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There were many dangers if you were a soldier living on the Western
Front. There was the constant threat of
the enemy invading the trenches, and also, some nights you had to go out into No
Man’s Land and fight to get into their trenches. On the first day of war alone,
there were approximately 60,000 deaths for the British
army. Another danger was a commonly used weapon on the Western Front: poisonous
gas. Gas attacks were frequent and deadly in the trenches. The gas was called chlorine gas and was possibly the most feared among the soldiers. This is because the toxins that the gas contained targeted to the eyes, nose,
throat and lungs. The gas was relatively
dense, and so it settled on the ground. This meant that any injured men on the ground, who were out of reach of a gas mask
stood absolutely
no chance against the fatal fumes. As
gas attacks became more and more
frequent, the number of causalities rose as a result of them. Towards the end
of the war, the Germans began to use a different gas called Mustard Gas. This proved
to be the most lethal gas of all for several reasons; one it was much more difficult
to detect; two it tended to remain on the surface of the ground; there it would
linger for a longer period of time, therefore lengthening the effects they had
on the soldiers.
Injuries
There
were many injured soldiers on the Western Front. These men could be found in
the third row of trenches at the nursing area.
The most common injuries that the soldiers would have were often simple
cuts that had become severely infected due to the constant exposer of trench water
that contained deadly diseases. Most of
the wounds that became infected often lead to the development of gangrene. There were also numerous infections that were
discovered after the start of the war.
Many men who lived in the trenches developed infections such as: trench
foot, trench mouth and trench fever (which was more of a flu). A soldier could prevent these infections by
limiting the amount of exposer to the contaminated water, although that was often hard to do because the trenches were often flooded when it rained. The soldiers were provided with gumboots to
protect themselves but the soft rubber of the boots were often punctured by
debris and fallen barbed wire. This then
made the boots pointless. There were
also the expected injuries that soldiers were to endure after fighting through
No Man’s Land such as scratches from barbed wire, bullet wounds, or knife cuts.
Hygiene
The
soldiers that lived in the trenches were not provided with sanitary conditions
in which they could live in. If a
soldier received an open wound while serving at the Western Front it would
almost certainly become fatally infected.
There were several factors that contributed to the infecting of a wound.
These factors include; the constant presence of rats; the rotting corpses on
the battle field; parasites that lived in the rats; over flowing lavatories;
etc. The rats were one of the main
problems whilst living in the trenches. They came in millions
and because of the constant food supply that was provided due to the
solders that had passed away. Another
problem that came with the presence of the rats was the parasites that lived on
them. The rats would run over the men as
they slept, and this then, in turn, spread the parasites that lived on the
rats. After a few days of living in the
trenches, the men would have lice living in their clothes and laying their
eggs in the seams of their clothes.