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Soldiers found themselves working in dirty and unpleasant conditions, especially when the weather was bad.

Daily duties included cleaning their weapons for inspection, refilling sandbags, fixing barbed wire and repairing collapsed trench walls after bad weather.

Emptying the latrines (trench toilets) was a very smelly and dirty job and everyone tried to avoid getting that duty. In the wintertime, trenches were freezing cold and often flooded with water after rainfall.

'Trench foot' was a condition that many soldiers suffered from as a result of standing in water and mud for a long time. In serious cases, soldiers had to have their feet amputated (cut off).

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Soldiers serving on the front line were very far from home. They did not see their families and friends for months on end.

Writing and receiving letters became a lifeline for many soldiers. They looked forward to hearing news from their loved ones at home whilst they served their country on the front line. Many soldiers also kept diaries and journals which helped them to record their experiences and feelings about war.

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Trenches were long, narrow ditches dug into the ground where soldiers lived.

They were very muddy, uncomfortable and the toilets overflowed. These conditions caused some soldiers to develop medical problems such as trench foot.

There were many lines of German trenches on one side and many lines of Allied trenches on the other.

In the middle was no man's land, which soldiers crossed to attack the other side.

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What was life like in a World War One trench?

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Trenches were long, narrow ditches dug into the ground where soldiers lived. They were very muddy, uncomfortable and the toilets overflowed. These conditions caused some soldiers to develop medical problems such as trench foot. There were many lines of German trenches on one side and many lines of Allied trenches on the other.

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Soldiers in the trenches did not get much sleep. When they did, it was in the afternoon during daylight and at night only for an hour at a time. They were woken up at different times, either to complete one of their daily chores or to fight. During rest time, they wrote letters and sometimes played card games.

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The trenches could be very muddy and smelly. There were many dead bodies buried nearby and the latrines (toilets) sometimes overflowed into the trenches. Millions of rats infested the trenches and some grew as big as cats. There was also a big problem with lice that tormented the soldiers on a daily basis.

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Watch this animation to see the muddy trenches, muddy boots and muddy food that made up trench life.