Trench Numbering System

[kerry]

Could anyone explain the British trench numbering system? Did it start again at Corps or Div boundaries, or from BE to FR to BR to US sectors of the Front? Was there only on Trench 38 (Hill 60) or other Trench 38s in other parts of the Front? What and where, for example, was Trench No. 1?

Thanks

Kerry

[BMoorhouse]

Kerry,

My understanding (and please someone correct me if I am wrong) is that there was no overall numbering sytem for trenches. If there was any system, it was that trench names were usually named using the first letter of the trench map grid reference.

Brendon.

[jhill]

I was hoping that some one would step in here with some hard information about trench naming conventions. The bits that I can surmise go like this:

Initially, it seems most trenches were named informally, often by the particular battalions first in the area. They tended to have names similar to those of streets back home. Thus we have Snargate or Tottenham Road (I am looking here at a Vimy map). This tendency also seems to have resulted in the renaming of ordinary roads, such as Oxford Street in front of Ypres.

Of course this organizational vacuum did not remain totally unfilled. I notice that more systematic naming convention was in use in 1916 in the HOOGE – MOUNT SORREL sector on the south face of the Ypres salient. Front line trench segments were numbered consecutively from right to left. Thus trenches 65,66,and 67 would have been adjoining segments of front line trench, each about 200 yards in length. I have no reference, but I suspect these numbers originated at Army Headquarters. Behind that, the reserve line trenches would be number 65R, 66R, and so on (at this time there seems not to have been a proper support line here. One wonders if anyone thought ahead to the complications which would result if an advance resulted in a new front line, or if a German advance resulted in the old reserve line becoming the front line.

It also quickly became necessary to give names to German trenches, especially if an advance was being planned. To a considerable extent the sensible practice was followed of simply retaining the German names. Thus we have Fabeck Graben and Zollern Graben near Pozieres.

We can see here and there other signs of the misguided hands of staff officers with a passion for organization. On Vimy Ridge someone named most of the German trenches alphabetically. Thus in the northern part trenches are named CYGNET, CYANIDE, CYCLIST, and so forth, while south of these there were names like BATTER, BEER and BANFF. Further south there were other trench groups beginning with the letters “F” and “T”. Curiously, its seemed not to have occurred to anyone that “CLUCK” might be confused with “CLUTCH”, nor “CYRUS” with “CYPRUS”.

With the benefit of hindsight we can see that any formal naming convention would be made pointless once a war of movement began to return to the western front. At any rate the Darwinian development of the army took care of things. Whereas early in the war War Diaries and Operational Orders referred to trenches by name only, later on it became standard to add precise map coordinates of the end points of the section under discussion.

I am sorry to have taken up so much bandwidth when I have provided so little hard information. Naturally most of this is merely my analysis of what “might” have been going on.