swarmed the trenches in droves, and caused the men to scratch, until their skin bled. Men were unable to sleep at night, as they scratched themselves uncontrollably to alleviate the itching.
There was also trench foot, an infection of the feet, caused by standing hour after hour in waterlogged trenches in their socks and boots. The skin slowly went numb, swelled up, turned red then blue and became excruciatingly painful. When left untreated, the foot turned gangrenous and had to be amputated.
“If you are fortunate enough not to lose your foot 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 pain and many have had to have their feet and legs amputated”
The solution was to smear the feet with whale oil and change their socks regularly.
A soldier’s diet consisted mainly of bully beef (corned beef), bread and biscuits. By 1916, bread was made with dried ground turnips and the main food was pea soup with a few lumps of horsemeat. The men were undoubtedly undernourished and some were even starving. Also, they were after all expected to eat these meagre rations in waterlogged, rat infested, lice ridden trenches, surrounded by the stench of decomposing bodies.
Little wonder then that dysentery was widespread, causing stomach pains and diarrhoea, accompanied sometimes by vomiting and fever. Latrines were dug four or five feet deep, but sometimes, men had to use the nearest shell hole. Unfortunately, supplies of water were irregular and a soldier had to depend on contaminated water collected from these same shell holes.
Many men also suffered shell shock, caused by the enemy’s incessant heavy artillery. Beginning with headaches, tiredness and giddiness, it often developed into a complete mental breakdown. Yet, the men suffering from shell shock were often labelled as cowards and sent back to the trenches, where some committed suicide, whilst others deserted, were court-martialled and shot.
It seemed to many that there was no way out of the trenches other than death and some did kill themselves. Others stood up to be shot down by the enemy. Still others wounded themselves severely, in the hope that they would be sent home. The most common self-inflicted injury was to shoot yourself in the foot, covering it with a sandbag so the gunpowder would not show. To go home severely disabled was better than to remain amidst the horror of the trenches.
------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.
March 1919
Siegfried Sassoon
But, war memoirs, poems and novels often describe scenes of apparent joy and laughter. So, did the soldiers have fun even in such dire conditions? Undoubtedly, it was not joy, but a sort of madness. Isaac Rosenberg described trench life as "a demons' pantomime" with men "flung on the shrieking pyre" with "grinning faces" and "yelling in lurid glee".
Merry it was to laugh there -
Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder
Wilfred Owen's poem 'Apologia Pro Poemate Meo' (1917)
Life in the trenches was hellish, chaotic and absurd. There was no fun only madness and despair.
War poems, War novels, and War memoirs frequently describe scenes of misplaced, mad mirth. There was the infernal grin in the faces of soldiers who died in greatest pain, and there was the frequent dementia due to shell-shock and gas-raids. But these appeared as mere related symptoms of a more universal disease, the total loss of order. Isaac Rosenberg, the most visionary of all the trench poets, wrote consciously uncoordinated poems evoking scenes of trench life as "a demons' pantomime" with men "flung on the shrieking pyre", with "grinning faces" and "yelling in lurid glee". In 'Dead Man's Dump', the speaker wildly addresses a merely mad earth, which had formerly been seen as the divine seedground of the dialectics of birth, death, and resurrection:
