Information for your Front Line letters

See Information and examples below to help you create good letters from the front.

The Trench:

When the Germans attacked in Belgium they quickly beat the armies defending the borders and managed to get into France very quickly. The British and French generals, uncertain about how to stop the German advance decided to ‘dig in’ and ordered the construction of Trenches to act as a barrier against the attack.  The soldiers dug a hole about a meter wide at the bottom and two meters deep. Boards were placed on the ground to act as drainage. On the side of the trench facing the enemy a ‘fire step’ was cut into the wall. This was for soldiers to shoot from. Sandbags were placed at the top of the trench. This would stop the trench caving in if a bomb went off nearby. It also provided more protection from bullets. In front of the trench Barbed wire was rolled out.  This was to stop soldiers being able to charge at the trench. The trench would be equipped with men armed with rifles and bayonets. At regular intervals along the trench there were machine gun posts.

Advantages: easy to make, easy to defend, cheap to build, don’t need lots of men to defend them. 

Disadvantages: wet, cold, hard to get in an out of without being seen by the enemy. Trenches were very dirty and unhygienic as there was no running water or flushing toilets.

• Due to the intensity of World War I trench warfare, 10% of the fighting soldiers were normally killed.   A minor injury in the trenches could kill you, since it was likely that infection or gangrene could set in. Gangrene is when your body tissue begins to decay/rot due to the introduction of bacteria. The Germans recorded that 12% of leg wounds and 23% of arm wounds resulted in death, mainly through infection. The Americans recorded 44% of casualties who developed gangrene died.

• As in many other wars, the greatest killer was disease. Sanitary conditions in the trenches were quite poor, and common infections included dysentery and cholera (both involve severe diarrhea and stomach ache  ---  “death by diarrhea”)

Many soldiers suffered from parasites (worms that live inside and feed off your body, making you severely ill) and related infections. Poor hygiene also led to fungal conditions, such as trench mouth and trench foot.  Another common killer was exposure, since the temperature within a trench in the winter could easily fall below

zero degrees Celsius (32 °F). Burial of the dead was usually a luxury that neither side could easily afford. The bodies would lie in no man's land until the front line moved, by which time the bodies were often unidentifiable.

REAL LETTERS FROM WWI

Excerpts of WWI Letters from Soldiers

The soldiers at the front need more rest. While in the trenches the water is over our knees most of the time. The war is going to last some time yet, and might be another twelve months before it is over. The war has only just begun and its going to be a war of exhaustion. After the regular armies have done their work it means that all the young lads at home being trained and disciplined and will take our place in the field. The sooner people understand this, the better, it will be for the nation.

Private H. F. Leppard in a letter to his mother on December 19th, 1914

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We have just come out of the trenches after being in for six days and up to our waists in water. While we were in the trenches one of the Germans came over to our trench for a cigarette and then back again, and he was not fired at. We and the Germans started walking about in the open between the two trenches, repairing them, and there was no firing at all. I think they are all getting fed up with it.

Private Stanley Terry in a letter to his family in November, 1915

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We started away just after dawn from our camp and I think it was about an hour later that we encountered the enemy. They were on the opposite side of the valley and as we came over the brow of the hill they opened on us with rifle fire and shrapnel from about 900 yards. We lost three officers and about 100 men killed and wounded in that half hour. I do not want any more days like that one. (this section censored) Anyway we drove the Germans back and held them there for eight days.  I cannot tell you all I should like to, as it would never reach you.

Private James Mitchell in a letter to his father on October 17th, 1914.

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I have not written to you for a long time, but I have thought of you … It is, indeed, not so simple a matter to write from the war, really from the war; and what you read … in the papers usually lack of understanding that does not allow a man to get hold of the war, to breathe it in although he is living in the midst of it.  The further I penetrate its true inwardness the more I see the  hopelessness of making it comprehensive for those who only understand life in the terms of peacetime, and apply these same ideas to war in spite of themselves. They only think that they understand it. It is as if fishes living in water would have a clear conception of what living in the air is like. When one is hauled out on to dry land and dies in the air, then he will know something about it.  So it is with the war. Feeling deeply about it, one becomes less able to talk about it every day. Not because one understands it less each day, but because one grasps it better. But it is a silent teacher, and he who learns becomes silent too.

Rudolf Binding, letter (April, 1915)

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I have an old platoon roll before me; three pages of names, numbers, trades, next-of-kin, religions, rifle numbers, and so forth. Faces come back out of the past to answer to these barren details, the face of this man dead, of that vanished forever.  Here and there rise memories of their habits, their nicknames, the look of one as he spoke to you, the attitude of another shivering in the night air, as he leaned over the parapet, watching with tired bloodshot eyes. Some of the faces have disappeared. Did I know you? I censored your letters, casually, hurriedly avoiding your personal messages, your poignant hopes.

Guy Chapman account of his experiences in 1930s

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Towards morning, while it is still dark, there is some excitement. Through the entrance rushes in a swarm of fleeing rats that try to storm the walls. Torches light up the confusion. Everyone yells and curses and slaughters. The madness and despair of many hours unloads itself in this outburst. Faces are distorted, arms strike out, the beasts scream; we stop just in time to avoid attacking one another.”

Erich Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

Quotes:

“It is a glorious thing to die for your country”

“The Lamps are going out all over Europe.  They shall not be lit again in our lifetime”

“The most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth.”

“World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death.”

“He was shot and killed by the other man, who also believed in duty, and he was buried where he fell. It was so simple and so unimportant.”