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.
Another terrible problem was the rats. There were literally millions of rats running around the trenches. They fed on the dead remains of the soldiers and could grow to the size of a rat. These rats carried many diseases that killed many of the men there as well. Lice were another dilemma in the trenches.
There would be no relief for front line troops for weeks on end. A near miss from an artillery shell could collapse a trench or cause dugouts to collapse burying alive those inside. The nearness of death, the fear of it and smell of it, the horrific sights of shattered bodies, the screams of friends cut in half and the constant shelling combined to send many men insane either at the time or later in life. Considering all these conditions, I think the worst thing about being in the trenches was the diseases which spread like wildfire throughout the trenches, due to the unhygienic conditions. There was also no way of preventing these diseases from spreading, as the medic’s in the trenches barely had any medicine to treat all of soldiers who caught diseases.
How important were the actions of officers rather than conditions in causing a high death toll in WW1. In World War One the amount of deaths were staggeringly high, this came down to many different reasons. Over the four years many men died from diseases, the conditions of the trenches and ‘no mans land’. However the most deaths came from within the army itself, it usually came from the poor actions that the officers made. Firstly, a main point that their actions were to blame would be that repetitive tactics and how they would refuse to change them.
| The amount of bodies out on the street caused a lot of diseases to spread, diseases like, cholera. They became a big problem. | Many hospitals and schools were destroyed/badly damaged along with the airport control tower. | They had trouble getting aid into the area because the airport was shut. And the situation had poor management.
This consisted of small spaces that waifs were confined to in their rooms because there were so many people living in the same building. The building didn’t do too well when it came to cold or bad weather. The buildings were made of brick so when it was cold outside the draft would sleek through under the doors or through the cracks and freeze the entire room which would cause the children to come down with bad fevers and other illnesses. The sanitary conditions were very similar to the other living conditions; they were both extremely harsh and almost unbearable. Between the dirt gathering with the sewage and the bacteria along with the dirty outhouses lead to the spread of diseases and eventually to the demise of some inhabitants.
Many factors we causing all of this, and these are just a few. When soldiers at the Western Front of World War I, and they heard a whistle, they would have to run over and try to take the next trench. This is what caused so many deaths in the Great War. They would run over, sometimes even with just bayonets and charge towards the machine gun fire, hoping to not get hit. This often cause great anxiety for some soldiers because they knew if
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 world would never be the same. So many people feared this war that it acquired a name for itself, “The Great War”. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ a) Life in the Trenches (Misery in the Mud): Smelly, noisy and filthy are just some of the adjectives a soldier would use to describe the nightmarish place called a trench. A trench was dug to protect soldiers from being in the direct line of fire. A typical trench was seven feet deep and six feet wide, built in a zigzagged pattern to prevent the enemies from shooting straight down the line.
‘Coughing like hags’ the conditions was not great in the trenches in World War 1, it was full of diseases and the weather conditions would make fighting a great deal harder. ‘We cursed through sludge’ Owen must have written this at a time when the weather was raining as the trenches filled up with mud and water up to the soldiers knees making it harder to walk. ‘GAS! Gas! Boys!