Trench Warfare: Vauban's Zigzags, the Lochnagar Mine and Drone-Era Dugouts

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Digging in is far older than 1914: Julius Caesar described flooded trenches at Alesia, and Thucydides recorded trench building in the fifth century BC. In the 17th century the French engineer Vauban turned siege trenches into a system of parallels linked by zigzag saps that blocked enfilade fire. Rifled muskets and better artillery at Vicksburg and Petersburg made trenches a defensive necessity, yet European armies entered 1914 committed to attaque à outrance, and the race to the sea left a line 400 miles long from Switzerland to the North Sea.

The Western Front trench had a fire step, parapet, parados, duckboards and traverses, while German dugouts on the Somme went 20 to 30 feet down with ventilation and lighting. Soldiers fought with clubs and sharpened shovels, and suffered rats, trench foot, trench fever and shell shock. Gas, tanks, tunneling and German stormtrooper infiltration all tried to break the deadlock. Later, the trench reappeared in Iwo Jima's tunnels, was buried by plow-equipped Abrams tanks in 1991, and returned in Ukraine as the only shelter from constant drone surveillance.

Artillery caused about 75 percent of First World War casualties.
More than 300 British soldiers, many showing symptoms of trauma, were executed for desertion or cowardice.
The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps was left in the front line for up to six months without relief.
British engineers packed 24 tons of ammonal into the Lochnagar mine, leaving a crater over 300 feet wide and 90 feet deep.
An eight-day bombardment of more than 1.5 million shells before the Somme failed because shrapnel tangled the wire rather than cutting it.

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