At 106, French veteran remembers life in World War I trenches Most of what he remembers, he’d rather forget — the mud, choking gas, death, nauseous odors and hunger, but above all, the death of doomed companions as young as he was at 19. “In the trenches, we ate at night so as not to see the worms on the meat,” he said in an interview. “The stench was intolerable.