Sunday Feb 17th, 1918
Snowing hard and deep. Clearing camp morning. Slept in trenches at night – wet through, knee deep in wet mud.
Trenches
The quality and nature of trenches in WWI depended upon a number of factors including the likely duration of their use, whether in the front or reserve lines, and enemy interference during construction. An added complication in Macedonia was the terrain – which could be very rocky. In such instances the trenches would be quite shallow.
Both these photographs are from Sir Thomas Harley’s collection. He served as an officer with the 9th Battalion, King’s Own Royal Regiment, of the 65th Infantry Brigade, in Salonika. The photograph on the left is taken in Jackson’s Ravine¹. I am not sure whether this would be classed as a trench. However, it looks like the men have small dug outs draped with tarpaulin and have positioned some boulders in front of them. The one on the right shows the Mamelon Trench, Doiran Front² in May 1917. It has duckboards for walking on, sandbags shoring up the wall and some sort of benches for sitting or lying on. Harley commented on the latter, ‘men had to rest and sleep on elevated boards because of the lack of space and absence of dugouts‘. It was 300 yards from the Bulgar Line.
Frank not only has to sleep in the trench tonight but it is snowing, wet and cold. It must have been quite an ordeal – made worse by the fact that many of the trenches were damaged by both the weather and enemy shell and mortar fire. Over the next few days, the wiring and other working parties are to be redirected to repair these trenches.
13th (Service) Battalion War Diary – 17th February 1918 – No 1 Sector, Minden Camp
Trenches in O1 have fallen in badly. Heavy snow everywhere has diverted most of the labour from new works onto maintenance and repairing generally. The B4 trenches are especially bad as they have recently been considerably knocked about by shell and Trench Mortar fire. Our artillery only registered. Enemy fired 7, 4.2 High Explosives on Silbury Fort and CT (communication trenches). Slight burst of machine gun fire on both sides during the night. Observation was bad all day. Continuous falling of snow caused this. 1 OR struck off under GRO 1011 with effect from 16-2-18 and 1 OR from 17-2-18. 2 OR having rejoined are taken on from 16-2-18. 1 OR having joined is taken on from 16-2-18. A draft of 49 OR having joined the Battalion is taken on from 16-2-18.
References & Further Reading
¹ Jackson’s Ravine can be found on the Dojran Map Edition 3A, June 1917 at coordinates 184.1 x 122.6
² Mamelon can be found on the Dojran Map, Edition 3A, June 1917 at coordinates 183.9 x 123.5
* Photographs from collection of Sir Thomas Harley, King’s Own Royal Regiment, Lancaster