he animal kingdom. Being able to carry on intellectual conversations and have intellectual thoughts is an important part of humanity. Would this have an effect on the morale of the soldiers? Lacking the ability to have these intellectual thoughts, would the soldiers’ even notice that they are losing their humanity? That is a tough question and it may have no true answer, but it is an important concept to take into consideration when dealing with trench warfare.The conditions of the trenches varied depending on which army you were fighting with. It seems that the Germans were much better prepared for this type of combat, for they had been planning far in advance. The German trench system was much more evolved, and they were prepared to stay there as long as necessary. The British on the other hand thought that the trenches would be temporary. They had planned on advancing soon after arriving. They were unaware that the Germans had anticipated such a move, and they were also unaware that the Germans trenches could with stand such bombardment. Since the British were not prepared to live in their trenches, this left many problems for their soldiers to deal with. When the bombing ceased and the British attacked, the Germans were supposed to already be dead, but to no avail. The Germans had strategically placed their machine guns around so that all the shells that had been coming towards them for the last week did not hit them. This enabled the gunners to slaughter the attacking British soldiers. That was when morale should have hit rock bottom. The troops were being forced out of their temporary homes just to be mowed down by some machine gun they couldn’t even see. There is not much humanity in that. That would wear down at one’s self esteem and make it hard to want to follow orders. As a result morale would be low.In Paul Fussel’s book The Great War and Modern Memory, he quotes a soldier named Grav...
