Andrew Robertshaw - First World War Trenches: 5 Minute History

MANY PEOPLE IMAGINE that the war started on the Western Front in 1914 and ended in 1918, was fought entirely in trenches and that there was little movement or open warfare over the more than four years of the struggle. This book aims to explain how trench warfare came about, to put this style of conflict in a historical perspective and to explore what caused the deadlock on the Western Front. It will examine the routine of trench warfare, the experiences of men on both sides of no-mans-land and how the trench stalemate began in 1914 and ended during 1918.

In films and on television the First World War is portrayed as being about the battles. The Somme in 1916 or Passchendaele in 1917 are presented as being typical experiences for the soldiers on the Western Front. In these on-screen presentations, trenches are places from which attacks over no-mans-land are launched or repulsed with bloody casualties. Soldiers do not live in trenches, they only die, and the day-to-day experience of being in a hole in the ground is defined by shelling, gas, constant rain and, perhaps, war poetry. I want to use this Five Minute History to explain the details of life in the trenches in addition to exploring the day-to-day reality of the men who took part in the war on the Western Front.

Since 1985, first at the National Army Museum in London and then in other museums, schools, colleges and universities, I have taught up to half a million young, and not so young, people about the First World War. I have used my illustrated presentation Eye Deep in Hell? note the question mark with hundreds if not thousands of groups. Responses to this talk have ranged from questioning to outright disbelief. Some people believe that what they see on the screen in All Quiet on the Western Front or Blackadder Goes Forth are adequate representations of history and that anything else is clearly wrong. One veteran of the First World War described his experience of the trenches as being 90% bored stiff, 9% frozen stiff and 1% scared stiff. Another suggested that his war was experienced in colour, not the black and white of the photographs and original film we see today. If this book succeeds, I want the reader to have an understanding of the 99 per cent of trench warfare the men experienced on an everyday basis and to bring some colour into the sepia world of 191418.

ASR,

Spring 2014

BY OCTOBER 1914, as we will see, warfare on the Western Front, from the Swiss border in the south to the coast of the North Sea in Belgium, was locked into static trench warfare. Both sides had dug in either side of a strip of land, which became known as no-mans-land. No one could move in this area in daylight and both sides worked in the night, when darkness allowed men to dig and erect barbed wire. However, this was not the first time soldiers had worked under similar conditions.

In previous centuries, when an army was dispatched to surround and besiege a castle or town, the use of cannon or siege engines on both sides meant that the attackers had to protect themselves from enemy fire. The defenders had the advantage of earth or stone defences which had been designed and built as a permanent protection, whereas their opponents had to provide themselves with some means of cover while being close enough to the place they were besieging to use their artillery. The result of this was that besiegers would surround their objective and then start to dig in at night, when their opponents would have difficulty seeing and shooting at them.