Infestation of lice was another problem. They caused blotchy red bite marks and created a stale smell. The army tried to get rid of lice by giving soldiers baths in huge vats of hot water whilst putting their clothes through delousing machines but this wasn’t very successful as most of the lice eggs stayed in the clothes and body heat hatched them within two to three hours.
As well as causing a bad stale smell and itching, lice were the cause for another disease, “Trench Fever” which was the cause for about 15% of all sickness in the British army. The first symptoms were shooting pains in the shins and then a fever. Trench fever did not kill but did stop soldiers from fighting so the army was keen to find the cause which was not found until 1918 and was lice faeces.
Rats were also a big problem. The large amount of rotting bodies and scraps of food that were found in the trenches attracted them and as one pair of rats are capable of producing 880 young in a year the problem just grew and grew.
There were two types of rat, brown and black. The brown rats were feared more, they could grow to the size of cats. One soldier wrote, “The rats were huge. They were so big they would eat a wounded man if he couldn’t defend himself.”
They also ate the decaying corpses of soldiers. They usually ate the eyes first and then went into the body and ate the liver. One soldier described finding a group of dead bodies whilst on patrol, “I saw some rats running from under the dead men’s greatcoats, enormous rats, fat with human flesh. My heart pounded as we edged towards one of the bodies. His helmet had rolled off. The man displayed a grimacing face, stripped of flesh; the skull bare, the eyes devoured and from the yawning mouth leapt a rat.”
The rats became bolder and started to steal food from the soldiers and attempt to take food from their pockets whilst they were sleeping. To try and get rid of the rats, soldiers would shoot at them with their bayonets, although this was forbidden as it was seen as a waste of ammo, or sometimes even club them to death.
A big problem for the army was shellshock and self inflicted wounds as it caused a big loss of soldiers capable of fighting.
Early symptoms of shellshock were tiredness, irritability, giddiness, lack of concentration and headaches and then eventually soldiers would suffer a mental breakdown. This meant they were incapable to fight again. It was thought that shellshock was caused by the enemy’s heavy artillery. A bursting shell creates a vacuum and when the air rushes into the vacuum it disturbs the cerebrospinal fluid, found in cavities in the brain, and this can affect the working of the brain. The only cure was to rest away from the fighting but some senior officers thought that soldiers suffering from shellshock were just cowards trying to get out of fighting. Between 1914 and 1918 80,000 soldiers were diagnosed with shellshock in the British army, but far more who had the same symptoms were just sent back to the frontline classed as malingerers. Some soldiers deserted due to shellshock, some of them were shot on the spot and others were court-martialled. 304 British soldiers were court-martialled and executed.
It was often due to shellshock that soldiers broke down and tried to wound themselves so that they could not fight.
Self inflicted wounds, also known as a “blighty wound”, were punishable by death if found out. 3894 men were convicted of SIW (in the British Army). None of them were killed; instead they served long prison sentences. The common way to obtain a blighty wound was to shoot yourself through the foot or hand. If it was suspected that a wound may have been self inflicted then military authorities tried to find out the type of bullet with which the soldier had been shot to determine whether it was an enemy bullet or not.
Some soldiers went to the extent of committing suicide; they would place the muzzle of their bayonets against their head and pull the trigger with their bare big toe. Others would stand up on the fire-step and allow themselves to by shot by an enemy sniper.
One of the biggest fears though was gas. Gas was first used by the French in the first month of the war when they fired tear-gas grenades, but the Germans were the first to use it on a large scale. They introduced the use of poison gas on 22 April 1915 in the Second Battle of Ypres. The gas was chlorine; it destroyed the respiratory organs within seconds of inhaling the yellow-green vapour causing choking attacks and a slow death.
Another gas used was phosgene. Phosgene was more deadly than chlorine as it caused less coughing meaning more of it was inhaled. Some of the effects of inhaling phosgene were: difficulty breathing, blurred vision, development of fluid in the lungs, burning sensation in the throat and eyes, nausea and vomiting. Exposure to phosgene could cause some delayed effects, a healthy soldier could suffer from these effects 48 hours after inhaling it. Some of these effects were difficulty breathing, coughing up white to pink-tinged fluid, low blood pressure and heart failure. The most lethal of all though was mustard gas as it was very hard to protect against and it was almost odourless. Some of the long term effects of being exposed to mustard gas were chronic respiratory disease, repeated respiratory infections, or death, permanent blindness and an increased risk in lung and respiratory cancer.
Life in the trenches was extremely tough and even caused some men to wound themselves in an attempt to get out of fighting. Soldiers faced many dangers and problems and lived in appalling conditions, it was cold, wet, muddy and they were surrounded by dead bodies. The smell was revolting, caused by rotting bodies and overflowing latrines. The soldiers lived in constant fear and danger of enemy attacks in a war that was only supposed to last for a few months and ended up lasting for four years.