where did soldiers sleep in the trenches of ww1?

Question

dugouts?

Answer 1

They slept in dugouts. A dugout is a cave dug under and below No Man's Land. Each dugout would hold about 11-16 Men and their gear. The dugouts on the Allied sides were shored up with wood while the German's were built of concrete. At the entrance there was a rubber sheet called a gas curtain that kept heavy mustard gas out of the dugout. In this the troops lived for up to four to six weeks at a time with rats and lice and fleas as their constant companions.

The Men slept on hard bunks and slept in shifts of four to six hours unless an assault was on then all were out on the firing step.

Where they ate was in the trenches with hot food brought forward from the kitchens in the rear in thermos type containers rain or shine.

Now that was living.

Answer 2

Most people don't know that the soldiers did 10 days in frontline trenches, 10 in support trenches and 10 out of the line. In frontline trenches they slept in dugouts. German dugouts were the most comfortable, French the least comfortable and the dirtiest. British dugouts were somewhere in between. If they were in support trenches, they slept in billets back of the line. The soldiers in Owen's poem 'Dulce et decorum est' are clearly such a group. They are going back to their billets at the end of the day. So for two-thirds of their time, they did not in fact sleep in the trenches.

Answer 3

Two pertinent excerpts from Location : WikiAnswers > FAQs > History and Society > War and Military History > World War 1
What were the conditions in the trenches of World War 1?


Beds were on ground level, and one had to be aware when asleep, as rats would eat through your boots and clothes. An injured soldier was a treat for the rats, and they would eat from the bare wound.

The soldiers had to sleep on floor level beds whilst covered in clothing full of lice.

Answer 4

In the trenches. A good amount of soldiers actually died in the trenches just from disease alone. There were rats and a lot of times, if you had to pee, you peed in the trench too. And all the dead men? They were sometimes used to hold up the walls of the trenches.

Answer 5

The q refers to the trenches, so none of the answerers needs to have said that they weren't in the trenches all of the time, but there's no sign that they know it either. It was two weeks on, one week off or something like that. The food was nothing special, mind, but a lot of men are better than they'd eaten in their lives.

Answer 6

Question : Where did soldiers sleep in the trenches of ww1? Answer : in the trenches !! Sorry they did not yet have Hilton's facilities at this stage in France !!

Answer 7

If Brits, or Frenchies or "Jerry", little,
"cat naps", awful day-to-day existence: sad, but twas the way of WWI. Oh, a "cat nap" is where one sleeps for just say 20 minutes every so often.

Many junior officers the same way, whilst the higher officers sleep on goose down beds...

hence why so many that survived the War went "bonkers" as you will.

I was parachute infantry in a later war: still tired as I never slept well, for years. Guess better than the "Enternal Sleep"? Of course.

As cruel as "command" was they knew to rotate troops of infantry, often: men can just stand so much.

Brave lads.

But that is for our WWI poetry to speak about.

We remember them, at the setting of the sun, ....

Answer 8

The trenches were holes in the ground, and that's where our brave soldiers slept, ate, etc.

Answer 9

They sometimes dug holes in the sides of the trenches.

Answer 10

They had billets also dug out in the trenches, when the trenches flooded so did their billet,also were rat infested too.