Table of Contents
Did rats kill soldiers in ww1?
Many men killed in the trenches were buried almost where they fell. If a trench subsided, or new trenches or dugouts were needed, large numbers of decomposing bodies would be found just below the surface. These corpses, as well as the food scraps that littered the trenches, attracted rats.
How did rats affect soldiers in ww1?
Rats and lice tormented the troops by day and night. Oversized rats, bloated by the food and waste of stationary armies, helped spread disease and were a constant irritant. In 1918, doctors also identified lice as the cause of trench fever, which plagued the troops with headaches, fevers, and muscle pain.
What did the rats eat in ww1?
The rats not only ate the soldiers’ food, but they also ate the rotting corpses. As quoted in Eye Deep in Hell, Ellis (1976) quoted a French soldier that once wrote, “’One evening whilst on patrol, Jacques saw some rats running from under the dead men’s greatcoats, enormous rats, fat with human flesh.
Why was the brown rat feared by soldiers in the trenches?
Both were disliked but the brown rat was especially feared. Filling themselves with the remains of humans because they could grow to the size of a cat! The rats would scamper across the soldiers faces in the dark.
What soldiers ate in ww1?
The bulk of their diet in the trenches was bully beef (caned corned beef), bread and biscuits. By the winter of 1916 flour was in such short supply that bread was being made with dried ground turnips. The main food was now a pea-soup with a few lumps of horsemeat.
What was the morning hate in ww1?
Stand To and the Morning Hate Accompanying stand to, as the light grew, was the daily ritual often termed the ‘morning hate’. Both sides would often relieve the tension of the early hours with machine gun fire, shelling and small arms fire, directed into the mist to their front: this made doubly sure of safety at dawn.
How did soldiers avoid lice in ww1?
Various methods were used to remove the lice. And the uniforms they took off, they burned them – to get rid of the lice.” Where possible the army arranged for the men to have baths in huge vats of hot water while their clothes were being put through delousing machines.
Why did soldiers drink rum in ww1?
It served not only for Dutch courage – the term, of course, originally referred to gin – but to help traumatised men sleep, to warm them up in chilly winters, to give them the courage to go into battle and to calm them down after it. Effective officers used rum as a motivational tool, a reward and a cure.