Trench Warfare



"This is killing me. Trenches kill me too. I can't believe I was one of the first known Koreans to experience trench warfare throughout World War III ever since nobody knew that there were some Koreans that participated in World War I. Maybe my great-grandfather would've be one of the well-known Koreans that participated in the First World War, just as there was even trench warfare in the Korean War back then, when my grandfather just did it."

--Su Ji-Hoon, Werman's Revenge

Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied fighting lines, largely comprising military trenches in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artillery. The most famous use of trench warfare is the Western Front in World War I. "Trench warfare" has become a byword for stalemate, attrition, sieges, and futility in conflict.

Trench warfare proliferated when a revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility, resulting in a grueling form of warfare in which the defender held the advantage. On the Western Front in 1914–1918, both sides constructed elaborate trench, underground, and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire, mines, camouflaged trapping pits, and other obstacles. The area between opposing trench lines (known as "no man's land") was fully exposed to artillery fire from both sides. Attacks, even if successful, often sustained severe casualties.

With the development of armoured warfare and combined arms tactics, emphasis on trench warfare has declined, but it still occurs wherever battle lines become static.