war would
change them completely One wrote: ... if we go back home we will be broken,
worn out, rootless, without hope. Men will not understand us.
On Christmas Dav 1914, the first of the war, some troops from, both sides made an unofficial peace. A football match was played, presents were exchanged and carols sung. The men were forbidden to let it happen again, and it did not. As the war dragged on, bitterness between the two sides increased to a point where accounts like this could be written:
On Christmas Eve we were told not to fraternize with the Germans. For my friends and me 'we were in no mood for any joviality with the enemy. Since the Batte of Loos we hated their bloody guts. Christmas Day: no parcels, no letters. Short, rations -plus a few raisins covered in hairs from inside a sandbag. That night we saw a patrol of jerries laying wire ... Snowy and I took a Vickers (machine gun) ... a hail of bullets and the ghostlike figures fell. The ground was raked to finish off anv who were feigning death. Goodwill to all men meant nothing to us then.
G. Coppard.
Click here to read a letter which
one young soldier sent home to his mother. It shows how the officers and
men were suffering from terribly wet conditions.