What Was it Like to Fight in the Trenches During the First World War

Last updated on July 22nd, 2022 at 05:11 pm
In many ways, the First World War was a more horrific experience for those who fought in it than the much bloodier Second World War.
While the savagery of the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1944 was immense, at least the soldiers there were constantly on the move in a rapidly shifting conflict.
The same cannot be said for life in the trenches during the first global conflict years earlier, a clash of armies in which claustrophobia and psychological terror were the daily lots of the average soldier.
British, French, German, Italian, and other European men in their teens, twenties, and thirties spent much of the time from 1914 to 1918 living in a hole in the ground, constantly listening to machine-gun rounds and artillery explosions.
When a reprieve came from this, your commanding officer often instructed you to climb out of the hole you were in and run in the direction the machine-gun fire was emanating. It was a difficult existence.
Soldiers …