24 Hours in the Trenches: A Day in the Life of a WW1 Soldier

You've probably pictured the First World War as four years of men going over the top every morning. The soldiers' own graffiti, scratched into a chalk quarry in northern France, tells a different story. It's late May 1916, five weeks before the Battle of the Somme. Harry Platt is 19, a bricklayer's apprentice from a Lancashire mill town who joined a "Pals" battalion with half the lads from his street. Spend one full day with him in a front-line trench: stand-to before dawn, the rum jar, digging and sandbags, Maconochie's stew and rock-hard army biscuits, the war on lice, rats and trench foot, and a night wiring party out in No Man's Land when a flare goes up. Everything in this episode comes from the record: • The Naours quarry graffiti: nearly 2,000 inscriptions left by soldiers underground • British battalion war diaries at the National Archives ("Quiet day", "Nothing to report") • Army orders on the rum ration, foot inspections and whale oil • The "live and let live" truces of quiet sectors Harry is invented. Every detail of his day is documented. Chapters 0:00 The myth of constant battle 1:20 24 hours in a WWI trench 3:12 Chapter 1: Stand To 5:44 Chapter 2: The Ditch 8:56 Chapter 3: The Menu 11:57 Chapter 4: The Unseen Enemies 14:01 Chapter 5: Night 16:38 The end of the day 18:21 Next time: Hadrian's Wall Watch the first episode, a day as a pyramid builder:    • The Daily Life of a Pyramid Builder: Not W...   The Stickman Archive: history's ordinary people, one day at a time. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one. #history #ww1 #worldwarone