Life in the Trenches
destroyed the drains, so the battlefields became quagmires of mud � often, men drowned in the mud.
Sanitary arrangements were unsatisfactory, and disease killed as many men as the enemy. The
hundreds of human corpses made disease (and flies) inevitable, and trench rats grew fat on human flesh.
And thousands of casualties.
Antibiotics had not yet been discovered, and � in the dirt � even a small wound often led to blood
poisoning, gangrene and death. Perhaps worse was to recover, profoundly disabled or mutilated
Trench Fever is an unusual disease in that it was first discovered in 1915 and disappeared in 1918
when the war ended. It was again reported during the 2nd World War when it affected the Germans on
the Russian Front but it is now a very rare disease
Latrines were ideally dug behind the front line trenches but obviously these could not be used during
enemy attacks and a small pit was usually dug in the front line trench to accommodate the men; as the
war progressed, if the trench was demolished by shell fire, dead bodies were incorporated in the
repaired trench wall and the stench of putrefaction was added to that of urine and faeces. It needs no
imagination to understand what the trench conditions were like after the trench had been recently
shelled!
Louse infestation ran at about 97% and explains why Trench Fever was so common; it is amazing
that Typhus was so rare, usually found only in the few Australians who had been infected before leaving
Egypt.