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Although trench warfare brought positives to our troops, it also brought
negatives.
Firstly, a positive that trench warfare brought was the protection it brought to the people inside the trenches. The trenches that were used provided a form of protection for the troops, as it protected them from enemy fire. It provided a ‘safe’ place for the troops to reload and to fire at the enemy forces from behind a barrier, making them a harder target for the enemy to shoot at.
A negative that trench warfare brought was disease and infection. Diseases such as trench fever and trench nephritis, along with infections such as trench foot and trench mouth were common in the trenches. These diseases/infections brought sickness, amputated limbs and even death.
Another negative involved in trench warfare was the conditions that the troops lived in inside the trenches while the war was being waged. The conditions were often damp, crowded, pest infested, and horrendously smelling.
World War One introduced many new weapons that had been invented or improved upon during the Industrial Revolution which mainly took place in the 19th century; weapons that would cause much more death and destruction than in any previous war. These weapons included machine guns, heavy artillery guns, tanks, and new chemical weapons (tear, mustard and chlorine gas).
Machine guns were improved upon after they were first used in the American civil war. After the improvements were made, the machine guns were capable of firing up to 600 rounds of ammunition per minute, which was the equivalent to facing 250 soldiers using rifles. The trenches were the only thing that stopped the soldiers from being mowed down like grass.
The heavy artillery guns were capable of firing large shells a long distance, mostly projected in an arc so that the shells could drop upon the target from above, which is why it was an effective weapon for trench warfare.
Tanks were introduced by the British army in September 1916. These tanks were good for getting through trenches and barbed wire, but due to the fact that they kept getting stuck in the mud, and their frequent break downs, they were considered unreliable. The reason that the tanks kept getting stuck and breaking down was because they had been rushed into production, so that the British and allied forces could get the upper hand. The tanks didn't only cause death outside of the interior of the tank. The men inside the tanks often died because of over heating, or suffered mental damage due to the noise that the tanks produced.
The new poisonous chemical weapons that were introduced by the Germans in 1915 were called tear, mustard and chlorine gas. These gases were designed as a way to attack the troops in the trenches by burning and destroying the respiratory
system of any person not wearing a mask. In 1925, poison gases were banned under something called the Geneva Protocol. This protocol banned the use of the
poisonous gases due to the horrific injuries that they caused.