Why is trench warfare so deadly

Oversized rats, bloated by the food and waste of stationary armies, helped spread disease and were a constant irritant. In , doctors also identified lice as the cause of trench fever, which plagued the troops with headaches, fevers, and muscle pain. The unsanitary conditions of trench life, especially the cold, persistent dampness, resulted in trench foot, a frost-bite-like infection that in extreme cases, led to gangrene and amputation.

Trench warfare caused enormous numbers of casualties. Later in the war, forces began mounting attacks from the trenches at night, usually with support of covering artillery fire. The Germans soon became known for effectively mounting nighttime incursions behind enemy lines, by sending highly trained soldiers to attack the trenches of opposing forces at what they perceived as weak points.

If successful, these soldiers would breach enemy lines and circle around to attack their opponents from the rear, while their comrades would mount a traditional offensive at the front. The brutality of trench warfare is perhaps best typified by the Battle of the Somme in France. British troops suffered 60, casualties on the first day of fighting alone.

German soldiers lying dead in a trench after the Battle of Cambrai, Inside a trench, all that is visible is just a few feet on either side, ending at the trench walls in front and back, with a patch of leaden sky visible above. Trenches in WWI were constructed with sandbags, wooden planks, woven sticks, tangled barbed wire or even just stinking mud. Trenches became trash dumps of the detritus of war: broken ammunition boxes, empty cartridges, torn uniforms, shattered helmets, soiled bandages, shrapnel balls, bone fragments.

Trenches were also places of despair, becoming long graves when they collapsed from the weight of the war. John Ellis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Nicholas J. Stroud: Sutton, Gary Sheffield, ed. War on the Western Front. New York: Osprey, All Disquiet on the Western Front Question.

The trench lines had the effect of turning western Europe into two fortresses whose armies laid siege to each other along a single border. For more information Tony Ashworth. Stephen Bull.