The Western Front was the name the Germans gave to a series of trenches that ran 700 kilometres from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. The 1916 Battle of the Somme 1st July - 18th November 1916 was an Allied offensive carried out jointly by the British Army and the French Army in the sector of the Western Front north and south of the river Somme.
As a result of wet conditions and poor hygiene some soldiers suffered from "trench foot". Front line soldiers could be expected to advance across no man's land towards the enemy frontline trenches in the face of shelling machine gun fire and barbed wire defenses and trenches were zigzaged so that if an enemy was ever to enter the trench he cant shoot strait down the line.By the war's end each side had dug at least 12,000miles of trenches. The first major trench lines were completed in late November 1914. At their peak the trenches built by both sides extended nearly 400 miles from Nieuport on the Belgian coast to the Swiss borde.