What was life like in the tren
The layout of a trench was quite complex. The reason they were not built in straight lines is simple. They were built in a zigzag. This was because, if the enemy took the trench, they wouldn't be able to shoot straight along the trench and kill all the people in the gunfire's way. There were quite a lot of lines of trenches so the soldiers could take cover at any point. The second line of trenches was about fifty to one hundred metres back. If they were driven out of the front line, then this was the place to take cover and rest. There were also communication trenches that linked up the trenches. These just led back until they were far enough away from enemy guns. Everything "going up the line" used these trenches. Here are a few examples of things that were used by the trenches: fresh troops, mail, food, water, ammunition and lots of other important supplies. Wounded men also went down the line to the CCS (the Casualty Clearing Station). These could stretch back to up to seven or eight hundred metres back! Apart from the CCS, there were also a lot of different things that were needed. There were resting soldiers, artillery, ammunition dumps, the very important cookhouses, transport such as horses and mules, tailors, c
Halfway up the side of the trench, there was a "firing step". This was just a little bit sticking out for soldiers to stand on so that they could see over to shoot. This came in very handy at times. At the bottom of the trench, "duck-boards" were placed along to help people walk along it. As there was a lot of mud, it helped the people from sinking into it. The walls of the trench as you would imagine, couldn't just be left as a mud wall, so they were reinforced as well with railway sleepers, corrugated iron or sometimes by specially made sections of woven basket. This was absolutely useless when the trench came under heavy shellfire but did help the soil dropping into the trench. As you would expect, the soldiers had to go to the toilet some time or another. Latrines, as they were called, were situated at intervals along the trench. They shouldn't really get the privilege of being called a latrine because it was only a hole cut into the back of the trench. These latrines had to be moved quite often though because enemy snipers knew where the latrines were and were always on the lookout for careless people doing their necessaries. Another good idea that the trenches had were that they had a gas alarm (Gas Point) every one hundred meters or so along the front line. It was just an empty brass cartridge case from an artillery shell with a piece of rope hanging from it. This wasn't much but it did the job. If a poison gas shell was fired, then the sentry would sound the alarm and the men wo
Some topics in this essay:
Apart CCS,
Man's Land,
,
Clearing Station,
barbed wire,
front line,
line trenches,
trench wouldn't able,
wouldn't able,
man's land,
trench wouldn't,
hundred metres,
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Approximate Word count = 1009
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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