Trench Warfare in World War I and World War II

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Trench Warfare in World War 1 and World War 2 was very deadly. Many soldiers in the trenches died from random causes. Just about every trench in both of the wars where very nasty. It was a place that no one ever wanted to be or would ever want to go. Trenches were built about every way that you could imagine. They were built above ground and underground. Building trenches was very difficult and time consuming. It would take 450 men six hours to construct a trench that was 250 meters long. Most trenches where about two meters deep and two meters wide and where never built in a straight line. They built the trenches zigzagged because when they dropped a bomb on one part of the trench the blast wouldn’t be able to kill everyone. They also done it like that to keep the poison gases from spreading to far down the trenches and so that the enemy couldn’t just run up and shoot in a straight line and kill everyone. They built trenches like that to keep everyone from dying at once. People dying in trenches was very random and very common. About 1/3 of the allied casualties on the western front was in the trenches. A lot of the men in the trenches died from shell fire. Shell fire would cause a good many of them to be buried alive because of the trench collapsing on them. A lot of men also died from grenades and shell fire. About 1/3 of the men that died in the trenches died from disease or other medical reasons. The biggest problem with the trenches was the weather conditions. Weather would make the trenches muddy, cold and depressing. Many soldiers died from the weather. They would be exposed to the cold for a long period of time and freeze to death. When people died they had high chances that they wouldn’t be buried. Soldiers normally... ... middle of paper ... ...soldiers also used gases to kill the enemy. The big three gases was chlorine, phosgene gas and mustard gas. The one most widely used was mustard gas because it was less detectable. Eventually the tank was invented, the tank was almost impossible to stop so they used it to break through enemy lines especially to break through the trenches. Soldiers would also break through lines by using miners to dig tunnels to the enemy trench and place a mine to blow it up so they could attack them. I think trench warfare was very deadly. I would not have wanted to be on the front line in one of the trenches unless I had to. The environment from where the trenches were and from all the bombing was impacted a lot. It killed off a lot of the wildlife and it also destroyed vegetation. It made people around where it was starve and cause a famine. I am very glad I live in America.

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