Forgive the stupid question: how did WWI forces leave their trenches?

by BurningHanzo

I know that the Western Front was relatively stagnant with trench warfare for years. I also know that soldiers didn't just stay in the trench the entire time. Sometimes they would leave, go on leave, go back to HQ, whatever.

I guess what I'm asking is: how? I mean, besides an offensive or something. Wouldn't you get shot if you left your trench? Was it incredibly high risk to leave? Did the soldiers have some type of tunnel system or something for avoiding enemy gunfire?

AlamutJones

The first thing to remember is going to sound really stupid once I’ve said it, but it’s this...an army is usually going to be a lot more concerned with their enemy moving troops forward than moving troops backwards. An advancing column of fresh, fit men is of more immediate concern than a retreating one full of men who are wounded and exhausted. Exhausted, injured men can barely fight.

Artillery MAY try to hit men moving out, if they thought they‘d have the range, but often they’d focus on the front proper trying to damage the first line of defences, or on things like machine gun nests/artillery emplacements trying to take them out to make it less costly when their own men attacked.

Second...this may help you visualise some of what you need. It’s a map used by British command in the 1916 Somme offensive. Can you see how it’s been overlaid with a squiggling mess of interconnected trenches?

Welcome to Spaghetti Junction.

Some of these are front line trenches, facing out onto barbed wire and no man’s land. A “support” trench is behind that, for the times when the front trench needs to be reinforced RIGHT NOW. Men could move from the support trench to the front to reinforce particularly vulnerable spots, or else withdraw from the front trench when it was under attack to regroup in the second line and launch the counterattack.

Some “reserve” trenches sit a little further back from the support line (full of men and supplies who haven’t been moved to the hairy bits of the action yet, but who will be the next ones to rotate forward to the support trench or front line when someone else needs a rest or additional reinforcement) and there are “communications” trenches and “travel” trenches running the other way, connecting the front with the support and reserve lines.

It’s not three distinct and separate lines, but more like a spider’s web or a net. By the end of 1918, the web could be shockingly elaborate.

This aerial view from Loos in 1917 also shows what I mean. See them interconnect?

When you get to the rear of the web, a few miles away from the front...that’s RIGHT at the outer edge of enemy artillery range. You could hear it, and may have been able to see a glow at night as shells were shot off, but it would be a very, VERY difficult distance for all but the longest-range enemy guns to make accurately. That’s where you can come into the open, knowing they can’t reach you.

Men could rest in camp there, training in preparation for their move back into reserve trenches and eventually to the front line. Dressing stations and field ambulance depots would also be there or in the reserve trenches - close enough to send crews forward to the front or support trenches to recover wounded, close enough for the wounded and sick to either walk out themselves or be carried on stretchers to reach the care they needed, but also far enough back that casualties were unlikely to be shot to shit again while they were still being treated for the first time. More permanent medical facilities, where men could be for weeks or months rather than hours or days, would be reached by the nearest railhead, river barge or road.

Men who had been granted leave would work their way to the rear of the trench net and use the same rail or road connection - not necessarily to go home (they might only have a week or two of leave, which is not much when going home eats up three days travel) but perhaps to go to a town away from the front where they could have a real wash, eat real food, meet a pretty French girl who would love them passionately and deeply for a week and then forget they existed.

It’s also worth pointing out that the ”squiggliness“ of the lines on the map was not a stylistic choice or an accident. The trenches on the ground doglegged back and forth almost continuously, because every corner allowed somewhere to shelter if the trench you were in was under fire while you were trying to move through it.