The trench system on the Western Front in World War I, fixed from the winter of 1914 to the spring of 1918, eventually stretched from the North Sea coast of Belgium southward through France, with a bulge outwards to contain the much-contested Ypres salient. Running in front of such French towns as Soissons, Reims, Verdun, St. Mihiel and Nancy, the system finally reached its southernmost point in Alsace, at the Swiss border. In total the trenches built during World War I, laid end-to-end, would stretch some 25,000 miles, 12,000 of those miles occupied by the Allies, and the rest by the Central Powers. Between 1914 and 1918, 7,000 British soldiers were killed or wounded daily.
As historian Paul Fussell describes it, there were usually three lines of trenches: a front-line trench located 50 yards to a mile from its enemy counterpart, guarded by tangled lines of barbed wire; a support trench line several hundred yards back; and a reserve line several hundred yards behind that. A well-built trench did not run straight for any distance, as that would invite the danger of enfilade, or sweeping fire, along a long stretch of the line; instead it zigzagged every few yards. There were three different types of trenches: firing trenches, lined on the side facing the enemy by steps where defending soldiers would stand to fire machine guns and throw grenades at the advancing offense; communication trenches; and "saps," shallower positions that extended into no-man’s-land and afforded spots for observation posts, grenade-throwing and machine gun-firing (pg. 234). British trenches were considered amateur compared to the Germans, being unpleasant, dirty, smelly, and wet. Much nicer German trenches were elaborate, sometimes comfortable for soldiers, deep, and kept very clean.
While war in the trenches during World War I is described in horrific, apocalyptic