History Investigation: Trench Warfare

The rats and spending most of your time delousing yourself didn’t sound at all pleasant for a young man who would be willing to join the army and therefore put many men off of joining.

As the Germans were the first to decide where to stand fast and dig, they had been able to choose the best places to build their trenches. The possession of the higher ground not only gave the Germans a tactical advantage, but it also forced the British to live in the worst conditions. The trenches were rarely a few feet above sea level and therefore flooded very easily. In some cases the mud would be up at waist height. This made moving across “No Man’s Land” an even greater struggle. As shelling blew large craters in the ground the rain filled them up and eventually the water ran into the trenches. Trench foot was therefore a large problem. Trench foot was an infection of the feet caused by cold, wet and insanitary conditions. Accounts of over 20,000 men were treated with trench foot and in some cases amputation was the only cure. Men were required to change their socks at least twice a day and rub their feet with whale-oil. It was estimated that a battalion at the front would use 10 gallons of whale-oil everyday.

I think making the men endure these weather conditions and without any means of proper sanitary conditions was terrible, many men would probably have still been able to fight instead of having their foot amputated.

Medical facilities consisted of tents with beds jam-packed next to each other. This made the conditions in hospitals appalling with bodies not being disposed of correctly and blood not being cleaned up. The war had about 9 million deaths and 20 million seriously injured. Many of the wounded died of blood loss. Therefore blood transfusions were the most significant medical development and saved many lives. However early attempts at this by British doctors failed because they did not know about the need for blood type matching. The war also produced a rapid development in prosthetics, the making of artificial limbs, and in plastic surgery.

I believe that the poor conditions and the hospital construction type led to many more unnecessary deaths than if the hospitals had been built, maintained and cleaned properly.

It is difficult for me to imagine fully the life that the soldiers had whilst they were in the trenches, but it is very easy to see that their life was a horrific and petrifying ordeal. All of the items discussed above demonstrate a range of conditions from unpleasant to dreadful; the parts which I believe highlight this most was, the everyday threat to life, rotting dead bodies and appalling living conditions. The fact that so many young men fought in these conditions is a testament of their bravery.