In this would be found ‘dugouts’ cut into the side of the trench wall, often very small but with room for perhaps three or four men to squeeze in for shelter, or for a telephone position for a signaller, or for a Platoon or Company HQ.
It also is dug in sections rather than a straight line, so if a shell explodes inside one of these ‘bays’ (also called ‘traverses’), or an enemy gets into one, only that section is affected.īehind it is another line, similarly made, called a support line. Thousands of men became casualties in fighting for, or making small adjustments to their lines, to give this cover or observation.
It is not straight, but follows contours or other natural features allowing good defence or a view over the enemy lines. There is a front line, or “Main Fire Trench” facing the enemy.
The bird’s-eye view (above, from an official infantry training manual of March 1916) shows a typical but very stylised trench layout. Many officers and men would have given a great deal for trenches as clear and well laid-out as this sketch suggests. From simple hole in the ground to formidable defensive systems Stylised trench layout. An enemy shell bursting in this trench would give the men little chance of survival. By most standards this would have been regarded as useful shelter but a poor trench: it has no dugouts, does not seem to have any duckboarding or revetment, and has no bays. Note scaling ladders (duckboards) across trench. British troops asleep in a support trench during the preliminary bombardment, previous to the attack on Beaumont Hamel, 1st July 1916. It is odd in that it seems to be very broad (the rear parados can not be seen at all), and is typical of Flanders in that it is built up with sandbags rather than dug deep into wet ground. A well-constructed and dry trench in a quiet sector.
New Zealand troops of the 9th (Wellington East Coast Rifles) Regiment using a periscope rifle and a trench periscope in a front line trench near Fleurbaix, June 1916. These trenches were scratch affairs, created as the advancing troops dug in, and were sometimes little more than 18 inches deep. In the major offensives of 1915, 19 many trench positions were only held for a few days at a time before the next advance moved them on into what had been no man’s land or the enemy position. Each feature presented its own set of challenges for the men who had to dig in and defend. In France the trenches ran through towns and villages, through industrial works, coalmines, brickyards, across railway tracks, through farms, fields and woods, across rivers, canals and streams. In parts of Italy, trenches were dug in rock in Palestine in desert. At Ypres in Belgium the ground is naturally boggy and the water table very high, so trenches were not really dug, but more built up using sandbags and wood (these were called ‘breastworks’). The trench sides will crumble easily after rain, so would be built up (‘revetted’) with wood, sandbags or any other suitable material. For example, in the area of the River Somme in France the ground is chalky and is easily dug. The type and nature of the trench positions varied a lot, depending on the local conditions. By November 1914 there was a continuous line of trenches covering some 400 miles from Switzerland to the North Sea. The massive armies of both sides dug in to take cover and hold their ground. Before and after those dates were wars of movement: in between it was a war of entrenchment. Trench warfare of the First World War can be said to have begun in September 1914 and ended when the Allies made a breakthrough attack that began in late July 1918. It had been widely practiced in the US Civil War, the Russian-Japanese war and other fairly recent wars. The idea of digging into the ground to give some protection from powerful enemy artillery and small arms fire was not a new idea or unique to the Great War. The trenches were the domain of the infantry, with the supporting arms of the mortars and machine-guns, the engineers, the medics and the forward positions of the artillery observers. But behind them was a mass of supply lines, training establishments, stores, workshops, headquarters and all the other elements of the 1914-1918 system of war, in which the majority of troops were employed.
The trenches were the front lines: the most dangerous places. Although most of us think primarily of the Great War in terms of life and death in the trenches, only a relatively small proportion of the army actually served there.