" (The Century) But as the war dragged on, the subject of going home became a ghastly joke. Writer Robert Graves wrote, "We held two irreconcilable beliefs: that the war would never end and that we would win it."(Fussell 73).
World War I, considered one of the greatest conflicts in world history, was new kind of war, a war where you never even met your enemy. Men lived and fought in trenches dug in the ground. "The spade will be as indispensable to a soldier as his rifle", wrote Ivan Broch in his book Is War Now Impossible? (Hansen 14). For most of the war, soldiers experienced two main phases: extreme boredom in the back trenches and tremendous fear in the front line(Hatt 20). Soldiers could spent days in the front line facing artillery fire and machine guns. Soldiers whose trenches were invaded faced grenades, rifles, bayonets, and knives(Hatt 20). When it rained the trenches filled with mud which, if stood in too long, caused "trench foot"(Hatt 21). The trenches were filled with rats that not only would steal soldiers food, but also carried lice that caused "trench fever"with their bites(Hatt 21). Dead bodies were stacked on the trench tops to make them higher and on the ground so soldiers didn't have to walk in the mud (The Century). New technologies also made the battlefield a horrifically terrifying place. Thirteen pound exploding shells as well as shells containing poisonous gases could be shot distances of up to 5900 yards. Machine guns could fire 600 bullets a minute(Adams 13, 45). Tanks could take heavy damage, run through barb-wire, and act as shields for attacking infantry (The Century). German submarines made naval attacks virtually impossible (Adams 38). Worst of all, the war, as Robert Graves noted, seemed to have no end. (Fussell 73) Such extremes led to one of the most stressful environments one can ever encounter and, as described much later by the Holmes and Rahe theory, when stress builds up, people are likely to break down.