Caption: "French officers' mess in the field, August 1916." Food in the trenches, during WWI, may have started out better than it was by the end of the war. Regardless of the progress of the war, the officers always ate better than the men in the trenches. Officers at the regimental and battalion level lived a more hazardous life nearer to the front lines, yet they often ate better food than their men and enjoyed better conditions. Junior officers fought and died alongside their men in the muddy killing ground of the trenches and of no-man's land. They were prime targets for enemy snipers. The demands that leadership placed on them put them at the front of every attack, exposing them to deadly bullets and explosions.