Tag Archives: trench warfare
Sarcastic account of conditions for generals in WW1 by a dispatch rider
This newspaper cutting from The Times on 20th November 1914 can be useful source for revealing attitudes of some regular soldiers towards their commanding officers. While not directly critical, the writer’s final sentence contains some evident sarcasm!
A Cambridge undergraduate, who is acting as a motorcycle dispatch-rider, sends home the following account of his experiences after being wounded:-
I was pushing off the next field, when four big shrapnel shells burst near by, searching for a battery, but all they found was my left foot, which got in the way of a piece. I was very annoyed about it for the moment, but by the time I had hobbled a mile and a half, and found the destination of the message I carried, I was resigned to my fate. A pal of mine cut my boot off and put a field dressing round my foot, and the kind-hearted old general let his car carry me off to a field ambulance. It’s rotten for generals out there, you know; they get worried stiff – poor old chaps, and get loads and loads of responsibility and anxiety and have to sit about all day in cold, damp ditches and splinter-proof shelters, and fume and scheme, and feed on bread and chicken and ham paste and sardines.
The Christmas Truce and Britain vs. Germany football match
The Horrible Histories account of the Christmas Truce and a fictional account of a football match in No Man’s Land. For ideas on how to teach the Christmas Truce and the idea of WW1 football, please see this comprehension lesson outline and set of resource.
The Battle of Vimy Ridge
Vimy Ridge was a 7km ridge that had been held by the Germans since the Race to the Sea in 1914.
First World War – “The Killing Fields”
People’s Century was an excellent television series which focused on major events in the Twentieth Century. In this episode, soldiers from all sides of World War I remember the trenches, the tactics, and the terrible nature and scale of the slaughter that shattered the old world order. They remember recruitment, machine guns and mustard gas, aerial bombing, the trenches, Battles of Verdun and the Somme, conscientious objectors, military justice, American participation, and armistice.
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
The end of the Battle of the Somme
On the 18th November 1916, the Battle of the Somme ended when German troops retired from the final large British attack at the Battle of the Ancre amid worsening weather.
Towards the end of WW1 (1917-1918)
Events in 1917-18 that brought the First World War to a close: the entry of the USA into the war, the Ludendorff Offensive, and the German naval mutiny of 1918.
