Life in the Trenches

Information Sheet for Narrative ModuleModule title: Life in the Trenches

Module description (overview):

Students will become familiar with Life in the Trenches during World War I.

Template task (include number, type, level):

Task 27. After Reading Journal entries from WWI veterans, write a letter home from the perspective of a WWI soldier, describing your day in the trenches.

Teaching task: Template Task 27

Grade(s)/Level: 6

Discipline: (e.g., ELA, science, history, other?)

Social Studies

Course: World History

Author(s): Jann Leishman

Contact information:

Jann Leishman jann.leishman@ccsdut.org

Section 3: What Instruction?

PACING SKILL AND DEFINITION

MINI-TASK INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

PRODUCT AND PROMPT SCORING (PRODUCT “MEETS EXPECTATIONS” IF IT…)

SKILLS CLUSTER 1: PREPARING FOR THE TASKDay 1 #7: Integrate and

evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

Eyewitness GuidesEW Guide World War One Cased 1stLink this task to earlier class content.

No Scoring Introduce Trench Warfare. (Students should already have background to WWI)

Share with class pictures of WWI

SKILLS CLUSTER 2: READING PROCESSDays 2 and 3

#7: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.#9: Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

1-2-3 SpecialStudents will receive an account of WWI, A War of Movement.Students will receive a journal entry from a WWI soldier.-George Hatch

- 1-2-3 Special paper needs to be completely filled in.

- Classroom discussion and share

Students will first read through the account of WWI. Next they will read the journal entry and then they will fill in their 3 items on their 1-2-3 Special paper.Next they will continue on with the 1-2-3 process.

Days 3 and 4

#7: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

Photo Analysis and WorksheetEach group will have several WWI trench pictures, along with a “window”

Students will turn in their worksheet and the teacher will assess.

In their groups students will look at a variety of WWI trench pictures.Students will complete the Photo Analysis assignment.

Students will get out of their desks and partner up with someone from another group, to share their findings.

Day 4 #7: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

WarhorseTrench warfare sceneWWI cartoon-Christmas Truce

No scoring As a class, students will watch the Trench Warfare scene, from the movie Warhorse. Teacher will help students understand what is happening.WWI cartoon

Day 5 Vocabulary. ABC Squares Students will turn in worksheet, and will be graded on worksheet and participation.

With a partner students will fill in their ABC Squares. (Thinking of a word dealing with WWI, they need a word for every letter in the alphabet.) Next partners will decide on their 10 best words and write each one on a sticky note, posting them around the room under the correct letter. Teacher will go around the room, reading the list for each letter, partners with a word on the wall no one else has will receive a treat. After, ask some students to share definitions of terms that others overlooked or misunderstood. After scoring, be willing to provide direct instruction or guide a close reading if needed to work through a key phrase most students missed.

SKILLS CLUSTER 3: TRANSITION TO WRITING

Day 6 #3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

Blank Paper No scoring Discuss the assignment.Read an example.Allow students to brainstorm ideas of what they want in their papers, writing this down on their blank paper.

SKILLS CLUSTER 4: WRITING PROCESSDay 6 #3: Write narratives

to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

Blank lined paper or paper provided by teacherEssential Question: What was life like in the trenches during WWI?After reading and examining the WWI material, write a letter home from the perspective of a WWI soldier, describing their day/life in the trenches.

Paper has all components of a friendly letter.Voice, detail, and realistic events are in place.

Students will share their work, using the “Author’s Chair.”Two students make a comment, and one person asks a question, from the students writing.

Teacher will collect students work, and grade.

Resources:http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=history/firstwar/interviews

George Hatch speaks about life in the trenches

That night, while going into the trenches from this valley about a mile or so walk through the trenches, we were told that there would be a white tape, along the wall of the trench, and to follow that white tape and it would take us to the front lines. What a night that was. We came to a place in the trench where the tape divided, and we didn't know whether to go right or left. But we took the right, and we ended up where there's no trenches.

The shells were falling overhead, bursting, and lo and behold, I was told to pass the word back by my commanding officer in front of me, for the men to, just two and three at a time, to come over this shell hole, which had once been trenches, and it ended up nothing but shell holes. And so we got within 35-40 feet of Germans, and here they were, their heads popped up out of that trench, and they were firing to beat the band.

Naturally, we were lost. And the officer in charge, a bullet hit him under the nose and came out the back of his head. Dead as a doornail. I undone the epaulettes on my tunic and let go of all my heavy equipment- my blanket, and overcoat, and bandolier of ammunition. And I turned around and was crawling from shell hole to shell hole to get back to where I came from, to the best of my ability, and the rest did too. We came to barbed wire, and we started

shouting to the boys in the trenches not to fire. And we got back in the trench. I don't know how many was killed but there was an awful lot of the boys killed, and that was our very first experience.

Anyway, the next morning, we were told we were going over the top at 5:06 in the morning. It was September the 15th. A whistle started to blow, daylight was breaking, and the first tanks that ever roamed over No Man's Land came across the trenches. And they blew a whistle, and we had to help one another over the front line trench.

In the meantime, the German artillery got a line on our trenches and they let us have it and all hell broke loose. I saw a man wounded, scream like a horse. I saw blood coming out of their ears, out of their mouth. Now, if you don't think you get scared when that happens. You're scared, and you're scared to death.

We went over the top and we advanced to a place called Thiepeville. And it had been a sugar refinery. The factory was partly standing and partly blown to pieces. There was 1100 yards we had to advance that morning, that was the first time in the entire year we'd ever been, and seen the wide open country by the trenches, by the battles and the trenches where they were. Of course, the trees were shredded, just stubs of trees and leaves and branches knocked down from shell-fire.

We gave the Germans three days of steady, honest artillery fire. The guns were only two or three hundred yards behind us, what they call Whizbang guns, eighteen pounder guns, and they fired for three days and three nights over our head. Anyway, when we got to this refinery, that's where we had to dig-in and make it our trenches for the night before we could advance further.

When daylight broke the very next morning, I remember a young group of Canadian boys, still in their uniforms, as if on parade. They were reinforcements. And I've got my two stripes and I'm now a corporal and I'm standing on top of the trench, watching the boys start digging, to change the trench around somewhat. And a shell came so close that I didn't have time to jump down into the trench where they were digging; I just stood there, and the shrapnel pellets were going all around my feet, and I saw at least 25 of the boys killed right there and then, that just got to the trench, just got to the trench.

Well, the dirt from that explosion on the ground knocked me flat on my face. I put my hand on the back of my neck, and off came skin and hair and everything. When I got down in the trench, everybody didn't know what to do, how to do it, or where to go.

When night time came, I was told that I'd better go back and try to find a medic, where the medics were. And I was told to follow this communications trench and it would take me back to the medical unit. It was very dark, very dark at night, and shells were exploding overhead. The Germans had a direct bead on our lines. I was going through something that I couldn't understand, I was standing in something, every step that I took I went down to my hips, and the suction, and it turned out to be, it was a communications trench full of Australian dead bodies.

And they had been there for a month or so, and the smell was something, if you've ever smelled a human dead body you've never smelled any odor in your life until you have. You've never smelled a badder one.

Anyway, I got maybe 100 yards or 100 feet through that trench, and I came to another trench, and I saw what I thought was cigarette lights, facing one another. And it turned out to be two boys with dirt, squatted down, facing one another to escape the artillery gun fire, shrapnel etc. And I asked them where the medics were, and not one

would utter a word. I shook their shoulders, and they wouldn't talk, petrified with fear. Anyway, I left them, and I found the dugout. I couldn't see down in there, I stepped my way down, five or six feet, and I felt some cloth. So, I was scared myself and I layed down and stayed there to escape the shrapnel overhead, and I fell asleep.

When daylight broke the next morning, I'm laying between two dead Germans. And they had their spiked helmets on. They never took their helmets off, they just threw the bodies in there.

Life in the trenches during the First World War took many forms, and varied widely from sector to sector and from front to front.

Undoubtedly, it was entirely unexpected for those eager thousands who signed up for war in August 1914.

www.firstworldwar.com/features/trenchlife.htm

A War of Movement?

Indeed, the Great War - a phrase coined even before it had begun - was expected to be a relatively short affair and, as with most wars, one of great movement.  The First World War was typified however by its lack of movement, the years of stalemate exemplified on the Western Front from autumn 1914 until spring 1918.

Not that there wasn't movement at all on the Western Front during 1914-18; the war began dramatically with sweeping advances by the Germans through Belgium and France en route for Paris.  However stalemate - and trench warfare soon set in - and the expected war of movement wasn't restored until towards the close of the war, although the line rippled as successes were achieved at a local level.  (Click here to view brief film footage of German soldiers preparing trenches in France in 1914.)

So what was life actually like for the men serving tours of duty in the line, be they front line, support or reserve trenches?

Daily Death in the Trenches

Death was a constant companion to those serving in the line, even when no raid or attack was launched or defended against.  In busy sectors the constant shellfire directed by the enemy brought random death, whether their victims were lounging in a trench or lying in a dugout (many men were buried as a consequence of such large shell-bursts).

Similarly, novices were cautioned against their natural inclination to peer over the parapet of the trench into No Man's Land.

Many men died on their first day in the trenches as a consequence of a precisely aimed sniper's bullet.

It has been estimated that up to one third of Allied casualties on the Western Front were actually sustained in the trenches.  Aside from enemy injuries, disease wrought a heavy toll.

Rat Infestation

Rats in their millions infested trenches.  There were two main types, the brown and the black rat.  Both were despised but the brown rat was especially feared.  Gorging themselves on human remains (grotesquely disfiguring them by eating their eyes and liver) they could grow to the size of a cat.

Men, exasperated and afraid of these rats (which would even scamper across their faces in the dark), would attempt to rid the trenches of them by various methods: gunfire, with the bayonet, and even by clubbing them to death.

It was futile however: a single rat couple could produce up to 900 offspring in a year, spreading infection and contaminating food.  The rat problem remained for the duration of the war (although many veteran soldiers swore that rats sensed impending heavy enemy shellfire and consequently disappeared from view).

Frogs, Lice and Worse

Rats were by no means the only source of infection and nuisance.  Lice were a never-ending problem, breeding in the seams of filthy clothing and causing men to itch unceasingly.

Even when clothing was periodically washed and deloused, lice eggs invariably remained hidden in the seams; within a few hours of the clothes being re-worn the body heat generated would cause the eggs to hatch.

Lice caused Trench Fever, a particularly painful disease that began suddenly with severe pain followed by high fever.  Recovery - away from the trenches - took up to twelve weeks.  Lice were not actually identified as the culprit of Trench Fever until 1918.

Frogs by the score were found in shell holes covered in water; they were also found in the base of trenches.  Slugs and horned beetles crowded the sides of the trench.

Many men chose to shave their heads entirely to avoid another prevalent scourge: nits.

Trench Foot was another medical condition peculiar to trench life.  It was a fungal infection of the feet caused by cold, wet and unsanitary trench conditions.  It could turn gangrenous and result in amputation.  Trench Foot was more of a problem at the start of trench warfare; as conditions improved in 1915 it rapidly faded, although a trickle of cases continued throughout the war.

The Trench Cycle

Typically, a battalion would be expected to serve a spell in the front line.  This would be followed by a stint spent in support, and then in reserve lines.  A period of rest would follow - generally short in duration - before the whole cycle of trench duty would start afresh.

In reality the cycle was determined by the necessities of the situation.  Even while at rest men might find themselves tasked with duties that placed them in the line of fire.

Others would spend far longer in the front line than usual, usually in the more 'busy' sectors.

As an example - and the numbers varied widely - a man might expect in a year to spend some 70 days in the front line, with another 30 in nearby support trenches.  A further 120 might be spent in reserve.  Only 70 days might be spent at rest.  The amount of leave varied, with perhaps two weeks being granted during the year.

Stand To and the Morning Hate

The daily routine of life in the trenches began with the morning 'stand to'.  An hour before dawn everyone was roused from slumber by the company orderly officer and sergeant and ordered to climb up on the fire step to guard against a dawn raid by the enemy, bayonets fixed.

This policy of stand to was adopted by both sides, and despite the knowledge that each side prepared itself for raids or attacks timed at dawn, many were actually carried out at this time.

Accompanying stand to, as the light grew, was the daily ritual often termed the 'morning hate'.

Both sides would often relieve the tension of the early hours with machine gun fire, shelling and small arms fire, directed into the mist to their front: this made doubly sure of safety at dawn.

Rum, Rifles and the Breakfast Truce

With stand to over, in some areas rum might then be issued to the men.  They would then attend to the cleaning of their rifle equipment, which was followed by its inspection by officers.

Breakfast would next be served.  In essentially every area of the line at some time or other each side would adopt an unofficial truce while breakfast was served and eaten.  This truce often extended to the wagons which delivered such sustenance.

Truces such as these seldom lasted long; invariably a senior officer would hear of its existence and quickly stamp it out.  Nevertheless it persisted throughout the war, and was more prevalent in quieter sectors of the line.

Inspection and Chores

With breakfast over the men would be inspected by either the company or platoon commander.  Once this had been completed NCOs would assign daily chores to each man (except those who had been excused duty for a variety of reasons).

Example - and necessary - daily chores included the refilling of sandbags, the repair of the duckboards on the floor of the trench and the draining of trenches.

Particularly following heavy rainfall, trenches could quickly accumulate muddy water, making life ever more miserable for its occupants as the walls of the trench rapidly became misshapen and were prone to collapse.

Pumping equipment was available for the draining of trenches; men would also be assigned to the repair of the trench itself (click here to view brief film footage of British troops pumping water from trenches in 1914).  Still others would be assigned to the preparation of latrines.

Daily Boredom

Given that each side's front line was constantly under watch by snipers and look-outs during daylight, movement was logically restricted until night fell.  Thus, once men had concluded their assigned tasks they were free to attend to more personal matters, such as the reading and writing of letters home.

Meals were also prepared.  Sleep was snatched wherever possible - although it was seldom that men were allowed sufficient time to grab more than a few minutes rest before they were detailed to another task.

Dusk: Stand To, Supply and Maintenance

With the onset of dusk the morning ritual of stand to was repeated, again to guard against a surprise attack launched as light fell.

This over, the trenches became a hive of activity.  Supply and maintenance activities could be undertaken, although danger invariably accompanied these as the enemy would be alert for such movement.  Men would be sent to the rear lines to fetch rations and water (click here to view film footage of British soldiers receiving rations in 1914).

Other men would be assigned sentry duty on the fire step.  Generally men would be expected to provide sentry duty for up to two hours.  Any longer and there was a real risk of men falling asleep on duty - for which the penalty was death by firing squad.

Patrolling No Man's Land

Patrols would often be sent out into No Mans Land.  Some men would be tasked with repairing or adding barbed wire to the front line.  Others however would go out to assigned listening posts, hoping to pick up valuable information from the enemy lines.

Sometimes enemy patrols would meet in No Man's Land.  They were then faced with the option of hurrying on their separate ways or else engaging in hand to hand fighting.

They could not afford to use their handguns while patrolling in No Man's Land, for fear of the machine gun fire it would inevitably attract, deadly to all members of the patrol.

Relieving Men at the Front

Men were relieved front-line duty at night-time too.  Relieving units would wind their weary way through numerous lines of communications trenches, weighed down with equipment and trench stores (such as shovels, picks, corrugated iron, duckboards, etc.).  The process of relieving a line could take several frustrating hours.

...And the Smell

Finally, no overview of trench life can avoid the aspect that instantly struck visitors to the lines: the appalling reek given off by numerous conflicting sources.

Rotting carcases lay around in their thousands.  For example, approximately 200,000 men were killed on the Somme battlefields, many of which lay in shallow graves.

Overflowing latrines would similarly give off a most offensive stench.

Men who had not been afforded the luxury of a bath in weeks or months would offer the pervading odour of dried sweat.  The feet were generally accepted to give off the worst odour.

Trenches would also smell of creosol or chloride of lime, used to stave off the constant threat of disease and infection.

Add to this the smell of cordite, the lingering odour of poison gas, rotting sandbags, stagnant mud, cigarette smoke and cooking food... yet men grew used to it, while it thoroughly overcame first-time visitors to the front.

www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/warpictures/