It was a bloodbath. Thompson recounted: \u201cIt was like pie meat for the Germans, near everyone was getting [trapped] in the barbed wire\u2026 They were just cutting us like cutting hay. The fire was rapid, continuous, machine-gun fire and shrapnel bursting. You wonder who\u2019s going to be shot next \u2013 and I was shot next.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Thompson managed to crawl back into the trench and reach safety, many of his companions weren\u2019t so lucky. For the next two years, the Allies failed to gain control of that one, small hill.<\/p>\n
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Why was there so much trench warfare during WW1?<\/h2>\n
Millions of men perished in trench warfare, but it was one of the defining strategies of World War I \u2013 particularly on the Western Front. However, this strategy was nothing new: armies had been holing down in the earth for centuries, to avoid having soldiers exposed.<\/p>\n
But World War I saw the strategy explode. There were several reasons for this: before the war had broken out, military technology had vastly improved: the machine gun had been unveiled in 1884, and artillery had been consistently upgraded since the late 19th century. As well as facing deadly weapons, in 1914 more soldiers were on the battlefield than ever before \u2013 meaning more men needed protection.<\/p>\n
To avoid being massacred where they stood, in September 1914, both sides began to dig trenches that they could hunker down in and defend, and subterranean corridors soon stretched from northern France all the way to the Swiss Alps.<\/p>