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We were entertained by Mr. Murrey Maclean describing life in the trenches during the First World War using the novel method of a series of fictitious letters written home by a son to his mother, well illustrated with slides. While the letters were entirely the work of the speaker he explained that they were based upon historical accounts, including letters which had been written against regulations and for which the writers could have been court-martialed. Most correspondence from the front was by means of free preprinted cards which the sender ticked a sentence to convey his message, e.g. "I am well".
The first of the letters described the journey to the front line; the trains consisting of trucks used for both men or horses, a base camp which was little more than shells off buildings.
The move up to the actual front line using wet, smelly communication trenches where they relieved a battalion who were tired, dirty and unshaven. The days were taken up with repairing damage to the trench walls using any material at hand to shore up crumbling walls. They spent four days in the fireline trenches ready to fight off any enemy attack and four days in the rest trenches. All the time they could expect shells and bullets to be whistling around above them.
They had water brought forward in petrol barrels, not always well cleaned out. Food was bully beef and hard biscuits in the forward trenches but a little better when on rest (many of the other ranks were better fed than they had been at home).
There were gas attacks at times which could be a problem because there was a shortage of gasmasks, most men had nothing more than cotton pads soaked in copper-sulphate.
The wire in no-mans-land had to be repaired and night patrols went out to do this work and to try and get prisoners who could be questioned. On these missions the men involved who returned usually did so covered in cuts from stumbling into the barbed wire.
Enemy pushes were preceded by heavy shelling which often destroyed the trenches and left corpses and parts of bodies scattered about. Similar bombardments preceded allied attacks as well as groups digging forward into no-mans-land to get close enough to provide covering fire for the charging soldiers.
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