What was a trench in World War 1?

Answer 1

Trenches were constructed by soldiers with a shovel. As you could imagine, this was a hard and laborious task. There were three standard ways to dig a trench: entrenching, sapping, and tunnelling. Entrenching involved men digging from the top downwards. This was, by far, the quickest way to dig a trench. However, it left those working on it exposed, so this method could only be used at night or on a trench further back. Sapping involved extending the trench by digging away at the end. The diggers were not exposed, but only one or two men could work on the trench at a time.

Tunnelling was like sapping except that soil above the trench was left in place and then removed when the trench was ready to be occupied. This provided plenty of cover for the diggers, and it made the position of the trench hidden until it was ready to be used.

The corridor leading through the trenches was too low to fire from. Raising it any higher would make soldiers who were not firing vulnerable to enemy fire. The fire step was dug into the trenches so only those who were firing were vulnerable to the enemy. The banked earth on the trench facing the enemy was called the parapet. This often included sandbags to cover soldiers on the fire step and barbed wire to slow the enemy's advance if they neared the trench. The paradoe was the slightly raised ground at the back of the trench. This protected soldiers from shells landing behind the main trench. The floor of the trench was usually covered by wooden duckboards. In some trenches, the floor was on a wooden frame to provide a drainage ditch underneath.

Dugouts of were built in the rear of the trench. This was where soldiers slept, read, wrote and spent all of their spare time. Dugouts varied in luxury and size. British dugouts were usually 2.5 to 5m deep, whereas German dugouts were much deeper, usually a minimum of 4m. Sometime German dugouts were much deeper and more complex than normal, going up to three storeys down.

It was considered suicide to attack a trench head-on, as the opposing forces in the trench could easily pick off attacking soldiers with rifles or machine guns. A strategy was adopted by both sides to flank the trenches. Attacking them from the side would result in fewer casualties. However, since both sides used this strategy, they continued to try and outflank each other until their trenches stretched from the North Sea to the Swiss border.

Each side had many different trenches. Both sides had a front line trench, which was backed up by several other trenches further back. The objective of trench warfare was to take the enemy's front line trench and then use it to give covering fire as soldiers advanced to take the next trench. However, both sides lost and gained trenches continuously, resulting in a stalemate.
Trench warfare is a form of occupied fighting lines, consisting largely of trenches, in which troops are largely immune to the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. It has become a byword for attrition warfare, for stalemate in conflict, with a slow wearing down of opposing forces
Trench warfare is a form of warfare where both combatants have fortified positions and fighting lines are static. Trench warfare arose when a revolution in fire power was not matched by similar advances in mobility, resulting in a slow and grueling form of defense-oriented warfare in which both sides constructed elaborate and heavily armed trench and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, with soldiers in both trench lines largely defiladed from the other's small arms fire and enclosed by barbed wire. The area between opposing trench lines (known as "no man's land") was fully exposed to small arms and artillery fire from both sides. Attacks, even successful ones, often sustained severe casualties as a matter of course. Periods of trench warfare occurred during the American Civil War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Second Anglo-Boer War and reached peak bloodshed on the Western Front of World War I. Trench warfare is often a sign of attrition warfare.

Answer 2

The trenches were all along the Western Front, they started at the coast of Belgium and went through France and ended in Germany.

The trenches were where the soldiers would sleep, eat and fight. There would be four rotations of when the soldiers would fight. Some of the trenches had three lines front like then second like then their line. The front line would be closest to the enemy and would be the most dangerous. Trenches were awful as they could be full of human waste and rats which would spread horrible illnesses.

There were 25,000 miles of trenches. Northern France and Belgium held most of these. There were trenches in the Alps, in Italy and other locations in Europe, including the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey. Significant battles of varied duration were fought in Verdun, in northeastern France, the Somme, in Picardie (northern France), and the Marne, east-north-east of Paris.

Answer 3

During World War I, the "trench system" was a sophisticated series of cuts in the earth, usually deep enough such that a soldier could stand erect without being exposed to the surface, designed to thwart enemy offensive action. The trenches were so widespread, and so effective, that World War I is accurately described as a "trench-warfare conflict."

Answer 4

During WW1, the armies fought in trenches about 8-9 feet deep. These trenches protected the men from gunfire and other harms. With the invention of new technologies like gas, tanks, airplanes, and the machine gun rendered open-field fighting useless, so they had to fight in said trenches.

Answer 5

It was basically a skinny and relatively deep pit surrounded with barbed wire that was used for fighting. The trench was like a barricade and protected the soldiers from direct gunfire.

Answer 6

holes in the ground

Answer 7

Mobilization of resources and people

Answer 8

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