Preview

Essay About Life In The Trenches

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
442 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Essay About Life In The Trenches
Life in the trenches is varied differently from alliance to alliance, but the hardship is still the same. So what are the trenches like for our soldiers at war? All of the soldiers face many difficulties while at war.

Death is a constant comrade in war whether in the trenches or not. Constant shellfire brings random deaths to those not even on guard. Many of the soldiers are buried due to large bombardments in the trenches. Death is shown all around not just from bombardments, but also disease and injuries.

Rats, lice, frogs and worse carry disease throughout. Rats are infested by the millions in the trenches. Both the black and brown are feared, but the brown is more feared. The rats will feast on rotting corpses, eating eyes and livers. Which makes the brown rats grow to about the size of a cat. Despite the soldiers hunting these rats with whatever they have, the rats keep reproducing by the hundreds, which cause more contamination in food and the spread of infection.
…show more content…
Lice and frog have their toll on the soldiers as well. Lice are a nonstop annoyance. They live in the seams of the soldiers' clothing, and more eggs hatch because of the body heat produced by the soldiers. Which cause more itching for the soldiers at war. Frogs, along with slugs and horn beetles are constantly found in the trenches and buried in places near water.

Along with little nuisances comes big responsibility for soldiers when not at the front line in the trenches. An hour before dawn, soldiers are awoken to guard for a dawn attack. This is called "Stand To", or otherwise known as "Morning Hate".

Once the Morning Hate is over, the soldiers clean their rifles with an inspection right after. Next rum is served right before breakfast. After breakfast, daily chores are assigned. Once daily chores are finished, soldiers tend to personal matters as movement during the daytime was

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Ww1 Syllabus Nootes1

    • 4241 Words
    • 17 Pages

    The nature of trench warfare and life in the trenches dealing with experiences of Allied and German soldiers…

    • 4241 Words
    • 17 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In this source, it illustrates an image of the many deaths that happened. The lying men around the trenches…

    • 174 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Fra Eline, our comrades on the front lines have other problems than the enemy. It comes in the forms of dysentery, rats, and trench foot. Dysentery makes an average man unable to preform the most basic of tasks. This dysentery is caused by unclean drinking water and rotten meat. The rats are a common infestation in the trenches because they spread lice and are a nuisance to the men.…

    • 69 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    How Did Ww1 Affect Canada

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages

    These casualties were particularly felt by the soldiers fighting in the war. With the soldiers living in trenches and having to fight alongside each other for survival, close friendships were formed, but tragically lost. In addition to this, once the war was over, many families were left without loved ones. Before the war, the historical perspective was that war was a good thing, a good time for the boys and a way for them to let off steam. After World War One, the perspective on war drastically changed. It was now seen as a terrible notion, and the people that were sent off to war were largely pitied. The war front majorly consisted of volunteer soldiers, with little training. Once the number of soldiers had become critical, the need for conscription…

    • 677 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During World War I, there were many issues that surrounded the health of troops. The lack of medical advancement and the knowledge of it, then the struggle of keeping ones self-healthy throughout combat were key points to survival. During World War I in less than a year, American troops suffered more than 318,000 injuries 120,000 were counted as casualties. The front line soldiers are always at the highest risk in any war. With World War I though, trench warfare was a dangerous place to be considering they were always at risk for disease or infection because they were in the poorest conditions. During World War I, the Black Plague was one of the most drastic plagues in history. The troops would try anything and everything to help the disease not run like a wild fire. Soldiers would use herbs to blow away bad smells of the sewer and clean the contaminated air. During the war, soldiers would…

    • 1746 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Rats in their millions infested trenches. There were two main types, the brown and the black rat. Both were despised but the brown rat was especially feared. Gorging themselves on human remains they could grow to the size of a cat. Men, exasperated and afraid of these rats (which would even scamper across their faces in the dark), would attempt to rid the trenches of them by various methods: gunfire, with the bayonet, and even by clubbing them to death. It was futile however: a single rat couple could produce up to 900 offspring in a year, spreading infection and contaminating food. The rat problem remained for the duration of the war although many veteran soldiers swore that rats sensed impending heavy enemy shellfire and consequently disappeared from view. This rat problem was so big that a lot of soldiers died due to infection and there was no way of ridding them. Rats were by no means the only source of infection and nuisance. Lice were a never-ending problem, breeding in the seams of filthy clothing and causing men to itch unceasingly. Even when clothing was periodically washed and deloused, lice eggs invariably remained hidden in the seams; within a few hours of the clothes being re-worn the body heat generated would cause the eggs to hatch. Lice caused Trench Fever, a…

    • 1918 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hello Mother and Father how are you doing? I haven’t been doing too well in the trenches. As you know I have been assisting the French in the trenches for nearly two years. The trenches are horrendous; I never thought I would be more petrified at the horrific conditions than the actual war. Every day we face rats, hundreds of millions of rats, scurrying through the trenches. Since we don’t have a proper waste disposal system, the rats eat the trash that lay on the floor and the soldiers who have died in combat. It’s a gruesome sight, watching a fallen solder’s surrounded by flies and the rats consume the decaying corpses. Trench foot is almost just as bad, a couple of my closest friends have died from it. They told us that we developed trench foot from standing…

    • 675 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Trenches were built to protect yourself from the enemy(s). Trenches were generally around two meters deep and two meters wide. There was three rows. The first row was called the frontline trench. The frontline was the closest to no mans land (the land controlled by neither side of a war), it was also the most dangerous because that was were most of the fighting went on. The second row was called the support trench. It was back-up to the frontline, just in case the enemy got passed. The third and last row was called the reserves. This is were they kept all the supplies and equipment. Also there was communication tunnels connecting the trenches, they were used to transport supplies and messages to the other trenches. Trenches were very unhealthy. Lice, rats and all sorts of vermin occupied the trenches. There was little to no running water, the bathrooms consisted of a bucket in the trench. Also there was dead bodies covering all of the land. Worst of all, there was rats. They would eat dead bodies, or eat out the eyes and live in the bodies of the dead. Rats would nibble the living while they slept or when they were wounded. The other horrible parasite was lice. Lice is hard to get rid of…

    • 1477 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    During World War I warfare was carried out using one the most familiar elements of modern warfare and soldiers were forced to live in the extremely horrible living conditions of The Trenches. A trench warfare is a kind of fight where each side digs deep trenches down in the ground to defend themselves against the enemy. The trenches of World War 1 stretched for miles in order to enable one side to get the upper hand on the other. The trenches were dug by soldiers themselves they would make the trenches by digging directly down into the ground which speeded up the digging process , but at the same time left the soldiers exposed to be fired on by the enemy as they dug. These trenches were sometimes even formed in places where you couldn’t break…

    • 163 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Generals Die in Bed

    • 1342 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The novel depicts how the war brings out disrespect and selfishness in the soldiers. Just like their constant companions the lice and the rats, the soldiers in the trench adapt to the hell that they find themselves trapped in – doing whatever it takes to survive. They even fight each other over food ‘at each others throats like hungry, snarling animals’. As the novel and the war progresses so does the inhumane side of the soldiers who become increasing more detached from killing, unconcerned with the death of friends. The soldiers are conditioned, hardened up and desensitised with self preservation becoming a key motivator. This is shown as the soldiers plunder the city of Arras, the allies ' town and vandalize houses with no consideration of the local people who will come back to a raided and shelled town. As they ransack the town ‘chewing food while pillaging,’ stealing and destroying people’s possessions, self satisfaction is their only concern. The soldiers become feral and even rebel against and shoot at their own Military Police who are trying to restore order. By these merciless and selfish acts the dark side of the soldiers’ nature is revealed.…

    • 1342 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In order to survive in given circumstances, creatures must adapt. In times of war, this principle is regularly applied since the circumstances of war often end with regular men developing selfish behavioral adaptations simply for the sake of survival. Soldiers become responsible for malice that could never be imagined in civilian life. In the novel, Generals Die in Bed, by Charles Yale Harrison, all the soldiers were once normal civilians. However, due to the pragmatic needs of survival, they are reduced to beings no better than the rats they dwell with.…

    • 1041 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ww1 Trench Life

    • 1561 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Life in the trenches was extremely difficult for thousands of people in WWI. The living conditions were terrible which added to the difficulty of life of a soldier on the frontline during WWI. The trenches, along with the rest of the war, were filled with the fear of going head on into battle. Soldiers faced death along with infestation, incoming artillery and lack of supplies.…

    • 1561 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    We don’t have any other pairs of clothes, so we sleep in the same pair of clothes every night. Since we have lice everywhere, we all have to cut our hair short so that it fits in our hats and we even have to scrape the lice off of our hair with the blunt edge of our knives. Our underclothes are always stuck to us from the sweat and the water inside of the trenches. Because our trenches are filled with water, there are a lot of us that have gotten trench foot. Trench foot is when your feet swell up to about two or three times the size of normal feet and they develop gangrene. I could stab my bayonet into my foot and not feel it. Sometimes, if you are lucky enough, the swelling goes down, but you feel the worst pain you have felt in your life. Men are screaming and crying in pain as their legs and feet get amputated. I got lucky, but if I was stuck in that trench for one more day, I fear I would have been too…

    • 399 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Life In Trench Warfare

    • 1453 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Many of the trenches men died of disease because it ran rampant in it. Life during trench warfare was highly boring as the soldiers had to sit there and basically nothing to do if there was no fighting going on. Many of them had nothing to do but clean their weapons and the life in the trenches showed that many of them hated it. Many of the men believed that they were going to die in the trenches and not make it back home. Many soldiers had to live in the filth and the muddy conditions. Many of the soldiers in the trenches contracted trench foot which was an infection of the feet because they are in the water and wet so often. In the winters the trenches would freeze with ice and in the summers it would fill with water. Front line soldiers were told to and had to cross no man’s land to attack the enemy which almost always failed and thousands died. Poisonous gases such as mustard gas, and many others were one of the many attempts to break the deadlock , basically a standstill and sometimes it proved effective if they were catching the enemy off guard and the wind was blowing in the right direction. Many diseases affected the men in there because of the cramped and poor hygiene. Lice and rats were there and many died of…

    • 1453 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Louse Hunting

    • 724 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The word verminous is defined as of or with vermin, being infested with vermin. The lice used the soldiers as their breeding place and eventually became strong in numbers. Instead of an external war, the soldiers were fighting a war within the trenches against the lice. The lice endangered the psyches of these men and caused them to lose them military bearing. Rosenberg described the men running around, stripping of their clothes, and…

    • 724 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays