How to rephrase this sentence?

Question

How can I rephrase this sentence so it does not include the word "was"?

The winter of 1914 was a dire one.

***Rest of my paragraph...

The soldiers, unequipped to face the rigours of the cold and rain, found themselves wallowing in a freezing mire of mud and the decaying bodies of the fallen.

Answer 1

The dire aspects of the winter of 1914

Answer 2

The dire winter of 1914 found the soldiers unequipped to face the rigours of the cold and rain and wallowing in a freezing mire of mud and the decaying bodies of the fallen.

Or: 1914's winter - a dire one - found the soldiers ...


Nice descriptive language, by the way, but what exactly is wrong with using "was"?????

Answer 3

In 1914 a dire winter occurred. The soldiers...

Answer 4

The winter of 1914 brought about dire circumstances.

Answer 5

Your basic idea is sound, and needs just a bit of tinkering to male it really good. I have no idea why people ignore the search for the most efficient word and punctuation and think that the answer is adding more punctuation and unnecessary words. Let's slow down and LOOK. If you want to keep it all one sentence, the proper punctuation after "certain" is a colon. Any time you NUMBER the elements to follow, a list becomes formal and requires a colon. But why "for," anyway? A thing is either certain or it isn't. And a period or "full stop" makes for a longer pause, a formal setting of the scene and uses the rhythm in your favor. "Amongst the darkness" simply makes no sense. "Darkness" is singular, and nothing can be "amongst" a single thing. And let's get poor Jake away from the dramatic threat of the eyes and put him in the realm of judgment, the sort of thing that humans do. Let's make the eyes and the darkness the focus of this passage, which means isolating them and possibly even choosing an ominous adjective, since we now have the emotional scope and physical space for it. Let's make the darkness into a THING that's moving in on him and threatening him. And let's imply that this business has been building for some time, with a single word. Try this: "And yet Jake couldn't shake the feeling that unseen piercing eyes had been watching him from the encroaching darkness. His campfire and rifle suddenly seemed pitiful and ineffective as the dark and the eyes crept nearer in the suffocating jungle night. Suddenly the tent and the others seemed very far away." Fewer words and most of them appeal to the five senses. THAT'S how to scare hell out of people.

Answer 6

During the winter of 1914, the [which?] soldiers, ill equipped and unprepared for the brutal conditions of icy rain, also faced the horror of having to wallow [make their way?] through a terrain filled with the bodies of the fallen.

Answer 7

In the dire winter of 1914...the soldiers....

Answer 8

If you're tring to avoid using any form of "to be," then evidently you need a verb saying what that winter DID. Maybe it "exacted a cruel toll"? Or "added to the horrors of the war" or "killed more troops than did enemy fire"? If these don't fit the bill, maybe at least they'll get your thoughts moving in the right diirection.