Trench Warfare

Articles from Trench Warfare

French Soldiers Desperate to Leave the Trenches (The Atlanta Georgian, 1917)

So horrid was the terror of World War I trench warfare that more than a few of the Frenchmen serving in those forward positions (and others who were simply overcome with life in the military) began to post personal ads in French newspapers, volunteering to marry widows and divorcees with large families in order to be absolved of all military duty.


Read what the U.S. Army psychologists had to say about courage.

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TRENCH RAID! (The American Legion Weekly, 1922)

This is an eyewitness account of the very first trench raid to have been suffered by the U.S. Army in France; like most first time engagements in American military history, it didn’t go well and resulted in three dead, five wounded, and eleven Americans taken as prisoner. Historians have recorded this event to have taken place on the morning of November 3, 1917, but this participant stated that it all began at


3:00 a.m. on November 2, after a forty-five minute artillery barrage was followed by the hasty arrival of 240 German soldiers, two wearing American uniforms, jumped into their trench and began making quick work out of the Americans within.


The U.S. Army would not launch their own trench raid for another four months.

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Instructions for Building Trench Shelters (Trench Warfare, 1917)

It was the preferred plan on both sides that their troops sleep in fields and forests as they briskly marched forward to the terror-struck cities of their timid and surrendering foes – but other sleeping arrangements had to be made when it was decided that trenches were necessary. Officers in forward trenches would sleep in shifts within muddy little rooms called dugouts and the enlisted men would get something worse; dubbed, shelters, these holes were simply rectangular caves carved into the walls of the trench:


Click here to see a 1915 ad for British Army military camp furniture.

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Life in a Trench (What the Boys Did Over There, 1919)

Corporal Frank Sears of the American Expeditionary Force put pen to paper and explained for all posterity the unsanitary conditions of <b.living in a W.W. I trench in France:

Life in the trenches is made up of cooties, rats, mud and gas masks…
We became so used to mud up in the lines that if our chow did not have some mud, or muddy water in it we could not digest it. It was just a case of mud all over: eat, drink, sleep and wash in mud.

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The Deep German Dugouts (L’Illustration, 1915)

A French photograph showing the entry to one of the many subterranean shelters that dotted the Western front during the First World War – also included is a diagram of what one of the smaller German dugouts with a similar entry-way.


This article appears on this site by way of a special agreement with L’Illustration.

Click here to see a 1915 ad for British Army military camp furniture.

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Living the Trench War (NY Times, 1915)

This World War One correspondence makes for a wonderful read and it gives a very lucid picture of what the war must have been like once both sides had resigned themselves to trench warfare. The letter was dated October 8, 1914 and the British officer who composed it makes clear his sense that no modern war had ever been fought in this queer manner before.

Living the Trench War (NY Times, 1915) Read More »

Living the Trench War (NY Times, 1915)

This World War One correspondence makes for a wonderful read and it gives a very lucid picture of what the war must have been like once both sides had resigned themselves to trench warfare. The letter was dated October 8, 1914 and the British officer who composed it makes clear his sense that no modern war had ever been fought in this queer manner before.

Living the Trench War (NY Times, 1915) Read More »