Trench Warfare

It shows the harsh and terrible conditions, which the Australian troops, experienced, whilst in the trenches. “Great, sleek, corpse-fed rats ran in squads between our legs” depicts the dirty conditions of which, the Australians experienced, where sixteen per cent died from typhoid, dysentery and gastroenteritis. This was the major cause of death in Australian troops. In the winter the weather would get down to below zero. There were reports of Australians toes falling off, after freezing and contracting gangrene. This would occur when the trenches were filled with mud up to their ankles in a trench two metres wide and 2 metres high. When the Australians arrived at the Western front, the first thing they saw were the lines of wounded soldiers being taken to the rear. As they got closer, they could feet the earth shake, and hear the constant ‘crump’ of artillery shells. This was known as trench foot and not uncommon in Australian soldiers. George states, “It is one of the things Kipling forgot to tell us” differing much from what they had expected the war to be like. The hard work and enduring sacrifices that they made in these harsh conditions evaluates the contribution of Australian soldiers to the Western Front

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

World War 1 is perhaps best known for being a war fought in trenches, ditches dug out of the ground to give troops protection from enemy artillery and machine-gun fire. The trenches spread from the East to the West. By the end of 1914, trenches stretched all along the 475 miles front between the Swiss border and the Channel coast.

The diseases that most affected the soldiers,while they were fighting for a cause in the trenches were,Trench Foot,The Trench Influenza and Shell Shock.

World War I was known for its very slow-paced battle and the stage of stalemate. After advancing from Germany on France, battle turned into trench warfare. Trench Warfare is a defensive strategy in a field where the army stays in rows of trenches that were placed along the Western Front during the war. The use of trenches during the Great War was a very significant tactic during battle, by making soldiers hidden but exposed just enough to be able to attack the enemy. On a daily basis, life in the trenches was very scary and filled with horror. Death was upon the soldiers even if there was nobody attacking them. There was a continuous shell fire that would randomly take the lives of many. Some men died on their first day in the trenches, and very few were lucky to make it out unharmed. Shell fire was not the only issue in the trenches. There were plenty of diseases and infections spreading around like a wildfire. Many soldiers got infections and diseases that could not be treated such as Trench Foot or Trench Fever. Although trench warfare acts as a great defensive and offensive measure, it became very dangerous because of the many different causes of death including shell fire, diseases, and infections.

These endless zigzag trails were the soldiers’ home for as long as they were assigned duty to them. The trenches were often infested with “rats and lice… ‘There are millions! Some are huge fellows, nearly as big as cats…’ The soldiers often went weeks without washing or changing clothes, and most were infested with body lice” (Newman 141). Conditions were so wet and dirty and the men had to live with it. As a result of the wet and dirty conditions, many soldiers got ‘trench foot’. “Their feet swelled up to two or three times their normal size and went numb…but when the swelling went down, the pain was agonizing.

Of the 22,200 people killed during the war, it is estimated that ¾ died of something other than a bullet would (MILITARY). Illnesses like dysentery, typhoid or “lake” fever, pneumonia, malaria, measles and smallpox were all present in the camps of soldiers (MILITARY). People were dying so fast in fact, that the hospital tents would be forced to hold dead bodies as many camps were facing coffin shortages (Newfield). The amount of people packed together in such a small space and the fact that the hospitals, the place they sent sick and wounded, were storing bodies, both added to the problem of spreading disease. Observers of this horror, like Capt.

World War I was known for its very slow-paced battle and the stage of stalemate. After advancing from Germany on France, battle turned into trench warfare. Trench Warfare is a defensive strategy in a field where the army stays in rows of trenches that were placed along the Western Front during the war. The use of trenches during the Great War was a very significant tactic during battle, by making soldiers hidden but exposed just enough to be able to attack the enemy. On a daily basis, life in the trenches was very scary and filled with horror. Death was upon the soldiers even if there was nobody attacking them. There was a continuous shell fire that would randomly take the lives of many. Some men died on their first day in the trenches, and very few were lucky to make it out unharmed. Shell fire was not the only issue in the trenches. There were plenty of diseases and infections spreading around like a wildfire. Many soldiers got infections and diseases that could not be treated such as Trench Foot or Trench Fever. Although trench warfare acts as a great defensive and offensive measure, it became very dangerous because of the many different causes of death including shell fire, diseases, and infections.

The military technological advancements of trench warfare, poison gas, and tanks were just a few of the many important military innovations in the First World War. In WWI, the advent (no—trench warfare had existed since the American Civil War) of trench warfare slowed battles to vicious, bloody scraps over a few meters of ground, often lasting months and even years. Be sure you have a clear introduction on the AP exam. This is critical. Warfare in the nineteenth-century demanded the concentration of large masses of troops over open ground to compensate for the extremely inaccurate musket.

Intro: The life for the average soldier in the WW1 trenches was pretty horrible. They had to live in mud, fellow dead soldiers and lots of rats, some the size of your hand. Life of a soldier was very tough, having to see your best mate get shot and he left to rot. Any soldiers that made it out of the war would have suffered either shell shock or post-traumatic stress disorder and living with either of these would have been terrible.

In World War 1, there were many new tactics that war has never seen before. Trench warfare was one of the new tactics that they used in World War 1. They used the trenches for many things. In World War 1 and All Quiet on the Western Front. They are an accurate portrayal of each other because of the way they fought while in cover, built them, and the way they put all their resources in them.

The five sources that I have selected to help with my enquiry are photographs, an extract from a newspaper article and a soldier's diary. The reasons why I chose these five particular sources is because I believe that they are a wide variety of selections, dating back to many years, all ranging from the start of the war to the end of the war. However, one of my sources, the newspaper article, was published in 2008 so it is more of a recent source but still, very useful and effective.From my own knowledge I know the trenches were inhumane

Trenches were dug out in the ground for protection, against machine guns and bombs, however the trenches were not made for comfort or for soldiers to live in for a long time. Most trenches were muddy and wet and soldiers had terrible living conditions which would cause disease, and eventually death. In document two, by Robert Donald, he exclaims that “I do not see why the war in this area should not go on for a hundred years.” Usually, life in the trenches meant consent fighting and battles, no side ever won because each side would encounter a bomb or some kind of causality and make their trenches deeper, and deeper. This was one cause of a stalemate, and why it was predicted that war in the trenches would continue for years and many more soldiers would die. In an outside source, a diary written by a man named Endy, talks about his life in the trenches and how their were many deaths. Although, this was not the only reason the trenches were deadly. The use of poisonous gas was also used in trenches caused many

It was poorly constructed, polluted with human excrement and contained pools of water. Buried about a foot deep, hundreds of Germans and French lied in the trench since last October. Mud was my best friend, and sleep was interrupted by the booming of German shells. There was infection everywhere. Men were blown or shot to pieces, and their bodily fluids fed the rats. Those malicious critters were immense, crawling on and eating the decaying bodies. Some of the men had gotten a nasty disease that ate away at their feet. Trench foot, they called it. Unless we could dry our feet, our feet began to rot. Making up the majority of our diets were stale bread. With no appetite, I starved for most days. And containing no proper washrooms, we had areas in the trench where we relieved ourselves. Oh how the banging never ceased for sixty seconds! Some men were terrified of fighting, mama. Their minds went crooked, and their bodies twitched and trembled constantly. They wouldn't fight, or listen to orders. Most of them were executed, unless they had an injury that could send them home. Mama, Riley was shot in the heart yesterday. But, he died grateful. "It's an end to those shells, bombs, rats, lice and mud," he spoke his last

Even people who have not done an in depth study of World War I has heard of the infamous, trench foot. As many as twenty-thousand casualties were said to have suffered by the British Army alone. The cause to this infection of the feet was quite obvious. Trench warfare become most prominent during WWI, this was a type of warfare fought on land that consisted of seven foot deep, six foot wide tunnels dug into the earth to protect from enemy fire. These first came about when German General Erich von Falkenhayn commanded his troops to start digging to protect themselves from the oncoming French and British troops. The allies, after realizing they could not break through the German line, began to dig trenches as well (John Simpkin, 1997). Because of being the first to start digging their trenches, this gave the Germans the advantage of choosing the location to start digging. They of course, chose the high ground. This was a good decision based on a military tactical standpoint, as well as an advantage when it came to the living conditions of the soldiers (Simpkin, 1997). The deeper the British troops dug, the more water would begin to flood the trenches. The trench conditions were so bad that some soldiers even preferred to sleep outside the trenches, in plain view of their enemies and in a bullets trajectory. One soldier named Arnold Ridley