Articles from Trench Warfare
Appearing in The American Legion Monthly some nineteen years after the end of the war was this nifty article written by a German veteran. The article explains quite simply how his forward listening post operated in the German trenches North of Verdun during the early Autumn on 1918.
It was the preferred plan on both sides that their troops sleep in fields and forests as they briskly marched forward to the terror-struck cities of their timid and surrendering foes – but other sleeping arrangements had to be made when it was decided that trenches were necessary. Officers in forward trenches would sleep in shifts within muddy little rooms called dugouts and the enlisted men would get something worse; dubbed, shelters, these holes were simply rectangular caves carved into the walls of the trench:
Click here to see a 1915 ad for British Army military camp furniture.
Corporal Frank Sears of the American Expeditionary Force put pen to paper and explained for all posterity the unsanitary conditions of <b.living in a W.W. I trench in France:
Life in the trenches is made up of cooties, rats, mud and gas masks…
We became so used to mud up in the lines that if our chow did not have some mud, or muddy water in it we could not digest it. It was just a case of mud all over: eat, drink, sleep and wash in mud.
The design and general scheme of a small dugout which can be made by the infantry under the supervision of an officer, without the aid of an engineer, are here given.
Click here to read an article about life in a W.W. I German listening post…
Click here to see a 1915 ad for British Army military camp furniture.
A French photograph showing the entry to one of the many subterranean shelters that dotted the Western front during the First World War – also included is a diagram of what one of the smaller German dugouts with a similar entry-way.
This article appears on this site by way of a special agreement with L’Illustration.
Click here to see a 1915 ad for British Army military camp furniture.
This World War One correspondence makes for a wonderful read and it gives a very lucid picture of what the war must have been like once both sides had resigned themselves to trench warfare. The letter was dated October 8, 1914 and the British officer who composed it makes clear his sense that no modern war had ever been fought in this queer manner before.
An experienced Canadian trench fighter wrote the attached columns offering sound advice to the American National Guardsmen he knew were bound to enter the war at some point.
Men enthuse over descriptions of bayonet charges. They are no idle pastimes, so it behooves all soldiers not only to become absolutely perfect in bayonet exercises, but to practice getting under way, keeping abreast with your mates and having a firm hold on your rifle. The soldier may say, ‘Oh, that bayonet exercise isn’t practical in a charge. No? Very well, that may appear right to some, but I should advise every one knowing every parry, thrust and counter so thoroughly that after they become second nature you can then do whatever your intuition at the moment directs.
Some of the trenches have two stories, and at the back of many of them are subterranean rest houses built of concrete and connected with the trenches by passages. The rooms are about seven feet high and ten feet square, and above the ground all evidence of the work is concealed by green boughs and shrubbery.
Cooties, in the World War One sense of the word, were tiny little bugs that lived in the seams of uniforms for that unlucky multitude who lived in the trenches. Being an equal-opportunity sort of parasite, they plagued all combatants alike, regardless of one’s opinions concerning Belgian neutrality, and were cause for much complaining, scratching, discomfort and the creation of way too much juvenile verse.
The attached article from 1917 tells the tale of some fortunate Doughboys and their encounter with a U.S. Army Cootie Graveyard (read: delousing station):
They entered a bedraggled, dirty, grouchy lot of sorry-looking Doughboys. They came out with faces shinning and spirits new. They knew they had before them the first good night’s rest in some time and sans scratching.
As far as cooties were concerned, the American infantrymen of the Great War had it far easier than his European comrades and counter-parts, for he only had to contend with them for the mere six month time that he lived in the trenches, rather than the full four years.
Mr. Junius B. Wood, correspondent of the CHICAGO DAILY NEWS with the A.E.F. recently spent a week in the sector held by the American Army Northwest of Toul. He lived the life of a Doughboy, slept a little and saw a lot. He spent his days in and near the front line and some of his nights in No Man’s Land. Here is the second and concluding installment of his story, depicting life at the front as it actually is…
Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.
The manner in which front-line soldiers in a war are able to stave off boredom has been the topic of many letters and memoirs throughout the centuries, and the attached article will show you how one Frenchman addressed the issue – it is a seldom seen black and white photograph depicting an acrobatic stunt being performed above the parapet and in plain view of German snipers.
An informative article from World War I concerning the doctors of all the combatant nations and how they dealt with the filthy conditions of stagnant warfare and all the different sorts of wounds that were created as a result of this very different war:
This is a dirty war. Gaseous, gangrene, lockjaw, blood poisoning, all dirt diseases… Colonel G.H. Makins of the Royal Army Medical Corps longs for the clean dust of the Veldt, which the British soldier cursed in the Boer War.
The war has changed many things, and it may have altered conceptions of military smartness as well. For from Paris, the home of ‘mode’ and ‘chic’, comes a daily fashion hint from the front that is upsetting. It is from Henri Barbusse (1873 – 1935), author of the novel Under Fire
An article by the admired British war correspondent, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett
Everything has changed; uniforms, weapons, methods, tactics. Cavalry had been rendered obsolete by trenches, machine guns and modern artillery; untrained soldiers proved useless, special battalions were needed on both sides to fight this particular kind of war that, in no way, resembled the battles your father or grand-fathers had once fought.
A good read.
An account of the first all-American trench raid of the First World War. The correspondent noted that the raid, which took place in the Loraine Sector, spanned forty-seven minutes from start to finish.
The participating unit was not named.
An informative article from World War I concerning the doctors of all the combatant nations and how they dealt with the filthy conditions of stagnant warfare and all the different sorts of wounds that were created as a result of this very different war.
Attached, you will find a mechanical drawing made by the industrious souls assigned to the Royal Engineers in order to placate those busy-body brass-hats situated so far in the rear and having little better to do than wonder aloud as to how the Hun tended to deal with his bowel movements.
The author of
The Western Front Companion
This will give the viewer a good understanding of what the trenches looked like in the autumn of 1914, before the adjoining communication lines were dug and the years of rain and artillery would begin to create that landscape so famously depicted by the photographers, painters and writers of the First World War. In the distance beyond the haystack, the opposing German trenches can be seen.
