How to survive living in a WW1 trench

The First World War was a global event that started on 28 July 1914 and lasted for almost 4 and half years, finally coming to an end on 11 November 1918. The whole thing was a complete mess from the start and saw some of the worst weapons used that humans could possibly create at the time. The level of organization and diplomacy involved was very sloppy from the beginning and after a load of countries declared war on each other for next to nothing, the fighting came to its peak in the center of France.

Even to this day, there is an area in France known as “zone rouge” which is a no-go area to the public due to the many thousands of tons of leftover explosives and gas shells. The Great War as it came to be known saw the forces of Europe fighting in a way they never had before, from the muddy dug-out trench networks of the front line.

Since Germany declared war on both Russia and France, it was decided the best tactic was to quickly deal with France while Russia gathered its army, and began funneling troops through neutral Denmark in an attempt at a quick knockout blow to northern France. Their plan didn’t work though as when passing through Denmark, the British noticed German troops were committing numerous war crimes and said to Germany that if they didn’t stop then we’d put down our cups of tea and come and give you a damn good thrashing. Germany shrugged and so Britain entered the war, an event that strengthened mainland Europe against the Germans and prevented them from quickly ending the war for France, leading to a long drawn-out trench war.

German trenches were significantly better than British and French ones, mostly due to them knowing the chance of a quick win was out of the question and they were in it for the long term. They built their trenches deeper and bigger and much more comfortable, expecting the war to last a while and so prepared accordingly. The British however made no such preparations as they expected the war to be over in a matter of months, with a popular recruitment campaign in the country saying “Come kick some ass and be home by Christmas”, and since the war only began in July you can see how this was overly optimistic.

The British trenches were probably the worst ones you could possibly be in during the first year of the war. After the initial problems were fixed they became more livable, but that first year of the war saw thousands of British troops dying from all kinds of horrible diseases.

Here are a few of the things British troops had to endure during the first year of the war.

1) Trench foot

This gruesome disease was named as such because it was by far the most common condition you could catch in the trenches. It’s officially known as immersion foot syndrome and means that someone’s feet have been wet for too long. In the first year, there were no duckboards on the bottom of the trenches to keep people’s feet dry, and the troop’s feet would be permanently submerged in water, with them often being forced to sleep semi-submerged in water-filled craters.

If your feet are constantly wet for more than a full day then the skin will start to turn pale and go numb. The biggest danger comes from gangrene forming on the soaked skin and causing the foot to be amputated which was the only method to save the victim’s life since antibiotics hadn’t been invented yet.

2) Shell shock

This is another condition that no one knew about before the Great War, probably because no one had shot millions of tons of explosives at each other before. Shell shock is a psychological condition that can cause people to seem crazy, with their emotions and thought processes being far removed from what can be considered normal.

The condition is caused by going into a state of shock caused by constant explosions and the knowledge that you could die at any second. Imagine seeing a blown-out crater covered in body parts that used to belong to people you knew, knowing that at any second you could die in the same way. Every single time a bomb lands you know it could have been you who died, and thinking about this constantly while trying to sleep and eat can cause people to break down into the state now known as shell shock. Learning about how to survive living in a WWI trench involved developing a strong psychological defense against the constant threat of death.

3) Rats

These furry little creatures can live just about anywhere and aren’t afraid to steal food and poop in peoples drinking water. They are known carriers of disease and have caused many more deaths by spreading it than they have with their tiny jaws. Rats were a constant threat to people’s health and a hand full of diseased rats getting into the front lines food supply could be devastating to the war effort.

4) Gas Attacks

An ever-present threat was a wave of strangely colored gas floating towards the front line. First came chlorine gas which was only deadly if you breathed too much of it in and often caused very few deaths when used. It could also be beaten by using a simple gas mask and didn’t affect anything on a person other than their respiratory system.

Mustard gas on the other hand was a whole different story. The gas acted in the same way you’d expect acid gas to work, causing huge puss-filled blisters on the skin and causing light burns to anything living it touched. This meant you couldn’t just put your gas mask on and play cards until it passed, but every single area of your skin had to be covered. The answer to this was the trench coat which could have the collar and cuffs folded out to protect the neck and wrists, and combined with some leather gloves and a full-head gas mask, this provided the only effective method of living through a cloud of gas.

5) Human-caused disease

After the rats and trench foot, the soldiers themselves were the biggest cause of disease in the trenches. Toilets were just holes within a dug-out trench, and when heavy rainfall came they would often overflow and become part of the small stream flowing through the trenches, the same stream that people sleep in and cook around.

The huge amount of dead bodies lying in no-mans land where they couldn’t be collected also poisoned the ground water with disease, and since this land was surrounded by trenches that were lower down, that water often ended up finding its way inside.

Being forced to live in a trench filled with diseased water and having to walk through it, sleep in it, and cook over it every single day meant that not catching anything was almost entirely down to luck. Whilst trying to avoid disease you must deal with the psychological issues of seeing countless blown apart bodies and hearing the thousands of artillery shells landing around you knowing that the next one could be for you.

If you were lucky enough not to get infected by a sewage-covered rat or killed from a quarter-ton shell during your sleep then you’d get your turn to go “over the top”. Not dying from trench conditions gave you the opportunity to run towards thousands of well-trained soldiers with machine guns and in the unlikely event that every single one of them misses you, you would then be forced to kill a bunch of people doing the exact same thing as you but on another side.