Why were sleeping conditions in the trenches in World War 1 bad?

Answer 1

Sleeping conditions in WW1 trenches were so bad for a numerous amount of reasons. one is that the poor hygiene left the soldiers invested with lice which would practically eat them alive until they came up with the idea to use a hot iron on their clothing which would "pop" the lice to their death. My second reason is the trenches were invested with tomcat sized rats which would eat their food and the dead bodies of soldiers who sometimes couldn't be properly buried after a cave in, etc. Another reason was that the soldiers would get many diseases such as trench foot and trench mouths, or gums. Trench foot is the rotting away of the foot due to a wet boot causing moisture to soak into the foot which soldiers would walk on and the skin would rot away causing the foot to get diseased. Trench mouth was poor hygiene in the mouth creating the gums in the mouth to rot away and become diseased. Both of these conditions were extremely painful. Also, soldiers had absolutely no comfort, as they slept on the dirt and used each other to stay out of the mud leaning back to back. In the trench the soldiers were always under some type of artillery fire sometimes "Screaming Mimi's or invasions from their enemies.