Living Conditions

"Mud, mud, glorious mud..."

As you can imagine, trenches were not a very nice place to live. I'm sure that nobody would choose to live in a wet and muddy hole in the ground, infested with rats and lice, but that is exactly what the soldiers had to do.

The weather in the area where the trenches were was often rainy. This meant water collected in the trenches, making the floors a bog. The trench floors had a raised platform of planks to walk on, called "duck boards". These were to stop the men sinking into the mud. The communication trenches were usually the wettest and muddiest. Scots regiments removed their kilts to walk through them without their kilts getting wet and clogged up with mud. You couldn't do that with trousers!  

Stretcher bearers at Passchendaele.  It is easy to see why this became known as "The Battle in the Mud".

It wasn't just the trench floors that were reduced to a bog. In Flanders (Belgium), the land is very flat and low. The farmers who used the land previously had spent hundreds, perhaps thousands of years creating drainage ditches to drain the normally marshy land so they could farm it. The heavy shelling totally destroyed this system and the area was reduced back to marsh almost straight away. The heavy guns that were used by both sides often became stuck in the mud, and the battle at Passchendaele became known as "The Battle in the Mud" because of the conditions.

This is a close-up picture of a dug-out.  You can see that it would give soldiers shelter but was not very pleasant to spend a lot of time in.

The soldiers in the trench slept and sheltered in rough "dug-outs", dug out of the trench walls. The British dug-outs for ordinary soldiers were no more than mud walls and a roof, with planks to sleep on, and blankets. The officers had slightly better conditions. They had a "room" underground with beds and a table for maps etc. The German dug-outs were often better than the British and French. They had concrete defences and deeper dug-outs. Even ordinary soldiers had "barrack rooms", which could be six to nine metres underground.

The problem was that the Germans knew they would be in the trenches for a long time, so they made themselves as comfortable as possible for the duration. The Allied Generals did not want the troops to get too comfortable, because they believed that they would soon be moving forward to drive the Germans out of France.  

We also must not forget that No-Man's Land was basically a killing field.  With so many rotting corpses lying around, the smell was terrible.  I suppose that each day the men would pray that the wind was not blowing in their direction not only for the smell, but also for the threat of a poison gas attack.  Of course, the men went out to recover as many bodies as possible, but many were lost forever in the endless mud.

Diseases and Treatment

The lack of washing facilities and the fact the men were living in such cramped conditions meant that disease was common and spread very quickly. Lice were also a serious problem, and could not only cause discomfort but serious illness. There were epidemics of typhus, cholera and dysentery (which killed thousands), plus measles and influenza. There was also "trench fever", which had flu-like symptoms. The men had a high temperature for 3 to 5 days, and then they got better.  

This man is standing in a trench full of water.  This was the reason why many soldiers developed "Trench Foot".

"Trench Foot" was also very common. This was caused by the feet being constantly submerged in water. It started a bit like the foot had been in the bath too long. First the skin wrinkled, then the whole foot swelled up to a huge size. Then the skin died, turned black and started to rot. The men were supposed to take measures to avoid this, but they did not work. Many men lost their feet as a result.

There were no antibiotics for injured men. Wounds often went septic, which then led to gangrene. Many soldiers lost their limbs. Many died. There were field hospitals a safe distance back from the fighting, but men could easily die before they got there, some from blood loss. X-rays were rare and needles were not sterilised. The Americans introduced blood transfusions late on in the war, but the early British attempts failed because they did not know about matching blood types. A rapid development in prosthetics (false limbs) led to the development of plastic surgery.

Under the constant strain of being under fire and hearing explosions all day caused shell-shock in some men. They were reduced to nervous wrecks. At first it was not recognised as a medical condition, but later it was understood and the men were sent home, and not shot for cowardice like they previously would have been. However, many were still branded as cowards by their family or friends, or felt ashamed of themselves. In some men, from then on, any sudden or loud noise could trigger fear, making them tremble, shake or cry out in sheer terror. Some just wept because their memories scared them so much.