I am generally wary of answering about “daily life” because, especially during war time, there were substantial variations in a soldier's routine, according to his rank, branch, specific occupation, as well as their position relative to the front or to the areas of more frequent action. This also doesn't take into account their personal inclinations, character, education and all the things that would have made the large mass of the men involved in the conflict different from one another.

It is hard to define individuals, within the largest masses of men ever assembled, under a constant pressure towards homogeneity, without sacrificing any feature or trait that would make them remarkable – more than the shell of a human. I must admit my inability to give this materials a coherent form; they are unbalanced, partial, uneven. Still...

Since your question involves “other” fronts, I'll put something together from a few things I have collected here and there about soldier's lives on the Italian front (that I have already posted on the site in the "Friday free for all" instalments) – I must caution you that these are quite old sources and more so the info we have comes often from either first hand accounts (biased in favour of people who could and had an inclination for writing down their experience), accounts from the army and more specially the army psychology bureau (which was run by clergymen, a fact that does not disqualify their account but – together with the obvious purpose of keeping the men into fighting shape – affects their understanding of the men and the tone of their reports) or trials and censorship process (that suffer from a problematic similar to the previous ones – as they were meant to serve as instruments for the public authority, not as historical accounts).

It also must be remembered that, as far as first hand accounts go, the most interesting, the most eloquent, those who show a deeper attention to the mind and condition of the soldier – that in short we find easier to relate to – are not at all representative of the life of the common soldier; common soldiers left very few first hand accounts, due to both circumstances (literacy was fairly low) and inclination. Their letters and diaries are often limited to stuff that happens, crops, health, food, time that goes by.

It's hard to get a picture of their lives from there. It's hard to get a picture of their lives at all.

 

But they were likely rather dull and uninteresting, at least from their point of view. Something that many accounts have in common is the feeling of a constant “dull pressure” that some likened to the state of a stone within a wall, pressed by all sides, holding through mere inertia, unable to move or to find any respite. As future historian Adolfo Omodeo – an artillery officer – wrote to his wife: Oh, that the sorrows of war were only the marches, the cold, the hunger, the trench; and proof of valor enough the contempt of death! The true misery is holding together, to suffer through the strain that day by day carves out “another” life, empty of anything but that, of any thought but that, to turn into a living Caryatid under a weight that's never lifted, endless […] so that I feel like a stone in a wall, like those supports and machinery, groaning under the burden of my [artillery] pieces, once trees majestic, now tortured timbers.

If this perceived depression of individual thought and willpower was common to the men, we can't tell with certainty. Officers often credited their men with a naïve simplicity that left men almost unaffected by their condition, more busy with the common needs of life. But this perception may have been based on the general lack of communication between the “army” and the “soldier” that appeared to develop during the war. And such sentiments may have been shared by the men among themselves.

The army leadership was certainly concerned about that. Noted Father Agostino Gemelli, then director of the physio-psychological Office of the High Command: the entrenched soldier thinks little, because he has little to look at; he is stuck thinking of those same things. His inner life is limited and nothing inspires it. His spirit is working without an object […] and becomes prey of dreams, legends, tales the most weird and nonsensical, of any false news. Meanwhile General Luigi Capello complained about a significant depression of willpower … showcased with the deepest apathy even in the issue of securing one's well being, while the interventionist politician G. Castellini wrote from the front: no letters, no news, a slow stupefaction that binds your life to the petty war of your trench. It's weird how I have lost intelligence. I have very few moments of nostalgia or thoughts of a man who can think and write. […] From time to time I look from the machine guns opening, in full midday, looking on the lushest ground of green, two thousand meters from our trenches to the enemy's. It's a beautiful land but it gives one a painful feeling of desolation and fake tranquillity. On the other side, from the trenches where they shoot at us, there's for sure someone else who looks with the same eye at this desert and the silence in between. Still Gemelli saw in this also evidence of the soldier's adaptability: A soldier ceases to be himself; his I is someone else; his life as a soldier is a parenthesis within his life; it's not his life, but another life that has little importance for him; he then exists extraneous to himself.

This adaptation to a soldier's life was not just made of dull routine. Something must have existed that kept the men's busy, besides manual labour – that was for the Italian soldier a large portion of life, trapped as they were in a state that has been described as "intermediate between that of a free man and that of a beast of burden". But the commonly though comforts of the soldier's life – shows, songs, readings – were largely denied to the common soldier and the officer both. Such forms of entertainment, besides being against traditions and regulations of the Army at the time, would have fallen under the umbrella of propaganda.

Propaganda had been a contentious point between the Italian Army and the Government since the beginning of the war: Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna was strongly opposed to it, for both ideological and practical reason. Propaganda was a political matter – propaganda within the army meant politics within the army; and nothing was more dangerous than allowing the divisive influence of politics within the ranks. Thus the staunch opposition against war propaganda, the refusal to admit parliament members to the area of operations (the general contempt of the military men towards the politicians was in fact reciprocated in full, the usual joke being that military career was “what was left for the dumb child”) and the mistrust faced by the interventionist public figures who had volunteered – who were often turned away from commanding duties or kept under police surveillance during their service.

Those men most of all felt the disillusionment that followed the first weeks of war – after the hopes of a glorious victory that would have brought back the spirit of the Italian Risorgimento, as prophesied in the “radiant days of may”. Men like Cesare Battisti, the most famous of the Trentine irredentists, felt almost trapped between the troops, who blamed them for “calling for the war”, and the Command, that didn't trust them and almost forced the volunteers to beg for that active role that was their only way of avoiding the shame of sending others to their death while they were kept safe somewhere in the rear. A similar conflict was felt by the numerous priest-soldiers in the Italian Army; while allowed to serve as chaplains, many had to admit that they had no way of providing for men who weren't willing to listen. And to gain the men's respect they had to wear the men's colours and take on active duty. Living with the men was for a priest a test of vocation that many could not pass.

The troops lack of enthusiasm for the conflict took at times the form of open contempt for those who had “provoked” it. After the death of Corridoni, Benito Mussolini, himself a volunteer, recalled a men coming to him; “are you Mussolini?” the man asked. And to the future fascist leader's affirmative answer, the man – likely aware that Mussolini had been on friendly terms with Corridoni – followed with: “I heard that Corridoni croaked; good riddance. And well deserved. Wish the same to all those who wanted the war.”