British soldier on observation duty in a trench during the First Battle of the Somme
Digging has been part of warfare since the first tribesman threw the first stone at an enemy. Earthworks were a quick and easy way to find protection. In Britain, for example, spectacular earth ramparts remain visible at Maiden Castle in Dorset and hilltop forts can be seen throughout these islands.
Trenches themselves had been used for centuries and had been important in the American Civil War of 1861–65 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. But no earthworks have captured the imagination like the trenches of the First World War.
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