Dig Down: The Horrors of Trench Warfare

I thought I could write and essay style answer to the questions given, but I know that everyone else is doing the same thing, and that can get rather tedious. So I thought I would use a different style. (Feel free to let me know if you notice a typo)

Dig Down

We have been called
From our homes sunny and bright
To kill our brothers many
We’ll be back by Christmas
The government officials said
Bloody liars

Rifles cough
Quickly bolted
While the artillery echoed
A great tremendous sound
That soon forced us underground
To hide away in dirt from pain
And the shells
That all around us fall

In the dirt we dig down
In ground we are found
With all the snakes and rats
To no man’s land I never wish to go
“Over the top”
Assisted suicide in my mind
The government officials call it
“A war of attrition”
They got that one right
But we’ll be the ones to bled
Not them

The food we steal
From citizens we’ll never see
And if we get home
Our families will never understand
This time we spent
Facing no man’s land
There are no heroes here
Only the dead
Upon which the rats feed
And the rest of us
Tomorrow’s meal

My ears hum
While my throat slowly chokes
What ever part of me doesn’t go
Disease will have instead
Gangrene, typhus, cholera, and dysentery
I believe to be my worst enemies
As the gas comes once again
I’ll put my face in a mask to save

Here we stay
Through the day and night
We cannot run away
This war is stagnant
Mobility was lost long ago
In the trenches we’ll give our souls
“Ils ne passeront pas"

Machine gun clicks and sounds
While breathing mustard clouds
Sinking in mud
“This is how the world ends”

“Ich gebe auch”
The last words I suppose I’ll ever hear
Since I decided to dig down

Makes me cry...
now mine seems so bland!
Great idea!

A war of attrition did seem to be the goal of many governments; however, few of them saw that that was the goal of their enemy as well, and as a result, as you said, the goal of the war seemed only to be to kill more men than were lost, and it almost seems as if governments forgot what they were actually fighting for, and were simply enraptured in the fighting itself. It's actually very sad.

Wow. That is impressive. I agree with you, though. While reading All Quiet over the summer, I thought, "These goverments and rulers have no clue what happens in the trenches. They just want to fight and don't care what they are doing to their countrymen." And now you've put it in a poem, and it is very good. Genius. He should give you creativity bonus points. I also agree with Weston: mine looks terrible now.

Great Idea! Great Poem!

So are you saying that trench warfare developed because all of the belligerents fought with absolute intensity (though morale seemed extremely low among troops; I refer to the governments in the early going of WWI here) and no one gave out because governments almost had a romantic view of the conflict? (At least, for Germany in the beginning; it seems England always had a level head about its goal being to maintain the status quo).

Very creative..sure wish I thought of that..

Loooooooomissssss!
that was amazing my friend i wanted to cry
amazing
truly

did you mean hide instead of hid in the first part?

Dang...that was good...really good. wow, i didnt know your writing was that good...

I like how you did the point of view through a soldiers side. This makes your poem more personal which adds more depth and description to the life in the trenches. Your poem is very good

Thanks guys, just thought I'd try something different
I thought more of you knew that I wrote stuff from time to time

Thanks Molly! I fixed the typo

Iwilson: No one had ever fought a war quite like this before. Most governments went into WWI expecting to fight a war similar to the Napoleonic wars, where the victory was decided quickly with large scale battles. Due to the changes in technology i.e. machine gun and heavy artillary, it became far easier to defend then to take the offensive. Earthworks grew, and the possiblity of an army moving around the flank forced the trenches to grow even longer and more elaborate, keeping both armies from ever having a battle like the ones of old. Hmm I seem to be rambling.
Anyway, about the English, look the at the battle of the Somme to see that they sent as many men over the top to be mowed down by machine guns as any other country. Thankfully by the time WWII came around military tactians had figured some of this out, and were able to come up with brand new more modern ways of killing each other that didn't focus on having the soldiers sitting in a large hole waiting to die of sickness.

Was food stolen from civilians? I thought civilians had to give it to them, in order to supply their own army?