For most people, the phrase ‘First World War’ conjures up images of deep, waterlogged trenches and mud-spattered soldiers. But what was trench life really like? In this episode, those who survived it describe their experiences. The trenches could be a shock to those who knew little about them in advance. Walter Hare of the West Yorkshire Regiment first went into the front line in December 1916.
We moved to the right, I remember, got into a church yard – a cemetery – and then dropped down into a trench. And I couldn’t believe it; I was knee deep in mud for a start. I’d never been told about the Somme and the mud on the Somme, it was all new to me. Well we sloshed down this communication trench and we passed a support line and then we went further up and got to what was the front line. And then that was the first we knew about trench warfare – we were told we hadn’t to show our heads above the parapet because there were snipers and they would get us if we did, you see, so we had to be careful. It was a bit of a shock because I could hear shells exploding and rifles and machine guns going, and I thought, ‘Well, I shan’t be here above five minutes.’ It depressed you a bit; just I’d not been warned about it, you see, I’d no idea what it was like.
By the end of 1914, lines of trenches snaked across the Western Front, stretching from the Belgian coast to the Swiss frontier. They varied in quality and sophistication, but British private Walter Spencer described a typical construction.
We had duckboards chiefly in the firing line, not much in the communication trenches because the communication trenches were generally fairly good. Well we had sandbags on the top of the trench between us and the enemy to stop the fire, of course. Very little wire netting; there was barbed wire out in the front of the trenches, usually about 20 yards in front of the front line trench. Generally speaking – it varied a little – but it would be somewhere about 2 yards wide and it was erected on posts as far as possible, or was just left out what we called stranded in kind of circles.
Those manning the trenches would modify them according to their own needs, and even add some personal touches, as William Holmes of the London Regiment remembered.
Every trench was originally built by soldiers with sandbags which were, I suppose, about 18 inches long and about a good foot wide. They were filled with ordinary soil and tied and put one on top of the other to make a wall, if a wall was wanted, or any other construction that wanted to be big enough to take a sentry looking over. They’d make a little platform right from the ground upwards, you see. And the funny thing was, what we used to laugh about, was at the end of… the beginning of every long trench was a name of a famous London street, every one had it. And if you come to a place where you turned round you had to call it Piccadilly Circus or something like that. But they all had their names, all the trenches did.
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