Life in the Trenches

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Life in the trenches of World War One wasn't just about facing the enemy, it was about surviving all sorts of other things. The filth, the disease. Psychological challenge.

has been around for thousands of years. It's a really basic fundamental idea. And over the years it became more elaborate. You did have trench systems But they were only ever intended to be temporary, you know, in the American Civil War, in the Boer War, the years leading up to the the First World War. But at the time of the First World War None of this, none of what happened was in any way anticipated. It was going to be a mobile war. At the beginning, it was a mobile war.

but you had the Germans held up uh as they were advancing at the Marne. And then you had them building a series of trenches and the British in response, built trenches. And I've got this extraordinary account that I found in the National Archive from an observer, so someone f flying alongside a pilot.

'cause the aeroplanes at this point were doing reconnaissance. Looking down and on the aisle, on the thirteenth of September, so, you know, really Soon into the war, seeing the Germans building trenches, Uh that's really the that's the kick off point for the First World War as we know it. So then the British would build or the Allies would build trenches.

And that began the race to the sea. And what that meant was basically trying to outflank, trying to outflank, trying to outflank, but every time an outflanking move was made, another trench was built. So trench, trench, trench, trench, trench, all the way Uh to the North Sea on one side and the s frontier with Switzerland on the other side. So what? Over four hundred miles you're talking about.

So, you know, your rate of fire was so much quicker and also the the you know, the power, the strength on You know, I was I was trying to work it out the other day that one of the you know, the stock field gun, the British field gun, the eighteen pounder, I think it could what could it fire to? It could fire if you put it in Charing Cross, I think I'm right in saying it could it could hit gold as green. Not saying you'd want to. But but you could. And and even the machine guns, you know, the the

the development of the machine guns. You know, you had the Vickers gun, which was the heavy gun on the British side, the Lewis gun, which was the the light machine gun, could be carried by one man, could be fired from the shoulder, fired from the hip, all set up on a bipod. You know, that could that could reach Camden Town, I worked out. You know, these were and firing hundreds of rounds a minute.

And in a situation like that, the ultimate defense is a trench. You know, you can get into a trench. You can you're not safe. you know, in the in the early years, in the later years, if a shell, you know, as artillery becomes more and more important and there's more and more of it and and the the economies of the nations gear up to building more and more guns. You know, a shell lands in your trench, you know.

And there are snipers everywhere. You always have to be careful of snipers. There are a lot of ways to die in a trench, but they're a hell of a lot safer than being Above ground. So this is why they developed, and this is why the war became one of stasis for so many years.

You had a fire step. It would be what? It would be you know, a bit taller than a man. Um it would have a firestep that you would stand on in order to to see over the top, to see what was ahead. You probably have a periscope there. It would be

Just a just a little hole really that a man could s squeeze into. And they were actually discouraged because they were sort of undermining the trenches. But people did it because they did it. Um and you would have dugouts, not particularly um elaborate dugouts. uh but you know, enough for officers, for for whatever really. I mean, people like to say, Oh yes, this was for X, this was for Y you know, you've got a you've got a a huge system of trenches covering hundreds of miles over

o over four years. I mean they did they were used for what they were used for.

You know, trench foot was you know, the the boots were leather, they were perfectly good. I think they got better boots in nineteen fifteen. But, you know, twenty thousand people had trench foot by the end of nineteen fourteen, and your feet got wet

uh were the you know, chained slightly so they were rough on the outside so you could rub oil in and make them more waterproof. In certain very wet areas, Flanders for example, um, people were given uh rubber waders or rubber boots. So that was you know, that wa and and then after after they'd more or less eradicated it, it was um it actually became a crime. To have uh to have trench Trench fever you got from the feces of lice. Um and basically you had the lice you'd be scratching and

feces would get inside or the poison would get inside. And that was a really nasty disease. It took a while to incubate, and then you were, you know, high fever and pain for five days, it would go, it would come back. And then it was one of these kind of things.

We'd probably move on to this, but you know, because you were out of action potentially for three months, didn't kill you. Um, people saw it as almost as good as a blighty wound. You know, you were out of the line for three months. You felt terrible. But you weren't going to die. Um so you know, th there was that, there was the mud, there was the cold. I'm buried dead. I'm buried dead inside the trenches. You know, the you sometimes the walls were built up.

Yeah. Th there was um a story of one man uh was talking about walking down one of the communication trenches, you know, to get to the front line, and he said there was an arm sticking out, and we never moved it because it became a sort of friends.

You know, we'd we'd some people would shake his hand, some people would say, you know, hello chum, and it became, you know, as part of the grim humour. But but, you know, it it's it also shows that there were people inside the you know, the the the fabric of the trench. One man said, you know, he moved into a trench that had recently been uh a French trench. And he was doing some wiring one night front and he he fell into basically um some bodies, some decomposed bodies.

And he said it was the most disgusting feeling. He sort of pulled himself out of it. It was sort of I think he said it was like jam. And he pulled himself I mean, can you imagine just the the the astonishing

you'd have a reserve trench quite a lot further back, five hundred yards further back, and there you might have a regimental aid post, you know, the first of the the medical posts, you you might have a a command post, you might have a some kind of Yeah, you yeah, absolutely. And then you the at the rear and then you have communication trenches leading all the way back.

Um you know, it was a a proper maze. If you were arriving in the trenches, you would hopefully have a guide to bring you forward because n you know, it was very complicated to know exactly where trenches had names. You know, communication trenches had names, the junctions had names, you know, from wherever the local troops were from. If they were Scottish they'd be Mutt Glasgow names, London might be Piccadilly Circus.

Um and uh so it was a complicated business. You would go back to the reserve trend. you would go behind the lines, whereas you say, you would have some you know, you'd have a bath for one thing, um, you'd be able to clean up, you'd be able to go and see a concert party. You could you know, there were things you could do. Um and then you might get some leave, you know.

Every year, eighteen months you might get to go home. And that's another story again, because you were living such a different life. to anyone at home that it could be a great relief to be home or it could be a massive c culture shock and a disappointment.

if if you kept men in them for a long time, they'd they'd die. So but it's but it's the fact that we got this sophisticated system, massive state funded, state backed, uh you know sophisticated modern nation states are able to keep these sort of people in these

um uh you know, a a advanced posts, main posts, then back to uh a a a spot where you could actually have surgery. and then back to a main hospital, and then back to the port where you'd be taken back to England. All of this was so carefully worked out. Now it didn't always work, a bit like the health service. D didn't always work.

But it was there for you. And so, you know, you would only get at the you know, the preliminary spots you'd get triage basically. You know, you might you get at the regimental the first one you get some morphine. And then more could be done for you. The Thomas Splint. I don't know if you've heard of this Thomas Splint. You know, this extraordinary development where, you know, if you had a femur injury

It was really a death sentence before this. You know, you would be carried and you'd have the ends of the bones against each other, the pain would be astonishing and you would lose so many people to to to to to to gangrene and to to to to whatever else. This was a a splint, you know, you i i it would it would keep the the the leg steady and it meant that people could be carried long distances and they could live. Credible development.

all you know, uh i it was div it was actually pre war, but it was perfected at this time. And this was all part of the medical system that would allow you to be taken further back as was necessary until you could actually be operated on now, don't get me wrong, the the purpose of all this was to bring you back into action

Of a man who was sent all the way back, you know, in great pain, ended up in a hospital, um, in England, and he was visited every day by one of these sort of do good do good o women, sort of a you know, of a certain class who visit him, and she kept asking him

Um, where were you hurt? Where were you wounded? And he tried to put her off by saying, um, you know, in France and and she said, No, no, where we and eventually he got fed up and he said, Madam, if you were wounded where I was wounded, you would not have been wounded at all.

No. And she left and she never came back. And and so, you know, th this is the idea. You know, all these different kinds of wounds, injuries, some were able to come back. So, you know, for example, if you had trench fever, you were taken off for a bit of a you know, bit of a rest and then you were brought back as soon as possible. But if you had something more serious

You ended up as one of those unfortunate people back in back in England who, you know, after the war ended up begging on the streets. So, you know, it it it but the reverse of that was the postal.

Because the the authorities were very clever, in the same way that they rotated. They didn't rotate because they wanted people to have a a decent time. They rotated because they knew if you were in the front line for too long you were useless. You know, you weren't getting any sleep. You were getting, if you're lucky, four or five hours of of broken sleep a night lying on the on the firestep.

So, you know, you were doing all of these incredibly stressful jobs, so you had to be you you you were no use. You had to be brought back and and uh and allowed to have more rest. Well another thing that was very practical was the postal system. It kept morale up. You had if people were getting letters from home on a regular basis, or getting fruit cannons. Or chocolate. Or heroin.

City, Regents Park, and then brought to the coast and then brought over in steamers and then brought again in stages. Very much like going back on the hospitals. They'd be brought to basically um uh a a sort of trench post office, a sort of frontline post office, and be delivered into the trench. And I think that's remarkable actually. And all of this set up in such a short period of time. When it mattered, they could do it. And

Uh and it also gives you a sense of what the the authorities had to set up quickly. You know, how how the economy had to change, how industry had to change, how everything had to be changed when a very large portion of the British public were now living in France.

they would be zigzagged. And of course, if you think about it, that makes perfect sense. You'd have these traverses. And the idea being that if a shell exploded in the trench, Then the the the force of it couldn't go all the way down. It would be broken by these crenellations, if you like.

Um and it also meant that if somebody got into your trench, enemy got into it, they couldn't fire all the way down, or indeed if a group got in, you know, they couldn't just run all the way down, they were sort of held up as they as they moved along. That made perfect sense. It wasn't just the frontline trench, but certainly the frontline trench had to be um

had to be like that. So it was miserable inside, but it also had that level uh of protection, particularly against artillery shells. Now People coming into a trench for the first time were in quite a lot of danger because they didn't know how to live in it. And the first thing you do always was to keep your head down because the trenches were at variable height.

You know, they weren't all built to a to to a specification. You know, these weren't IKEA trenches. They were just placed there. They were they had to be built and they had to be built given whatever uh was there, the geography and and the conditions at the time. So people arriving in um would either be sort of lackadaisical and wouldn't know to get their heads down. You only had to pop your head up for a second and a sniper would take your take your head.

Or they would throw themselves down at the the slightest noise. Um and in fact what something that the The uh front line officers like to do is, you know, when you had a staff officer coming up from behind, they enjoyed it when the staff officer came up and was so scared that they threw themselves down at every you know, that was

You know, that that constant sort of, you know, competition and rivalry and sort of antipathy between the staff officer and the frontline officer. That was that was very much at play. Um but so so it was a great danger. And you know, snipers were were a great So people not only did they have to keep their heads down, not only were the signs up, you know, reminding people to keep their heads down, people you know, they had different ways uh

War being the mother of invention. I I read about one man. We used to be able to isolate snipers. What we used to try to do, we'd put a turnip on the parapet.

And then the sniper hopefully would fire and fire through it and you could see the direction of it coming. Then you'd put another turnip up for a different point. And you'd fire through that and you'd be able to sort of work out precisely. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure how successful that was, but you s you know, it's what it's what it's what we used to do.

Um, and you had to be very, very careful of snipers. You had your own snipers, obviously. And so periscopes were w were po they even had a setup where you could sort of remotely fire a gun through some sort of mechanical um so you didn't even have to put your head up over over the over the trench. Um, Sometimes people were incredibly lucky, found lots of accounts lots, but accounts of of shells landing inside a trench, but they were done.

Um and one man said a sh a shell landed right next to me, and he said I was so fascinated. I picked it up, you know, pulled it out, picked it up, and um an officer, an artillery officer came along and said two things. First of all

Never ever touch it again. It could have gone off. And secondly, if you'd left it where it was, we could have worked out where it came from. So, you know um I suppose, you know, mm people didn't shouldn't really have needed the instruction. Don't lift it up once it's landed. But then there are also different kinds of artillery. Um so You know, the mortars, mortars are interesting because obviously they you know they could be in the the trench opposite.

and you could hear it fire. You could often hear the whoop whoop whoop as it came over, and you could also see it.

And so this was one of the things about being you know, becoming experienced. you knew when to keep your head down, you knew basically how to behave, and you also knew, sort of m almost instinctively, how to stay safe from, for example, um a a mortar that was that was coming over. So there were diff you know, you you had to kind of learn this new existence of of how to stay safe.

So both safe in terms you know, from from the weapons that were going to hit you, fire at you, but also from, you know, how to stay healthy, you know, in the trench as as well and how to get enough sleep. um and how to you know, how to eat properly and how to and also bear in mind that the trenches you know, we we have again possibly an idea that th no man's land was this sort of consistent um belt. Of course it wasn't. You know, some trenches

Could be a thousand yards, you know, miles, well, you know, miles, but you know, a long, long way away. Um, in which case, you know, your your interaction with it would would be, or day-to-day interaction with it would be less. Um, and then perhaps the the average would be two, three hundred yards, but then you had places where it was literally fifteen yards away.

and the enemy trench. And you know, y account somebody said, you know, I'd get up in the morning and well, get up in the morning, I'd I'd I'd be there in the morning. They didn't sleep eight hours overnight. But um And a voice would come over, Morning Tommy, and I'd shout back, Morning Fritz. That's what it was. You know, you had a sort of weird Sort of communication. And that actually, now I think of it, sort of widened itself out.

in terms of the the routine in the in the in the trench, in the front. because you would have first thing in the morning, you would have stand to

Getting it out of the way. And then they'd stopped so that either side could have breakfast.

But but within that you had to learn how to be an an you know, a a city animal. You had to learn how to how to live and to be wise to everything that was going on. And and it and it did take a while. And that included, you know, breakfast would come up. You had to know how to how to make your breakfast. You had to know what you were eating. You had to know how to get the best of it. You had your rum ration in the morning. That was incredibly important.

You know, it was and it wasn't it was two tablespoons. You know, it wasn't gonna get you drunk.

That helped. You know, it wasn't just keeping you alive, it was doing something more for you, was fortifying you, was keeping your spirit keeping your spirit up. And of course, you know, there was a lot of there was a big temperance movement at the time. Um and so there were lots of people back at home saying these

They shouldn't be, this is quite wrong. And there were a lot of people in in the trenches saying, How dare you? You come you know, you you temperance people, come and stay out here for a bit and then see how you feel about you know, um uh uh about this. And even, you know, Woodbine Willie, you know, th th that that wonderful um uh padre who came out and, you know, would hand cigarettes out to the to the soldiers. I mean he was temper

And he spent some of his time, you know, saying that they shouldn't be getting alcohol. I think I think he I'm not sure about this, but I think he may have changed his view in the same way he changed his view about war. give them something. You know, they're living a hard life out here, give them something. So, you know, and then your meals, you'd you'd have your McConaughey's meat and vegetables and if it was co I you you did a video on this, didn't you? Even it, haven't you?

There were people who said, you know, um well no, actually I qualify that. There were people who very sheepishly after the war said this was This in some ways was the best time of my life because

Not because of the d danger, although I think it you know, certain people do experience uh you know, a heightened excitement and to kind of get you know, to g to get off on that kind of thing. But I think more for The comradeship, more for the fact that, you know, in back in Blighty, people lived their lives and their lives could be terribly mundane, they live and they die, and, you know, they didn't particularly Get close to others and get I think here people became very, very close.

They laughed together, they relied on each other, they you know, you what you might have remembered about the morning was, you know, less the the the the shelling and more the fact that someone made you a cup of tea. Uh and I think that was important. And I think when people got home after the war they uh a lot of people actually missed that. They didn't have that same sense of belonging. Also a sense of purpose.

You know, for a lot of people there was no you know, what are we doing? This is completely mindless. Why why are we trying to kill other people that we don't have any hatred? Um but in an at another level it gave people a a a a meaning, something to do that they'd perhaps not had um before. It gave people new you know, they could

When they were behind the lines they experienced a new culture. Now I'm not saying that every you know, these were culture vultures who couldn't wait to get to to Paris to see the you know to to go and see the paintings.

On the other hand, in all kinds of different ways, you know, so many expressions we have nowadays come from that period. Egg and chip. What's more English than egg and chips this meal they first had in France? Really? And um you know th th there were a lot of people

Going to to to different kinds of restaurants, going to to the concert parties, um, going to brothels, all these experiences that people were having that they they wouldn't have had at home. I mean the concert parties I found That's fascin you know, wonderful account from a man who played first girl. You know, his life was completely changed. You know, he he came out as a member of the a corporal in the Middlesex Red.

And just a little corporal, you know, average. And he applied and he you became a member of a concert party, the Ace of Spades concert party, which is uh I think a divisional concert. And he played he was quite small, quite slim, and he played first girl, and he took the name It was Dolly Clare. I forget. Anyway, he took a it took a name. And he always played the girl. And some sometimes it was, you know, big, broad music hall review, sometimes it was serious plays, melodramas.

And he talked about one he was very proud of where he had a very tragic death at the end, um, playing a Native American And he was a very convincing girl and his his interviews in the Imperial War Museum. And sometimes get you know got really annoyed, angry when people suggested that he was anything other than the virile man. Of course. But you know, this was of the time.

All the same. He was playing First Girl and and doing it well. And the the Colonel was invited to one of the shows and was told there were two girls and was told you've got to choose which one is the real And he was chosen by the Colonel and then he was sent to see the Colonel.

And the colonel, he said Oh he was disgusted when he found out that I was a man, but I was very pleased. You know, it's it it's it's and this was a whole to he became an actor after the war. So I suppose my point is not everybody had a wholly negative experience. And I think you're allowed to say that.

The First World War of course was a hellish time in terms in so many ways, but it was also time of companionship, time of opportunity, and if you look at what came after the war, For so many people, things just got worse. I mean you know, so many of the wounded areas. came home to to no kind of safety net whatsoever. Just ended up on the streets begging. You know, they were promised a a land for heroes, homes for heroes and and none of that material.

Um you know, Britain more you know, pretty soon went into depression. So that you know, at at the end of the next war. people were bloody well sure they weren't going to get the same result after the end of that they got at the end of this war.

So yeah, it's it's a much more it's like all of these stories, you know. Much more nuanced, much more interesting. Uh and you won't get one story. So I think people should stop trying to tell one story.

physical and psychological scars long after those guns fell silent. And thank goodness we've got books like Josh's, we've got accounts of of the letters, the diaries. We're still able to hear those voices. Those men who lived through it. Thanks again to Josh Levine for coming on the show and thank you for listening.

And there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history it dot com slash subscribe.