BBC to recreate trench horror

Somme: Tens of thousands were killed or wounded on the first day

The BBC has received dozens of phone calls from people hoping to take part in a "reality television" programme that will attempt to recreate the hellish conditions of the World War I trenches.

It's going to be tough

Executive producer David Colthurst

Twenty-five young men will spend up to two weeks in a trench dug along old French lines. They will be exposed to tear gas, sleep deprivation, rats and maggots.

Veterans' associations have broadly welcomed the series, but historians warn that it will be difficult to properly reflect the horror of the trenches.

A BBC spokesman said: "This is a serious documentary series - a lot of people have phoned in already wanting to take part."

Going over the top: A haunting image of World War I

He said the producers were consulting military experts and veterans before filming begins later this year.

"It's going to be tough," the programme's executive producer David Colthurst told The Sunday Telegraph. "Anyone who volunteers will be stupid if they don't realise that."

But the programme will work within modern health and safety guidelines.

Other TV programmes have tried to relive the past by recreating iron age settlements, and houses in the 1900s and 1940s.

Living memory

The Royal British Legion said it hoped the series would have an educational impact.

"It might be an opportunity for the younger generation to learn about what really happened in the trenches," spokesman Jeremy Lillies told BBC News Online.

I don't see how you could convey the perpetual tension

Nigel Steel, Imperial War Museum

But Nigel Steel, a World War I expert at the Imperial War Museum, in London, said he was uneasy about the attempt to recreate the trenches.

"I don't see how you could convey the perpetual tension," he told BBC News Online.

"You can have the mud, the wet and the cold - but the soldiers lived in the constant fear of a mortar explosion that could rip off an arm. A TV programme will never quite get away from the artificiality."

The Imperial War Museum has its own recreation of a Somme 1916 trench complete with a "special smell floating through it".

Mr Steele added that he felt it was too early to tackle the subject for a TV reality show while WWI was still in living memory.

'Total war'

World War I is regarded as the first "total war" in which the combatants mobilised all their resources on a scale never before thought possible.

The number of men mobilised by both sides: the central powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey), and the allied powers (Britain and Empire, France, Belgium, Russia, Italy, USA), was more than 65 million.

Historians estimate that up to 10 million men lost their lives on the battlefield - and another 20 million were wounded.

Despite the use of new technology such as aeroplanes, tanks and submarines it is trench warfare that remains the lasting image of World War I.

The increased power of the more modern weapons gave much greater advantages to defence.

This led to often huge losses by the attackers - on the first day of the Battle of the Somme 60,000 British soldiers were killed or wounded.