– Given that marching across no-man’s land was virtually a death sentence, why did nations with parallel trenches not just start digging trenches forward towards each other, to avoid going over the top?

Question

For instance, given kilometres of trench networks which ran close to each other, sometimes only hundreds of meters apart, why did soldiers from each side not just begin digging new trenches towards the enemy from places across the length of their existing trench, so that they could eventually break through without sacrificing thousands of lives running across open killing fields?

In: 3

Answer 1

Running across no man’s lands wasn’t a guaranteed death sentence. Dudes made it across all the time. One of the major issues was that once across and taking the opponents trench. It was extremely difficult for exhausted attackers to prevent a counter attack and hold onto ground.

Pushing a trench across isn’t going to change that.