Stark 100-year-old pictures show horrifying conditions Brit soldiers faced in the First World War trenches
A SERIES of stark 100-year-old photographs show the horrifying conditions British soldiers faced while fighting from the First World War trenches.
The black and white pictures reveal what life was like for the men who fought, lived and marched through the muddy quarters.
LIFE IN THE TRENCHES
Sobering images of British troops such as these have come to define our understanding of the First World War.
Much of the war was fought by soldiers living in the long, narrow ditches dug into the ground along the Western Front.
The extraordinary collection of shots shows the day-to-day life of soldiers from battling free a car entrenched in deep mud to a smiling trooper putting on a brave face as he examines his flooded dugout on the Front Line.
In another snap, an exhausted mule presumably drawing its last breaths is helped by French soldiers who desperately try and pull the doomed beast out of a deluged shell hole.
Another brutal shot, part of the National Library of Scotland’s online collection, shows a struggling soldier attempting to drag a large gun along a sodden railway track surrounded by bog.
Due to scientific and mechanical advancements - such as machine guns, tanks and aeroplanes – soldiers on all sides of the Great War spent much of their time between 1914 and 1918 sheltering in trenches.
Men had to cross the hazardous space if they wanted to attack, knowing they would face almost certain death if they went ’over the top’ into No Man’s Land.
GRIM CONDITIONS
The trenches were grim during the hot weather as they were infested with lice and rodents.
Trenches were dirty places to live and contained the living and the dead.
Conditions were worse when heavy rains or cold weather set in as the hastily constructed lines of defence were prone to flooding or even collapsing.
Allied trenches were generally lower and wetter than German trenches.
The constant water was not only uncomfortable for the men, but also caused the trench sides to subside.
Poor living conditions saw thousands of Tommies ending up with frostbite or trench foot – where soldier’s feet would become numb, blistered or even gangrenous.
In addition, as the front line was fairly static throughout the war, millions of men and machines would frequently trundle over the same ground again and again.
This would churn the already muddy ground into a sticky gloop which could readily trap animals, troops and vehicles – particularly after torrential downpours.
Soldiers would often recount the unpleasant conditions in the front line trenches which they would sometimes occupy for weeks at a time, always under the shadow of death.
Around 10 million military personnel on both sides lost their lives during the war, losing more than 700,000 soldiers.
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