The trenches
SOURCE 1
Aerial photo of the trench system
SOURCE 3 A well-constructed German trench
Reserve
Trench
Saps
Front
Support
Trench
Trench
No
Man’s
Land
Communication
Trenches
Farmer (1987: Section 4 Source C)
SOURCE 2
Cross-section of an ideal British front trench
Taylor (1969: 114)
SOURCE 4
A trench in very
poor condition
Farmer (1987:
Section 5
Source C)
Brooman (1991: 12)
Nature of trench warfare
SOURCE 1
Historian Gordon A Craig’s description of trench warfare
The two great armies faced each other in a double line of trenches,
each protected by dense barbed wire entanglements, machine gun
nests, and mortar [cannon] batteries and backed by a support line and
heavy artillery [mounted guns].
In this fantastic new form of warfare … by day, [men] exchanged
desultory rifle fire over the parapets or lobbed grenades into the
enemy’s trenches. At night, small parties crept out into the no-man’s
land between the lines and cut their way through the wire, seeking
prisoners who might divulge information about the enemy’s plans.
Periodically, the high commands, with an enthusiasm and optimism
that never seemed to dim, ordered a general offensive in this or that
sector of the front. These big pushes were preceded by a protracted
artillery barrage … The gains were always infinitesimal and the
losses tremendous.
SOURCE 3 Winston Churchill’s view of trench warfare
No war is so sanguinary [bloody] as the war of exhaustion. No plan could be more
unpromising than the plan of frontal attack … The Anglo–French offensives of 1915,
1916 and 1917 were in nearly every instance, and certainly in the aggregate, far more
costly to the attack than to the German defence. It was not even the case of exchanging
a life for a life. Two, and even three, British or French lives were repeatedly paid for
the killing of one enemy, and grim calculations were made to prove that in the end the
Allies would still have a balance of a few millions to spare.
It is the tale of the torture, mutilation or extinction of millions of men, and of the
sacrifice of all that was best and noblest in an entire generation.
Churchill (1923–7: 332)
SOURCE 4 ‘Over the top’
Craig (1974: 334–5)
SOURCE 2 A young German soldier’s view of trench warfare
… a more appalling struggle could not be imagined. It has been a case
of soldier against soldier, equally matched and both mad with hate and
rage, fighting for days on end over a single square of ground, till the
whole tract of country is one blood-soaked, corpse-strewn field.
Vincent (1985: 4)
Taylor (1969: 137)