The Trench; Experiencing Life on the Front Line 1916

An oral history of life in the trenches of the First World War.

This is a companion book to an ambitious new BBC documentary series which aims to recreate the everyday life of soldiers in the First World War. A group of volunteers from the city of Hull will face life in a specially reconstructed trench in northern France under as many conditions as can realistically be recreated from the testimony of surviving veterans and the official Regimental War Diary. This companion book vividly reconstructs the reality of war – what it felt like to see the front line for the first time, how the trenches themselves were constructed, how soldiers passed their leisure hours, where they slept, what they ate. It takes an original new approach to the history of the Great War, bringing home the unimaginable horror by recreating in extraordinary detail the everyday realities of trench life.

Richard Van Emden is the principal researcher on the television series and a respected authority on the First World War. He is the author of a number of books, including Veterans and Prisoners of the Kaiser.