Virtual Tour
World War I
The Western Front
The first major trench lines were completed in late November 1914. At their peak, the trenches built by both sides extended nearly 400 miles from Nieuport, on the Belgian coast, to the Swiss border. Among the Allies, the Belgians occupied 40 miles, the British occupied 90 miles and the French occupied the rest. Experts calculate that along the western front, the Allies and Central Powers dug nearly 6,2500 miles of trenches by the end of 1914.
The Trench System
The Allies used four "types" of trenches. The first, the front-line trench (or firing-and-attack trench), was located from 50 yards to 1 mile from the German's front trench. Several hundred yards behind the front-line trench was the support trench, with men and supplies that could immediately assist those on the front line. The reserve trench was dug several hundred yards further back and contained men and supplies that were available in emergencies should the first trenches be overrun.
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Connecting these trenches were communication trenches, which allowed movement of messages, supplies, and men among the trenches. Some underground networks connected gun emplacements and bunkers with the communication trenches.
German trench life was much different. They constructed elaborate and sophisticated tunnel and trench structures, sometimes with living quarters more than 50 feet below the surface. These trenches had electricity, beds, toilets and other niceties of life that contrasted sharply with the open-air trenches of the Allies.
A Soldier's Story
At dawn in the morning about, we were told, 800 guns opened up and we went over the top. It was all quite nice; we didn’t have anybody firing at us, not for the first quarter of an hour or so, anyway. We were getting along – strung out in what we called open formation, that’s a couple of yards between each man – and we came under long-distance machine-gun fire. As we were going along, the man on the left of me was hit in the arm and the man on the right of me was hit in the heart, he died – he probably died, we weren’t allowed to stop, anyway but he did, we knew he died afterwards. It missed me altogether, that was just the luck of the war.
I had to go with my section between the second and third German lines to a machine gun post. Just as we got over out of the second line to go to this machine gun post, they opened up on us.
Well I said, ‘Get down, for God’s sake, or we’ll all be killed!’ We all flopped down, the six of us, I could feel something just feel a pain in my arm, then I felt something in my head. We shoved six bombs into this machine gun post and there was no more firing then.
By this time, we was all wounded, the six of us were all wounded, but none of us was killed. And all in the left arm and the left hand. One chap had a bullet right through the palm of his hand, oh, it smashed up his hand. This bullet had went into the muscle of my left arm, but it hadn’t touched the bone, it had come right out the back of my arm. What had hit me on the front of the eye, the top of the eye, I don’t know but it took all my eyebrow away and the skin, and it was bleeding, pouring down with blood.