St Dunstan’s in a charity in the UK which aims to support and help rehabilitate veterans who have lost their eyesight either partially or completely. You can read more about them at their website here. They don’t get as much publicity as the larger veterans’ charities like the Royal British Legion, but they are a very worthy cause and I support them wholeheartedly.

As of 12th February I have 28 articles on Triond on aspects of the First World War. The flow of fractions of a cent from each view on these articles is slow, but adds up.

Here are links to my articles so far that I’m counting towards this challenge:

A Visit to the WW1 Fortifications at Verdun, parts one, two, three, four, five, six and note on sources

24 Hours in the Trenches – Notes from a Lecture, parts one and two

The Indian Army memorial at Neuve Chapelle, France, parts one, two, three, four, five and six

Scottish Memorials on the First World War Western Front, parts one, two, three, four, five and six

A review of the book ‘The British Expeditionary Force 1914-15′

A review of the book ‘Pill Boxes of the Western Front’

A review of the book ‘The Fortifications of Verdun 1874-1914’

A review of the book ‘Walking Verdun – a Guide to the Battlefield’

A review of the book ‘Scottish Divisions in the World Wars’

The earnings from viewers clicking on these articles and donated so far to St Dunstan’s are:

1 – 30 November 2011: £18.57

1 – 31 December 2011: £14.99 (running total £33.56)

1 – 31 January 2012: £4.09 (running total £37.65)

Please, if you haven’t already done so, help me raise money for British veterans who have lost their sight by clicking on these articles and taking a look.

I set this out in the article here, giving myself the target of raising £50.

Many thanks to all who have read my articles and thus contributed. The grand total for November from these articles is $28.98, or £18.57 converted to UK currency. I donated that sum to St Dunstans online this evening (though they’ll actually get 25% more because as a UK taxpayer I marked the donation for Gift Aid, whereby St Dunstans can claim back the income tax I paid on the sum donated).

£18.57 is well short of the £50 I was aiming for, so I’ve decided to continue setting aside for St Dunstans any income from these articles through December too, along with that from any other First World War articles I add this month.

Again, many thanks to those who have supported me in this endeavour by reading my articles.

This is the final part of a multi-part article. To begin at the first part, click here.

I hope that you have found this series of articles to be informative, and that they have given at least some idea of the complex nature of the forts and defences around Verdun, as well as the hellishness of the ten months of bitter fighting for them in 1916. It is right to remember the sacrifice of the thousands of men who died there, both for their sakes and also to remember the horrors of war thus making it a little less likely that we will resort to it lightly in the future. War is dreadful, and only to be taken up when the alternatives are even worse.

I thought that I should finish with a little note on the sources used in writing these articles and on my credentials. I do not claim to be a historian. All that I know of the First World War is gleaned from reading a good number of relatively popular books rather than diving into the primary sources. But I do like to understand the sites I visit properly and read up on them extensively before and after my visits as well as examining them thoroughly when I do visit, taking copious notes with lots of photographs. I would like to think of myself as a thoughtful and thorough history buff and history tourist, if not a proper historian, bringing my own thoughts to the places I visit and giving the reader some idea of the experience.

Information sources used in the creation of this series:

• Book ‘Walking Verdun’ by Christina Holstein – basically a series of walks across the battlefield taking in the main sites and defences, but including excellent explanations which make it a valuable reference in its own right, even for those not visiting the sites.
• Book ‘The Fortifications of Verdun 1874-1917’ by Clayton Donnell – a slim volume that gives a good introductory explanation of the forts and their components.
• Book ‘Major and Mrs Holt’s Battlefield Guide: the Western Front, South’ – the chapter on Verdun is an 88-mile driving tour which they optimistically claim might be squeezed into one long day. As with all Holt’s publications it is an excellent whistle-stop run through the main monuments and memorials (along with a selection of minor ones) at a battlefield, and makes a good starting point for planning what to see. Obviously since I was travelling by bicycle I could not use their tour route as written, but it was still a very useful resource and the more conventional car or bus tourist will undoubtedly find it invaluable.
• French IGN map 3112ET, 1:25000 (4cm to 1km) – a detailed modern map of the whole east bank area north of Verdun, showing paths, forts, monuments and the major bunkers. Invaluable if you intend to explore the area thoroughly.
• My own observations on visiting the sites personally in July 2011 and my photographs taken then.
• Explanatory panels at the main sites – most are in English as well as French but unfortunately many were hard to read due to damp and fungus getting in under the plastic covers and occasionally from vandalism (a sad indication of disrespect for those who fought and died there which I found very annoying).
• Fortiff Sere website, page on Froideterre (French language, but recommended for its photos of the interior of the fort and a clear map of the layout): http://www.fortiffsere.fr/verdun/index_fichiers/Page12509.htm.

The Osprey Fortifications series book on Fort Douaumont is probably worth a read, but unfortunately I cannot comment on it as my book fund has not yet stretched to buying a copy! There are also other books which go into considerable detail about the technicalities of the forts if the reader wants to concentrate on that (I only wanted to know enough to understand how they worked as defensive structures).

Thank you for following me on this journey around the forts of Verdun. I hope to write more articles based on my cycle tour of the Western Front, so look out for them!

This is part six of a multi-part article. To begin at the first part, click here.

Reading more about the fortlet of Froideterre on my return to the UK, one difference between it and the full forts became apparent, namely that Froideterre was a collection of unconnected blockhouses rather than a single structure. Not getting inside the main structures on my visit, I had assumed they were connected by galleries underground but that was not the case. There was the main barrack block with one machine gun turret atop it, an artillery block with the twin 75mm gun turret, a third block with the second machine gun turret on top and the Bourges casemate block. All four were built into the one horseshoe-shaped artificial hillock but the only way to get from one to the other was to exit and cross the courtyard in the open. Only after the Battle of Verdun was over, in 1917, did military engineers have the time to dig tunnels into the bedrock under the four blocks and connect them up.

So what combat did Froideterre see during the ten-month Battle of Verdun, and what was the outcome? The Germans had launched the Verdun offensive in February 1916 and Fort Douaumont, at the centre of the Thiaumont Ridge, had fallen soon after. A road led straight downhill from Douaumont, through Fleury village to the eastern edge of Verdun itself, but it was in plain view of Froideterre, with its observers and gun turret. The choice was therefore either to work west along the ridge to take Froideterre, or to ignore it and concentrate on Fort Vaux at the far east of the defences, the opposite end from Froideterre. That is what the Germans did and through April and May they worked closer to it and then launched an assault on 1st June that took the fort on 7th June after very bitter fighting.

The Germans were now in a position to sweep down towards Verdun on a broader front, from Douaumont in the centre to Vaux in the east, but the thrust from Douaumont would be in view of the guns of Froideterre so it could be ignored no longer. On 23rd June 1916 the Bavarian troops attacked eastwards along the Thiaumont Ridge, taking Thiaumont and then the command posts and troop shelters that will be covered in the next part of this article, before leading units attacked Froideterre itself.

Map 2: June 1916 attacks on Forts Vaux, Thiaumont and Froideterre (map by Bruce Officer)

The Bavarians expected Froideterre to be battered almost helpless but although one machine gun turret was jammed the other was working as was the artillery turret (firing canister shot – shell cases full of steel balls which effectively turned an artillery piece into a giant shotgun for close defence). The Germans got into the courtyard but were machine gunned and beat a hurried retreat up onto the top of the fort. There they were still under fire but could take cover in the shell craters atop the fort and started to throw grenades into the few holes that their bombardment in the days before had blasted through the earth and concrete roofs into the rooms of the fort below.

After one particular grenade, a cloud of thick smoke started to pour out from inside the fort. The grenade had set off a store of signalling rockets which threatened to create a fire. Knowing they would be blown to smithereens too if fire reached the main magazine, the Germans evacuated the top of the fort while the French rushed to put the fire out. But during the confusion they also managed to get the second machine gun turret working again so by the time the danger was over a renewed German attack was met by a hail of fire and repulsed.

The German spearhead here had been whittled down to a handful of men but a concerted attack by reinforcements might have taken the fort. The commander of the leading troops, only a lieutenant, sent for more men but by now the French artillery batteries in the valleys further back had recovered from the gas shell attack which had silenced them temporarily and were able to lay down a thick curtain of shellfire to stop German reinforcements getting through. Only 15 men remained of the German lead unit that had attacked the fort, now cut off by shellfire. They tried to get back to their lines after midnight, under cover of darkness, but ran into a French unit and were captured.

Froideterre had held out, and would now be an invaluable observation point to call down fire onto the road through Fleury as the Germans attacked there. It also acted as a front line command post, shelter for weary troops, communications centre and first aid post over the next weeks as the French started to push the Germans back.

This is how the forts around Verdun, and the lesser bunkers, often ended up being used in the fighting – a mix of roles and above all a harbour of relative safety amid the hellish landscape of a First World War battle, places that anchored the defence, supported and sustained the troops fighting in trenches and shell holes in between.

And a final macabre note: because of the fighting it saw, and its later use as a first aid post, a good number of French soldiers were buried under the courtyard of the fort. Whether they were later exhumed and moved to one of the main cemeteries, or whether they lie there still I know not.

That completed our visit to this small but important fort, so we mounted our bicycles again and rolled down to rejoin the road along the Thiaumont Ridge.

To be continued in part seven (still to be written), but for now please jump to the final part, about the sources used in writing these articles.

This is part five of a multi-part article. To begin at the first part, click here.

I had read of the non-rotating armoured observation posts on the forts at Verdun, and that is what the helmet-shaped dome proved to be.

Photo 8: observation dome at Froideterre (photograph by Bruce Officer)

Pockmarked by bullet hits and surrounded by a concrete apron, this armoured observation post peers out across the front of the fort like the helmet of a medieval knight buried almost to his eyes. Within here, a single observer would have looked out to spot approaching enemy, or to direct the fire of the artillery or machine gun turrets. Generally, one observation dome was paired with one armed turret, the two connected by a speaking tube so that the observer could relay instructions.

The view from here is obscured by trees, but one must remember that the hills around Verdun were not nearly so wooded in 1914. The forests here are post-war plantations and when the fort was built the views from it were extensive, across open hillsides and the fields of farms and villages that were destroyed in the war and have never been rebuilt. When one visits Verdun, one has to constantly remind oneself of this, that the fighting was across muddy hills and ravines but with open views that allowed observers from hilltop forts to call down fire on anyone that moved in daylight on the slopes below. Only with a map or a good guide can one really get a feel for how dominating these hilltop positions were.

The map in part two of this series is marked with the main woods that existed in 1914 and from that one can see how commanding the view from here would have been.

The final part of the Froideterre fortlet that we visited was a strange-shaped concrete bunker attached to the west side of the main block.

In appearance this was like two bunkers joined side to side, but one stepped slightly back, both with gun ports for artillery pieces. A spur of concrete jutted out, blocking view from the front of the fort.

Diagram 2: Bourges casemate (diagram by Bruce Officer)

This is one of the ‘Bourges casemates’ that were added to many of the forts during pre-war modernisation. They housed a pair of 75mm guns that could rotate through a 60 degree arc and were aligned to cover gaps between the forts, to their sides. The solid concrete spur jutting from one corner protected the gun ports from shelling by an enemy in front of the fort, and thick steel shutters could close the ports if an enemy assaulted and tried to clamber through or throw grenades in.

Below the main gun floor was a basement with sleeping quarters for the crew and an ammunition store. Above was a pillbox-like structure that was actually an observation post to command the fire of the guns from.

The photos below show views from the outside (facing the gun ports) and inside (note that entering the block is not recommended due to structural damage during shelling and there are warning notices).

Photo 9: view of the Bourges casemate at Froideterre (photograph by author’s companion on the trip

Photo 10: interior of the Bourges casemate (photograph by Bruce Officer)

In the photograph above one can see the curved rails in the floor on which the gun pivoted. The rail attached for the ceiling is for a hoist to lift away a damaged gun barrel and bring in a new one.

Continued in part six.

This is part four of a multi-part article. To begin at the first part, click here.

My companion and I didn’t pause long to take in the view from the top of the fort – those fascinating-looking turrets beckoned.

Photo 5: Froideterre twin 75mm gun turret (photograph by Bruce Officer)

The first turret was maybe 8 feet across, with two stubby gun barrels barely poking out. From the way the mushroom-shaped cap matched the ring around the base it was obvious that it could be lowered so that all that would show would be the domed top. Further reading on returning home revealed some interesting facts. It was made of steel 9 to 12 inches thick (thickest on the top) and could withstand all but the heaviest hits. The guns within could fire out to almost 5km (just over 3 miles). The visible turret is only the top of a two-storey structure going down into one of the blocks of the fort, with a hand-cranked lift to carry ammunition up to the platform where the gun crew stood and a massive counterweight that balanced the mass of the turret so that it could be raised or lowered by a single man operating a hand crank.

Just how proof against hits the turret was became obvious when we walked around it and saw the gouges in the steel, none actually penetrating all the way through (though on doing further research I discovered these actually dated from a later war, from June 1940 when the fort briefly faced German invaders once more).

Photo 6: damage to main turret at Froideterre (photograph by Bruce Officer)

One could almost put one’s fist in these shell hits but yet they hadn’t penetrated the armour!

Next we moved on to one of the smaller turrets, a machine gun turret. From a distance this looked crude, tinny almost, but the armour is actually almost as thick as the main turret. The two vertical slits are for a pair of machine guns, the horizontal ones for the crew to look out of. The reason for having two machine guns was less for the increased firepower and more that since machine guns firing continuously will overheat. Having two in a turret allowed one to fire while the other cooled down. Again, this turret could rotate and could be lowered when not needed, and as before it is only the top of a tall and complex mechanism below.

Photo 7: machine gun turret at Froideterre (photograph by Bruce Officer)

It seemed surprising to me at the time that two pairs of machine guns would be considered enough to protect even a small fort like this from direct assault by enemy infantry, but on reflection I remembered that a machine gun can pin down large numbers of enemy unless the crew are themselves forced to duck down. Safe within armoured turrets, these machine gun crews would be able to keep up a withering fire regardless of whether they were being shot back at.

Having examined the armed turrets that just left the strange helmet-shaped dome, so we next walked over to that.

Continued in part five.

This is part three of a multi-part article. To begin at the first part, click here.

Continuing along the Thiaumont Ridge from the MF 3 battery site, my companion and I came to a turn off signed for Froideterre. By the junction we could also see a wall and entrance dug into the side of the hill, and on the other side of the road some intriguing metal cones on top of what looked like wells. Which to visit first? We chose to take the side road up to the fortlet of Froideterre, hoping that visiting it might put the other structures into context.

When you arrive at the infantry fortlet of Froidterre you find yourself in a courtyard (now the car park) facing a wall of concrete topped with earth and grass, with metal domes peeking out above.

Although it is an unmanned site and one cannot get inside, there is an explanatory panel at the entrance to the car park with a plan of the fort and the area around it. What we were looking at was the interior of the fort, the concrete wall being one face of the largest of a line of four bunkers, the face pointing away from the enemy, the face the garrison entered by.

Photo 3: interior face of the main blocks at Froideterre (photograph by Bruce Officer)

As you can see from this photograph, at the end of the barrack block the earth and grass topping slopes down into the courtyard allowing one to easily get up onto the top.

So we did.

From up on top one can better understand how the fort worked as a defensive (and offensive) structure. We could see several turrets and a small dome poking up through the earth above the blocks of the main structure below, and each surrounded by concrete aprons. Standing with our backs to the courtyard, the earth topping of the fort sloped gently downhill towards what seemed to be a rather smoothed-out ditch.

Photo 4: view sideways along the fort from the top (photograph by Bruce Officer)

The larger turret housed two 75mm guns, the offensive armament of the fortlet (75mm, or 3 inches, being the diameter of the shells they fired). The smaller turrets were each for two machine guns, the defensive armament for repelling any attempts to storm the fort. An attacker coming from the north or northwest (the expected direction of attack) would not have seen the concrete main structure of the fort at all, just a low hillock topped by the turrets and surrounded by barbed wire, a ditch with a sturdy iron fence, and more barbed wire. All that earth of the front slope of the fort protected the concrete living quarters from shells as much as the concrete itself did. And that the fort had suffered heavy bombardment indeed was obvious from the dents of shell craters in the grass all over the top of the fort.

Continued in part four.

Setting off northwards one morning from the city of Verdun, along the east bank of the River Meuse, my companion and I soon entered the tree-clad hills that loom over the city, and climbed onto the Thiaumont Ridge that slopes eastwards in the direction of Fort Douaumont, the jewel of the Verdun defences. Almost as soon as we were amongst the trees we began to see the strongpoints that were such a feature of the Battle of Verdun: corners of earthworks and blocks of battered concrete peeking out through the trees and the gloom of a drizzly July day. For as well as the 12 major forts built in the hills here, there were hundreds of bunkers, troop shelters, command posts and ammunition magazines, the remains of which still lie silent within the forest that was planted after the war.

Photo 1: a command post bunker in the trees (photograph by Bruce Officer)

Verdun is a name that echoes in the French psyche the way that the Somme and Passchendaele do in the British. It was here in 1916 that the Germans launched a massive attack that began ten months of continuous fighting for these hills and the fortifications on and around them. The toll of dead and wounded easily equalled that on the Somme as the French poured in more and more units to hold the hills at all costs and the Germans likewise to take them. That the French did hold out at Verdun is one of their key contributions to the eventual Allied victory, and Verdun has become a symbol of French tenacity.

The city of Verdun sits on the northwards-flowing River Meuse, where the old main road cuts across the narrow river valley on its journey eastwards from Paris to Metz. It has been a strategic location for centuries and has endured many sieges, including one by Attila the Hun in AD 450. With the loss of the French border city of Metz to the Germans in the war of 1870, Verdun became a border city again and its defences had to be modernised. Modern long range artillery meant that it was now pointless to try to hold the edge of the city itself, so the new defences were created in the hills to the north and the east.

At first these defences consisted of a handful of forts and fortlets on the hilltops and ridges: heavy masonry barrack block complexes surrounded by broad ditches and covered with earth, topped with thick earth parapets behind which wheeled artillery pieces and riflemen would stand to defend the forts. It was assumed that the gaps between the forts would be protected by units of the mobile field army, throwing up earthworks and digging trenches as needed. As artillery grew in destructive power in the last decades of the 19th century the forts were improved – masonry was replaced with concrete and guns behind open ramparts on fort tops were replaced with fewer rotating steel-armoured artillery turrets, the extra guns being dispersed into batteries between the forts. The positions infantry would occupy between the forts were bolstered with concrete command posts and concrete shelters for troops to sit out bombardments in.

And on the route we cycled, it would be one of those smaller ‘interval’ positions we would encounter first.

Continued in part two.

This is part two of a multi-part article. To begin at the first part, click here.

In the first part I explained how the hills to the north of Verdun are full of First World War defences, from the large forts to smaller fortlets, bunkers and shelters. It was those smaller fortifications my companion and I encountered first as we cycled up the road along the Thiaumont Ridge.

Slogging up the incline we spotted some earth banks and glimpses of concrete through the trees. A hundred yards or so later there was a sign pointing up a path that gave away what it was we had seen, “Batteries et Magasins MF 3” – an outlying artillery battery position and ammunition magazine number 3 for the Froideterre fortlet.

The map below shows the layout of the major defences in the hills above Verdun, with the route we cycled in red and battery MF3 highlighted in red.

Map 1: fortifications in the hills above Verdun, with first part of cycle route in red (map by Bruce Officer)

At first glance it appeared a confusion of concrete blocks partly covered by earth.

Photo 2: interval artillery battery position (photograph by Bruce Officer)

Getting closer, we saw it was a series of four bays, separated by earth banks with concrete structures under them. If this was an artillery battery position as the sign said, then it seemed clear that the bays were where guns sat and the concrete bunkers between them were either crew shelters or ammunition stores. A bit of research on returning home showed that to be the case, as the plan below for a typical 4-gun battery position shows.

Diagram 1: concrete and earth 4-gun battery position of type built at Verdun before the war (diagram by Bruce Officer)

These batteries had no overhead cover. Their main protection was afforded by being sited behind a ridge, out of direct sight of the enemy. The earth banks would offer some protection against near misses or limit the damage from a direct hit to one single gun and its crew. The concrete shelters provided somewhere for the crews to sit out bombardments, men being much more vulnerable to shrapnel and fragments than the guns themselves were.

The majority of the artillery in the defences around Verdun would have been assigned to one of these open battery sites, the cost of steel gun turrets being so high that the forts themselves only had one or two gun turrets apiece.

Between the battery position itself and the road was a very flat path, running along the contour of the hill. This turned out to be the line of an old narrow-gauge railway. These light railways, carrying small engines and wagons, linked the main defensive sites to feed the voracious appetite for shells of the artillery.

These pre-war concrete and earth batteries weren’t the only artillery positions, however, as artillery units would dig gun pits wherever they had to deploy, and improvise whatever cover and protection they could.

Continued in part three.

Having a real interest in the First World War, I try to attend the monthly talks organised locally by the Western Front Association, of which I’m a member. One of the most fascinating recently has been the talk on life in the trenches, entitled “24 Hours in the Trenches,” by Major John Cotterill. In these two articles I am trying to get across the key points that I took away from that excellent lecture. Note that any mistakes are most likely from my own misunderstandings rather than errors by the lecturer.

This is part two of a two-part article. For part one, please click here.

Setting aside the major battles and bombardments, a soldier’s time in the trenches was one of routine, albeit routine that could at any moment end in sudden death from sporadic shelling or a sniper’s bullet. A soldier would spend his time split between sentry duty, repairing the trench from within, repairs outside the trench such as to the belts of barbed wire in front of the trenches (a night-time job as to be spotted outside the trench in daytime was usually fatal), maintaining his kit and weapon, washing and shaving as far as the limited water allowed, eating, and catching some sleep if the situation and noise allowed (it wasn’t uncommon to go for days without sleep).

During the night, a soldier might occasionally also have to take part in a raid on the enemy trenches. These could involve anything from a couple of men creeping forward to examine the state of the enemy barbed wire to a hundred men storming a section of enemy trench. The aim was to capture prisoners for intelligence, get an idea of the layout of the enemy defences and also to keep the enemy on the defensive.

NCOs (non-commissioned officers, i.e. corporals and sergeants) had to keep an eye on the state of their men, as did officers (small unit officers such as platoon and company commanders would be living the trenches with their unit). There was sentry duty to allocate and officers would do the round of their sentry posts to check the men were alert. Officers also had a significant amount of paperwork, even in the front line, such as daily reports of strength, any casualties or sick, assessments of enemy activity, etc.

During the day, maybe one tenth of the men in the front line would be on sentry duty at any one time. At night it could be as high as one quarter as the risk of raids was higher and it was harder to see. Stretches on sentry duty might be around two hours to stop fatigue or boredom reducing their effectiveness.

French trench sentry using periscope, 1915 (Biblioteque Nationale de France collection, public domain)

Dawn and dusk were considered especially likely times for an enemy attack and so the entire unit would stand to on the fire step of the trench. This had the added advantage of giving officers a chance to check the state of all their men.  The dusk stand-to allowed men to familiarise themselves with what was in front of their trench as the light faded, reducing the chance that a tree stump or a corpse in no-man’s-land would cause a jittery sentry to sound the alarm as it might if first spotted in full darkness.

There was often a daily foot inspection, as damp trench floors and damp boots led to foot rot which could get serious.

During quiet periods, the front line was held relatively thinly, with the majority of troops in the second line or the reserve line even further back, or out of the trenches altogether in hutted camps a few miles back. Having too many men in the front line just meant more casualties from snipers and sporadic shelling. This meant a platoon having to cover a reasonable frontage, and with the zig-zag trenches preventing line of sight between trench bays men would often be alone or in twos or threes. Each man therefore had to know what to do in the different circumstances he might find himself in. This was achieved by defining standing orders called ‘actions on’ i.e. the action to be taken on seeing an enemy working party, on smelling poison gas, etc.

Another consequence of holding the front line relatively thinly was that units could be rotated in and out of front line duty quite frequently. A platoon would typically only spend three or four days in the front line trench before going back to second or third lines or to hutted billets, though this could be extended considerably during the weeks-long battles of the Western Front, when reserves were being committed to battle and those on trench garrison duty had to stick it out. But outside of those times, a soldier might spend only a quarter of his time in the front line, in the most immediate danger. However periods in second and third lines were still dangerous since men were at risk from shelling, if not from snipers or raids.

Rotating units in and out of the front line so frequently meant it became well practised. Changeovers were done at night to minimise the chance of the enemy detecting it and calling down artillery fire on the trenches at their most crowded. Officers and some NCOs would go forward beforehand, in daylight, to familiarise themselves with the positions. After dark, at the designated handover time, the old garrison would stand to on the fire step whilst the new unit came up the communications trenches and filed in behind them on the front line. On command, the men would swap places, the old garrison stepping down and filing away as the new unit stepped up onto the fire step. During all this, the incoming sergeant in charge of stores was expected to check and sign for those items that stayed in the trench (and there were many), though in the dark and in the crowd of changeover it hardly seems likely that was rigorous. Once the old unit had moved off and the moment of worst vulnerability was over, normal sentry duties would be assigned and things would return to the routine of trench life.

This lecture was definitely one of the most interesting I have attended at the Western Front Association and made me want to learn more about the details of what life in the trenches was like, rather than the broad brush picture painted in so many accounts.