Memoirs & Diaries - Trenches At Vimy Ridge. As the War had to be, I shall always be glad I was able to play even a negligible part in it, or I should never have known with such certainty the madness of it.
During training I was aware only of the glamour of War. I prepared myself for it with enthusiasm, and bayoneted and clubbed the stuffed sacks representing the enemy with a sort of exalted ferocity. I was as jealous of my regiment as I used to be of my school. Schools Online World War One - H.Q. - Articles - The Western Front. Feature Articles - Life in the Trenches. Life in the trenches during the First World War took many forms, and varied widely from sector to sector and from front to front.
Undoubtedly, it was entirely unexpected for those eager thousands who signed up for war in August 1914. A War of Movement? Indeed, the Great War - a phrase coined even before it had begun - was expected to be a relatively short affair and, as with most wars, one of great movement. The First World War was typified however by its lack of movement, the years of stalemate exemplified on the Western Front from autumn 1914 until spring 1918. Not that there wasn't movement at all on the Western Front during 1914-18; the war began dramatically with sweeping advances by the Germans through Belgium and France en route for Paris.