The Influence Of A Soldier's Daily Life On The Western Front

The biggest force that shaped a soldier’s daily life on the Western Front was the trenches. There were two aspects of trenches that shaped the soldier’s daily life. The first was the maintenance and creation of the trenches. The second was the living conditions inside the trenches. Updating and up-keeping a trench required a lot of physical labor. Jünger wrote that the soldiers had to do every possible task themselves, when it came to modifications to the trenches. They were the ones that would sink deep shafts, construct dugouts and concrete pillboxes. They would also have to rig up wire entanglements, devise drainage systems and fill in latrines. In the beginning of the book, Junger talked about his experience in the chalk trenches of Champagne.

He also contributed the chronic overtiring of the troops to the trench warfare because the officers were more concerned with the size of their trenches for security purposes. The trenches were important to the soldiers because they were the only things that were keeping them alive. Junger constantly mentioned how they were constantly being bombarded by artillery fire and the trenches were the only thing keeping them alive. They were forced to keep digging the trenches deeper because of the need to survive. They were forced to keep digging and force to labor over the trenches. That’s why the officers kept making their soldiers dig because that was the only security they had from the enemy’s artillery rounds. Without the trenches they would be in no man’s land and they surely would have been destroyed by the enemy’s artillery