14. Mud Made the Already Tragic and Miserable Conditions of WWI Trenches Even More Miserable and Tragic
Stuck in the mud of Flanders amidst the Battle of Passchendaele, it often took six men to stretcher a single casualty over the muck. Men stumbled through glue-like mud that sucked the boots from their feet, and that was often as deep as their waists or deeper. Soldiers no longer thought of those in different uniforms as the enemy: that honor, or dishonor, went to the deep and all-devouring mud. Wounded men often faced a tragic end when they were swallowed up by the slime, and hale men were frequently 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.”
Related: Haunted Battlefields of the United States and Europe.