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World War I was a war of trenches. After the early war of movement in the late summer of 1914, artillery and machine guns forced the armies on the Western Front to dig trenches to protect themselves. Fighting ground to a stalemate.
Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising military trenches, in which combatants are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery.
Trench warfare reached its highest development on the Western Front during World War I (1914–18), when armies of millions of men faced each other in a line of trenches extending from the Belgian coast through northeastern France to Switzerland.
Trench warfare in World War I was employed primarily on the Western Front, an area of northern France and Belgium that saw combat between German troops and Allied forces from France, Great...
Trench warfare is perhaps the most iconic feature of World War I. By late 1916 the Western Front contained more than 1,000 kilometres of frontline and reserve trenches. Enemy attacks on trenches or advancing soldiers could come from artillery shells, mortars, grenades, underground mines, poison gas, machine guns and sniper fire.
Trench warfare becomes necessary when two armies face a stalemate, with neither side able to advance and overtake the other. Although trench warfare has been employed since ancient times, it was used on an unprecedented scale on the Western Front during World War I.
The image of muddy, rat-infested trenches stretching across the battlefields of Europe has become synonymous with the First World War. The stalemate of trench warfare, which characterized much of the fighting on the Western Front, was a defining feature of the conflict.
Millions of men perished in trench warfare, but it was one of the defining strategies of World War I – particularly on the Western Front. However, this strategy was nothing new: armies had been holing down in the earth for centuries, to avoid having soldiers exposed.
During WWI, trenches provided shelter for soldiers who engaged in the harsh fighting along the Western Front. They also made it difficult for the opposing forces to advance and attack the frontline. Dug under the cover of darkness, they ran eight feet deep and between four-six feet wide.
Trench warfare was a critical component in European theatre of World War I. Here, British soldiers occupy a German trench in at Ovillers-la-Boisselle, France during the Battle of the Somme...