Trench Warfare - The Battle of the Somme 1916.

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Trench Warfare

The Battle of the Somme 1916

The battle of the Somme was between 1st July and 19th November 1916. On the first day of battle there were already 60,000 casualties of British troops, this was the worst day of slaughter in the history of the British Army. Nearly 190,000 men lied under the battlefield at the end of the battle. So as you can see just from this information the war was very bloody and tragic but it was not all a failure as that battle helped technology on fighting and improved it.

        The book which source A comes from is published in 1976 so therefore it is published on the 60th anniversary to remember or celebrate the dead that died in the Somme and so maybe he is critical of the battle. I assume the author is a ‘he’ because the source tells me he could have been in the battle due to the detail he gives us and so the only people in the army were males at that time. The source suggests that it wasn’t so much as pain the soldiers were uncomfortable about but boredom and a lack of luxuries, ‘discomfort… troops washed and shaved as best they could’. In the source it says ‘relaxation was difficult’ so I assume that would be due to uncomfortable accommodation and the fact that the soldiers should be alert at all times just in case shells come flying into the trenches. ‘On quit days’ suggest generally quite days as this source does not mention any explosions or any fighting. The downfall of this source is that it has no information about the conditions like trench foot, lice, rats, flies, and weather so therefore this source is not a true reflection of what life is like in the trenches. The last line gives the story away ‘moved silently across no-mans land’ as it tells us how real trench warfare was like, soldiers were not allowed to run across no-mans land.

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        Source B is a picture of British ally (Australians or New Zealanders) in a German trench, which suggests they captured it as one soldier is at stand-to position on the wrong side because the fire step is on the left, and so are the barbed wires so therefore they must be in the German front line. I know it’s a German trench because it id deep and wide. The trench would have been captured at night as source A suggests, ‘night was time of major activity’. And the picture is taken at dawn because one of the soldiers is ...

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