The Nightmare of WWI Trench Warfare Got Worse When Soldiers Drowned in the Mud
World War I was a horrific and brutalizing experience for the millions of soldiers who fought in it. For those engaged in the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele, in Flanders, “stuck” took on a literal meaning when unusually wet weather conditions morphed much of the region into a sea of mud deep enough to swallow soldiers, and even horses.
Flanders is a low lying coastal region abutting the North Sea in Belgium, where the water table is seldom far below the ground. The area is naturally prone to muddiness, but 1917 saw relentless rains that enhanced its already muddy norms. Artillery barrages churned the ground and made it even muddier. Thousands of horses and mules died from exhaustion as they tried to drag gun carriages and wagonloads through the mire, and moving a gun 250 yards could take over six hours. It took six men to stretcher a casualty over the muck, and men stumbled through glue-like mud that sucked the boots from their feet, sometimes reaching their waists or higher.
Soldiers no longer thought of those in different uniforms as the enemy: that honor went to the deep and all-devouring mud. Wounded and dying men were swallowed up by the slime, and hale men were buried when sodden trench walls collapsed around them. Soldiers came to fear the mud even more than they feared their opponents’ shells, bullets, and bayonets.
As a British officer described his men’s suffering: ” Covered with mud, wet to the skin, bitterly cold, stiff and benumbed with exposure, cowed and deadened by the monotony of 48 hours in extreme danger and by the constant casualties among their mates, they hung on to existence by a thin thread of discipline rather than by any spark of life. Some of the feebler and more highly strung deliberately ended their lives.”