The Terrifying Way Mud Killed Armies
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- čas přidán 18. 05. 2024
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~~Video Description~~
Mud is an 'element' often discussed in military history, yet little understood. We usually associate it with bogged down baggage trains and tank treads- but for the people who had to experience it on the ground, it was so much more. Mud was a terror. It was Hell. That doesn't only apply to the First World War, either. While the trenches of Flanders are perhaps the most notorious example of this principle, it applied well to many other time periods as well, including the Napoleonic Era and the American Civil War. In this video, we'll examine some of the many primary accounts from these time periods and more which go into detail on exactly how horrible that putrescent slime could become.
~~Sources & Further Reading On This Topic~~
` The Ministry for History's excellent video on the Siege of Sebastopol:
• Crimean War Logistics ...
` "Mud in World War I" Article: conflictarchaeology1.files.wo...
` The voice recordings from WW1 Veterans in this video are found here: www.iwm.org.uk/history/voices...
The following sources may all be found at www.nativeoak.org/library as free PDFs
- "A Soldier's Experience, A Voice from the Ranks"
- "Mud and Khaki, Sketches from Flanders and France"
- "Recollections of an Officer of Napoleon's Army"
- "What a Boy Saw in the Army"
- "With the British on the Somme"
- "Bullet and Shell"
You may also be interested in this book, not used for this video: amzn.to/3QlzyjE
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~~Timestamps~~
00:00 Introduction
01:15 Mired in Mud
10:05 Sponsored Section
11:53 Drowned in Mud
26:12 Conclusion
One time fishing, I stepped into mud and sank up to my knee. The suction was real. If I hadn't still had one foot on solid rock, I wouldn't have gotten myself out. When I managed to pull my leg free, the mud kept my shoe and sock. By the time I turned around to retrieve them, the hole had collapsed and my shoe was gone. At least I wasn't interested in fighting the earth for it. Mud like that in all directions instead of a few feet of riverbank would be terrifying
I had a similar experience on a local dirt bike track. They had churned up the ground to get good traction but then it rained pretty heavily. The bike had slipped out from under me and as I tried to upright it I got stuck. As I would struggle either I or the bike would fall, and this happened several times. It is insane how quickly the mud saps your strength. If my boots hadn’t been so attached to my legs I believe that I would have probably lost them too.
Always have an emergency shovel. The earth won't have my things!
@@mill2712the mud would swallow the shovel
Imagine being an archeologist in 3,000 years finding your shoe because it was encased in mud and then hardened into the riverbank.
@@annoyedbipolar7424 I've thought about that. I assume they would be able to tell that the material was once mud and that someone got stuck. But if not, it's one shoe and sock, in a riverbank, a long way away from any habitation at a similar depth / date. Much mystery :)
There was a battle in the mud recently in Germany. There was a mud wizard. He conquered the mud giving him the ability to walk on mud and defeated the police.
You brought back a memory I thought was long long buried.
@@DragonMaiden77 Sadly his knowledge of the mud got burried along with him.
when I hear Mud I immediately think of the Mud Wizard.
@@UFOinDisguise We all got a little mud inside each one of us.
@@skraaaaz lmao
I was in the US Army and stationed in Germany in the early 2000s. Grafenwoehr is where God tested out all the different types and consistencies of mud. One time, our first sergeants Humvee got stuck in a mud hole , then our captains’ got stuck trying to pull it out, then a HEMTT, and finally our M88 Hercules tank recovery vehicle blew its engine trying to pull out the HEMTT. It was a very long day, lol
A long day for sure, but when condensed into a few sentences the story is funny as hell
I’m assuming that they made you get your shovels out and get to work
I can attest to this. I too trained in Grafenwoehr. 173rd Airborne. 2000-2004. Support actually lost an m-4 in the mud, but that was in Hoehnfels.
@@infinitsai It reminds me of that poem/story/song There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly.
Which is wild because Graf is royalty compared to Vilseck
I have a testament as to how terrifying mud can be. I am an active duty US Marine and during my combat training course we were practicing patrol techniques and manoeuvres and our sergeant was leading us through some rather marshy terrain. Now we were treking with full kit so flak jackets with sapi plates and our packs and all together I was weighing about 250 pounds. I was following right behind our sergeant and we are taught to use the same path as the point man in order to confuse the enemy of numbers. and as i was minding my pacing i planted myself exactly in his footprint and the ground beneath me gave way and i sank up unto my chest into the earth. I most definitely would have sunk in over my head if i hadn't managed to grasp a branch on a nearby log. it took 3 other marines to pull me out.
Fucking hell. I can't imagine the fear I would have stepping on anything non solid ground after that.
im not apart of the army but once we went to like this marshy swamp and while we were walking around the swamp i got my boot stuck in the mud i had to ditch my boots because if i didnt i would've gotten left behind
Damn that sounds worse than what happened to me, I’m Army Infantry and we were doing an FTX with the battalion. Me and my squad were inserted into bravo company to help with their numbers and there was a point a couple days in where we had to walk through the depths of the hell that was a Louisiana swamp and it was a (comparatively) short night time movement but navigating through the dense foliage, water crossings, etc. turned it into a multi-hour slog to get through. People were just going down all around me from things like injuries and heat exhaustion to the point where we started to use white lights near the end to get the hell out of there. At one point we got to a ridiculously muddy area and I took a step and sank damn near down to my knee and had to be helped out. At least we weren’t wearing our body armor but we still had on full kit, if you wanna hear another shitty story about this, Angry cops made a video about the same training event that was conducted a couple years ago, it should come up if you search “Angry Cops fort polk”
@@mr.cavesponge you know its bad when you switch from red lens to white
God, that's terrifying. Thank the Lord for your fellow Marines that were able to rescue you from the mud.
My grandfather was a radio man in North Africa, and got fungal infections of the legs and buttocks from sitting too long in the trenches calling in enemy positions on his radio. He was captured and sent to a hospital in Berlin, where he exercised in secret at night while pretending to still be immobile, and then escaped with a rope of sheets out the window at night. He was recaptured and sent to a prison camp in Italy.
And then what???? 🥺
@@whatnosejob7981 probably survived or he'd not be able to type this comment.
@@whatnosejob7981 Glad you asked. :) He hand his accomplice were planning to jump onto the train that passed by their hospital window each night at midnight. There were German guards waiting for them on that train (they must have had an informant). In the POW camp it was common for men to hang their washing on their hipbones (they were that malnourished), and he once saw a man kill another over a lump of sugar. He and about 10 others escaped again (not sure how), and were sheltered by an Italian farmer in a hollowed-out haystack. A German patrol eventually found them there, and they spent the rest of the war in POW camps until being liberated by British troops (my grandfather was British-South African).
He went back to Italy with his wife many years later, hoping he could find the farm, and that the farmer and his wife (who brought them hot meals while sheltering them) would remember him. The farmer peered out of his upper window as they approached on foot, and bellowed "Russelio!!!" (my grandfather was Russell, also my middle name). They had a wonderful dinner together with many stories. I wish I had met my grandfather, but only got these stories second hand. They should all be remembered though. So heart-warming.
@@EmpiricalPragmatist that’s absolutely ducking wild man I love it they don’t make them like that
@@idunusegoogleplusnot necessarily
I died in hell... They called it Passchendaele.
i Belive Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Alied Commander said of Passchendaele " Mud is bad, the Boches are bad, but mud and the Boche!" he was opposed to the offensive as was Lloyd george.
@@neilbuckley1613 Yeah. To this day tour guides in Flanders avoid driving in the mud or even small puddles. You never know how deep it really is.
@@VanyaTheSlavicIt's from a poem dude.
@@VanyaTheSlavicWhat's wrong with you? Lol
@@VanyaTheSlavic what!??.
I had the honor to meet, and speak, with British Great War veteran Harry Patch during one of his lasts visits to Ypres about 20 years ago. As we sat with this last combat veteran of that war my friend asked him what he most remembered about his experiences during the war. Mr. Patch slipped into a 1,000 yard stare and his voice took on a deep deep tone, a haunted tone, "mud" he nearly whispered, "the mud, the bloody mud." My friend lovely placed his hand on Mr. Patch's forearm to bring him back from his inner thoughts as we all dashed tears from our eyes.
It's a shame such men are no longer with us at least they may find some comfort in the afterlife they all deserve a good rest
Such a cool story. I know America’s involvement came late but the last WW1 vet in my area to my knowledge passed away in the mid to late 90’s I would have been in high school. He used to come give talks when I was in my earlier years of school I’m guessing until he got too sick. It seemed like he really enjoyed coming and talking to us.
You're quite lucky to have gotten to experience such a special encounter. Thank you for sharing.
@@benjammin9745 dissapointment
@@benjammin9745 I’ve imagined they’d be happy. Happy to know that they contributed to change in society. If it wasn’t for their sacrifice most of us wouldn’t be here or have the freedom to do or express any of these things
When people say that the Russian Winter is what halted the advance of the German Army in Russia during Operation Barbarossa, that's not quite correct.
It was the mud of the Russian Fall, known in Russian as the Rasputitsa. Rasputitsa literally means something along the lines of 'the time of liquid roads'.
Also, of course, the Red Army had something to do with it.
Just look over that direction today. 2023 and mud still grinds the modern day army progress to a halt.
Autumn or spring? I thought it was the spring thaw that turned most of Western Russia to mud.
@@malusignatius Both. The heaviest Rasputitsa is in the fall, but there's also a springtime Rasputitsa when the winter frost thaws.
@@Master-Mirror Ahh right, that makes sense.
And the shitty Russian road system of the time, which was comprised of a lot of dirt roads.
Drowning in mud was of course not just limited to the War of 1812, Napoleonic Wars, American Civil War, or the First World War. In October 1941 during the German advance on the Soviet capital, Moscow, the roads were clogged with mud. It didn’t just drown equipment, but men as well. There have been multiple instances of German soldiers slipping into the mud and either drowning or shooting themselves to prevent the former from happening.
yup, it was the mud that caused issues, not the cold winter. By the time they got there, the coldest part was already over and as the snow and ice thawed, everything became mud.
Fucking Europe and mud. In april in a region of Croatia it dropped to -13 celsius and it snowed 1 meter high. We were out camping with no gear. Sure it was cold, and we kept the fire going all night to warm ourselves. But what the fire did was melt the ice and the dirt, created mud. Sitting around the fire in mud, god i can smell that shit 3 years later. Didnt sleep that night, just stood all night keeping it going. We were all tired as shit, by the end we were sleeping on foot. It doesnt get off. It smells bad. It gets your clothes wet but not water where you can just stand by the fire to evaporate it. I cant even imagine being surounded by it and it being knee deep. Holy shit thats scary.
@HappyBreezerStudios Exactly why Zhukov waited to launch his offensive in the winter. It wasn’t because the Russians were used to the cold (though yes that was a factor and problems for the Germans certainly got worse when the winter came), but it was because had the Soviets launched their offensive during the Rasputitsa Season, the advance would not have gotten very far. The Army defending Moscow was certainly lucky Stalin was so patient, while Hitler and OKH chief of staff, Colonel-General Franz Halder were very impatient with Army Group Center’s slow progress. Most of the advance made by Army Group Center during Operation Typhoon was during late November and early December when the ground hardened, contrary to popular belief.
i spent 2005 in Ramadi, Iraq, with the US Army. I was trying to get around on crutches due to a broken ankle. The ultra-fine, powdery dust of Iraqi soil became sticky, slippery mud when the winter rains began, and this made for incredibly treacherous footing to the tiny rubber tip of a crutch meant for dry ground. The inches deep piles of moondust around the base became super slick hazards that somehow also stuck to everything they touched. If you walked across a part that only had the first couple top inches wet from rain, the dryer stuff underneath could stick to your boots and accumulate with every step until you ended up four or five inches taller just trying to walk across the open areas of the base.
It got so bad at times that when our base was mortared, the mortars could just bury themselves meter or more deep in the mud and never be seen again if they failed to detonate. Our EOD teams did not even try to excavate them, and just marked the spot with a hazard flag and told you to stay away from it.
And even this is just a tiny taste of what mud could be like.
I guess when the force left and the camp was disassembled the shells were exploded to not cause harm to anyone who moves through the area later.
@@HappyBeezerStudios prolly not tbh
@@HappyBeezerStudios No way they had time for that in the heat of the Iraq war in Ramadi of all places. Probably just drone striked it, lol.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Lol, no. That falls under the category of 'not our problem'. 🤣
That last part is exactly why large parts of France are still considered "Zone Rouge," meaning red zone. If you walk there, there is a very high likelihood that you are going to find, if not trigger, some unexploded WWI munitions. Think about it, during Verdun alone, over 1,000,000 shells were fired, and approximately 1/5 did not explode. That's harrowing
One of my favorite creepypastas happens to be “All This For What?” as narrated by The Dark Somnium, as it doesn’t contain any supernatural or paranormal elements whatsoever, only a harrowing account of the horrors of war as seen through the eyes of a soldier in the trenches of WW1.
One battle I know was fettered by mud was the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. As the battle and siege began on March 1954, Viet Minh and French artillery transformed the valley into a mud pit, the French nicknamed the garrison "La Cuvette", or the toilet bowl, as the base began to fill with mud, dead soldiers, and human waste. Just to add to the belligured French position, the monsoon season began, drenching the French strongpoints, flooding foxholes, and collapsing trenches, by this point in the battle, Dien Bien Phu resembled Verdun, the valley became a cratered moonscape, with barbed wire, and debris strewn everywhere. The Viet Minh used the mud to their advantage, it provided protection from French firepower, and it allowed the Viet Minh to entrench and sap their way through strongpoints, in a macabre sort of way, the Viet Minh used similar tactics used by France during the Battle of Verdun.
I was about to say precisely that: the mud of Indochina, a fluid sticky thing, where they say they could not dig a trench.
After all it was French general's fault. Who thought luring enemies into a valley easily surrounded by hills and making it a turkey shot for the enemies was a genius idea?
@@Etendard1708 i assume the general strategy at point in that theatre was that, the french would bunker up a stronghold in the điện biên phủ valley to block the way between the việt minh force (in northern VN) and the communist laos force (in northern laos), with the additional intended effect of drawing in & burning up việt minh manpower (similar to what russia had claimed in bakhmut - drawing in & burning up ukrainian manpower)
it could have worked for the french if việt minh really poured in infantry (per china's advisory) for a grueling trenches & bunkers warfare, which was still a strength of the french army at that time
nobody could have guessed that việt minh artillery from the surrounding mountains would have entombed the french force in the valley instead, a fact that only became visible in hindsight
Let's put this into context: General Henri Navarre was under pressure from his superiors in France to end the war ASAP, the First Indochina War had entered its seventh year, and there was little indication that the Viet Minh were giving up, moreover, the French was yearning for that decisive battle that would win them the war, because this is how battles were fought in Europe, the French were ill-suited to skirmishes and ambushes from the Viet Minh, this is why Dien Bien Phu became a major military operation. The French also expected Dien Bien Phu to be an infantry fight, this is why the garrison was vulnerable, it was fortified to withstand infantry assaults - not artillery bombardments, the Viet Minh were more sophisticated than the French expected, as they entrenched and camouflage their artillery positions, Viet Minh artillery outnumber France 5-to-1, ironically, the Viet Minh were better fortified than the French.
@@Fusilier7 and also, the French expected that their air force could support the ground troops with ease, something that didn't happened eventually, due both to bad weather and Viet Minh flak.
I love this look into mud’s effect on armies, truly hard to imagine mud that deep. And I say that as someone who lives on a dirt road in state that has 5 seasons (we added mud season in between winter and spring).
Wait, Vermont is that bad with mud?
@@BradanKlauer-xh3hm only when the ground has to deal with absorbing a few feet of snow all in one month, mud season isn’t as bad now since so many more roads are paved.
Yeah I learned about mud season when I first moved to Kentucky. The soil back home in Colorado had a more sand like consistency and clay was extremely uncommon. Funny enough my first thought with the experiences with mud I thought to myself "Now it all makes sense why attacking Russia is pretty much always a bad idea."
Is is said during the battle of agnicourt, countless knights died like animal drowning in their helmets and slaughtered by lightly armored archers when they got stuck in mud.
Not archers , longbow-men.
@@teddyjones3652
so archers
at what point is the slaughter a mercy kill?
It definitely contributed to Walter's PTSD in Vietnam with him watching "his buddies lying face down in the muck," like he told the Dude numerous times, any chance he had.
The man in the black pajamas dude.....worthy fucking adversary...
I work as an archaeologist in Belgium, so I spend a lot of time outside in trenches and holes in mud. Because of this I recognise some things from this video. Even though what I go through is obviously only a tiny tiny bit as bad as what these men went through, I still recognise how they talk about the sucking effect (you WILL lose shoes and boots in mud if it's deep enough) and the way it exhausts you. When I come home from a day of excavating in muddy circumstances I get cramps and muscle aches in my legs that I wouldn't have normally, and I get home to a good warm meal and a warm bed. I can't imagine what it's like having to go through combat in mud that is even deeper, day after day, and then having to sleep in that same mud. It also slows down our working pace enormously because every movement costs so much more time and energy.
Hello Brandon. War as an even dirtier business.
I always remember the scene in Waterloo, with the Scots Greys stuck in the mud, picked off by French Lancers, contrasting with their earlier scene of charging, like the famous painting "Scotland Forever".
Scenes from not far away in WW1, with actual photographs, are not ones you would choose to remember, as you described, but at this time of year, with all the poppies, we should not forget either.
When I did my military service in 1989, Sweden. Our officers seems to love to send us out in rainy nights on newly plowed fields, the mud stick to everything. :D
And by the way I was in the Navy. But everyone needs a break in. :)
But my experience with mud is nothing compared with what the soldiers of the past had to endure.
Lol Sweden, no combat experience 😂
stop it, his boots totally got muddy!@@ak9989
@@ak9989 no way bro is talking down on someone for being in their nations military😭😭
This reminds me of being in a trench in the 90s in CFB Petawawa it started to rain and my trench filled with water but the sides of the trench got softer and softer and the water got thicker and thicker , I decided I no longer had a trench and that I had to leave but getting out proved almost impossible as my meat pushed only against soft mud and my hands could not push on anything to bring me up and would simply sink into the mud , It got harder and harder to simply breath as the force of the mud on my chest made it harder and harder to expand my chest . Eventually 2 or 3 people cam and spent about 30 minutes laboriously pulling me out of the mud "trench " using rope tied to trees for sum traction and a bunch of my kit was lost to the mud .
Crazy stuff! -- Sorry, everything reads as sarcastic on the internet.
@@Soren015 no you're just a dick
That sounds like a literal nightmare
@@ashno.3375 was not fun , do not recommend 0:5 stars - stay in school the military is not for everybody
Glad you made it. We all need help from time to time due to the “mud” in our lives
My experience with drowning in mud is that when I was at an airsoft summer camp few years ago, we once had a task to march through a forest, where we encountered a big swamp, which looked kind of half wet, half dry, as it was summer and the terrain has partially dried up, it was still located in a generally wet and marshy area. As we were going through it in a collumn, ,trying to find the most dry and stable path, one girl slipped and in a matter of seconds she was arms deep in the mud. Fortunately, she didn't try to go out by herself nor did she keep drowning, but it took 2 or 3 guys and a few minutes of struggle to get her out of it.
I was doing a mud run back in 2014 and my leg got stuck down to about mid-calf level. The effort to pull out of it almost dislocated my knee. I cannot fathom the fear and anxiety the men who sunk into mud felt. Utterly horrifying
It’s insane how literally just water and dirt could turn into this eldritch nightmare…
Most people have tried to step in mud in a river or creek. But a road turned to mud is on a other level. Can’t imagine a muddy battlefield is basically a ocean of mud, you have to fight in.
When I was young, a fishing trip with my father was somewhat ruined by mud. It was nothing like the Western Front - only a couple of centimetres deep all told - but it was everywhere in that part of the country, and it was paradoxically both greasy and sticky. It was amazing how heavy it made your boots (and more than that, when you inevitably slipped and fell over...), how tired you got trying to move carrying all that extra burden, how dispiriting it was to wipe the mud over everything you touched - fishing gear, water bottle, snacks, everything. And, I have to emphasise, when we'd had enough, all we had to to was head back to the house we were staying in and have a hot shower. Amazing how the application of hot water and dry clothes makes you feel like a new person! I can't imagine what it must be like to be unable to escape the mud, getting more and more fatigued and yet knowing if you fall asleep, you drown...
The three great Russian generals were General Mud, General Snow and General Distance.
and dont forget their trusty Captain Cognitive Disonance!
Nobody else really has videos covering mud. I appreciate that you chose to cover this topic! You seemed to do it justice.
I will soon- I’m inspired to do a video on this topic as well….. but from a biblical POV
It was not only mud. It was all the other things that were added to the mud that made it so much more : blood, decaying bodies, excrement and so on
@26:15
There's a reason Dante's hell is more cold, wet and muddy than it is fire and brimstone
Those familiar with Dante Alighieri and his work will recognize that aside from blood and wind, mud is the most common sight in Hell. In particular, the circle of gluttony is a muddy, cold mire in which sinners wallow in the muck, pelted by a never-ending mix of cold rain, sleet, snow, and feces, guarded and tormented by the three-headed beast, the Cerberus. However, many places in Hell are described as muddy, a mire, a swamp, etc.
I can relate. While I didn’t have any interactions with mud during my service, as a civilian I have had many. I’m a master electrician, and job sites are always muddy holes during the fall and spring in Pennsylvania. Even mud up to calves can be extremely difficult to walk through, and excavations or trenches can easily collapse and suffocate a person, even if their entire head is above ground.
There’s a reason you always hear that campaigning season was late spring to fall. When you have thousands of feet, hooves, and wheels chugging along on dirt roads it’s not going to be good for them. And at least here in Virginia late November through May can be very wet and nasty.
In 1863 Ambrose Burnside tried to cross the Rappahannock in January. it did not go well.
@@Tareltonlives yup. I do kinda wish Brandon went more into the background of why the Union army was trying to move in that weather as it is a bit of important information in my opinion that he could have easily said.
"In the winter of 1863 the Union Army under the command of Burnside after the desaturase Union defeat at Fredericksburg in December tried to manouver around the Confederate's flank to gain some level of victory. But those hopes were dashed when terrible weather turned the advancing army into a quagmire"
Something quick like that would have been great. I love the guy but for how much he'll go into great details into a subject/topic it really irked me some when he just pretty much said "Hey bro I don't feel like giving some background info so go do it yourself."
My Boy Scout troop went on a backpacking trip once on a trail mostly used by horse riders. It was a weekend during this time of year, and it rained heavily on Friday. We camped on high ground so it didn’t seem so bad. Saturday morning came with a temperature drop and all of the mud began to freeze.
There were miles of trail with deep hoof prints in mud which had frozen semi-solid…it sucked so freaking bad. Every step required effort not to roll an ankle or fall. Definitely one of many “character building” moments in Boy Scouts.
A commander must also be a weather man
I think this might be the reason I was taught how to survive quicksand as a kid as if it were a useful skill
As a duck hunter I agree with all these soldiers. Mud is so unbelievably frustrating to walk through. Also it can be pretty dangerous when there is no bottom to the mud and you just start sinking like quicksand. If you keep moving quickly you can avoid sinking but it’s exhausting.
I almost received my eternal reward one day when I worked at a water treatment plant. I stepped into one of the sludge ponds not realizing there was no bottom and the mud wouldnt hold my weight. I sunk all the way down to my nose. I had the tip of my boot on a rock. And I mean the very slightest tip at that. I came very close to sinking all the way that day.
Note that soldiers also happen to be carrying around multiple kilograms of steel and lead at all times. Soldiers might actually NOT be able to float in mud even though a naked person could.
I remember the mud scene in the book titled, ‘The Things They Carried.’ About three soldiers in the book died in the mud, they just couldn’t escape. The people they were fighting had always avoided the mud, so the soldiers naively believed they could use the aversion to it as a safe place to observe the enemy. It was sad.
I work in construction. The company i work for primarily focuses in the construction of warehouses and thus we clear massive sways of land. All that aside, the primary reason why we dont work when it rains is primarily because of the mud. Land thats been cleared, tilted, compacted and leveled has a tendency to become rather fine dirt, in our part of the country dirt tends to become an extremely fine dust, which only begs for a light mist to become mud, when it rain it sucks water like sponge and will look absolutely fine till you step on a small mount of it and watch your foot sink right into it. I seen bulldozers and excavators not just stuck in mud but sunk up to their operator cabins and some even worst.
Wow, this just adds to my already mountainous list of reasons why I think WW1 was one of the worst wars to fight in. You know you're in a bad spot when the enemy and the earth itself is trying to end you.
I read years ago of the cadets from Virginia Military Institute advancing through a muddy field at the Battle of Newmarket and the mud sucking the shoes off their feet. "That's got to be an exaggeration!" I told myself.
Then several years later I was an officer student in the Marine's Basic School in Quantico VA. We had a field problem that took us attacking across a muddy field. I didn't doubt that VMI story any more after THAT experience. I didn't have my combat boots sucked off but that muddy field sure tried!
"One picture's worth 1,000 words." So's a Marine Corps field problem!
stop being silly, mud is just a bit uncomfortable it cant suck your boots off lol.
“Hell is mud” is the funniest fucking thumbnail I’ve ever read in my life and I can’t explain why
You really missed an opportunity to retraumatize every elder millennial by not showing us a replay of *that* scene from the neverending story. Kids born in the 80s? We understand the horror of mud.
Research Historian here - I was sifting through possibly 30-40 Great War record boxes at the National Archives in Kew Gardens over much of 2017 and came across a box that I proceeded to sift through - each box contained about 1000+ original documents including orders - triplicate copies - maps - secret and classified information - war diary records - administrative papers - aerial photographs for each unit over a given 3-4 month period for each year of the Great War - to my utter astonishment from one box I lifted a document that seemed unusually burdened - I carefully lifted the page and turning it over there was adhered to the upper left corner a genuine smear of original 1916 Somme MUD - not just a smear but an actual lump the size of your thumb that had the consistency of still-moistened concrete - but still clung to the page it had adhered itself to - you cannot imagine any other mud still retaining its own mass after so many years as the moisture would have evaporated and it would have disconnected itself - it appeared to me to still retain moisture as it was not at all chalky or dry - it had a certain darker hue of brown hinting at moisture - not this specimen it was truly glued to the page - how it came to be there is of course unclear but it was obvious the box had never been observed by others and must have been shut ever since it was created either during the period listed on the box or shorty after the War - had someone lifted the page it is likely they would have removed the mud - so what did I do ? - took several photos as expected and carefully returned it to its box intact - if that mud could have told a story you wonder what it would have said ...
Very Lovecraftian. I wonder if any students of physics could explain how a soldier could get sucked under mud so easily. After all, you can float in water. Is mud lighter?
My two cents (correct me if I'm wrong) :
Mud is definitely denser than water.
The problem is mud is not a stable solution, it'll settle overtime.
Denser layer at the bottom, and the layers on top of it get progressively lighter.
And struggling in the mud doesn't help either, because it'll push the water away from the soil particles and form a compacted more dense layer of mud around the place where pressure is applied.
there are cohesive forces from fine particals that cause them to be attracted to larger partials and also the viscosity of the mud is extremely high ( think like grease ) . the density of mud which flows in as you move in it add to the weight you must overcome to move up in the coloum
A key part of being sucked under is having 30-60 pounds strapped to the soldier's body of ammunition, weapons, helmet, boots, etc.
I have experienced this, being sucked into the swamps of Canadian Forces Base Borden. Truly hellish!
mine was petwewawa
@@kevinlove4356
Also, an important thing is that mud behaves like a non-newtonian shear thinning, thixotropic liquid; in this case, just like ketchup, it gets thinner the faster you move in it up to a certain point.
This results in that, when you step on in with the tip of your foot, it gives way and allows you to pass, to get inside. But then it inmmediately settles, and you're stuck in a thick, unmoving gel.
In addition, due to its composition (the different phases in the heterogeneous mixture that mud is) it's great at dissipating energy. Water offers a lot of resistance to movement, but mud is at just another league.
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, his platoon sets up camp in a muddy field, where heavy rains & flooding left them open to attack. It’s a horrific story, especially when you learn that it wasn’t a mud field they were camping in
My grandfather was at Ypres III Passchendaele - thankfully, I guess, he was injured by artillery on day one of the battle and was spared the hell of the proceeding months of death and mud. Albeit enduring 7 months in hospital with a destroyed foot, leg and arm before a medical discharge - 1st Battalion Welsh Guards
😅 I'd prefer a physical injury to the psychological suffering of dealing with mud
I really learned about mud when I was installing solar panels in what was a previous farm bought by a school. It snowed and then rained for a day and it was nearly impossible to do anything in it. I had boots that went all the way up to my knee and they got sucked right off me and I could barely walk. We couldn’t drive anything either, it was insane. Someone fell face first and couldn’t get up since his hands sunk right in.
I've experienced sticky, sucking mud when I worked on a farm with poor drainage, that mud only came up to my ankles but the need to twist and jerk the foot out of the mud killed my ankles and I lost more than one welly in that damn mud. I can only try to imagine how deeper and more sticky mud those troops suffered through. May all those who fought rest in peace now that the years have taken the veterans.
I always wondered if the mud caused any problems back when I read about WW1 as a kid, and that wonder had followed me till now and wow, it’s just as horrifying as I imagined.
Massive cause of trench foot and infections
Never was in the army but reading The Things They Carried and the depiction of a man drowning in a field of shit and mud during mortar fire and never being recovered fucked me up enough to fear mud
Even good old Hannibal faced this when he marched through the swamps aroud the mouth of river Arno, as he was bypassing generals Servilius and Flaminius on his way to plunder central Italy and lure them into a battle on his own terms. Besides exhaustion and spreading of diseases (Hannibal himself lost an eye to infection there) there were cases of people sinking into mud in their sleep and suffocating. Imagine beying severely exhausted from the difficult march while at the same time beying afraid of lying down to rest...
Hannibal's army was successfull in the end and even won a great victory at Trasimene not long after, but it still left the lowlands around Arno noticeably smaller compared to the state in which it has entered it.
I grew up in the backwoods of southern Illinois and I have encountered mud like this in creeks cutting through farmlands. I've been stuck up to my waist. Lost a shoe when my friend and sister drug me out. It really does suck you in. It's like a living water sleep paralysis demon where the ground turns into liquid and pulls you in.
Yay, a new video. Really missed your videos lately since ive been giung through a tough time finding out my dad needs a liver transplant. This really cheers me up :)
I'm sorry to hear about that- I hope all goes well!
@@BrandonF thanks Brandon :)
just finished reading Storm of Steel, mud is horrifying but also seems to have saved so many lives by simply stopping shells from detonating at some poor souls feet by seemingly being too soft a surface.
however you can only imagine for all the shells that did explode and combine the mud and with churned up corpses that have been laying in no mans land for months simply becoming one with the watery mire.
needless to say, being even slightly wounded and splashed with this fluid would be very dangerous.
as someone who works with horses, i can’t imagine how hard it was for calvary armies to get through the mud. once horses get stuck in mud sometimes the freak out or start slipping everywhere or just refuse to move. i had to drag a horse out of mud once just to immediately get stuck myself. he reluctantly pulled me out but put up a fight
The horse pulled you out of the mud ?
@@msyokoming6970 yeah. he’s decently smart, recognizes basic riding words. i had him on a lead, and i told him to walk, and reluctantly with encouragement he pulled me out. he’s super stubborn and bites me constantly, but he always listens to me eventually because he’s decently well behaved for a horse
I kept on thinking through this video that there must be a snow shoe equivalent that you could strap onto your boots to get through mud. But the stopping power of mud still applies in the Ukraine war today.
It would be rather hard, if not impossible, to do something like that because mud is too soft and sticky to the point it's either you can stay afloat and cannot move due to high pressure under your feet, or sink so what's the point. This invention to fight mud is called pavement or air transport.
"Corduroy roads" and fascine bundles (yes, it's where that word comes from) were used.
Take a bunch of sticks, branches, smaller tree trunks, connect or overlay them,
and you can build a temporary or even permanent road. (if you bury the wood in dense soil that slows down rot, and build a road over it)
I've personally applied that when working in a cold, knee- deep pond with additional more than knee-deep mud. Just a few fallen branches put into place make a big difference... enough for slow walking and hand-ramming posts.
Roads for wheels are a bigger challenge, of course, and road mud a different fluid than the fallen willow leaves that made up the pond floor.
@@batonnikus
with other words: mud is too sticky.
Any invention touching it will get bogged down, so, best case, it's something thats useful when stuck.
I don't know how common "folding roads" are in modern armies, but they exist.
@@nos9784 like that yes, but not like snow shoes for personal use.
@@batonnikus wikipedia seems to yield german and britisch folding road equipment, used by a few more countries.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Engineers_bridging_and_trackway_equipment
de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faltstra%C3%9Fe
German "Bundeswehr" material was also used this summer, to ensure access for emergency vehicles to the "wacken open air" metal festival when it turned non- recreational due to amounts of mud that don't really discourage metal fans, but even the most mud- aquainted metal festival organizers trying to keep those fans alive, non-hypothermic, fed, and accessible to emergency services.
Remember playing on the banks of the marsh with my friend when we were kids. One time he took a wrong step and near instantly sunk down until he was up to his waist in mud. We struggled quickly to get him out since it happened during low tide and water was going to be coming in. It probably wouldn't have gone up to his head, but still was extremely frightening
I was at an archaeological field school over the summer and I experienced mud like this while exploring the island I was on. It went up past my knees and the more i tried to move the more suction the mud had, and eventually i was stuck in place. With every step i went in deeper and deeper into the mud and it was genuinely terrifying when I realized that i was alone and trapped. There was no bottom, I barely managed to get out by basically using all of my energy to force my legs out and pulling my body up onto this section of land that had thick grass and roots keeping it in place
Mud really is hell
When i was setting up. a horse paddock 80x 50., the 6ft long feed gate needed to be mud free.
Found a product called woven geotextile fabric. Its pinned to the ground with thick steel flathead 4" pins. The Geotextile fabric laid on top of bare earth, keeps the soil from engulfing your choice of top dressing, i .e. gravel , sand , wood chips, Etc.
The feed gate project had a 2x4 laid flat, as edging for a rectancle 16ft wide by 7' long. The gate was at the middle 8ft mark .
And the Geotextile fabric was invented in WW2, by the U.S. core of Enginneers , while making roads in Alaska!
This geotextile fabric comes in woven & non woven.
It was 1st used by the dairy industry. To keep mud off the cows coming into area for milking
Then the landscape industry made a lighter version called ' weed cloth'.
Amazing video. Mud is such an underrated danger in warfare. My dad used to tell me stories when men were drowning in craters full of mud in a "modern" war. And you don't have to search long to find similar stories on the battle and beers: war stories account from ukraine.
Not going to lie, I was skeptical clicking to watch this video but it is honestly one of the best made, well researched, passion projects I have ever seen on CZcams. You create excellent content. Keep up the fantastic work 💪!
I was present at a military exercise where an off-road truck ended up swamped in mud up to the tops of the tires. We had 20+ men with shovels and entrenching tools digging it free and two other trucks using their winches to drag it out of the hole, yet it took a full day's work to get it out of that damn mud, with several instances of the guys working to free the vehicle sinking in themselves and needing to be pulled out.
I can barely imagine the horror of having to spend months or years in an environment where that mud is basically all around you as far as the eye can see, and having to fight a war on top of that.
the book Mud, A military History by C.E. Wood. Is a intresting read on the subject.
I remember reading a book ( can't remember the exact name). That talk about not just mud, but all horrible conditions that show through the history due to terrian and weather.
Snow, ice, desert, mud, swamps, etc, etc
Without mud, the nation of Texas would not have existed. The "Sea of Mud" saved the Texicans after the Battle of San Jacinto. General Vicente Filisola had 2500 Mexican troops that got mired down for weeks while being caught in a heavy rain event, near present day Wharton.
Cool vid & I love the kit, dude !
my dad's dad's dad told stories like this and my dad brought me to one of these clay-ey sticky sucky mud pits just to experience the non-newtonian quality of it, but that was not sewage mud 😳
Good ol' CZcams recommendations plopped this on my lap - and I'm grateful for it.
I just want to say, you've got yourself a bright future young man. The presentation encapsulated a pitch-perfect retelling of the minutia people often overlook when looking back on these events throughout human history.
Well done.
The way you weave together these quotations and descriptions is enviably skillful. Thanks for the video!
imagine drowning in mud... god...
also put the Enfield down, it's making me nervous
Somehow it sounds worse than common water
Twice in my life I had a chance to experience mud first hand and it's was a brief experience but definitely a memorable one and the one I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. The first time experience was brief but extremely draining, the second was longer but it was exponentially worse, even in summer mud is a monster, it drains your energy, it drains your heat, it sticks to everything on your body and adds an armor worth of weight on top of your clothes. Your feet get sucked by it and trying to get it out sucks out the strength out of your muscles and the cold leads to cramps. At times I felt a fear of getting stuck without a way to get out, being left to sink to that dark goo of dead matter. It's a monster like none other
By far one of the best “weight of fighting” videos you’ve ever done. The formatting and pacing were top-notch.
A video on the topic of battlefield visibility-LITERAL fog of war, to use the phrase-would be a great follow-up or companion to this video.
Every video you make your quality gets better and better!
I love using first hand accounts to better describe the past.
Please keep up this great work!
I remember one time my biology teacher over heard me and my friend talking about quick sand. I was being a smart ass explaining that its not as deadly as they make it seem in the movies. That day he taught the both of us how mud can make quick sand look like a joke. He also eventually taught me about how much more dangerous cave diving is compared to caving or scuba diving.
Quick sand itself is not particularly deadly and it certainly isn't 6 feet deep.
A fitting tribute to the men of all sides, one of your best videos, keep up the great work Brandon, it is appreciated :)
One time i was paddle boarding downa local river and wanted to stand on the bank. When i got there and stood on it the mud went up to my upper thighs, i couldnt move my legs whatsoever, if my dad werent there i would have been completely stuck.
Then about 4 years later i went atv riding in the smokies after a thunderstorm. About 5 times my atv stopped moving, the instructor told me to just use more gas and then the engine started smoking. It still didnt move.
After all this i have learned to never underestimate the power of wet dirt
I've hiked through near knee-deep mud after a beaver swamp took over a substantial part of what had once been a blazed trail in the Appalachian wilderness. Our group's leader took a six-foot stick to check ahead of us, warned us of spots where it would get even deeper, and ultimately at one point directed us to turn back - there was suddenly a spot where the mud was about 4' deep and had a current running through it strong enough to wrench the stick out of his hands and carry it away.
I've never been in combat but I can only imagine what it's like trying to march through that *without* knowing there's a hot shower and clean dry clothes waiting for you after that, let alone adding the threat of being shelled or even gassed while you try.
One of the best descriptions of mud in World War One is to be found throughout E P F Lynch’s book ‘Somme Mud’…it’s scary to say the least.
Brandon, like you, I have read mini accounts of soldiers, battling the elements, mud, snow, cold and thought how difficult it must be, and living and fighting in these conditions. when I was living in Belgium, I obtain some idea of how really difficult and horrendous this was. As I drove through the countryside on nice paved road, I looked out into the fields after rain, and saw how they were turned up by one truck or tractor and realize what it must have been like after hundreds of thousands of men with all their equipment, their vehicle’s and their animals are in fighting and this fields.
How powerful it is to tell the story through showing actual accounts from the people who experienced it firsthand. Thank you so much for this.
I agree- thank you, glad you enjoyed!
Hell of a video dude! First I’ve seen of yours and I’ll definitely be back for more.
Amazing video. You really brought the mud to life. Scary monster indeed
I have done my share of enduro on motorcycles, cars and bicycles (in Poland) and I'll say: there are months you just don't go riding because you can't. Literally, I have fantastic muddy stories about going 30 centimeters/minute or completely halting drivetrain because mud went into every little hole and built so much mass motorcycle gained almost twice it weight, not to mention grease buildup on tires made them heavy and slippery to the point where either wheel slides in place or stops immediately (when traction comes back) due to accumulated weight.
you did an incredible job on this video. very thorough but also your enthusiasm for the topic made it an easy watch
the photo on the right is haunting. love it when talking about the mud.
Very interesting and easily forgotten topic
I’m impressed you took a stab at a historical Biblical event and linked it to a flash flood without discounting the possibility of its religious importance. You made your point and turned at just the right moment to the Napoleon era as to not ruffle feathers or call into question the miracle
That was some amazing writing. Well done!
Horrifying.
I cant imagine how much war has evolved the landscape from mud alone. Olympic swimming pool sized bogs of essentially macerated earth, fecies, rotting bodies, and shrapnel.
While I don't want to downplay mud, it's quite telling that the majority of the examples given in this video are in the modern (post-railroad) era. Pictures of battlefields from even as late as the Civil War show areas were the vegetation is largely undisturbed (anyone familiar with construction best practices can tell you that plants--and in particular grass--are the key to preventing sediment flow). Round shot simply wasn't capable of churning up the soil in ways that generate a tremendous amount of mud, and the sorts of explosives they had prior to the development of high explosives (essentially they were limited to gunpowder) were very limited in effective radius. Weapons prior to gunpowder simply couldn't generate significant amounts of mud. And while thousands of booted or, in the case of Rome, sandaled feet could churn up the ground, the armies didn't usually stay in one place long enough to really create teh quagmire that was seen in WWI. I don't recall any records of mud being a tremendous factor in sieges in the Middle Ages, for example, or something the generals of the Roman army had to deal with in their camps (though one may argue that the Roman penchant for road building suggests mud was a significant factor). When mud DID happen--such as Agincourt--it was, no doubt, truly horrific--as if the Earth itself were swallowing men for the sin of war. But it was only with the rise of high explosives designed to blast apart trenches and underground defenses that mud became ubiquitous in warfare. Prior to that, mud was a thing you occasionally had to deal with, not a constant way of life.
Yeah, industrialisation made war more horrifying.
Great job man!
Thank you for making such an insightful video that honors the firsthand experiences and account of those experiencing war. For far too long, I've met many people whose obsession of war is so technical and absent of story that it feels perverse to listen to them talk. I was relieved and horrified by this video and I'm eager to see more from you.
I have some little experience with the kind of mud these men speak of in their accounts. Not nearly as deadly but it definitely seemed like the starts of what could eventually become the monstrous substance they speak of.
When me and my family first moved to our new ranch after being forced from our old land by evil landlords (long story) we had to settle our new home during fall and winter months. we own a herd of five wonderful horses who we consider our family and on the first major melt off of the snow their enclosures became a nightmare. We came out to find a swamp of deep mud mixed with manure to make a stinking sucking liquid which would almost suck your shoes off, as a matter of fact it did several times. This being an emergency for the horses, horse hooves can get all kinds of rotten if left in these conditions, our whole family got together and labored for many hours to shovel the mud out and replace it with gravel and put in place railroad ties as almost sort of dams against the mud. It took pretty much that whole day but we eventually more or less solved the problem.
Luckily this year we have an infinitely better set up that has gotten rid of the problem all together but that experience was crazy and I'd like to remind everyone that it only effected a small area of maybe fifty to sixty feet with only five horses churning it up into a sucking liquid. But it sounds like a scaled back version of what soldiers experienced and even with this limited interaction I can tell you it was horrible and I can only imagine how much worse it could possible get for an army.
I hope this comment helped add to the overall discussion on this topic.
Looking forward to the future: it would be good if armies test their planned walking robots (i.e. Spot and the one from Unitree) on how well it can handle the mud. Same goes with planned powered armor (industrial powere exoskeleton are already a thing).
Your narration and commentary is amazing. This was something special
I was out jetskiing once and I managed to get it beached in some mud hiding behind about 6 inches of water in southern NJ. The tide was going out so all the water was just gone in minutes after I beached it and I was at the center of a big muddy field. I got off of the craft and stepped right into waist deep, very VERY smelly mud, with the sweet surprise of sticks and sharp clam shells at the bottom, but nothing solid enough to stand. I made my way over to a plastic chair that was left in the brush, and was able to use that to push myself back onto the jetski after about an hour, but the chair was absolutely gone after that. Though I made it back onto the jetski, I was baking in the sun until it set and I was stuck in that big, muddy plain until the tide came back in. I initially beached it at about 3:00pm and finally got moving again at 7:30pm. I still have scars on my feet from all the cuts I got trying to get out of that mud. Scariest thing I've experienced and this video really evoked that feeling in me again.
so history was kinda muddied by war?
Boo!
I know its a serious vid but am i alone in thinking that the first guy sounded like Winnie the Poo? i kept waiting for him to describe the mud to be sticky like honey.
Thanks for highlighting this. My grandfather fought in WW1 with the Lancashire Fusiliers so fought at Passchendaele, The Somme, Gallipoli, in all those battles and he said the thing he hated most was being stood knee deep in mud or water for days at a time. I found that hard to understand, that he preferred hand to hand combat or running at machine gun nests, but he said it was a welcome break from the miserable conditions they lived in, during the first years in France and Belgium. This video helped me understand a bit more about the reality of it, so thanks for the upload.
Very solid video. Never seen you before but I greatly appreciate the passion behind this commentary
Imagine the horrors of Ukraine. The mud, the death and the wrath. No matter who is fighting, the Ukranian battlefield is a muddy hell on earth. This is the cost of war. Old men sending the young to die in hell on earth, for causes that where waged before these youthfull troops where even born. War is an atrocity no matter how you see it, and those who beggin them are the purest expression of evil in this world.
Is it just me? ... or does this video seem a bit ... *muddied*?
badumtss
Great video Sir. I can't thank you enough, you really put things in perspective.
My first time watching your channel and I found your presentation quite engrossing and entertaining. Keep up the good work!
Just take a look at Ukraine, they also got stuck in the mud more than once