16 facts about World War I that I guarantee you never knew before

As someone who gets a lot of fulfillment from learning history, I rarely see a discussion about history that I don’t take a moment to learn from. So when I saw this post on Reddit’s World War I forum, where user Sudden-Round6862 asked, “What are some lesser-known facts about the daily life of soldiers in the trenches during World War I?” I wanted to see what people had to say.

A similar post by WriterReborn2 asking, “What’s your favorite weird/obscure fact about war?” caught my eye as well, so I thought I’d share people’s responses to both posts:

1. “Romania went to war twice. The first time was in August 1916, after they faced political pressure from the Entente Powers, then they marched into Transylvania (then occupied by Austria-Hungary) almost immediately. Later in 1917, after Russia was out of the war due to the October Revolution, Romania was surrounded by enemies and with the Central Powers on all sides of the treaty.”

“By November 10, 1918, Romania no longer felt bound by the treaty, seeing that by then only Germany remained as a belligerent Central Power and Austria-Hungary had completely collapsed and re-entered the war on the side of the Entente Powers just in time to see the end of the war.”

—u/Evilzonne

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2. “The original name for the tanks was ‘landships’ but they had to be secret about them when they were invented so they said they were ‘water tanks’ to keep the information secret. The name stuck and we still call them ‘tanks’ today, although that was just the original cover story.”

—u/Lift829

3. “The French name for their soldiers (Poilus) was literally just ‘Hairy Ones’ because of how unkempt they were.”

—u/Hunter-KillerGroup35

4. “The reason soldiers in World War I were clean-shaven was for gas masks. The trend was purely practical, but the practice continued and became fashionable in post-war life. The military still practice shaving for this reason, although modern gas masks will still work even with beards.”

—u/Lift829

—u/Aurelian369

On an even more humorous note: the man who discovered this wonderful app was named Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming.

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6. “Soldiers didn’t spend all their time in front-line trenches. They were directed to rear areas. Of course, they often had to form working parties to dig trenches and put up barbed wire obstacles.”

—u/Spiritual_Loss_7287

“There is a fundamental difference between German and Allied troops. The French rotated quite often; the Germans stayed on the front line much longer. This meant that many French soldiers had seen the cruelties of war firsthand, unlike the Germans; most German soldiers had never been in a trench under direct fire. Therefore, after the war, the war was terrible in Britain, but in glorified France.”

—u/Powerful-Speed4149

7. “Some soldiers hunted rats, tanned their skin and used them as patches for their clothes.”

—u/Sea-Eye-770

8. “In the early months of the war, there was an unofficial Christmas truce between German and British soldiers.”

—u/shuxx3er

9. “The teeth of the British troops were so bad that they had to be given grinders. As a result of this the Royal Army Dental Corps was formed, because soldiers are not good with toothaches.”

—u/obsoleteboomer

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10. “There was a style of bombardment called drum artillery (or we call it a phenomenon). I don’t know how many people have heard of that term. Imagine a drum roll, how fast the cadence is. Then imagine each drum hit being a 77mm or a 105mm. I haven’t seen a WW1 film that captures that… I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be bombarded for hours or even days at the cadence of drums.

—u/damnitA-Aron

11. “Despite the horrors taking place, the most popular topic of conversation by far was gossip about other soldiers in their trench. At least that’s what Ernst Jünger said.”

-u/deleted

12. “What emerges in the narratives of the conflict is the randomness of death. A stray shell, a lucky sniper shot, carelessness in handling the multitude of instruments of death in your daily routines. The Allies had a term for it (probably the Germans did too). They called it ‘waste’ – the constant attrition of combat power by front-only formations.”

—u/Brilliant_Let6532

13. “The flies you would see on the decaying bodies of both your comrades and your enemies will land on you, and your food and possessions. That and the rats that would be everywhere.”

—u/alwaysawkward66

14. “I spoke to a First World War vet and asked him what was the worst thing about living in the trenches, and he said lice. You couldn’t get rid of them. Itchy, crawling and biting. Day and night.”

—u/lotsanoodles

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15. “If you fell off the path of the duckboards or the boards that were used to navigate behind the ditches, the mud in some areas was so thick and deep that you would be trapped and could drown in it if your friends couldn’t rescue you in time.”

“You’d have the bodies of people who died months before you arrived buried in the trench floor/walls and you’d smell them or see some of them coming out if the rain or bombing moved the ground.”

—u/alwaysawkward66

16. And finally: “For the vast majority of survivors of the war, nothing happened most of the time. They waited and went about their daily routine. Maybe they were talking about the guy who caught a random shell last week, or a rookie who raised his head when told not to. Then there were places like Fort Douaumont, near Verdun, where hundreds of thousands of thousands of trains died within a mile of men on the front. and shells from artillery constantly for over a year”.

—u/notcomplainingmuch

If you want to share any facts of your own, feel free to leave a comment. Or, if you prefer, you can write in the anonymous form below.

Please note: Some comments have been edited for length and/or clarity.

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