Weather
It was bitter cold in the winter in the trenches. The mud that the soldiers were standing on froze, because it was so cold many soldiers caught frostbite. This caused parts of the body to freeze and fall off. When Joseph caught frostbite he lost two of his fingers on his left hand. In the autumn and spring the weather was not much better. When it rained if it rained hard it flooded the trenches. It turned the soil into thick wet mud. Sometimes the mud came up to the soldier’s waists but normally it came up to their ankles, if they stood in it for too long they sometimes caught trench foot.
Conditions
The conditions in the war were very bad. They had bad food and had to live in wet mud. They had 1 tin of two-gallon tin water to 40 people to wash in and their clothes were really dirty from being covered in mud. This often caused the soldiers to get body lice, which fed on blood. They wore the same clothes for a week and then got them washed. This caused more lice. While the soldiers weren’t fighting they used to delouse each other, which meant the soldiers picking lice and lice eggs out of each other’s clothes. The army tried something where the soldiers have a hot bath while their clothes are being put through delousing machines but this rarely worked because it didn’t get all the eggs out which meant they had hatched within a few hours of the soldiers getting their clothes back on. Joseph got body lice, which caused him to have red blotches all over his body from the bites, he tried the method of running a burning candle up and down his clothes but he had to try and burn the lice without burning his clothes.
Another big problem was rats. They were everywhere. They fed on the food and dead bodies, and because of the constant deaths the rats increased. This lead to disease and contaminated food. Because the rats had a constant supply of food they grew huge, some to the size of cats. There were 2 different types of rats-the brown rat and the black rat. Both were dreaded but the brown was most feared. The soldiers hated the rats so much (they ate soldiers-by first eating their eyes and liver and also scampering across the soldiers faces in the dark) that they tried lots of methods of killing them. Some of them were; they tried shooting them with their bayonets and also tried clubbing them to death. A single rat couple could produce up to 900 offspring in a year, which meant even more rats spreading infection. Joseph caught a few diseases himself but he mainly had to watch others suffering. This also linked into how the soldiers had to live in such dirty conditions. Because the rats spread diseases the soldiers had to eat the (infected food) and scratch themselves with dirty fingers. They also coughed and sneezed over each other, which spread the infections around the trenches. Joseph was one of the soldiers that caught a bad infection. He had to stay in bad for 2 days, it should have been longer but they needed men to fight. The soldiers also got sick from the smell of rotting bodies mixed with the fumes of the shells, this made them vomit and sometimes collapse.
The soldiers could always hear the German bombs going off and smell the gases. They could hear the screams of injured and dying men in pain. Each day they saw soldier after soldier dying. Joseph saw one get his head blown off by a shell; the image haunted him for the rest of his time there. They saw millions of grenades flying in every direction, shooting hot metal everywhere. This cut into the soldier’s bodies, making them bleed inside. This caused immense pain.
Food
There was not much food in the war so the soldiers had to live on rations, but the Red Cross usually sent them food parcels. Filed rations usually consisted of hard biscuits, tins of corned beef that the soldiers nicknamed bully beef, jam and tea. If all that was left was dry crackers a good trench cook could find something tasty. Fresh water was usually a problem it was brought up to the trenches and then kept in large tanks which wasn’t very hygienic. To take the soldiers minds off food there were cigarette and tobacco rations regularly and those on the front line got a daily supply of rum.
Hygiene + health
There was a severe lack of hygiene in the trenches. The soldiers had no clean water and a limited access to dirty water. A lavatory or a latrine was often a large bucket at the side of a trench but for the soldiers who didn’t want to use this method for the fear of being attacked from behind would often use “in the hat” method for toilet paper the soldiers used newspaper, grass or the tail of their shirt. Because of this lack of hygiene most of the soldiers became ill quickly. If a soldier was severely ill or injured they would be taken to a trench where they would be nursed. Although this trench was quite far away from the battlefields it was always under fire, because we would lose a lot of soldiers if that trench got blown up. Most soldiers became more ill than they already were from being there because of its lack of hygiene. They also caught diseases from the other patients. Sometimes the doctors didn’t believe the patients were ill and thought they were pretending to be sent home, this was sometimes the case but even if it wasn’t the doctors treated all patients as if they were pretending.
Boredom
Boredom was a very bad problem in the trenches because the soldiers were only on the frontline for a few weeks, the rest of the time was spent in the trenches either doing odd jobs or trying to keep themselves entertained. If the soldiers were on the front line all they could do to relieve their boredom was look forward to rotating with another soldier. A soldier in the trench could do small tasks like filling sandbags, mending the barbed wire and repairing the duckboards on the floors of the trenches. Harder tasks were things like rebuilding trenches because after bad weather or an explosion they need rebuilding. In this spare time the soldiers also tried to get some sleep but it was very difficult to because if they were caught by their commanding officer they would be severely reprimanded and it was also dangerous because they could be killed by the enemy because they could sneak up on them while they were asleep. Most soldiers didn’t get much sleep because they were afraid of this or just because they couldn’t find the time. The soldiers also tried little things to keep them amused like cleaning their weapons, digging a bigger trench or making one deeper or games like cards or dominoes, wrote letters to home, some even carved their girlfriend or wives name in any dry wood they could find with their bayonet.
Mental effects
During and after the war some of the soldiers suffered from mental effects. Some were quite bad but not terrible. During the war the soldiers saw horrific sights, they saw their own friends get their heads blown off, they saw their dead trench mate get eaten by rats, they saw men get caught and shot down on barbed wire, they will never forget the deafening sounds of the snipers and shells or the screams of dying men. All these sounds and images would have haunted this soldier for the rest of his life, he would have had nightmares about it every night and the sounds would have been going through his head every day. When Joseph and his friend were sorting out some barbed wire one day his friend got told to go over the top. Joseph said goodbye to him thinking he would be seeing him again but he saw his friend get a bullet straight through his head before he had even gone over. He probably never forgot about that image, it probably haunted him forever. The main mental effect was shell shock, this was when soldiers had heard truly deafening sounds from artillery fire and it had made them go mad. It resulted in soldiers shivering, stuttering, fainting for no reason and when they talked it made no sense. The officers and doctors normally assumed though that the soldier was pretending to be ill to be sent home so they treated all soldiers as cowards. They punished them by taking bullets out of their rifles and even tying the men to the wheels of artillery guns. If the soldier was found running away or hiding even if it was because of the shell shock he may have been sentenced to death (shot at dawn). This was where the soldier was kept in a cell over night with a window looking out towards the firing post where they would be shot tomorrow at dawn. Sometimes the soldier could even see another soldier getting shot so he would know what it will be like for him. Also in some conditions the soldier would be getting shot by some of his own friends and if they didn’t want to shoot him they would be punished or even shot themselves.
