During WWI many new weapons and new ways of fighting developed. Most of the weapons were developed because of the industrial revolution.

Before WWI most warfare took place in open areas with soldiers lined up in a straight line.  WWI was the first modern ware. With the development of more accurate and longer ranged weapons soldiers had to have ways to defend themselves. This is how trench warfare came about.

Around the beginning of the war German forces tried to quickly knock France out of the war, in attempt to quickly win the war.   Instead, they started a totally new kind of warfare.  During the Battle of the Marne, French, British and German armies got into a stalemate. Where neither side could gain any ground. So instead of retreating the soldiers dug down into the Earth, starting trench warfare.  The trenches along the western front were around 300

In WW1 between 1914 to 1918. 306 British and Commonwealth soldiers were shot for desertion! This is my tribute to these poor unfortunate shell shocked men. My great grandfather was lucky enough to survive 4 years in the trenches in France.

“Taffy you awake?”

“Could hardly sleep through this bloody shelling now can I!”

Corporal Reid continued talking to his Captain,

“Taffy my mate in Red section down the way says were going over the top tomorrow, tell me its not true!”

Captain Thomas Telford spoke quietly as a Rat ran over his muddy boots,

“Yes we go over the top at 7.30 am sharp!”

The private began shaking uncontrollably he dropped his tin cup into the deep sodden mud and said,

“Taffy we lost half the platoon last time and were still here in this God forsaken shit hole!”

As the words left the private’s lips a German shell landed 300 yards further down in the trench! Mud blood and a severed leg burst through the canvas covered aperture to the dug-out! The severed leg landed at the feet of Captain Telford! Taffy lent forward and took the laces off the boot in front of him, he then calmly ducked down and threw the leg into no-mans land. A hail of German machine guns opened up with the movement of the leg landing no mans land!

Without saying another word Captain Telford ducked down and walked to the east and knocked on the wooden frame of the Major’s dug-out and pushed his way into the small mud encrusted space, Captain Telford said,

“Major sorry to disturb you may I talk to you?”

Major St-Smithe replied,

“Go ahead Captain what is it?”

Captain Telford gathered his composure then said,

“Its about tomorrow sir the big push. We lost half our men last time we tried to break out from the Somme. Most of our soldiers have never seen action Sir their scared stiff. Corporal Reid is at breaking point, he bunks with me. I just left him; he is in tears and shaking. A bloody severed leg just burst into our dug-out! And do you know what I did? I took the bloody laces off the boot as mine are worn out! I’m so hardened to this hell on Earth I stole the dead mans boot laces!”

Major St-Smithe stood up and walked towards the red faced Captain and said,

“Captain in exactly one hour and six minutes you are going to lead your section over the top and walk slowly towards the German lines! Understood? And besides our artillery has been softening up the German lines for days”

Captain Telford looked at the bloody boot laces in his hand then said,

“With all due respect Major I’ve been here in this very same trench for two years. I’ve Captained my men in three assaults on the German lines. The shelling makes no difference they have concrete dug-outs way deeper than ours I’ve seen them in a captured trench back in 1915”

The Major calmly put his left hand onto of his holstered Webley and Scott service revolver and said,

“In one hour and 4 minutes you will take your men over the top and walk towards the enemy lines else I‘ll have you court marshalled and shot for cowardice!”

Captain Telford snapped to attention and saluted the Major and spun on his heels and made his way back to his blood covered dug-out. At the bottom of the trench there was two feet of sticky mud. Rusty bully beef cans and spent .303 shell casings sunk in the viscous revolting mud. The next hour cut into Captain Telford like a surgeons knife!

At 07.25 am Major St-Smithe stepped from his dug-out and put a whistle to his lips. He blew the whistle once and watched as the frightened tired British soldiers walked two steps forward to the makeshift wooden ladders with the exception of Captain Telford’s 12 men! Shaking with anger Major St-Smithe flung open the canvas sheet and saw Captain Telford standing erect next to Corporal Reid! The Major screamed,

“What the bloody hell is this get your men to the ladders now!”

Captain Telford replied,

“Respectfully Major I refuse!”

The major screamed even louder,

“Telford I’ll have you court marshalled and shot for this!”

The Captain replied,

“Once again with respect sir what difference does it make I go up the ladder first and I’m dead! The rest of my section wont make it to the enemy trenches and you know it! Oh and sir I take it you will not be going over the top yourself! How silly of me to even think you would walk to your death! You wont even let us run at the enemy! Its tantamount to suicide you bastard!”

The Major put his hand towards his service revolver. Corporal Reid lost control and grabbed the Webley and Scott from his Captain’s holster and pulled the hammer back and shot the Major square in the chest! Then he put the revolver in his mouth and pulled the trigger! The back of his head blew off! Brains and fragments of skull showered the rear wall of the dug-out.

One week later the twelve man firing squad aimed at the paper disc that was pinned to Captain Telford’s chest. The Lt Major said,

“Squad, ready aim fire!”

At least for Captain Telford the wait for death came mercifully quickly another brave young man was executed for cowardice and attempted desertion.

Lord Banks

Oldest Man in Europe, Last British Male with a Nineteenth-century Birthdate, and Last Man Alive to have Served in the Trenches – the “Last Tommy!”

For ten years before his death, aged 111, Harry was the centre of attention, and received awards, trips to the WW1 battles-sites, an honorary degree, and now, posthumously, we can all read about him on various sites on the internet. 

Had Harry not reached the ripe old age of 100, then 110, and finally 111, no-one would have known about him. No-one, other than his friends and family, would have feted him and given him the rewards that were his due. He did not become famous for the many, many, many things that he did in the 90 or 100 years before the numbers caught up with him, it was only when there was no-one older, no older ex-serviceman, that the sensationalist-seeking media took notice, and brought him into the public realm. 

Have we really become so shallow as humans, that we only notice the very biggest, the very best, the very oldest, to the exclusion of lower numbers, younger, smaller?

As dawn approached large masses of the German army climbed out of their trenches and began approaching their enemy across no-mans land. The approach was aided by their calling out of Merry Christmas in both English and French. The soldiers watching from the relative safety of their own trenches at first thought it was an elaborate trick but on seeing the Germans were all unarmed they too left their trenches and soldiers of the two enemy forces embraced each other in the area of no mans land as opposing armies shook hands and exchanged cigarettes. Further exchanges of rations were conducted as well as the singing jointly of carols and other popular songs of the day.

Some soldiers even managed to organize a football match in the middle of what for months had been a killing zone. The Christmas truce of 1914 occurred just five months after the outbreak of hostilities in Europe and this was one of the last examples of chivalry occurring on the battlefield during warfare. This action was never repeated during the remaining years of the First World War, any further requests by soldiers to repeat such a momentous event were quickly squashed by officers, any hopes of a Christmas ceasefire brought threats of disciplinary action against the perpetrators. It was however proof that in 1914 amidst the hardship suffered by these men that they maintained their humanity amongst the horrors of war.

- The ANZAC’S, very early on the 25th of APRIL 1915, GETTING READY TO GO INTO BATTLE.

- Landed at Gallipoli (turkey)

- Faced Turkish gunfire

- Landed in the wrong spot and had to climb up hill into the Turkish trenches

The Trenches

- They slept/ fought/ lived in the trenches.

- Had little comforts like toilets and heating

- Trenches were very close to enemy trenches

- Dug out in zigzags to make it harder for the Turks to invade

Withdrawal

- Secret withdrawal of all British allied soldiers in December 1925

- Over 10 thousand Anzac’s died during the campaign

-Every year on the 25th of April AUS and NZ remember the troops

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A Fact, Not a Fiction?

In those dark days, Mons was also made famous by another, much darker legend. On a night in November, Captain Yeskes and four of his London Fusiliers went on a patrol in No Man’s Land. Several days later their corpses were found, with teeth marks at the throats. And in the British trenches a weird, blood-curldling howl was heard… the howl of the Hell Hound of Mons.

Afterwards, on the battlefields of the Marne and the Somme, near Verdun and Ypres, patrols that ventured out in the darkness between the trenches, were found with the same telltale marks at their throats, while the howl continued to roam through No Man’s Land. Sentries declared they saw a grey form flashing past the barbed wire. The giant Hound of Hell was running there, silently…

In August 1919, the Evening News of Oklahoma published a story of the Canadian veteran Captain F.J. Newhouse. The Terror of No Man’s Land that was stalking among the corpses and dragged soldiers down to their death, was no apparition of a fear-crazed mind, he said. It was no phantom, no hallucination, no fiction… but a gruesome reality of the Great War. 

Captain Newhouse stated that certain facts had been brought to light, as a result of the recent death of Dr Gottlieb Hochmuller in a Berlin riot. Secret documents were found in his house, which proved the Hell Hound of Mons really existed. The creature had come out of maybe the most repulsive scientific experiment the world had ever known, as a giant hound with the brain of a human madman.

Indeed, Dr Hochmuller had roamed the German hospitals until he found a man gone mad because of his hatred of England. With the sanction of his government, Hochmuller removed the brain of this man and inserted it in a giant Siberian wolfhound. The dog lived, grew rapidly stronger and after careful training was released in No Man’s Land.

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Only an Urban legend, and Nothing More?

Could there be any truth in this monstrous horror tale? The surgical procedure Captain Newhouse described, is quite impossible. And the story reminds us of other tales – what we would call now “urban legends” – of alleged atrocities committed by “the Hun”. Most of these World War One horror tales have been proven to be war propaganda and nothing more.

Theo Paijmans, who wrote for the Fortean Times an interesting article on The Hound of Mons, could find no traces of a Dr Gottlieb Hochmuller and his bizarre medical procedures that remind us of the very fictional experiments of Baron von Frankenstein. The sudden disappearance of the creature also has elements of the various legends concerning demon dogs and hounds from hell.

But, as Paijmans points out, perhaps a giant dog really did haunt the trenches, abandoned by his master, hungry prowling the battlefield. And maybe Agatha Christie had some good reason for choosing Belgium during World War One as the setting for one of her supernatural short stories, titled… The Hound of Death (1933).

Other Great War Articles:

A Poet of the Great War, Wilfred Owen

In Flanders Fields

Phantoms of the Great War

Image by The Library of Virginia via Flickr

The Ghostly Cavalry

Together with a Corporal Barr he went picking up post and rations. They started back to the camp at about three-thirty. It was far from dark. On his right, Wentworth Day saw a fantastic wood of larch and birch, with thin trees, torn and twisted into grotesque shapes by shell blast: “It was a Hans Andersen wood of Arthur Rackham trees through whose sun-reddened trunks we could see cloud-masses lit with a Cuyp-like glow.”

Suddenly, as they splashed through the sunset pools of that deserted road, German cavalry swept out of that “spectral wood”. A dozen or more German Uhlans “in those queer high-topped hats which they had worn in the dead days of 1914″ charged and up the slope to meet them, Wentworth Day saw some French dragoons in their brass cuirasses, sabres upswung, plumes dancing from their helmets. They also charged to meet the Germans with their slender lances… but then the vision passed and there was no clash of mounted men, only the empty land and a thin wood of silver in the setting sun.

“Did you see anything?” Wentworth Day glanced at Corporal Barr, who looked white and uneasy.

“Aye… something mighty queer,” the Corporal said.

They reached camp, oddly shy of talking too much. The next day, at Neuve Eglise, “that skeleton of a village on the spine of the Ravelsberg”, Wentworth Day asked a peasant about the wood.

“Ah! M’sieu, that wood is a very sad wood, you know! It is on the frontier… a wood of dead men! In the wars of Napoleon, in the war of 1870, in this Great War… the cavalry of France and Germany have always met each other by that wood…”

And the man showed Wentworth Day the graves of the cavalry of all these wars in the tiny churchyard…

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The Spectres of Crécy

A Colonel Shepheard, who was a staff colonel during the First World War, told Wentworth Day another strange story. 

He was travelling in a car from Hazebrouck to Wimereux, together with a French captain as interpreter and aide. They dined and slept at Wimereux and the colonel dreamed he was riding the same road again, in the same car and trough the same villages. But this time, the car slowed down and stopped in one of these villages. And there, out of the earth on each side of the road, rose up the hooded, cloaked figures of silent men, thousands of them, and every man was staring fixedly at him – sadly, pitifully, endlessly… Their cloaks were grey, almost luminous, with a fine, silvery bloom on them like moths’ wings. When he touched one, it came off on his fingers in a soft dust…

Slowly, they all sank back into the ground… The next morning at breakfast, Colonel Shepheard told his French aide of his dream. The officer listened to him without saying a word.

“You know the name of that village near where your car stopped?” the French officer asked him when he finished his story. 

Colonel Shepheard described him the village he had seen twice: once in reality, once in his dream. And the French officer nodded: “Sure… It was Crécy indeed!… You have seen in your dream the archers who died on Crécy field in 1346, sir!”

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Back to Report

Wentworth Day also related the true story Major S.E.G. Ponder told him, the Oriental traveller and novelist. Ponder served in World War One as a Regular gunner in a Heavy Battery of the Royal Artillery under a Major Apultree.

On a night in autumn 1916, a Captain “A” and a Lieutenant “B” were ordered to go up the German trenches, so Captain A could show Lieutenant B the field of fire. The parapet and the parados were built mainly of the bodies of dead Germans. For some reason they dead didn’t to decompose there, on the Somme. It had something to do with the soil. They simply looked like alabaster.

The Boches put down a heavy barrage that night and neither A nor B showed up. Ponder wasn’t particularly worried about them as there were several deep dug-outs they could get into.

Next morning, about six – he was having a mug of tea in the mess – Apultree appeared in the door. He was dead white and shaking like a leaf. “I’ve seen B,” he muttered. “But he’s dead!…”

And then, Apultree told Ponder how B had suddenly appeared in the door of his dug-out. “Ah! You’re back to report?” Apultree asked.

“Yes, sir! But only to tell you I was killed last night, sir!”

And indeed, there was a shell splinter at the back of his ear and right trough his head. Apultree saw it clearly, no doubt about that… before B disappeared forever.

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More Great War Stories:

The Angels of Mons

In Flanders’ Fields

A Poet of the Great War: Wilfred Owen

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;

“As a rifle bullet cracked and seemed to pass right between us. “Keep still sir and they can’t spot you.” He said.”

From the dangers the soldiers faced at the frontline it was no wonder why there were so many casualties in the First World War. I think ordering men to go across “No Man’s Land” was pointless as a lot of men were killed and wounded and only a few miles of ground was captured.

The food during the First World War was rationed and very basic. A can of tinned beef, a slice of bread, a cup of tea and if they were lucky some biscuits as well. Food was often supplied in cans. Maconochie contained sliced turnips and carrots in a thin soup. One soldier said;

“Warmed in the tin, Maconochie was edible; cold it was a man killer.”

The British Army tried to hide this food shortage from the enemy. However, when they announced that British soldiers were being supplied with two hot meals a day, they received over 200,000 letters from angry soldiers pointing out the truth of the situation. Men claimed that although the officers were well-fed the men in the trenches were treated appallingly. I believe that for a soldier on the front line to be fighting fit, he would need much more food than that which was actually being offered.

Due to so many men being killed many of them were buried where they fell, also the scraps of food which were thrown away littered the area. This attracted rats. Rats could produce 880 offspring a year and soon it was clear that the place was swarming with them. Lice were another problem in the trenches. They caused frenzied itching but also they carried disease, one of which was know as pyrrexhia or trench fever. Trench fever caused pains in the legs and high fever like symptoms. Although trench fever did not kill it did account for 15% of all cases of sickness in the British army. Many men would put a candle to the seams of their trousers to burst the eggs but this required a lot of practise to master not burning a hole in the trousers. George Choppard talks about his experience with lice in the First World War;

“The things lay in the seams of trousers, in the deep furrows of long thick woolly pants, and seemed impregnable in their deep entrenchments. A lighted candle applied where they were thickest made them pop like Chinese crackers.”

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.

World War 1 started because the Arch Duke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Bosnian called Gavrilo Princip in 1914. Austria-Hungary orders Serbia to take the blame for the murder, Serbia refuses and allies with Russia, Germany and Russia declare war on each other, since Germany is part of the Triple Alliance and Russia is part of the Triple Entente, the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente went to war.

What Was Different About This War?

Before World War 1 the British had not fought anyone that had similar weapons, for example the British invaded Africa and all the people of Africa had to defend themselves were spears and swords they had no real military and they had no guns.

Being a soldier in the British army in these types of wars meant that all you to do when you saw the enemy was shoot some bullets and they would be dead and you didn’t have any real chance of dying unless you fought them in close combat.

However when World War 1 arrived the soldiers had to fight enemies who had the same or even better military than them. And this time there was a real threat of loosing the war and dying.

In World War 1 trenches were built to keep out the opposing army. Trenches were a network of tunnels dug in to the ground and were used as barriers to keep the opposing army out

Trenches had been used long before World War 1 they had been used in the American Civil Wars and in the Russo-Japanese War.

Here is an advantage and disadvantage of using trenches:

Since the trenches stretched over quite a large amount of land, if a soldier does get in to the enemies trenches there would be tunnels leading everywhere even to dead ends so the soldier would not no where to go and would get lost. The disadvantage of this is that the armies own soldier could get lost in his own trench.

Life In The Trenches

Life was unpleasant for British troops in World War 1, some of the reasons were because they were likely to catch a disease in the trenches, some of the diseases were common diseases such as a cold or flu but some diseases were deadly such as Trench Foot or Trench Fever.

The cause of Trench Foot was that the trenches were the soldiers were living were usually wet, so the soldiers clothes became wet and the soldiers did not have any change of clothes so all the water in their socks made mould grow on their feet, this mould usually grew until the soldier had to amputate his entire foot, knee or possibly their entire leg. Trench Fever was spread by lice.

Other reasons were that food was rationed and sometimes soldiers did not get enough food, also because of the war, dead bodies would be lying around the trenches, sometimes the bodies would be eaten by rats this could be linked to the diseases in the trench. Also some of the rats ate the food in the trenches; this was one of the reasons for there not being enough food for the soldiers.

Also there was nothing much for the soldiers to do in there spare time apart from talking to their friends, playing cards or by writing a letter home.

Methods Of Attack Using The Trenches

One method of attack the British used was sending men “over the top” (going over your own trenches). A group soldiers would go over there trenches and run across “no mans land” and capture the enemy’s trenches. The problem with this idea was that by the time the men had gone “over the top” and were half way across “no mans land” they had all been either killed or were badly injured.

This was the main technique of attack and it cost the army the lives of millions of people, even though this was killing most of their soldiers the British army never changed this method of attack.

Other methods of attack included throwing grenades, using gas which the Germans first used, using machine guns and by using tanks.

Conclusion

In conclusion trench warfare is when two armies fight using trenches; trench warfare is usually slow and tedious and requires patience. The main method of attack in trench warfare is by sending soldiers “over the top”.

Trench warfare was not the only type of fighting in World War 1 there were other types of fighting, for example: tanks and aeroplanes.

Trench warfare used in World War 1 and the tactics of trench warfare continued to be used in World War 2 even though trench warfare tactics were not very good..