Creative ways people survived the first world war

There was a time during the early part of the 20th century when people in Britain only heard about war through the newspapers or radio, and it usually consisted of some distant battlefield on the other side of the earth. When the First World War broke out in July 1914, the people of Europe had never seen a conflict fought in this way before, with warfare changing from mass cavalry charges and single-shot weapons used in line formation, to trench combat with machine guns and artillery.

(A picture of a man with shellshock, a psychological condition that affected thousands)

There was a massive recruitment drive in Britain for young men to join up, and it was heavily propaganda-based. Britain joined the war in August and repeatedly claimed it would be a short war, even going as far as to say it would be over by Christmas. Due to poor planning and shallow waterlogged trenches that were only designed to be lived in for a short time, things went from patriotic to living in hell really fast.

(typical living conditions for people in the trenches, especially during the first year when they were much shallower. Add getting shot at on a regular basis and it’s easy to understand why some people couldn’t take it)

No one knew the conditions of the trenches before arriving there, and ordinary farm and factory workers soon found themselves living in blood and human waste-infected water, and constantly worrying about the next artillery strike or sniper. It goes without saying that they didn’t want to be there, and since just quitting and going back home wasn’t an option, this spawned a number of creative ways people survived the First World War.

Self-inflicted injuries

If a soldier was injured badly enough, they would be sent home. The problem with this is that after the people in charge realized what was happening, they started to punish people at court trials with things like attempted desertion and cowardice. The French were particularly harsh as they would execute people who self-inflicted an injury by firing squad, which put a stop to people shooting themselves in the foot or hand. One way people tried to get around this was to shoot themselves through a piece of wood or sandbag, so the wound looked more natural instead of a clean, point-blank shot, but this still failed more often than it worked.

(dirty tools and conditions with a lack of antibiotics meant receiving any wound was potentially deadly)

Enemy inflicted wounds

If the shot came from the enemy and was witnessed by other people in the trench, you had a much higher chance of getting away with it, but it also meant the shot couldn’t be controlled. A popular method was to hold a lit match or lighter in one hand at night, and then raise it just above the trench line and wait until an enemy sniper blows your hand off, or preferably only a couple of fingers. A sniper will generally always go for the most lethal shot, so using them to create a small wound that’s just bad enough to be sent home was very risky, to say the least.

Make yourself sick

With all the dead bodies and human waste all over the place, it wasn’t hard to catch a disease or infection. Something as simple as drinking a cup of trench water would do the trick or any of the other sources of filth that the soldiers lived with. The only problem with this is that there was no such thing as antibiotics, and medicine at the time wasn’t exactly what we would call medicine today.

Hide, lie, and run

There were those on all sides that couldn’t stand the war, and this led to people doing desperate things to avoid having to stay in the trenches. The most common was to go on a planned leave, and then simply hide and not go back, preferably making up some elaborate story to avoid a severe punishment. In Britain, this usually involved doing a short amount of time in prison, which many saw as better than going back to the war.

Those who didn’t want to stay in the trenches or go to prison / be executed decided to simply go on the run, changing their names and making up false stories to explain their presence. Many people would often assume the identities of people who died but didn’t have their bodies recovered, which was very common during the war. Many of these people would have leave coming up or might soon be moved to a safer area, and people took the risk to pretend to be someone else just to get out of there.

volunteer for a really bad job

People were called up to join the army, but they didn’t have to become standard infantry. The trenches had many dedicated jobs like communications and body disposal teams that didn’t usually live on the front lines where the worst conditions were. They also used many engineers who were usually digging and building things instead of sitting in the muddy water on the front line. The problem with these jobs is they were not only limited but also really difficult. The picture below shows the job known as clay kicking, or “on the cross” as it was often referred to. A person sits on a small chair attached to a plank of wood with a cross plank for the shoulders to rest on and kicks a special shovel into the clay walls, taking out whole chunks at a time. It depends on the person if constantly being underground getting sweaty and working hard is considered better or not.