Trenches World War I

Trench Warfare World War 1 Trench Warfare

Trench Warfare “The men slept in mud, washed in mud, ate mud and dreamed mud” Soldiers fought from inside trenches with the land in between named “no man’s land” Armies lost many men for small gains. Infested with rats, no fresh food, little sleep, and dangerous. New tools of war, supposed to make war fast-moving, killed huge numbers of people in the trenches: poison gas Machine gun armored tanks

Casualties of War?

Soccer and the Trenches Christmas Day Soccer Match 1915 Soccer as an Attack Mode 1916

Earth!-Earth!-Earth! “To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him for ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; …” All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, page 55

Chance “It is this chance that makes us indifferent. A few months ago I was sitting in a dug-out playing skat; after a while I stood up and went to visit some friends in another dug-out. On my return nothing more was to be seen of the first one, it had been blown to pieces by a direct hit. I went back to the second and arrived just in time to lend a hand digging it out. In the interval, it had been buried. It is just a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit.” All Quiet on the Western Front, Erica Maria Remarque, page 101

Leaving the Shelter of the Trench “Our men advanced against the most terrible machine-gun fire ever directed against troops in any series of battles, and they fell by the thousands in every attack. But divisions were sent on time after time to face the same slaughter in their ranks, and they always did their intrepid best to obey the fatuous orders. When divisions were exhausted or decimated, there were plenty of others to take their place.” Lloyd George of England. Quoted from In Flanders Field Fatuous means: dense, dull, dim-witted (dictionary.com)

Leaving the Shelter Front Lines - The Trenches by Claude Guilmain - NFB

Letter Home Letter Home: My dear father Found in unit packet (middle of packet)

No Man’s Land YouTube - Green Fields of France

WWI Sing a Long The Reason Why To the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” YouTube - Auld Lang Syne

Poetry In Flanders Field by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae MD Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen Translation of last two lines: “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country.”