After the failure of the Schlieffen Plan (by which the Germans hoped to take over France by going through Belgium and attacking the French troops from the back) they were now in a predicament.

They got more resistance from Belgium than they expected. Their big forts were a small problem but this was brought down with artillery, nicknamed ‘Big Bertha’.

This gave the French time to re-group; also the British kept their part of an old agreement with Belgium and came to the aid of the ‘country in despair’. This put Germany in a war with Britain and France, also the Russians mobilized much quicker than Germans expected. So this put the German army in a war on two fronts. The Triple Alliance between Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary and Triple Entente between France, Britain and Russia were now at war with each other.

Germany and the allies were stuck up at Ypres, and the cold winter made the ground muddy and damp. All they could now do was to build ditches to shoot over at the enemy.  This soon became trenches which was a main part of world war one.  The trenches spread from the English Channel at Ypres all the way to the Swiss border.

The allied and German fighting took place of both sides of the trenches and was called the western front. The fighting was profuse and a lot of new weaponry was being introduced.

The trench was a big underground system constructed and filled with sandbags for protection.  The soldiers slept, ate and fired at their adversaries from here.

Many lives were lost at the trenches.  The space between trenches was called ‘No-man’s land’. This was laid with desolation and corpses.  Anyone who went over the edge of the trenches hardly had a chance of survival due to the quick shower of machine gun fire.

The conditions in the trenches were unsanitary and a lot of men died from diseases.

As the investigation progresses, I’m going to look at aspects of the conditions of the soldiers living in the trenches, how the trenches were constructed, any new machinery, also how it contributed to the death of a lot of soldiers.