The Great War - WW1
The Trenches
The opening weeks of fighting had given the false impression of a war of movement. But in September 1914, as each side tried to outflank the other in the 'Race to the Sea', the first Trenches; initially mere scrapes in the ground, began to make their appearance. Within weeks the stalemate they had produced on the Aisne spread down the 500-mile battle-line from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier.
At first the picture the trenches presented on the long, congealed front was by no means uniform. The Germans packed troops into the front line with little immediate support. beyond some machine-gun positions. In contrast, the British, in the low-lying, frequently flooded coastal plain of the Yser, quickly dug a three-line system of front, support and reserve trenches linked by zig-zag communications trenches.
The British system set the basic pattern which troops endured for the next four years, from Flanders to the dry chalklands of the Somme and Champagne to the wooded terrain of the Vosges. Beyond the trenches, at a grenade throw's distance, lay the barbed wire entanglements, and beyond that the narrow strip which divided the opposing trenches - 'no man's land'. It's width varied from sector to sector, from as much as 500 yards to as little as 50. Near Zonnebecke in 1915, the British and Germans were only 10 yards apart!.
As the war progressed, trench engineering became all the more elaborate. The German Hindenburg Line, built in the winter of 1916-17, consisted of three lines of double trenches to a width of two miles, the first of which was protected by six belts of barbed wire, the densest of which being 100 yards thick. Dozens of communications trenches linked the lines, and to the rear were sited hundreds of guns zeroed-in on 'no mans land' with shrapnel and high explosive or gas shells. Further forward, machine guns with interlocking fields of fire were positioned to strafe 'no mans land' the moment the enemy went 'over the top'. Railways were built up to the rear areas to speed reinforcement and supply.
Living conditions in the trenches were often grim. During the wet season, they became uncomfortable, dangerous muddy-bogs, particularly in the British sector on the Western Front. Men and mules could drown in the glutinous mud. Wounded men were particularly vulnerable. A survivor of Passchendaele recalled finding: 'Three heads in a row with the rest of the bodies submerged, giving one the idea that they had used their last ounce of strength to keep their heads above the rising water. In another miniature pond, a hand still gripping a rifle is all that is visible while its next door neighbour is occupied by a steel helmet and half a head, the eyes staring icily at the green slime which floats on the surface almost at their level'.
Sanitary conditions in the trenches were appalling. Rats gorged themselves on corpses lying in 'no man's land' or embedded in the walls of the trenches themselves. Trench-foot and frostbite claimed roughly 75'000 British casualties during the war. On quiet sectors boredom was a deadly enemy, although even here artillery, snipers and mortars caused a steady steam of casualties. During two months in the Neuve Chapelle sector in late 1916, the 13th Yorkshire and Lancashire lost 255 men although they had been on the defensive the whole time.
The monotony of trench routine was broken by the German dawn barrage and the Allies' reply at sunset, each side using the glare of the sun behind them to prevent the enemy from registering the position of their battteries. At night, patrols and trench raiding parties moved through the lunar landscape of 'no man's land', wiring parties, burial details and re-supply detachments went warily about their business, keeping an eye open for star shell or enemy patrols, while the latest batch of wounded went 'down the line' to the rear.
The British maintained morale with regular rotation between front, support and reserve positions, the arrival of letters and parcels from home and a concerted programme of recreational activities.