Throughout the four-year span of WW I, soldiers toiled away in the trenches, battling not only the enemy, but shell shock, trench foot, and other harrowing consequences of this brutal type of combat.
From sleeping soldiers to the glow of nighttime bombings, here's what it looked like to be in the trenches of World War I.
1
A soldier wields his gun, August 1916.
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“German soldier helps light a cigarette for his Romanian ally. World War II, Eastern Front, 1941.”
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A white phosphorus bomb detonates during a night attack, 1918.
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A British soldier befriends a family of rabbits, whose underground home was disturbed by the digging of the trench.
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Soldiers crouch as they run through a trench, 1917.
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British troops write, sit in a trench o the Western Front.
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Canadian soldiers rest, write letters from their trench.
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Tired soldiers rest in some of the sleeping shelters crafted during World War I
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British soldiers set up shop in a captured German trench.
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“France lost more soldiers between 1914 and 1918 than the USA in its whole history.”
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Australian soldiers prepare themselves a meal while on the frontlines.
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A British despatch rider bikes through a “communication trench.”
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“Soldiers with the British Machine Gun Corps wear gas masks in 1916 during World War I's first Battle of the Somme.”
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British Army officer Colonel Philip. R. Robertson wades through a flooded trench, January 1915.
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“An Australian Soldier wading through the mud in the Trenches of France - December 1916.”
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“Ottoman soldiers in Galica, World War I.”
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"French Moroccan Troops captured by Germans during World War I. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. (2017/02/24). National Museum of the U.S. Navy.”
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“Captured Russian loopholes that are mobile and can change position at will. German World War I postcard.”
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“Trench warfare at night captured by a British photographer, 1917.”
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“The Serbian Army in World War I, 1910’s.”
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“Prussian soldiers in WWI.”
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“1918: An Indian Lewis gun team engages an enemy aircraft in Mesopotamia during World War I, as other soldiers run for the cover of slit trenches.”
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"The MacAdam Shield Shovel was designed to give Canadian soldiers extra protection while fighting in the trenches of World War I. It was made from 3/16ths inch thick steel and had a 3.5x2 inch hole in it. 1910's."
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“An American sniper takes aim at the Germans from the trenches in France during World War I, c. 1918.”
