Transcript World War I

World War I
LIVING AND SURVIVING IN THE TRENCHES
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LIFE IN THE TRENCHES
‘mud, sleet, ice, mud, noise, jagged
steel, horror piled on reeking
horror’.
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The Western Front
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War and Death
 Most soldiers were killed during major offensives. Over
21,300 were killed on the first day of the Somme and
over 50 per sent of those who took part in the attack
were wounded. Other major offences such as those at
Loos and Passchendaele resulted in large numbers
being killed.
Being in front-line trenches was also extremely
dangerous. Almost every day some enemy artillery
shells would fall on the trenches. One study suggested
that one-third of all casualties on the Western Front
were killed or wounded while in the trenches.
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photos courtesy of www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm
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photos courtesy of www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm
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v3oDFtA3Es&feature=related
Trenches were dug in a zig-zag pattern
so that they could not be easily taken by
intruding enemies
Each trench had a listening post at the
end, where men would sit at nighttime
and listen for any sounds.
Flooding was a consistent problem and
this led to numerous cases of rat
infestation
Levels of trenches were built (front-line,
support, reserve and communication
trench) so that the enemy could not
easily take over one trench
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The Trench Design
Trenches were designed so that they would be about six
feet in depth and be wide enough for two soldiers to
pass at a time. At regular intervals along the trench a
firing step would be positioned so that the soldiers
could stand on it to see over the top of the trench and
fire a weapon into "no-man’s land". Along the bottom
of the trench would be wooden duckboards that would
stop the soldiers from sinking into the wet mud below.
In general terms the German trenches were in better
conditions than the British and French trenches,
sometimes even being built with concrete walls and
having intricate underground rooms for soldiers to sleep
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The trenches were regularly flooded, while soldiers
would try to sleep in such inhospitable conditions.
Corpses of colleagues once living, scattered around
the trench, would pass on diseases as well as bring
parasites such as lice, maggots, fleas etc... Blood lay
all around, another possible way to catch disease,
while fires occasionally ripped through the trenches
burning the remaining belongings of the soldiers
along with the men themselves. With the lack of
hygiene and the piles of filth and bodily waste the
soldiers and trench smelt terrible.
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Chlorine Gas

After the first German chlorine
gas attacks, Allied troops were
supplied with masks of cotton
pads that had been soaked in
urine. It was found that the
ammonia in the pad neutralized
the poison. Other soldiers
preferred to use handkerchiefs, a
sock, a flannel body-belt,
dampened with a solution of
bicarbonate of soda, and tied
across the mouth and nose until
the gas passed over. It was not
until July 1915 that soldiers were
given efficient gas masks and
anti-asphyxiation respirators.
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Trench Rats
 One soldier wrote: "The rats were huge. They were so
big they would eat a wounded man if he couldn't defend
himself." These rats became very bold and would
attempt to take food from the pockets of sleeping men.
Two or three rats would always be found on a dead
body. They usually went for the eyes first and then they
burrowed their way right into the corpse.
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photos courtesy of www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm
Necessity the Mother of Invention
To allow a soldier to see out of the trench
without exposing his head, a loophole
would be built into the parapet. A loophole
might simply be a gap in the sandbags, or it
might be fitted with a steel plate. German
snipers used armor-piercing bullets that
allowed them to penetrate loopholes. The
other means to see over the parapet was the
trench periscope—in its simplest form, just
a stick with two angled pieces of mirror at
the top and bottom. In the Anzac trenches at
Gallipoli, where the Turks held the high
ground, the periscope rifle was developed to
enable the Australians and New Zealanders
to snipe at the enemy without exposing
themselves over the parapet.
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photos courtesy of www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm
photos courtesy of www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm
Marching on an Empty Stomach
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Food for soldiers in the trenches during World War One was at times considered a luxury.
Getting decent hot food from the field kitchens to the front line trenches could be impossible
when a battle was either imminent or in full flow. When soldiers were at stand-down, food was
easier to acquire and both British and German troops could expect certain food to be available
with a degree of frequency.
The theoretical daily rations for a British soldier were:
20 ounces of bread1/10 gill lime if vegetables not issued16 ounces of flour instead
of above½ gill of rum3 ounces of cheese maximum of 20 ounces of tobacco5/8
ounces of tea1/3 chocolate – optional4 ounces of jam4 ounces of oatmeal instead of
bread½ ounce of salt1 pint of porter instead of rum1/36 ounce of pepper4 ounces of
dried fruit instead of jam1/20 ounce of mustard4 ounces of butter/margarine8
ounces of fresh vegetables or2 ounces of dried vegetables
Men claimed that although the officers were well-fed the men in the trenches were
treated appallingly.
All men carried emergency food called iron rations. This was a can of bully beef, a
few biscuits and a sealed tin of tea and sugar. These iron rations could only be
opened with the permission of an officer. This food did not last very long and if the
kitchen staff were unable to provide food to the soldiers they might be forced to
retreat from land they had won from the enemy.
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SIMPSON AND HIS DONKEY?
Research the contribution of
Simpson and his donkey to
the war effort.
150 words
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Stretcher Bearers
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In good conditions two men could carry a
wounded man on a stretcher. However,
after heavy rain it took four men to lift a
stretcher. The men not only had the
problem of dragging their feet out of the
mud after every step, they also had to make
sure not to rock the stretcher as this would
increase the pain of the wounded man. The
pain of shattered bone ends grating
together was so intense that the wounded
man was likely to die of shock. One
stretcher-bearer working in the mud in 1916
reported that:
"as one carried a wounded man you got
stuck in the mud and staggered. You put
out a hand to steady yourself, the earth
gave way and you found you were clutching
the blackened face of a half-buried, dead
soldier."
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Digging, Filling, Pumping
The latrines was the name given to
trench toilets. They were usually pits, 4
ft. to 5 ft. deep, dug at the end of a short
sap. Each company had two sanitary
personnel whose job it was to keep the
latrines in good condition. In many
units, officers gave out sanitary duty as a
punishment for breaking army
regulations. Before a change-over in the
trenches, the out-going unit was
supposed to fill in its latrines and dig a
new one for the new arrivals
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 Many diseases were easily caught by the soldiers in these
conditions. Here are just a few: *fungal infections ("trench foot" where feet could fall off)
 *warts and blisters (commonly on feet)
 *typhoid (through dirty water)
 *flu/cold (common but deadly in such conditions)
 *hypothermia (through cold wind and snow)
 Themselves, many of these diseases could be cured by drugs but
due to the lack of drugs in the trenches they became deadly.
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MUSTARD GAS
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Mustard Gas (Yperite) was first used by the German Army in September 1917. The
most lethal of all the poisonous chemicals used during the war, it was almost
odourless and took twelve hours to take effect. Yperite was so powerful that only
small amounts had to be added to high explosive shells to be effective. Once in the
soil, mustard gas remained active for several weeks.
The skin of victims of mustard gas blistered, the eyes became very sore and they
began to vomit. Mustard gas caused internal and external bleeding and attacked the
bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane. This was extremely painful and
most soldiers had to be strapped to their beds. It usually took a person four or five
weeks to die of mustard gas poisoning. One nurse, Vera Brittain, wrote: "I wish
those people who talk about going on with this war whatever it costs could see the
soldiers suffering from mustard gas poisoning. Great mustard-coloured blisters, blind
eyes, all sticky and stuck together, always fighting for breath, with voices a mere
whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke.“
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“Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
Wilfred Owen
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
Many soldiers fighting in the First World War suffered from trench foot.
This was an infection of the feet caused by cold, wet and insanitary
conditions. In the trenches men stood for hours on end in waterlogged
trenches without being able to remove wet socks or boots. The feet would
gradually go numb and the skin would turn red or blue. If untreated,
trench foot could turn gangrenous and result in amputation. Trench foot
was a particular problem in the early stages of the war. For example,
during the winter of 1914-15 over 20,000 men in the British Army were
treated for trench foot.
The only remedy for trench foot was for the soldiers to dry their feet and
change their socks several times a day. By the end of 1915 British soldiers
in the trenches had to have three pairs of socks with them and were under
orders to change their socks at least twice a day. As well as drying their
feet, soldiers were told to cover their feet with a grease made from whaleoil. It has been estimated that a battalion at the front would use ten
gallons of whale-oil every day.
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Rv56gsqkzs&feature=related
 Soldier at Somme - "Corpses lie along the parapets, rotting in the
wet; the mud makes it all but impassable, and now sunk up to my
knees, I have the momentary terror of never being able to pull
myself out..."
 "men die from slow suffocation in the mud, the wounded are often
suffocated in the mire before the stretcher bearers can get to
them."
 Robert Graves - "The trench smell still haunts my nostrils :
compounded of stagenant mud, latrine buckets, chloride of lime,
half buried corpses, stale human sweat and fumes of cordite and
lyditte.
 Sgt.Pottering - "Rats, feeding on the flesh of corpses, became giant
sized. I saw a rat bite a sergeant’s ear while he slept. They got
used to the troops; boots had to be worn at night and faces
covered while food had to be suspended from the dug-out ceiling."
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photos courtesy of www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm
photos courtesy of www.gwpda.org/photos/greatwar.htm
DEATH
BY
DISEASE
Pneumonia
83.6%
Meningitis
4.1%
Tuberculosis
2.3%
Empyema
1.1%
Septicaemia
0.6%
Bright's
Disease
0.5%
Typhoid
0.5%
Peritonitis
0.5%
Appendicitis
0.4%
Organic Heart
Diseases
0.4%
Scarlet Fever
0.3%
Measles
0.2%
Other
5%
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