Sleep Schedule
Soldiers in the trenches did not get much sleep. When they did, it was in the afternoon during daylight and at night only for an hour at a time. They were woken up at different times, either to complete one of their daily chores or to fight. During rest time, they wrote letters and sometimes played card games. |
Life in the Trenches
Trenches were long, narrow ditches dug into the ground where soldiers lived all day and night. There were many lines of German trenches on one side and many lines of Allied trenches on the other. Continue reading the main storyc many lines of German trenches on one side and many lines of Allied trenches on the other.In between the trenches was no man's land, so-called because it did not belong to either army. Soldiers crossed No Man's Land when they wanted to attack the other side. Dirty trenches The trenches could be very muddy and smelly. There were many dead bodies buried nearby and the latrines (toilets) sometimes overflowed into the trenches. Millions of rats infested the trenches and some grew as big as cats. There was also a big problem with lice that tormented the soldiers on a daily basis. Poisonous Gas Attacks
Gas masks used in WW1 were made as a result of poison gas attacks that took the Allies in the trenches on the Western Front by surprise. Early gas masks were crude as would be expected as no-one had thought that poison gas would ever be used in warfare as the mere thought seemed too shocking. The conflict cannot be said to have been the mother of any great, transformative inventions. Aircraft, submarines, machine-guns and the wherewithal for tanks were all around before the war began. It was, however, a test bed for existing technologies, providing a gigantic laboratory in which they could be improved and made to be ever more efficient and destructive.
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