New military technology How the war came to an end
French infantry advancing across no man’s land In the trenches
Both sides had expected the war to be over within months. British soldiers told their families they would be home by Christmas. However, the war quickly developed into a stalemate: neither side could win. The Germans, who almost defeated the French in the fi rst few weeks, had to split their forces between the Eastern Front (in Russia) and the Western Front, and so could not defeat either. Nor could the British and French drive the German army out of northern France. Along the Western Front, soldiers dug networks of deep trenches to protect themselves from enemy fi re. The strip of land between the opposing armies was called no man’s land. There, the ground was soon churned up, and in many locations a deep, sticky, dangerous mud lasted for the entire war. Trenches and shell craters were often full of foul water.
To take the enemy trenches, soldiers had to climb out of their trenches (go ‘over the top’) and march across no man’s land. However, they were met by barbed wire, machine-gun fi re and shelling. This made World War I battles incredibly bloody. For example, in 1916 1.1 million people were killed over fi ve months at the Battle of the Somme alone.
