History Investigation: Trench Warfare

In August 1914 the First World War was underway and recruitment was continuing well. A large number of excited and optimistic men were recruited. The young men thought that the war would be over by Christmas and that they would be back home soon with their families hoping to be regarded as heroes. However after a few months of the war beginning recruitment was nearly at a stand-still, the men that had not joined up were becoming aware of the conditions that they were likely to face in the trenches and this made joining the army less appealing. In this investigation I hope to demonstrate just how poor the conditions in the trenches were for the soldiers.

Daily life was monotonous and often very dull. After breakfast the boring, daily routine went on. An officer would appear with a list of details which were the soldiers’ duties for the day. Weapon cleaning and uniform inspection was normally the first priority. This would soon be followed by trench maintenance which consisted of construction and repair of trench defences. The men would then be required to remove the dead carcasses and wounded to prevent the rats feeding off them. The transfer of supplies, food rations and new equipment, from the rear, went on without end. The observation of enemy activity and movement was required to spot when the next attack or “push” could be successful. Barbed wire defences were commonly broken apart by shelling and therefore needed to be repaired. Often the men would spend a lot of time delousing their uniforms. Here is a quote from T.Howarth 1976 talking about his daily routine;

“It was not long to wait before a soldier appeared with details of the solders duties for the day. Weapon cleaning and inspection, always an important task, would soon be followed with pick and shovel work.”

I believe that the extremely unpleasant nature of some tasks and the menial nature of others would have made life in the trenches an exceptionally unpleasant experience and it is not difficult to understand why recruitment became difficult.

The soldiers faced terrifying and horrific ordeals which would make any man petrified and scared. A soldier on the front line would have had to face many dangers such as, constant bombardment of enemy artillery, poisonous gas attacks and enemy snipers positioned around the trenches. The snipers were sometimes hidden in trees these provided great vantage points and they would be able to pick off any unfortunate soldier who might reveal too much of their head for an instant. If a soldier, advancing through “No Man’s Land”, got past all of these hazards, then the machine gun fire would soon cut him down before he could get any opportunity to use his bayonet. Most of the deaths in the Great War were due to machine gun fire across “No Man’s Land”. Here is a quote from Robert Graves who describes his first encounter with a sniper;