Ww1 Trench Description

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

Trenches were very useful for soldiers as they protected them from snipers from high ground and hiding in bushes were the soldiers can’t see them and tanks that are firing shrapnel and trying to damage soldiers. The trenches were 1-2 meters wide with a depth of 3 meters and they were not dug in straight lines they were dug in a zigzag formation with different levels along the lines (Trenches/history), they had paths dugs so that the soldiers could move between the levels. Between the two countries, fighting was a big piece of land called no man’s land, which would be covered with land mines and barbed wire, and the land was often 50-250 yards long. Inside the trenches, they were often reinforced with wooden beams, at the bottom of the trenches there were wooden boards called duckboards, which this was meant to protect the soldiers’ feet from the water and to not make them get trench foot. Countries had the same idea when they build their trenches and made it a lot harder to fight and would take 3 months to end the war instead of 4 days without trenches

By mid September 1914 the introduction of trench warfare had begun and on the western front for the Germans it had become a war of attrition. By November 1914, with the exception of the United States of America, most major nations were at war due to allegiances or direct involvement.

The Western Front was the main location of war during World War 1. The outcome of the battles resulted in the formation of a battle front, which saw three years of warfare in 1915, 1916 and 1917, with only a few months of mobile warfare at the start and at the end of four years of fighting.

Trench warfare was adopted to maintain an area of land, to prevent the enemy from capturing that land. The importance of this investigation was to show the significance of trench warfare during the First World War and how effective it was on how it had prevented many full on, front lined, assaults. World War I could have had a great impact in history with the amount of war casualties, which would have been historically shocking, but instead it created the stalemate, which prevented such numbers of deaths from happening.

During the Great War, many different types of trenches were used. This includes the frontline trenches, and the reserve trench. In the front

During the Great War, many different types of trenches were used. This includes the frontline trenches, and the reserve trench. In the front

Trenches were long, narrow ditches dug into the ground where soldiers lived day and night. There were many lines of German trenches on one side and many lines of the trenches on the allied side. In the middle there was no-man’s land, so called because it didn’t belong to either army. Soldiers crossed no- man’s land when they wanted to attack. Soldiers in the trenches did not get much sleep, but when they did it was in the afternoon during daylight and at night for only 1 hour at a time. They were woken up at different times, either to complete one of the daily chores or the go to fight. The system of trenches was employed because a German commander, General Erich von Falkenhayn, decided that his troops must at all costs hold onto those parts of France and Belgium that Germany still occupied. Falkenhayn ordered his men to dig trenches that would provide them with protection from the advancing French and British troops. The Allies soon realised that they could not break through this line and they also began to dig trenches.

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.

Life in the trenches was very difficult and often very dangerous. They were often kept in the confined and small trenches for long periods of time. “Soldiers were bound to trenches, enduring long stretches of inactivity, suffering the random bombing or sniper attack, then undertaking terrifying charges” (Showalter). Trenches were often dug deeply underground and served as protection from incoming artillery. The idea and formation of these trenches were a result of France’s flat terrain. With flat terrain, soldiers were more prone to be killed from bullet fire. “Opposing forces dug deep trenches into the earth; from the trenches soldiers could safely lob explosives at their enemies” (Kreibohm). Trenches also spanned many miles and connected to other trenches. The most popular trench that spanned 475 miles was located between the Belgian coast and Switzerland called the Western Front, where most of the fighting took place. “The majority of the war was fought...stretching 475 miles between the Belgian coast and Switzerland...called the Western Front” (Kreibohm). The Central Powers and the Allied Powers both participated in this idea of trench warfare and elaborated on the complexity and the conformity of them. To protect the front line of the trench, machine guns were positioned in the front. Trenches were also protected by barbed

The use of trenches in The Great War was to protect soldiers while they moved positions and to exchange fire across an empty zone labeled as No Man’s Land. However, as Jennifer D. Keene explains, no soldier ever spent the entire war in the trenches. Troops rotated between the trenches, reserve, or rest areas, which were located in the rear. Keene goes on to tell that the normal rotation duration for soldiers on the line was for three weeks and the duration for behind the line was for one week, however, that time could vary depending on whether a unit was in training or if there was not enough replacement troops at the time (“American Soldiers and Trench Warfare”). Troops, although not always on the front line, were never completely

The living conditions in the trenches where never sufficient enough for living in, especially when the soldiers had to stay in them for a few years. The trenches where just ditches in the ground with no sleeping arrangements. Many of the soldiers would go days without sleep. The rations of food that the soldiers received were often boring and sometimes inedible because they were rarely given fresh food. This would limit a soldier’s stamina in battle and make it more likely for that soldier to get killed. The

Trench warfare, although trenches were used in ancient and medieval warfare, in the American Civil War, and in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5), they did not become important until World War I (Trench Warfare). The introduction of rapid-firing small arms and artillery made the infantry charges of earlier wars virtually impossible, and the war became immobile, with the contenders digging thousands of miles of opposing trenches fronted by barbed wire

During World War I, there became a new way of warfare that changed our thoughts on how wars are fought. On the Western Front, armies of millions faced each other in lines of trenches and fought over the course of four years. Trenches are large ditches that were dug in the ground to protect the soldiers from artillery. Trench warfare lead to disease, fatigue, and horrible times for the countries involved.

Most trenches were dug deep enough that men couldn’t be seen from above. Troops were then ordered to seek momentary cover in the trenches (FIGURE 1) however eventually it became their permanent front line.