![enemy front saint nazaire enemy front saint nazaire](https://static.kinguin.net/cdn-cgi/image/w=1140,q=80,fit=scale-down,f=auto/media/category/2/-/2-1024_1542.jpg)
These led to listening posts where sentries could listen for enemy troops sneaking up at night. Short trenches, or saps, extended about thirty feet toward the enemy line. All along the line were strong points, sometimes built of concrete, where machine guns were placed. The zigzags, intended to keep shell fragments from spreading very far, were called traverses. The section facing the enemy line was known as a fire trench. Soldiers reinforced the sides with sandbags, bundles of sticks or logs, or sheet metal.Īll trenches were dug in a zigzag pattern. The trenches were usually about four feet wide and about eight feet deep, but in some places they were much shallower. Each set of trenches consisted of several lines: a main line and up to four lines behind it. When it was rainy, a wounded man might drown in the mud.īy 1918, the western front trenches ran in a four-hundred-mile line through France and Belgium from the North Sea to the Alps. In Flanders, Belgium, where the 30th Division fought, the land was flat and low, and the trenches were often knee deep in water. Poison gas had killed much of the vegetation. Four years of war had left the battlefront so churned up by shells and trenches that it looked like the surface of the moon. No matter how realistic their training was, nothing could have prepared the Americans for the devastation of the western front. Then the troops were sent to quiet sectors in the front lines to become familiar with conditions there. Experienced French and English instructors taught them about trench warfare at schools in the rear.
![enemy front saint nazaire enemy front saint nazaire](https://www.supersoluce.com/sites/default/files/node/52201/enemy-front-mission-saint-nazaire-011.jpg)
The 81st Division, another unit with many North Carolinians, arrived in France in August 1918 but did not see combat until November. Most of the doughboys had time for training. There the soldiers were given more training before going to France to join with the British army. However, the 30th Division, which had a large number of North Carolinians, was sent first to Britain. Athough there were sightings of submarines, only a few American troop ships were sunk during the war.Īlmost all Americans arrived at French ports like Saint-Nazaire and Brest. The convoys constantly zigzagged across the water, making them difficult targets for German submarines. They were protected by the American navy. Troop ships sailed in convoys, groups of twenty-five or thirty vessels sailing in formation.
![enemy front saint nazaire enemy front saint nazaire](https://www.gry-online.pl/Galeria/Html/Poradniki/1525/1049433717.jpg)
Many had never been to sea before, so they became sick from the pitching and rolling of the ship. The soldiers came up on deck only once or twice a day, usually for exercise or lifeboat drill. These troop ships were often crowded and uncomfortable, with bunks stacked several layers high, and the men and their equipment forced into tiny spaces. Since air transportation was still a dream, America’s doughboys traveled on ships to France. See also: World War I and the Technology and the Weapons of WarĪmerican soldiers of World War I experienced a great deal of hardship while fighting on the western front in France and Belgium. Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History Reprinted with permission from Tar Heel Junior Historian, Spring 1993.