1. Blood and Mud Once the Germans dug in the French and the English found out that they where unable to break through the lines Unable to drive them back the allies dug parallel trenches across from the Germans

2. By the Winter of 1914 a series of trenches stretched from the English Channel to the Alpine Mountains The armies found that assaulting the trenches was suicidal Machine Guns, repeating rifles, and barbed wire created mass slaughter in between the enemy lines

3. Soldiers who had enlisted with such zeal to go to war soon found themselves in a new type of war Their days where occupied digging in the mud, stringing barded wire, and waiting for attacks The land in between the trenches became known as “No Mans Land”

5. No Mans Land was a shell scared hell the, constant bombing and machine gun fire kept any signs of life from appearing and ensured that it was always muddy One of the biggest problems faced by the soldiers at the front was “Trench Foot” Trench Foot was caused by having your feet stay constantly wet

6. Soldiers on the Frontline Trenches or Firing Line Trenches lived in missable conditions for weeks at a time The slept in holes dug into the sides of the trench called dugouts Rats and Lice where constant companions Hot meals where rare

7. Initially food and supplies where plentiful but as the war dragged on they became scarce during the war the average soldiers diet was 1000 calories or less Initially troops only spent a few days on the Firing Line before they where rotated to the rear but as men too became scarce troops spent longer and longer periods there Soldiers from all sides quickly realized that there was no honor, no glory, in this new mud digging war

8. Days on the Firing Line where bad, digging, waiting, bored, and scared But nights where hell, at nights small patrols would slip under the wire cross No Mans Land and scout the enemies positions The enemies would slip into your trenches and slit your throat if you where not paying attention Machine Gun Fire, and small arms fire where a night time constant while flares attempted to light the sky

9. The Weapons of WWI The most deadly weapon of WWI was the Machine Gun Invented by Hiram Maxim the Maxim machine gun saw service with every nation The Machine Gun is responsible for 90% of the WWI casualties

10. The Machine Gun made crossing no mans land impossible to counter this Generals turned to Artillery hoping to pound enemy trenches into oblivion Artillery pieces could range anywhere from a small field piece to a rail gun which could shot a shell roughly the weight of a car 8 to 75 miles French Rail Gun could shot a 3100lbs shell over 10 miles

11. Even with massive bombardments no one was able to break the stalemate of trench warfare Desperate to break the lines armies turned to technology One of the most frightening results of this was Poison gas

12. The Germans where the first to use Chemical weapons in 1915 within month all the armies where deploying them Chlorine gas was the most common form of gas It would burn the eyes causing blindness as well as burn the lungs cause coughing and even death

13. Mustard Gas was another type of Gas Mustard Gas was blister agent if it got on you skin you would swell up in massive blister not to mention what happens if you breath it The fear of gas attacks made gasmasks common equipment for all soldiers

14. Even with the horror of Gas Warfare the Trench Line were still un breakable In an effort to counter act the affects of machine gun fire armies turned to Tanks Initially Tanks where nothing more than armored tractors Eventually they would turn into rolling fortresses

15. Tanks however where awkward and cumbersome and slow They made easy targets for the enemies artillery which could easily punch through the early tank Armour Even the great battle tanks of the Germans could not break the trench lines This toppled German A7V Elfield was crewed by 18 men

16. To get a better understanding of what the enemy was doing on the other side of their trenches the armies turned to a new invention the Air Plane Originally Planes were unarmed and used for observation Over time they began to place machine guns on them and gave them bombs

17. While Planes were good for observing and made great stories for the home front they made little impact on the course of the war One of the Greatest Aces of WWI was Baron von Richthofen the “Red Baron” Flying a German tri-wing fighter plane He shot down 80 allied planes before he was shot down

18. The Red Baron fell a bright red Version of this German Tri-winged Fokker

19. The war not only breed advances in land and air warfare but also at sea All nations began to build massive battle ships called Dreadnoughts The Dreadnoughts became the main ship in all navy’s and a symbol of a countries naval strength

20. While the Dreadnoughts were the Kings of the Sea a new weapon was making a big impact on Naval warfare the U-Boat Submarines had been around since the Revolutionary war but it wont be until WWI that they become a viable weapon The Germans will prefect this weapon and use it with devastating effect Unrestricted submarine warfare almost shut England off from its colonies and there in it power

25. Many other weapons would be developed during WWI every thing from flame thrower to land mines and grenades Almost all of our modern weapons where developed and test in the bloody trenches of WWI The horror of how these weapons will be used will have a major impact on our rules governing how we fight After WWI people horrified with how these weapons where used write a series of rule at the Geneva Conference