German Trenches

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German Trenches
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C.R. W. Nevinson
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Life in the Trenches
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• The British Generals on the Western Front had
  a policy of attack trench warfare was only
  considered to be temporary and they saw no point
  in supplying materials to make the front line
  habitable as it was anticipated that the trenches
  would be used only as a starting position for the
  next attack. Indeed, it was seriously thought
  that the soldiers aggressive spirit would be
  eroded if the trenches were too comfortable

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Officers Dugout
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Jacques Villon
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• British Daily Ration, 1914
• lb fresh or frozen mean, or 1 lb preserved or
  salt meat 1 1/4 lb bread, or 1 lb biscuit or
  flour 4 oz. bacon 3 oz. cheese 5/8 oz. tea 4
  oz. jam 3 oz. sugar 1/2 oz salt 1/36 oz.
  pepper 1/20 oz. mustard 8 oz. fresh or 2 oz.
  dried vegetables 1/10 gill lime juice if fresh
  vegetables not issued 1/2 gill rum not
  exceeding 2 oz. tobacco per week.
• ( at discretion of commanding general.)
• The following substitutions were permitted if
  necessary 4 oz. oatmeal or rice instead of 4 oz.
  bread or biscuit 1/30 oz. choclate instead of
  1/6 oz. tea 1 pint porter instead of 1 ration
  spirit 4 oz. dried fruit instead of 4 oz. jam 4
  oz. butter, lar d or margarine, or 1/2 gill oil,
  instead of 4 oz. bacon.
• British Iron Ration, carried in the field
• 1 lb. preserved meat 12 oz. biscuit 5/8 oz.
  tea 2 oz. sugar 1/2 oz. salt 3 oz. cheese 1
  oz. meat extract (2 cubes.)

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• German Daily Ration, 1914
• 750g (26 1/2 oz) bread, or 500g (17 1/2 oz) field
  biscuit, or 400g (14 oz.) egg biscuit 375g (13
  oz.) fresh or frozen meat, or 200g (7 oz)
  preserved meat 1,500g (53 oz.) potatoes, or
  125-250g (4 1/2-9 oz.) vegetables, or 60g (2 oz.)
  dried vegetables, or 600g (21 oz.) mixed potatoes
  and dried vegetables 25g (9/10 oz.) coffee, or
  3g (1/10 oz.) tea 20g (7/10 oz.) sugar 25g
  (9/10 oz.) salt two cigars and two cigarettes or
  1 oz. pipe tobacco, or 9/10 oz. plug tobacco, or
  1/5 oz. snuff at discretion of commanding
  officer 0.17 pint spirits, 0.44 pint wine, 0.88
  pint beer.
• The meat ration was reduced progressively during
  the war, and one meatless day per week was
  introduced from June 1916 by the end of that
  year it was 250g (8 3/4 oz.) fresh meat or 150g
  (5 1/4 oz.) preserved, or 200g (7 oz) fresh meat
  for support and trai n personnel. At the same
  time the sugar ration was only 17g (6/10 oz.).
• German Iron Ration
• 250g (8.8 oz) biscuit 200g (7 oz.) preserved
  meat or 170g (6 oz.) bacon 150g (5.3 oz.)
  preserved vegetables 25g (9/10 oz.) coffee 25g
  (9/10 oz.) salt. (measured in grams ounce
  equivalent in parentheses)

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• The battalion's kitchen staff had just two large
  vats, in which everything was prepared. As a
  result, everything the men ate tasted of
  something else. For example, soldiers often
  complained that their tea tasted of vegetables.
  Providing fresh food was also very difficult. It
  has been estimated that it took up to eight days
  before bread reached the front-line and so it was
  invariably stale. So also were the biscuits and
  the soldiers attempted to solve this problem by
  breaking them up, adding potatoes, onions,
  sultanas or whatever was available, and boiling
  the mixture up in a sandbag.

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• Food was often supplied in cans. Maconochie
  contained sliced turnips and carrots in a thin
  soup. As one soldier said "Warmed in the tin,
  Maconochie was edible cold it was a mankiller."
  The British Army tried to hide this food shortage
  from the enemy. However, when they announced that
  British soldiers were being supplied with two hot
  meals a day, they received over 200,000 letters
  from angry soldiers pointing out the truth of the
  situation. Men claimed that although the officers
  were well-fed the men in the trenches were
  treated appallingly

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• General pattern for trench routine was 4 days in
  the front line, 4 days in reserve, 4 at rest,
  although this varied enormously depending on
  conditions, the weather and the availability of
  enough reserve troops to be able to rotate them
  in this way. In local reserve, men had to be
  ready to reinforce the line at very short notice.
  The relief of a unit after its time in the front,
  by a fresh one, was always an anxious time, as
  the noise and obvious activity increased the risk
  of attracting enemy attention in the form of
  shelling, machine-gun fire or even a raid at the
  very time when the manning of the position was
  changing.

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German dug out
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• Our trenches are... ankle deep mud. In some
  places trenches are waist deep in water. Time is
  spent digging, filling sandbags, building up
  parapets, fetching stores, etc. One does not have
  time to be weary.

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• 2) Sergeant Harry Roberts, Lancashire Fusiliers,
  interviewed after the war.If you have never had
  trench feet described to you. I will tell you.
  Your feet swell to two or three times their
  normal size and go completely dead. You could
  stick a bayonet into them and not feel a thing.
  If you are fortunate enough not to lose your feet
  and the swelling begins to go down. It is then
  that the intolerable, indescribable agony begins.
  I have heard men cry and even scream with the
  pain and many had to have their feet and legs
  amputated

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Trench foot
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• (5) Captain Lionel Crouch wrote to his wife about
  life in the trenches in 1917.Last night we had
  the worst time we've had since we've been out. A
  terrific thunderstorm broke out. Rain poured in
  torrents, and the trenches were rivers, up to
  one's knees in places and higher if one fell into
  a sump. One chap fell in one above his waist! It
  was pitch dark and all was murky in the extreme.
  Bits of the trench fell in. The rifles all got
  choked with mud, through men falling down.

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• (1) After the war, Captain G. H. Impey, 7th
  Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, wrote about his
  experiences of trench life.
• The trenches were wet and cold and at this time
  some of them did not have duckboards and
  dug-outs. The battalion lived in mud and water.
  Altogether about 200 men were evacuated for
  trench feet and rheumatism. Gum boots were
  provided for the troops in the most exposed
  positions. Trench feet was still a new ailment
  and the provision of dry socks was vitally
  important. Part of the trench was reserved for
  men to go two at a time, at least once a day, and
  rub each other's feet with grease.

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• Faced with the prospect of being killed or
  permanently disabled, soldiers sometimes hoped
  that they would receive what was known as a
  blighty wound, and be sent back home. There were
  some cases where soldiers shot themselves in an
  attempt to end their time on the frontline.
  Self-inflicted wounds (SIW) was a capital offence
  and if discovered, a man found guilty of this
  faced execution by firing-squad. A total of 3,894
  men in the British Army were convicted of SIW.
  None of these men were executed but they all
  served periods in prison. Others killed
  themselves rather than carry on in the trenches.
  The usual method of suicide was to place the
  muzzle of their Lee-Enfield rifle against the
  head and press the trigger with their bare big
  toe. In some cases, when men could endure no
  more, stood up on the fire-step and allowed
  themselves to be shot by an enemy sniper.

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• Rotting carcases lay around in their thousands. 
  For example, approximately 200,000 men were
  killed on the Somme battlefields, many of which
  lay in shallow graves.
• Overflowing latrines would similarly give off a
  most offensive stench.
• Men who had not been afforded the luxury of a
  bath in weeks or months would offer the pervading
  odour of dried sweat.  The feet were generally
  accepted to give off the worst odour.
• Trenches would also smell of creosol or chloride
  of lime, used to stave off the constant threat of
  disease and infection.
• Add to this the smell of cordite, the lingering
  odour of poison gas, rotting sandbags, stagnant
  mud, cigarette smoke and cooking food... yet men
  grew used to it, while it thoroughly overcame
  first-time visitors to the front.

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The Dug-out

• WHY do you lie with your legs ungainly
  huddled,
•  And one arm bent across your sullen, cold,
•   Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch
  you,
•  Deep-shadowd from the candles guttering
  gold
•  And you wonder why I shake you by the
  shoulder 
•      Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your
  head...
•  You are too young to fall asleep for ever
• And when you sleep you remind me of the
  dead.

Siegfried Sassoon
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Max Beckmann
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• Life in the trenches was filled with almost
  indescribable horror. The muddy, often
  water-drenched lines were cesspools of rotting
  carcasses, both animal and human. Often spending
  days waiting for a battle to begin, soldiers were
  subject to trench raids by enemy camps, snipers,
  aerial attacks and surprise attacks by the enemy
  using mortars and grenades. While moving up the
  line to begin your rotation at the front,
  soldiers were instructed to keep their heads
  down, lest they become prey for an apt German
  sniper. Both sides participated in surprise
  raids, reconnaissance missions to steal
  information about upcoming attacks or maps of
  positions, capture prisoners and/or destroy enemy
  lines. Some of the more torturous aspects of the
  trenches were in the health concerns. Soldiers
  often suffered from both body and head lice
  forcing them to shave their heads bald for some
  relief. The body lice lived in the folds of their
  quilts and the bodies of their greatcoats, and
  men would often scratch themselves raw in the
  night. Trench foot, a miserable condition, was a
  reality from standing in the cold, wet conditions
  for h ours and days on end. All tolled, catching
  a blighty (a wound) in battle was not the worst
  thing that could happen to a soldier, it meant he
  got off the line and out of the trenches.

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• 3) At the age of 92, Arthur Savage was asked
  about his memories of life on the Western Front.
• My memories are of sheer terror and the horror of
  seeing men sobbing because they had trench foot
  that had turned gangrenous. They knew they were
  going to lose a leg. Memories of lice in your
  clothing driving you crazy. Filth and lack of
  privacy. Of huge rats that showed no fear of you
  as they stole your food rations. And cold deep
  wet mud everywhere. And of course, corpses. I'd
  never seen a dead body before I went to war. But
  in the trenches the dead are lying all around
  you. You could be talking to the fellow next to
  you when suddenly he'd be hit by a sniper and
  fall dead beside you. And there he's stay for
  days.

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Louse infestation ran at about 97 and explains
why Trench Fever was prevalent.
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• The vector for Trench Fever was, of course the
  body louse, which became infected by feeding on
  the blood of infected soldiers spread was by
  migration of the louse and infection of the new
  host by the insect bite or by scratching the skin
  which was contaminated by the louse excreta. The
  excreta remained infective for long periods,
  weeks or months.
• Body lice have such an association with man that
  they are unable to live more than a few days
  without him, the longest known is 9 days "they
  are a parasite which is utterly dependant on
  man's blood for sustenance and man's body and
  clothing for prolonged prosperous longevity and
  reproduction They are expert at digging in among
  the seams of clothing to which lice strongly
  adhere by hooked claws. Favoured sites are
  creases at the back of shirts and seams at the
  fork of breeches"
• Spread is from man to man by contact and the
  louse is guided solely by a sense of warmth the
  spread is measured in terms of space by a few
  feet and in terms of time by a few days. Men
  huddling together for warmth in a cold, wet
  trench in winter make an ideal situation for the
  louse to spread. Peacock found that, in 1916, the
  infestation rate of British soldiers after six
  months at the front, was 95.

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• .
• Latrines were ideally dug behind the front line
  trenches but obviously these could not be used
  during enemy attacks and a small pit was usually
  dug in the front line trench to accommodate the
  men as the war progressed, if the trench was
  demolished by shell fire, dead bodies were
  incorporated in the repaired trench wall and the
  stench of putrefaction was added to that of urine
  and faeces. It needs no imagination to understand
  what the trench conditions were like after the
  trench had been recently shelled!
• These crowded, squalid conditions in which the
  men had to live and fight were a fertile breeding
  ground for rats who lived on the bodies, they
  were described as being as big as cats. There
  were flies in the warm weather and of course
  lice.

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• The men who were not getting in a bit of extra
  sleep sat about talking and smoking, writing
  letters home, cleaning their rifles, running
  their thumb-nails up the seams of their shirts to
  kill the lice, gambling.
• Lice were a standing joke. Young Bumford
  handed me one like this.
• 'We was just having an argument as to whether
  it was best to kill the old ones or the young
  ones, sir.
• Morgan here says that if you kill the old
  ones, the young ones will die of grief, but Parry
  here, sir, he says that the young ones are easier
  to kill and you can catch the old ones when they
  come to the funeral.
• Goodbye to all That
• 
  Robert Graves

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• In 1916-17 alone he published three volumes of
  verse.
• Following the war, in which he was seriously
  wounded in 1916 whilst serving with the Royal
  Welch Fusiliers, and the publication of his
  highly successful memoir (which caused a rift
  between Graves and Siegfried Sassoon), Graves
  spent a period teaching in Cairo

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• We went up into the front-line near Arras,
  through sodden and devastated countryside. As we
  were moving up to the our sector along the
  communication trenches, a shell burst ahead of me
  and one of my platoon dropped. He was the first
  man I ever saw killed. Both his legs were blown
  off and the whole of his face and body was
  peppered with shrapnel. The sight turned my
  stomach. I was sick and terrified, but even more
  frightened of showing it.That night I had been
  asleep in a dugout about three hours when I woke
  up feeling something biting my hip. I put my hand
  down and my fingers closed on a big rat. It had
  nibbled through my haversack, my tunic and
  pleated kilt to get at my flesh. With a cry of
  horror I threw it from me.

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The trench, when we reached it, was half full of
mud and water. We set to work to try and drain
it. Our efforts were hampered by the fact that
the French, who had first occupied it, had buried
their dead in the bottom and sides. Every stroke
of the pick encountered a body. The smell was
awful.
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• As a result the soldiers had to live, fight, eat,
  sleep, wash and defaecate in a narrow trench
  which was open to the elements, and often flooded
  for weeks at a time. The men's attempts to dig
  sleeping holes or "pozzies" in the rear of the
  trench was soon to be forbidden following a
  number of cave-ins in the wet weather when the
  occupants of the holes were buried. The men were
  subsequently expected to sleep wherever they
  could in wet weather they lived under
  groundsheets or tents in the bottom of the trench
  on duckboards.
• This was bad enough in summer, but it is almost
  impossible to imagine what it was like to live in
  a waterlogged or snow and ice filled trench in
  midwinter for weeks at a time even fires were
  forbidden because the smoke would attract enemy
  attention and the men could only huddle together
  for warmth, thus increasing the risk of louse
  infestation.

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• Aftermath
• HAVE you forgotten yet?... For the world's
  events have rumbled on since those gagged
  days, Like traffic checked while at the crossing
  of city-ways And the haunted gap in your mind
  has filled with thoughts that flow Like clouds
  in the lit heaven of life and you're a man
  reprieved to go, Taking your peaceful share of
  Time, with joy to spare. But the past is just
  the same--and War's a bloody game... Have you
  forgotten yet?... Look down, and swear by the
  slain of the War that you'll never forget. Do
  you remember the dark months you held the sector
  at Mametz-- The nights you watched and wired and
  dug and piled sandbags on parapets? Do you
  remember the rats and the stench Of corpses
  rotting in front of the front-line trench-- And
  dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a
  hopeless rain? Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it
  all going to happen again?' Do you remember
  that hour of din before the attack-- And the
  anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook
  you then As you peered at the doomed and haggard
  faces of your men? Do you remember the
  stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes
  and lolling heads--those ashen-grey Masks of the
  lads who once were keen and kind and gay? Have
  you forgotten yet?... Look up, and swear by the
  green of the spring that you'll never forget.

S. Sassoon.
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British troops returning from the Front
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C.R.W. Nevinson
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• 'They'
• The Bishop tells us 'When the boys come
  back'They will not be the same for they'll have
  fought'In a just cause they lead the last
  attack'On Anti-Christ their comrades' blood has
  bought'New right to breed an honourable
  race,'They have challenged Death and dared him
  face to face.'
• 'We're none of us the same!' the boys
  reply.'For George lost both his legs and Bill's
  stone blind'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs
  and like to die'And Bert's gone syphilitic
  you'll not find'A chap who's served that hasn't
  found some change.' And the Bishop said 'The
  ways of God are strange!
• 
  Siegfried Sassoon

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Unfinished cemetery
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Does It Matter

• DOES it matter?--losing your legs?...
• For people will always be kind,
• And you need not show that you mind
• When the others come in after hunting
• To gobble their muffins and eggs.
• Does it matter?--losing your sight?...
• There's such splendid work for the blind
• And people will always be kind,
• As you sit on the terrace remembering
• And turning your face to the light.
• Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit?...
• You can drink and forget and be glad,
• And people won't say that you're mad
• For they'll know you've fought for your country
• And no one will worry a bit.

Siegfried Sassoon