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Trenches:
Dulce María
Created on September 19, 2025
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Transcript
Trenches:
Seven Days in the Forgotten War
Start
1.
6.
Day 1
Phrase
2.
7.
Day 2
References
3.
Day 3
Content
4.
Day 4
5.
Day 5
Day 1: The Appearance of the Trenches
July 28, 1914.Being a man in 1914 meant leaving everything behind-family, comfort, and certainty- to defend your country against the looming threat of war.
The mud clings to our boots like a second skin, and the stench of rotting sandbags, overflowing latrines, and dead rats fills the air. Hygiene is nearly impossible. Trench foot spreads like wildfire, and lice crawl through our uniforms. This is not the glory we imagined, It's survival-day by day- breath by breath.
When Germany invaded Belgium and Luxembourg, the world shifted. The trenches appeared soon after, carved hastily into the earth with sandbags stacked for protection. At first, they were shallow and improvised, but as the war dragged on, they became a labyrinth of misery. We live in filth.
Day 2: A normal day
They didn't have the privilege of showering. Instead, they waited for rainwater to collect in the trenches-water mixed with mud, the remains of corpses, and other filth. In that same water, they washed their clothes.
Sleep was a luxury. Resting without fear was nearly impossible. The constant threat of gas, gunfire, or a surprise raid turned every moment into a gamble with death.
Their uniforms, shredded by constant shelling and crawling through barbed wire, had to be sewn by hand. Supplies were scarce, and repairs were a daily necessity.Food arrived cold, sometimes spoiled, and often contaminated with mud. Still, they forced down afew bites-just enough to keep going, just enough to be ready when the enemy attacked.
Day 3: Common Diseases in the Trenches
Disease was as deadly as any bullet. Many casualties weren’t caused by combat, but by the invisible enemies that thrived in the trenches—bacteria, parasites, and viruses.
Other common illnesses included influenza, malaria, typhoid fever, and dysentery. These diseases spread rapidly in the overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. Even a small cut could become infected and lead to pneumonia or worse. In the trenches, survival meant enduring not just the enemy’s fire—but the constant assault of sickness.
The soldiers lived surrounded by filth, stagnant water, and decomposing bodies. Sanitation measures like latrines and basic water purification were introduced to control outbreaks of diarrheal and dysenteric diseases, but they were often too little, too late. Lice were everywhere. They didn’t just itch—they carried trench fever, caused by Bartonella quintana, and louse-borne typhus, both of which left soldiers feverish, weak, and incapacitated.
Day 4: Everything Gets Complicated
The war changed shape before our eyes. The Battle of the Somme, which raged from July to November 1916, was unlike anything we’d seen.
But not all days were filled with fire. I remember stories of the Christmas Truce of 1914, when soldiers from both sides laid down their weapons. They sang carols, exchanged gifts, and even played football in No Man’s Land. It was brief, unofficial, and fragile—but it reminded us that humanity still flickered beneath the uniforms. Now, in 1916, that flicker feels distant. The machines are louder. The death toll is higher. And everything—everything—is more complicated.
Over a million men were wounded or killed. The ground shook with endless artillery, and the sky never seemed to clear. It was here, in the mud and chaos of the Somme, that we saw something new—tanks. On September 15, 1916, these mechanical beasts rolled onto the battlefield for the first time. Clunky, slow, and terrifying, they crushed barbed wire and crawled over trenches. We called them “landships.” The Germans didn’t know what hit them.
Day 5: May be the last day
As the war dragged on, many soldiers clung to letters—written and received—as lifelines to the world beyond the trenches. Some wrote with hope, others with sorrow. This final entry honors one of those voices: George Shipley, Company Sergeant Major of the 10th Middlesex Regiment, who died on December 2, 1915.
-Excerpt from a Letter at Sea Written by George Shipley, 6 August 1915, en route to the Dardanelles: “We then wondered where we were off to but eventually reached Port Said, stopped a day, went ashore, and off we go to the Dardanelles which we expect to reach tonight… I am in the best of health at present and hope to go through alright. I expect you heard I got married a week before I left, a lot of us did the same thing, it was quite a common occurrence.”