Joshua Levine

They weren't useful particularly to the attackers.

And in a situation like that, the ultimate defense is a trench.

You can get into a trench.

You're not safe.

In the early years, in the later years, if a shell, as artillery becomes more and more important and there's more and more of it and the economies of the nations gear up to building more and more guns, if a shell lands in your trench...

lands near you you know you're you're you're for it um and there are snipers everywhere you always have to be careful of snipers there are a lot of ways to die in a trench but they're a hell of a lot safer than being above ground so this is why they developed and this is why the war became one of stasis for so many years and are the are sort of

No.

I think that is one of the myths that, you know, people arrived in the trench, they stayed in the trench and they came out of the trench on Armistice Day.

You know, that's not what happened.

I mean, and there were practical reasons for the rotation.

Basically, you would be in the frontline trench for five, six days at most.

Then you would probably go back to the support trench, which was behind.

So the frontline trench, basically, you had.

You had a fire step.

It would be what?

It would be a bit taller than a man.

It would have a fire step that you would stand on in order to see over the top, to see what was ahead.

You probably have a periscope there.

It would be quite heavily riveted.

It would be built up with sandbags.