Living Conditions & Soldier's Daily Routine

The living conditions for soldiers in the trenches were absolutely diabolical. The biggest problem was the amount of mud that lay in the trenches. As I mentioned before they had to lay down "duck-boards" for the soldiers to walk on so they didn't sink in to the mud. It was no wonder that it was usually called "The Battle In The Mud"!  

This picture illustrates the muddy conditions

These horrible conditions led to a lot of diseases and illnesses.  One infection was called Trench Foot. This is how one soldier described life in the trenches :

"The constant immersion in icy cold water played havoc with the feet, and made them swell to such an extent that at times it was agony to keep on one's boot. To take them off, however, to gain relief would have been fatal, as it would be impossible to pull them on again."

You can imagine how they felt being in agony but fought on, lucky to live and tell the tale. To stop the soldiers getting trench foot, they were advised to wash their feet daily and to rub them with whale oil. This was to help protect against trench foot. Soldiers did not do this daily though as it was such a chore with taking their shoes off and all. Statistics show how 20,000 people in the winter of 1914-1915 were affected by trench foot. The only way to have fought back against trench foot was for the soldiers to constantly change their socks throughout the day. By the end of 1915, soldiers were ordered to have three pairs of socks with them everyday and they had to change them at least twice a day.

Not only were the trenches full of mud, they were also hoaching with rats. They carried a lot of diseases and some of these could be deadly. The rats lived off of dead bodies in No Man's Land and occasionally had a nibble on the sleeping soldiers. It was not unusual at all for the rats to run over you while you lay in the dugout.

Now on to the food they had. Luckily troops did not often go hungry. The only time they could go hungry was when shooting stopped the important supplies coming from the communication trenches. The food wasn't the best variety but the soldiers were glad when it came. The main meal was usually always tinned " Bully Beef' and a loaf of bread but not to themselves of course. This had to be shared between up to ten men! The sharing of rations was often just a lottery. The food was dished out by the army service corps. There was also quite a lot of cheese going about but soldiers were advised not to eat it as it caused constipation. Some people say that this was deliberate just so it would help the men from not using the latrines. People in the CCS were quite lucky as for a couple of days while they were recuperating, they got extra rations. There were also emergency biscuits going about. These were very hard though and if you had false teeth you would have to dip it in water or something to soften it up. The food only came as long as there were no hold ups. It depended on the transport, weather and what was going on with the fighting.

One thing that I would hate about the trenches would be the water. Water was carried in petrol cans and as you would imagine these would be very dirty. To get away most of the germs and grime from the water, chloride of lime was added. The water was usually absolutely revolting by the time it came for you to drink it. There was always shortages of water. To stop the agony of drinking this water, troops often tried to collect as much rain water as they could.

Now to the soldiers routine. By mid morning, troops had already started to do the necessary odd jobs around the trenches. This was usually filling sandbags, cleaning weapons etc. The cleaning of the weapons was a very important job. To do this boiling water was poured down the barrel to clear away the dust and rust then the "pull-through" method was used. This was when a piece of string with a piece of metal on one side and on the other an oiled gauze, was pulled through the barrel to oil it and to protect against rusting.

Every day, soldiers had to have a medical. This was just to check for diseases that were always going about. Diseases were very common in the tight living conditions which made the disease spread very quickly. One big problem was lice. They were everywhere. Soldiers tried to de-louse their clothes but it was no use as within a day you would have been bound to catch them again. There was a severe lack of washing facilities. One soldier described the lice as "pale fawn in colour, and they left blotchy red bite marks all over the body". Various, unsuccessful, methods of removing the lice were experimented. One method was to have a lighted candle held under your clothes to burn the lice but the hard part was to do this without burning your clothes. This skill only came with practice.

After doing the odd jobs, there was a long wait before the officers gave out the orders for the day. Trench maintenance was always needed with all the shooting and new support trenches were always being dug. Despite what you may think, much of the day was very boring. Soldiers used this time to read, play chess, cards, smoke and for the opportunity to write letters home to their loved ones. There were very strict rules about what you were allowed to write in the letters. You were only allowed to write limited things. Here is an example of what you weren't allowed to write : "We are feeling very tired after recent fighting"

Anything that could be of use to the enemy was totally prohibited just in case it fell in to the wrong person's hands

Every afternoon, there was always a bombing raid between two and four. They also machine gunned the trenches. You would be ok though as long as you kept your head down. This was known as the "Afternoon Strafe".

As I mentioned before, there were a lot of diseases and that going around. There were epidemics everywhere. This came about with all the germs in the food and water. The diseases that resulted from this were typhus, cholera and dysentery. These cost thousands of lives. Two other diseases were also fatal. These were measles and influenza. As the medical care wasn't really that good, many died from wounds that had been infected. Many soldiers also lost limbs due to gangrene in the wounds.

This picture shows some ex-soldiers after the war.

There was also an illness known as shell shock. At first these people were thought to be wimps but then they found out that it was actually an illness. It occurred when bullets constantly kept whizzing passed their ears, and constant explosions. These people just became nervous wrecks and were sometimes sent home due to not being able to continue.

When night-fall came, all was not quiet. Snipers often put all their fears behind them and crawled into No Man's Land. Their mission was to try and find any sudden movements and take advantage. Many men couldn't sleep that well due to rats, explosions, the cold or false alarms. Many didn't sleep any more than three to four hours.

Bearing all this in mind, it would be no surprise that the life expectancy of a 2nd Lieutenant was no more than three months!

You can now really start to see how the number of deaths in the trenches came about. It was not only the fighting and bullets that killed people, but the appalling living conditions as well. It is quite shocking the number of deaths due to the conditions and I know that I would hate to be one of those men fighting in the front line trenches of Europe.