WWI: Trench Warfare
Most aspects of the war are ugly and brutal. The worst aspect of this war was trench
warfare. Trench warfare was so unbelievable, it caused many people to loose their
minds, or even worse, lose their lives. There were many things that made this style of
fighting so hellish. The most important ones are the fighting conditions they had to live
in, the poor supplies they had, the poor defensive conditions they were in with all the
new weapons to use, like poison gasses, or shrapnel shells, the new diseases introduced
by living in trenches, and new weapons used to help defend trenches.
Trench warfare was created to help hold your position and fend off the attacking
soldiers. The idea has been used before in other wars but it was put in to a larger use
during WWI. The trench was used to stop attacking forces from being able to run into
your strong hold and kill everyone, trenches allow an army to dig a zig zag path to get
closer to the enemy while be covered by enemy fire and artillery. Trenches were also
protected by barbwire so that attacking forces could not run into the defending
armies trench.Some major battles where trenches were the Opening Clash which was
the first battle between the two armies and the battle at the Western Front which was
a four year battle between the two armies in trenches. The Opening Clash was really
the first battle to the war that took place
in september. “The first days of
September were dark, desperate hours for the Allied armies fighting in France...The
Battle of the Marne (September 6-lO) stopped the Germans in their tracks and forced
them to pull back...the Allied armies were too weak and tired to chase the Germans
as they withdrew from the battle of Marne. This gave them time to dig... By December
l9l4, trench warfare--the horrible deadlock that characterized the First World
War--had arrived.”(Bosco, Peter I) With this battle it started the use of trench warfare
in the war. The next big use of trenches warfare was at the Western Front, “Within
the space of a month, the German army had made a massive invasion of France, only
to turn before Paris. The initiative lost would never be regained. From the Battle of
the Marne onward, World War I on the western front would cease to be a war of
movement and would become a static orgy of death and destruction between
opposing trench lines.”(Phillips, Charles) The battle at the western front went on for
about 4 years and it was basically trench vs trench which really showed how long
trench warfare could last.
Fighting conditions in trenches were absolutely horrible. The trenches were filled
with water, rotting bodies, injured soldiers, men who hadn't bathed in weeks because
there was no where to do so, overflowing bathroom holes, medicines and other
materials, used to stave off the constant threat of disease and infection, cordite, the
lingering odor of gases from poison, rotting sandbags, stagnant mud, cigarette smoke,
and cooking food. Although overwhelming to a new member of the army that was
involved in trench warfare they soon got used to the smell and eventually became
part of the smell with their own body odor. Most soldiers had shell shock and had a
hard time living in the trenches and caused them to lose their minds.
In trenches there wasn’t really away to get supplies other then the ones brought to you
by you comrades so there was never really any supplies for the soldiers. Food was
late or cold more then often, therefore soldiers normally ate their food they brought
with them. They also carried around weapons for emergency just in case they ran into
a problem. Weather contributed to the rough time they had with supplies, with rain
causing trenches to flood, sometimes up to waist height, which would cause food and
other supplies they had to go bad. The soldiers might even be killed because they
were in the mud for so long that their feet were frozen like ice so they couldn't
move. Trench life was generally tedious, prone to boredom and was hard work,
with the trenches requiring constant building and repairing to keep out the water and
mud that would fill in the trenches if not kept out.
Poison gas and highly explosive shells were used to attack trenches, also the hand
grenade that was already created at this time was used to attack trenches. These
three highly explosive weapons were used to clear out trenches and to help get across
no mans land. Poison gas also called mustard gas was a highly lethal gas that could
start to effect enemies within 12 hours of them encountering it, “Mustard Gas
(Yperite) was first used by the German Army in September 1917. It was one of the
most lethal of all the poisonous chemicals used during the war. It was almost
odorless and took twelve hours to take effect. Yperite was so powerful that only small
amounts had to be added to high explosive shells to be effective. Once in the soil,
mustard gas remained active for several weeks. The skin of victims of mustard gas
blistered, the eyes became very sore and they began to vomit. Mustard gas caused
internal and external bleeding and attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the
mucous membrane. This was extremely painful and most soldiers had to be strapped
to their beds. It usually took a person four or five weeks to die of mustard gas
poisoning.”(http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWmustard.htm) Hand grenades
were brought in to the war from the start, Germans knew that trench warfare was
going to be used and prepared for it by making hand grenades to blow up people in
trenches, the Allies had not anticipated the large use of trench warfare and had to
improvise the making of them, “Germany was well prepared for trench warfare in
1914, having produced quantities of many types of grenades as early as 1913. The
Allies had failed to foresee the extended use of hand grenades and were forced to
hastily construct improvised types. During the next three years hand grenade design
progressed from crude bombs to refined weapons.” Germany was ready for this
type of fighting the allies were not which made it that much worse for them.
Living in a trench was the worst thing these people could do considering all the
animals and water they were sitting in which was basically their own filth. While
living in the trenches it caused the soldiers to contract diseases like trench foot,
trench mouth, and shell shock. The animals carried diseases that could be
transferred if they bit you which happened commonly. Lice and rats were the two
most commonly seen in trenches, lice made the men itch uncontrollably and the rats
bit the mean and caused there bites to become infected. “Life in the trenches was
dirty, cold, and uncomfortable. Soldiers shared space not only with other soldiers but
also with rats and lice. The rats stole food and bit the men incessantly. Sanitation was
almost nonexistent, and so disease ran rampant killing men almost as often as
weapons of war. Life vacillated between terrifying battles and mind- numbing
boredom.”(Bowman, John S.) Trench foot was a disease caused by living in the
unsanitary health conditions of trenches that had been filled with wet cold water that
caused the soldiers feet to swell over three times their normal size, “Many soldiers
fighting in the First World War suffered from trench foot. This was an infection of the
feet caused by cold, wet and insanitary conditions. In the trenches men stood for
hours on end in waterlogged trenches without being able to remove wet socks or
boots. The feet would gradually go numb and the skin would turn red or blue. If
untreated, trench foot could turn gangrenous and result in amputation. Trench foot
was
a
particular
problem
in
the
early
stages
of
the
war.”(http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWfoot.htm) Another common disease
that was seen in trenches was trench mouth, which was the overload of too many
normal bacteria in the mouth that caused gums to inflame and become infected,
“Trench mouth is a painful form of gum swelling (gingivitis). The term "trench
mouth" comes from World War I, when the disorder was common among soldiers.
The mouth normally contains a balance of different bacteria. Trench mouth occurs
when there are too many normal mouth bacteria. The gums become infected and
develop painful ulcers. Viruses may be involved in allowing the bacteria to grow too
much.”(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002039) Shell Shock was
basically PTSD now a days what it did was caused them to have mental stress and
emotional stress get the best of them and caused them to go crazy. All the diseases
spreading in the trenches almost caused just as much death as the war did.
With the use of trenches the armies had to make weapons so that they could
successfully defend them without any problems. some of those weapons were
flamethrowers, machine gun turrets, and the bayonet. Flamethrowers are
basically
self explanatory they were backpacks filled with chemicals that had a
hose connected to them that shot fire blasts, “The concept of the modern
flamethrower was first presented to the German high command in 1901 by a Berlin
chemical engineer. Funding was secured, and in 1908 a prototype man-portable
flamethrower (Flammenwerfer) was tested. During the period 1908-1914 this design
was improved and tactics were worked out for engineering troops armed with
flamethrowers to support infantry assaults. In addition, a larger nonportable device
for defending trenches...”(Tucker, Spencer C.) With the use of flame throwers people
could use them to defend the trenches by putting a huge wall of fire up that would
burn anyone who runs through it. The Machine gun was another weapon used to
defend trenches with its firing rate and its caliber size trenches had no problems
mowing down the opposing army when they ran at the trench, “The Germans usually
placed machine guns by themselves outside the frontline trenches in pairs to avoid
destruction by the artillery preparations.”(Tucker, Spencer C.) The machine gun let
the people in the trenches stop rushing troops in no mans land by firing large
magazines of ammo and at a faster rate then regular guns.The bayonet was already
invented at this time but was used to defend the trenches if they got involved in close
quarters combat, it tended to be used the least out of the three just because the
blade was to long and for them to use them as close as they were was hard, so the
soldiers tended to use their knives for close encounters. But never the less the
bayonet was used to keep rushing troops out of the trenches by stabbing them
before they made it in the trenches. With these new innovations to WWI, trench
warfare became a hellish waiting game between the two armies.
WWI was a war full of poor fighting conditions, not enough supplies, and new
weapons that caused deaths for people to be just like torture. The very idea of this war
is horrible and should have never taken place. War is a horrible thing that should be
avoided by all of the countries.