ABSTRACT
Much of the suffering that afflicted the troops, whether physical or psychological, arose from conditions in and around the trenches. The most noticeable problem they faced was the inadequacy of their clothing, both in quantity and in quality. In his book Krieg (War), Arnold Vieth von Golssena, writing as Ludwig Renn, described his one and only pair of underpants as a rag. Only the legs were still in one piece; they had no seat left, nor any buttons. In desperation he sewed laces to the sides and tied them round his waist.1 In Mud and Khaki, H.S. Clapham describes how he walked around for six months with a large hole in the seat of his trousers and was once unable to change his underwear for a month.2 There were times and places where no one changed a single item of clothing for a week and British rifleman H. MacBride managed to go 42 days without removing his tunic or boots.3 The clothing shortage was so acute that it was not unusual for the dead to be stripped. Jünger describes undressing French corpses to change into their fresh linen as a peculiar, slightly disturbing experience, although he soberly allows practicality to override emotion. At least everything would serve a useful purpose instead of being left to rot.4 Decay would set in soon enough in any case, according to Barbusse:
Improvisation was therefore the key. Anything that might help protect a man against the cold and rain was put to good use, which produced some carnivalesque attire. Barbusse wrote:
Many of the thick winter greatcoats were of reasonable quality, but they could become enormously heavy when wetted by rain.7 They were often too long and had to be ruthlessly shortened, otherwise the mud they picked up would make it impossible to walk. Getting about was already far from easy given the shortage of decent boots.
