– 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

Because it’s very hard to dig trenches without being seen and as soon as you are seen digging a trench towards the enemy trenches they would send artillery (or if you were close enough grenades)

You also have to remember that even if you did you’re only going to be able to dig a fairly narrow trench towards where the enemy has a fairly wide trench – which gives the defending side an advantage in the number of troops they can safely send to capture that section of trench

They did try sometimes though – sometimes it worked too but more often than not it didn’t

They’d also sometimes try to dig under each others trenches

At various points (particularly during WW1) the trenches were insanely close to each other.