soldiers of opposing countries  fight against each other across a vast desolate, dirt covered land,  and the only sense of cover was to crouch in a usually water logged  trench. The sense of death engulfed your very soul, the constant  bombardment of shells echo in your mind long after it had ceased.         On the Western front conditions were horrible to say the  least, stench of death remained constantly in the air, bodies riddled  with bullet wounds lay across the bottoms of the trenches, dismembered  bodies scattered across the landscape and the sounds of agonizing and  dying men echo across the battle grounds. Very limited rations  offering very little in flavour was the only food available to the  soldiers. Often raining, it caused muddy, damp conditions. The men  staying in a trench filled with water and muddy conditions often  caused such diseases as trench foot and trench mouth. Contagious  diseases were spread quickly. Lack of cleaniness gave many soldiers  lice and rats would run through the trenches feeding on the garbage  and human wastes.         Thousands of soldiers would line up under the cover of their  trenches for a stretch of miles and wait for the leading officer to  give the signal for the charge. When the signal was given the  thousands of soldiers would all try to run across the no-man's land to  attempt the breach of the enemies trench. This charge would be under  constant machine gun fire and mortar shelling by the enemy.         These kind of attacks usually failed maily due to the fact the  odds were already stacked against the attacking party. The distances  the charging men had to run to get to the enemies trench was far  enough for the enemy to use it's constant shelling and it's machine  gun fire to dwindle the attacking army significant enough for the  attacking army to retreat.         Counter attacks were quickly attempted after the attacks. The  counter attacks were similiar to the actual attacks e...