A little bit of context:

Sherriff fought in the trenches near Ypres (pronounced

Wipers by the British soldiers) and saw, first-hand, the
horror and pity of war. He also knew how boring the
trenches could be, how poor some of the officers were
(Hardy), how kind some were (Osborne), how nave some
like Raleigh were, how men like Hibbert were cowardly
and how much the war affected young men like
Stanhope. The play is Sherriffs attempt to let people in
1929 know the truth: that war was not some sweet and
noble thing, or something that was to be celebrated,
rather something filled with death, boredom and
suffering that reduced good men to pallid corpses who
lived like worms under the mud of Flanders.

Sheriff was there when the Germans launched

their final big attack, called the Ludendorff
Offensive, which was almost successful.
Trotters 144 circles remind the audience that
the attack was due to come at dawn on
Thursday and that the more time passes, the
more circles will be blacked in until the whole
page, the whole stage is filled with death which
is what the candles going out symbolises at the
end the men have reached their journeys
end.

Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff scheduled the

beginning of Germanys great 1918 gamble for victory on the
Western Front in World War I for the first day of spring, March
21. Success depended on delivering a knockout blow before
the arrival of millions of Americans in the summer. The
offensive, code-named Michael, struck the sector where
British and French forces joined, and matched three fresh
German armies against one overstretched British army and
part of another. After an intensive and carefully phased
bombardment, mixing high explosive and poison gas, elite
storm troops went forward. Avoiding strongpoints, they
headed for the rear, leaving the mopping up to the
conventional infantry. A famously thick fog aided their
progress.