Trench Warfare
A Milestone Documents E-text
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Abstract

World War I commenced on July 28, 1914, and concluded on November 11, 1919. Trench warfare was the major battle landscape of this conflict and dominated the military action from September of 1914 until the fall of 1918. Various historical commentators have painted vivid and horrifying pictures of an extended battleground that was a sea of muddy wastelands marked off by endless lines of barbed wire, dead soldiers, and never-ending networks of ditches cut into the ground, known as trenches. At their best, trenches were an interconnected system of underground tunnels and dugouts. All too often they were no more than man-made ditches that gave little cover for mortar and artillery bombardments.

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