Trench warfare Trench warfare is where rival armies dug themselves a trench, in order to protect themselves from gun fire from side. Life in the Trenches during World War 1 was terrible. Conditions were disgusting, the first thing a new recruit would notice was the smell, rotting bodies barely buried under the ground, men who hadn’t washed in weeks because there were no facilities for them to use. Although these smells were repulsive, new recruits soon got used to them and contributed to it with their own bodily odour. Disease and infection was very common in these conditions.
Germanys list of problems at this time was only growing. Losing WW1 caused many problems in itself as one might expect, never mind the Treaty of Versailles that was to follow. The most prominent socio-economic effects were most naturally the casualties, 2 million Germans were killed and a further 6 million were injured, also the increasing number of civilian deaths due to hypothermia and starvation. The reason these deaths increased, was due to food and fuel shortages caused by the cold winter of 1916-17. In these winter months there were signs of the country’s morale and unity breaking, it was not helped when Germany was hit with an influenza epidemic, wiping out 20-40 million, the resistance to the disease was lowered due to decline in living conditions.
Death was constant and not unusual for soldiers. Many soldiers didn’t even survive the first day. Besides this, many of the trenches were infested with rats, and soldiers feared them. Rats tended to feed on human corpses, spread infections and contaminate food. Rats weren’t the only problem concerning infection.
The rats were so big that they ate most of the food. Rats carry diseases, so the rats alone would make the people sick. This war expanded the health service, and lead to a high demand for nurses/physicians and hospitals. In the summer of 1914 Great Britain’s leaders formed many hospitals fully equipped with all of the medical devices they would need to provide for 7,000 wounded individuals. There were also army nurses
They had to use their tins and duck behind the sheds in the trenches. Not only was this incredibly unhygienic and caused many diseases among the soldiers, but they were also dodging bullets. The enemy would shot them as they went to the toilet and because they were pre-occupied they could not defend themselves. The toilets were a grim place to be, cans of overflowing sewage, undetectable bullets and often the bodies of men who had died in the act. Another terrible problem was the rats.
At night, mosquitoes constantly bit the soldiers and they had to take pills everyday to prevent mosquito transmitted diseases. So, in order to combat such things, each soldier had to put a mosquito net over his bed. Also, each camp ran rampant with rats and other vermin. At one point, a mate of Richard’s had to smash a rat with a book of his, and Perry said it was “the biggest rat he’s ever seen”. On top of all that, there were bigger pest problems.
This was terribly inconsiderate of the military as the other 82% of the nation was left to starve as the military was the government’s top priority. This led to extreme cases of hunger across Russia which soon became famine. Food shortages were at their worst in the towns and cities, Petrograd suffered particularly badly due to the remoteness from the food-producing regions. Secondly, transportation was a key pre- existing war condition; it was the disruption of the transport system rather than the decline in food production that was the major cause Russia’s wartime shortages. The attempt to transport millions of troops and masses of supplies to the war fronts created unbearable pressure on the Russian transport system, and it bucked under the pressure.
When war was declared in 1914, much of the Russian population rallied behind the Tsar and the monarchy in a wave of patriotism. However, the war weariness in the face of 'Total War' soon gripped the country, as the war exacerbated the domestic difficulties of Russia and highlighted the governments structural issues. Losses such as the 'Brusilov offensive' demoralised the army, which in turn weakened the standing of the Tsar and the faith the public placed in him. Poor organisation lead to major casualties, as by Christmas of 1916, 1.6 million soldiers were dead and 3.9 million were wounded with 2.4 million taken prisoner. This lack of organisation also lead to food shortages and issues with transport.
Yet following the war, many British soldiers had suffered from psychological consequences, including their shell-shock that had greatly impacted their ability to participate in the post-war economy. Returning veterans, ill or healthy, were met with feelings of estrangement as a consequence of their time spent away, and were often left confused by unfamiliar surroundings. These factors resulted in a difficult home-coming from a war that stunned many soldiers, left serious psychological impacts and drastically changed the lives of the soldiers and their immediate families. On August 7th of 1914, an attempt to increase the number of British soldiers was made. Much preparing for the front was needed.
"Knock-kneed" is a condition that makes knees hit together when walking. Owen employed this in his poem to show the reader how tired the soldiers were. They could not stand up and walk straight because they had already "cursed through sludge" for many miles. He also utilized the phrase "blood shod", which is when a horseshoe gets put on too hard and the horse's hoofs start to bleed. This exhibited the physical pain that the soldiers were going through.