Introduction

By August the 4th, 1914, a war had erupted between many of the countries in Europe. On one side there was Britain, France and Russia. On the other was Germany and Austria-Hungary. Other countries, like Belgium, had chosen to stay neutral. However, when Germany invaded France through Belgium, they were forced to join in defence of their country.

In the years leading up to The Great War, there had been many alliances and agreements made between different combinations of these countries. Germany had just won a war against France about 40 years previously and captured the territories of Alsace and Lorraine, which France wanted back. To stop France being able to gain the support of other countries so she could mount an attack, Germany made an alliance (a formal agreement to fight on the same side if attacked or in the event of war) with Austria-Hungary. This was natural as they had a lot in common. Alliances with Russia and Italy soon followed. This left France relatively alone.

Many people expected the war would be over by Christmas 1914. They were wrong. Germany would be "fighting a war on two fronts" because she was between Russia and France, two of her enemies. Count von Schlieffen developed a plan to solve this problem: to invade France via Belgium. Unfortunately for them, it did not work because Belgium fought back, so both sides were still fighting well into the winter. The men dug trenches in the battlefields of France for shelter, a place to rest until the weather got better. By late 1914 the trenches were home to millions of men on both side. When spring came, new attacks were expected to win the war. By early 1915, the trenches that had been dug for simple, safe shelter from enemy guns were a complicated network hundreds of miles long.  Networks of trenches appeared on both fronts: the Western Front, where German was fighting France and Britain; and the Eastern Front, where Germany and Austria-Hungary were fighting Russia.

The "new attacks" of the spring did not succeed and the soldiers remained in the trenches, which became more and more complicated, stretching from the North Sea coast to the Swiss border. The problem was that once they got into the system of "Trench Warfare", how did they get out of it?

The image many people have of the trenches in WW1 is of thousands of young men of mixed ages and backgrounds clambering bravely out of the trenches and going "Over the Top". For many, it was to almost certain death.  

In this investigation, I will try to find out exactly why trench warfare caused so many men (on both sides) to die, fighting for their country.

Trench Layout & Systems

Trenches began as shell-holes in the ground or ditches the soldiers dug to take cover. It was a well-known fact that it was easier for the enemy to shoot you when you were standing up than when you were lying down, especially if you were in a hole in the ground. This was proved in modern times in the Gulf War (1990), where a man in the open was 200 times more likely to die than a man lying taking cover in a ditch. Trenches appeared in the American Civil War (1860-65), but they were not used in World War Two (1939-45). This was mainly due to changes in military weaponry and tactics.

Each side used trenches; on the Western Front, where French and British Empire troops fought the Germans, and on the Eastern Front, where the Germans and Austrians fought the Russians.

As I have already mentioned, trenches began as simple ditches that were deep enough for men to take cover from gunfire, but soon they became very complicated. Each side (e.g. the British/French or the Germans/Austrians) had trenches. There were two, sometimes three lines of trenches running almost parallel to each other. Between the two sides, there was a desolate area called "No-man's Land", because it belonged to no one. No-man's Land could be anything from 25 to 100 metres wide. It was an area of devastation: with fragments of buildings, shattered and burnt down trees and craters and deep holes in the ground left from intense shelling, which were often filled with water.  

The first trench, on the edge of No-man's Land was called the "Front line" trench. This was where the soldiers who were fighting lived. Some of these had firing bays, dug out into No-man's Land. The Front line trenches were reinforced with barbed wire in front. In some places on the German Hindenburg line on the Western Front, it was 20 metres wide.

Behind this line, there were the "reserve trenches", a second line of defence, but they were also a resting place for the troop either going to or coming back from the front line. These were also known as "support trenches". These trenches were also important because if the enemy captured the front line trench, the soldiers would retreat and the second line would become the first line of defence. Sometimes there was a third line of trenches but these were not so common.

Running across between the trenches were the "communication trenches". These were a link between the front and second lines, but also led back from the fighting to safety, sometimes for a kilometre or more. Troops, food, water, mail, ammunition and other supplies came down them one way, to the front line. Wounded men went the other, to the field hospitals.

The trenches were dug in a zig-zag line. There were a few reasons for this. One was so that if the trench was captured by enemy troops, they couldn't fire  straight along the trench. Another reason, similar to this, was that shrapnel from a shell exploding would be contained in the right angle bends of the trench walls.