Trench Warfare – Old Magazine Articles

Instructions for Building Trench Shelters
(Trench Warfare, 1917)

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.

Notes on a British Front-Line Dugout
(”Trench Warfare”, 1917)

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.

War in the Trenches
(Hearst’s Sunday American, 1917)

An article by the admired British war correspondent, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (1881-1931), concerning the unique aspects of the Great War which combined to make that the sort of war that had never been seen before:

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.

A Color Photograph of One of the Very First Trenches
(1914)

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.

A British Shrapnel Grenade
(Trench Warfare, 1917)

During the earliest days of the war the British and Empire armies were seldom issued grenades, but the need for such weaponry became apparent once it was clear to all that trench warfare was going to be the norm. The earliest grenades (improvised by both sides) were simply food tins that were jam-packed with an explosive mixed with nails, glass shards and bits of iron. By 1915 grenade production was in full swing and British historians have estimated that throughout the course of the war on the Western Front, British and Commonwealth forces had used fifteen million hand-grenades.

The following article concern a British shrapnel grenade that is of the heavy friction pattern.

The British Ball Grenade
(Trench Warfare, 1917)

The attached mechanical drawing depicts one of the most common ignition grenades that were put to use by British and Commonwealth forces during World War One. The Ball grenade was essentially a cast-iron sphere that measured three inches in diameter and it was one of any number of British grenades that used the Brock lighter.

The Mills Bomb
(Trench Warfare, 1917)

A black and white mechanical drawing illustrating the most famous of British hand grenades that was ever used by British and Commonwealth forces during the course of World War One.

Night Patrol in the Trenches

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…