2014 $5 WWI 100th Anniversary,Trench Warfare, Mint Souvenir Sheet, Canouan

This mint souvenir sheet of two $5 stamps was issued by Canouan, one of the Grenadines of St. Vincent, in 2014 to mark the 100th anniversary of World War I. The sheet is titled "Trench Warfare of the First World War" and features two painted illustrations depicting life in the trenches. The top stamp shows Allied soldiers in steel helmets armed with rifles, crouched and ready in a trench under fire. The bottom stamp shows a Red Cross medic attending to a wounded soldier in the trench, sandbags and barbed wire visible in the background. The sheet number 1405 appears in the lower right corner.

Trench warfare defined the Western Front for most of World War I. When early German advances into France were halted in the fall of 1914, both sides began digging defensive trenches, and the front lines quickly solidified into a system of opposing earthworks stretching roughly 400 miles from the English Channel to the Swiss border. Soldiers on both sides lived for months at a time in these trenches, enduring mud, rats, artillery bombardment, poison gas, and the constant threat of sniper fire. Going "over the top" — climbing out of the trench to attack the enemy — often meant crossing open ground raked by machine gun fire, and advances measured in yards came at the cost of enormous casualties.

Medics like the one depicted on the lower stamp played a critical and dangerous role in trench warfare, treating the wounded under fire and working to get injured men back through the trenches to aid stations. The Red Cross armband offered some protection under international law, but medics were regularly killed and wounded in the line of duty.