Mud

Mud is the chief enemy and chief misery of the soldier.

Mud soft and deep, that you sink into, vainly seeking a
foothold on something solid; or stiff and clinging, gripping
boots so firmly as sometimes to drag them off. Mud, that
coats men, horses, guns, rifles, and all in a thick
camouflage, so that they become almost indistinguishable
from the ground. It clings to mens bodies and cracks their
skins, and the slimy horror of it soaks their souls and sucks
their courage. I have known those who can face an enemy
barrage without flinching, who still shiver at the memory of
their experiences in the mud of Flanders.

Boyd, Sergeant P, Salvage, Australian War Memorial Facsimile Editions, Canberra (1918)
1983, in McAndrew, M, Thomas, D and Cummins, P, The Great War and its Aftermath,
Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2001, p.173





Sickness & Disease
Your feet swell to two or three times their normal size
and go completely dead. You could stick a bayonet into
them and not feel a thing. If you were fortunate
enough not to lose your feet and the swelling begins to
go down, it is then that the intolerable, indescribable
agony begins. I have heard men cry and even scream
with the pain and many had to have their feet and legs
amputated. I was one of the lucky ones, but one more
day in that trench and it may have been too late.

Sergeant Harry Roberts, RAMC, after holding a flooded strategic front line trench for six days
and nights, just before the beginning of the Battle of the Somme, 1919




Lice
Jack, like most of the men, scratched almost all the
time, unconsciously, and gradually less aware that he
did so. Not all of them were resigned. Tyson had once
been driven so frantic that the medical officer ordered
him to have fifteen days rest. The constant irritation
had proved more wearing to him even than the sound
of heavy guns or the fear of dying. By the time they
had reached their billets Jack felt the first irritation on
his skin. Within three hours the heat on his body as he
marched had hatched the eggs of hundreds of lice that
had lain dormant in the seams of the shirt. By the time
he reached the front his skin was alive with them.

Faulks, S, Birdsong, Vintage, London, 1994, pp.346, 347.


Rats
There are millions!! Some are huge fellows,
nearly as big as cats. Several of our men were
awakened to find a rat snuggling down under
the blanket alongside them!

Major Walter Vignoles, quoted in Malcolm Brown, Tommy goes to War, Dent,
London, 1978, p.88


The Cold
Exposure
Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent
Low, dropping flares confuse our memory of the salient
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous
But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
What are we doing here?

Tonight this frost will fasten on this mud and us,
Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,
Pause over half known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.

Owen, W, extract from the poem Exposure, written in 1917, in Cross, T, The Lost Voices of World War One, Bloomsbury, London, 1988,
p.80

Psychological Angle
I shall not easily forget those long winter nights at the
front line. Darkness fell about four in the afternoon and
dawn was not until 8 the next morning. These sixteen
hours of blackness were broken by gun flashes, the
gleam of star shells and punctuated by the scream of a
shell or the sudden heart stopping rattle of a machine
gun. The long hours crept by with leaden feet and
sometimes it seemed as if time itself was dead.

F. Noakes, The Distant Drum, quoted in Winter, Deaths Men, p.86

Shell Shock
He upset all of us. There were just five or six of us
in our dug-out and every time a shell came over
her went haywire, shouting and screaming as if
he wanted to tear the place to pieces and tear us
to pieces too. We just couldnt put up with it, so I
grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and took
him down the duckboard track to the dressing
station. He was quite a mild little fellow, in fact
quite a sweet-natured sort of chap.

Bombardier Harry Fayerbrother, Royal Field Artillery, while in Ypres Salient, late 1917,
writing about shell-shocked comrade.