PRESS HERALD
Wednesday, September 8, 1918
6 Feet Underground but Still Alive
By Adona Umeri Soldiers lined up at the Italian front in the trenches prepared to take charge towards their enemies (from google images) During this difficult time at war, soldiers have had to spend the last four years of their lives in between narrow walls called trenches. Not only do these soldiers face the extremities of battles, but they also have to survive in these narrow spaces. For these courageous men, living in these trenches meant living in fear. As the war has been mentioned that it is coming to an end, soldiers still have to keep up with their daily routines in the trenches to survive.
There are many difficulties as to living in trenches. Firstly,
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Other problems that occur are lice infestation, trench fever, trench mouth, trench foot, and shell shock. Lice spreads into soldier’s clothing and within a few hours, their eggs hatch. Therefore, many soldiers shave their head to avoid lice. A photograph of Italian soldiers on the Albanian Front shaving each other’s heads to prevent lice infestation (from google images). This year, lice have been recognized to be the main cause of Trench Fever, a disease that consists of severe pain and high fevers. Another medical condition called trench foot is a fungal infection of the feet. I viewed a soldier who stood in cold, wet conditions that infected his feet. The conditions can include water levels up to waist height or very cold weather that can cause frostbite. Some cases resulted in amputation of the feet. I didn’t observe this since conditions are more stable now than they were four years ago. Trench mouth comes from the improper care of gums, which affect soldiers because of their unsanitary environments. Lastly, shell shock, an illness soldiers have is caused by the stress of battles. More issues include those that are war-related, which will be discussed later on.
The daily life of a soldier consists of being awoken by the officers or sergeants to prepare for attacks that occur at dawn. They “stand-to” and guard the trenches. This routine is named the ‘morning hate’. Firing weapons calm the nerves of the soldiers. The soldiers who
The opposing armies were in a deadlock and trenches had become a dominate feature of the war (Page 63, 2nd paragraph). Some trenches were from 5 feet deep to 30 feet deep; they caused a stalemate that was almost impossible to break. If you break into their lines there is another one waiting for you. The trenches were hundreds of miles long, constantly fighting. Also they were filled with rats and frogs. Trenches were always in repair, they were reinforced with sandbags, with sheets of corrugated
In trench warfare, the two sides fighting each other dig trenches in a battlefield to stop the enemy from advancing. According to Document 4, one difficulty faced by soldiers serving in the trenches during World War I was that the soldiers would get trench foot. The illustration on Document 4 shows a couple of soldiers being inspected for any signs of Trench Foot. Trench foot is a medical condition caused by prolonged exposure of the feet to damp, unsanitary, and cold conditions. The soldiers got this condition because the men had stood for hours on end in waterlogged trenches without being able to remove their wet socks and shoes/boots. During the first World War this was the most common to happen to the
I am sitting here in my trench with my fellow brothers. We are soaked from head to toe with mud all over us. I haven’t had a change in socks in weeks and I have seen men around me get trench foot. Trench foot is something I have seen and I never want to experience if we don’t have to. The lice have been spreading from man to man very quickly. At first the lice really bothered us but now it is just a part of our lives in these trenches. We have to be careful with our rations because the rats that have grown to the size of Oscar, so we have to keep our rations in a safe place
Artillery blaze was an melancholia strategie in ww1 by bombing day afterwards day the men in the trenches acquainted the cavernous of the arena and mud aerial if the battlefront stops the men alpha to feel the affliction every day you are affair if will they be austere this charge to be remembered with the abhorrence adversary ammunition with men dying every
The two main causes of diseases were trench foot and trench fever. Trench foot was caused by exposure to wet and damp areas and potentially took up to six months to completely heal. It essentially became an epidemic during the war. Men were forced to rub whale oil on their feet and did “stamping drills” that involved stomping and rubbing their feet to get the blood flowing. Trench fever also played a large role in the fatalities of soldiers. It is a bacterial infection that causes repeated cycles of high fevers. It can passed from person to person through body lice, overcrowding, and bad hygiene.
We’ve been fighting in very skinny trenches, just enough room for two men to squeeze by each other. There was a wall made of sandbags in front of each trench, which are more or less bullet proof, but give little protection from shell fire. The trench was between six and seven feet from top to bottom and the bottom is not more than four feet wide. Along the front there is a small ledge where someone stands in order to fire over the sandbag and cut into the rear of the trench are their dugouts. The men in the trenches are told to keep up a more or less continuous fire on the German lines and also to be ready to resist any attack that may be made. Every man must stand by all night every night, no one is allowed to sleep or to be in the dug outs. During the day one of three men must be on duty,
Trenches were known as a form of survival for the soldiers in World
For a soldier life would be a cold, dirty, monotonous cycle that seemed to never end. Soldiers would be living together in tiny spaces in all weather, so disease was common and was a terrible killer for the soldiers. Trenches would often flood, making the damp and perfect for rat that carried many deadly diseases and would eat the rations keeping the soldiers alive. One of the terrible diseases caused by the cold was called trench foot, this was a disease where the soldiers feet would turn black and toes would start falling off, this usually resulted in amputation.
War in the trenches is described in an apocalyptic, horrific terms, usually there were three parallel lines of trenches, a front- line trench was of major importance guarded by tangled lines of barbed wire, typically only occupied in force during stand to attention at dawn and dusk , located 50 yards to a mile from its enemy counterpart, a support trench line to which the garrison would draw when the front trench was bombarded, located several hundred yards back, and several hundred yards behind that a reserve trench line where
These soldiers had to live and sleep in these trenches and become use to the conditions. This included freezing cold weather, wet surroundings, dead and dying bodies scattered everywhere, mud, dirt, lice and rats, bullets and guns, and soldiers upon soldier. These circumstances weren’t only uncomfortable, they were harsh, and extremely dangerous. The rations were small, and food was seen as a highly valuable source (Hillman.R, 2001) This only added to the discomfort of the men there. Many soldiers watched as their teammate was shot right in front of them, “You are eating a crust of bread and a man is shot dead in the trench next to you, You look calmly at him for a moment, and then you go back to eating your bread.” William Peden. They became prone to the tragedy and the horrible conditions that they had to endure on a daily basis. A photo was captured on the Western Front (Photo captured on July 1916, found in World War One in Photographs) showing a soldier walking through a huge puddle in the flooded trenches. The sandbags kept the sides up but did nothing to prevent the water. Things like this made even the smallest journeys very treacherous and hard to do. Many people lost these men due to exhaustion and therefore drowning in mud. Obviously, living conditions were a big part of trench warfare and contributed to it being a very brutal part of
After it rained all of that water ahead to go somewhere so all of the rain was in the trenches which made it muddy and difficult to walk. The food was also very awful and content of canned food. That is if you could even get some because the rations were so low and the rats would eat some of it. There was also a lot of desire to hurt yourself, because it was like living in a nightmare with artillery shooting you all day. So the soldiers thought this would be the easiest way out, but that wasn't the case. The soldiers would shoot themselves in the foot or hand, hoping to get sent home but often times the officer would just shoot them even though they were on the same
The cold fell to temperature of minus Forty degrees Celsius; nevertheless, trenches had temperature of minus Fifteen degrees Celsius. Soldiers had to manage with the cold, hard to believe, it was worse than lice. The cold made it impossible to sleep. Frostbite affected many men and frequently directed to infection, decomposition and later on, amputation, along with hypothermia.
Private Charles William Clark, also of Owston Ferry, was invalided home suffering from trench foot. In severe cases, this affliction turned the feet blue; they would go numb and then burn as if touched by fire. When the nerves died, gangrene set in, leaving amputation of the toes or even the whole foot as the only solution. Thankful, by this time, trench foot had become an increasingly rare complaint as platoon commanders were made responsible for controlling the conditions that could lead to its spread. They were charged with initiating better methods for draining away water and setting up regular inspections of soldiers’ feet. This, along with remedies such as rubbing whale oil into the feet every four hours, had reduced significantly the number of cases reported, so it is seems Private Clark was unlucky, careless or had a commanding officer who neglected his duty!
The trenches were quite a terrifying place to be, the conditions were immense, unhygienic and brutal. The trenches were a key defence strategy implemented by the British and the Germans. For 4 years in the First World War the two sides inflicted onslaught upon each other ruthlessly on an industrial scale. The trenches were demoralising, horrifying and left strong men traumatized. Many men suffered and had to stand the strain of many unbearable illnesses both physical and mental; trench foot, trench fever, paranoia, pneumonia etc. There was “shell-shock” a term given to men who lost their wits. Some men got severe depression and also some soldiers got so fed up of life in the trenches which
Muddy trenches become stinking cesspools, overrun by rats, which I cannot tolerate. Men spend weeks in the trenches without washing, which allows disease to spread. Soldiers' clothes become infested with lice and many men develop trench foot, a painful condition that causes their feet to swell and turn black. There are also unknown steps down and other steps where a piece of parapet has been blown in, or some walls of a traverse have