Letters From the Trenches: A Soldier of the Great War Read Online Free PDF Page A

Germans back from the Ypres Salient. The battalion’s role in the coming action would have been determined by now, and the training
programme undertaken to ensure that all ranks were properly prepared. It can be said that the imminent battle, unlike so many offensives on the Western Front, generally enjoys a reputation for
thorough and meticulous planning and preparation.

CHAPTER 3
    FIRST TASTE OF THE TRENCHES
    M AY 1917. H ARRY IS NOW a trained infantryman, taking his place in the front line, close to the strategically important town of
Ypres. What would he have found?
    The front line here, as on most of the Western Front, had been virtually static for the last two years. Despite the lack of progress, the level of fighting in this sector had been consistently
intense, with enormous losses on both sides. The armies had constructed elaborate defensive positions, vast networks of interlocking trenches with concrete bunkers at strategic points. The trench
maps of the time show a mass of fine lines stretching back hundreds of yards from the front line, delineating the first, second and reserve lines of trenches, as well as supply and communication
trenches.
    The forward trenches were defended against infantry attack by deep concentrations of all but impenetrable barbed wire. This wire and the machine guns that covered it made ‘no man’s
land’ – the unoccupied area between the opposing trench lines – a killing zone for defenders: lethal for attackers. In any assault, the balance always favoured the defender.
    There was, effectively, a deadly stalemate. Generals on both sides were convinced that the war could only be won by decisive attacks, followed by a breakthrough as the enemy crumbled. Neither
side had a strategy that could allow these attacks to succeed, or if they did, they did not possess the means – especially reliable tanks, mobile artillery and air superiority – to
exploit it.
    In the line, Harry would have found well-established, deep trenches with shallow ‘funk holes’ dug into the sides and underground bunkers as command posts for each company. Food would
be carried forward to the men through a network of communication trenches. Hot meals would be brought in ‘hay boxes’,but were unlikely to be very hot by the time they arrived.
Sometimes hot tea could be brewed up on a small stove. Staple rations would be bread (though it would be around eight days old by the time it reached the front), tinned corned beef (bully), jam and
maybe ‘Maconochie’, a kind of tinned stew of meat and vegetables often known, from its manufacturer’s name, as ‘conner’. There would be the occasional
‘treat’ arriving in a parcel from home, and Harry celebrated his parcels in his letters. Smoking was encouraged with a substantial tobacco allowance, and, of course, it helped relieve
the boredom.
    Between major offensives there was daily shelling, patrols and sniper fire, punctuated by the occasional trench raid by either side, localized attacks, usually at night, to achieve a specific
purpose, such as to knock out an opposing strongpoint or seize a prisoner to take back and interrogate. As a novice to this kind of warfare, Harry would have been quite vulnerable. Many new
arrivals were unable to resist having a quick look at the enemy’s trenches, (which may have been less than a hundred yards away) only to fall easy prey to a sniper, or a burst of machine-gun
fire.
    Hygiene was a constant problem. Washing and shaving used up valuable water. It was normal practice to use the last dregs of a mug of tea to shave with one of the new-fangled safety razors that
were replacing the ‘cut-throat’ type. Soldiers just accepted that they were to be filthy and covered in mud for their time in the front line. Heavy infestations of body lice were an
inescapable and intolerable fact of trench life, and a dangerous one, for they carry typhus.
    The latrine trenches were, astonishingly, often dug in front of the