A Long Day In The Trenches Essay

A long day in the trenches with the decay and stench of death and despair and you are tasked with destroying an enemy in the same common conditions. For the soldiers of World War I they dealt with this on a daily basis for what many thought would be a short war. To summon the strength over the hardship of being in a trench filled with diseased water, rats and death on a daily basis, is a testament to the bravery and fortitude these men showed during this engagement. Both the Allied and Central powers fighting for basically the same causes, the freedoms and the rights of their country. They thought they would be home for Christmas, but for four years’ man’s new found technical advances made this into a war of utter devastation and death.

The machine gun and artillery used widely in World War I was a game changer in the existence of war. It changed the face of warfare forever, and took a level of humanity and integrity from the solider. They were now faceless and no longer had to meet the enemy face to face but were prisoners in the trenches and obstacles that occupied the modern day battlefield. “And the worst friend and enemy is but Death” (Brooke, 469) shows that the fighting was out of the hands of the grunt in the trenches. They were a mere expendable pawn in the battle strategy of the officers. The technology was supposed to make the troops and fighting more mobile, but it is ironic that the new weaponry and tactics made this a war of attrition and confounded the soldiers into a routine of living in a trench. Ernst Junger made a comment in The Storm of Steel: From the Diary of a German Storm-Troop Officer on the Western Front that spoke volumes “All the while the wounded came trailing back with white, dejected faces, huddled into the ditches by the gun ammunition columns that rattled past.” (Junger, 475). This statement emphasis that the spirit of the soldier was secondary to the destroying ability of the man’s evil creation during this time