The weaknesses in this source are that it was written ten years after the war so the author may have forgotten things or may have blocked things out of his mind because they were too painful to remember. Source A is only a tiny extract from the whole of his book so we don’t get the whole story, only the bit that was chosen for us.
The source is not completely fair because it only tells gives us one view of what it was like and only from a British soldiers point of view, not from the opposition.
Source B is a poem by Wilfred Owen, written in 1917, called ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. This too is a piece of primary evidence and shows how the author felt during the war. He writes about a gas attack as troops were making their way back from the front line, it includes what they looked like when the gas hit them and how they were feeling, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags”, “And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin”.
This source is quite informative and useful because it gives quite a lot of detail and really tells you how horrible it must have been for the troops that were being gassed.
The strengths of source B are that it was written first hand by someone in the war while it was still going on. The poem is strong, hard hitting and seems to be very honest.
The weakness of the poem is that, once again, it is only one person’s point of view and there is nothing to compare it to.
The source is not completely fair because it’s only told from a British soldiers point of view but it is clear and cannot be misinterpreted.
Sources C and D
Source C is a textbook account from ‘Challenge and Change’ by Phillip Ingram, published in 2000. This is a secondary piece of evidence, which may not have been written first hand but has been researched so it is still a useful source.
This source tells us about life in the trenches from quite a few different angles; Life in the trenches, Night in the trenches, Death in the trenches, The cost of trench life, The experience of battle, and changing attitudes to the war. It also tells us about how the soldiers must have been feeling, the illnesses that were around, what it was like living in the trenches and what happened. Here are some examples; “The hours of darkness were the most active and tense time in the trenches”, “Others suffered from a wide variety of physical illnesses”, “The sheer discomfort of living in the trenches, and “For many men the experience of battle was one of senseless sacrifice. They were ordered out of their trenches to cross No Man’s Land in a hail of machine-gun bullets and shrapnel”.
There were long term effects on the soldiers and ten years after the war had ended 65,000 soldiers were in mental homes because of the things they saw and things they were made to do.
The strengths of source C are that there is a lot of relevant information and the author has got his information from a wide variety of places so it isn’t just one persons view. By doing this it gives it a lot of breadth and balance.
The weaknesses of this source are that the text can’t show terror and horror, and that it is a sanitised view of what happened because it was written for school children and they can’t be too gory.
Source D is a BBC1 program called Black Adder; it was the last in the series called ‘Goodbyee!’ and was made in 1992.
It showed us a comical view of what happened in the war, this could be good because it was interesting and funny, and it made fun of a serious topic, which makes you remember it more. The program gave us an idea of some of the things that happened during the war, such as people pretending or actually going mad, how scared the soldiers were to go out on the battle field and fight and how they felt about their friends that had been killed. This source, even though it’s made to be funny, wants you to go away after watching it and to think about how horrible the war must have been for all the soldiers, friends and families.
The strengths of this source are that because it’s television it keeps the viewers attention and because it’s a comedy it is more memorable.
The weaknesses are that because it is a comedy it can’t show horror and terror, which, if you wanted to know exactly what it was like, it would need to be like that, showing all the gory details.
Source E
Source E is a piece of information I chose myself, it is a secondary piece of evidence as I have adapted it from a book of diary entries of soldiers, admirals and commanders in the war. It showed how they felt before, during and after the war. Before the war most soldiers were looking forward to fighting for real, but after it, from who was remaining, none of them said that they enjoyed it in the slightest and that they had lost so many close friends. A huge number of soldiers were reported to metal homes because of the many disturbing scenes that they saw, what they were made to do and what had happened to them, be it physically or mentally.
Source E’s strengths are that they are real diary entries from people of all different rank in the war so your not just getting one persons view and because it covers a lot of aspects in the war, it didn’t just concentrate on one thing.
The weaknesses of this source are that it can be biased because someone has chosen which bits to put in the book and they could of left bits out which they thought weren’t important but might have been important to someone else.
This source isn’t completely fair but it does give you a really good idea about how people felt and because they were real diary entries they were true feelings of the soldiers.
Conclusion
There are strengths and weaknesses in all of the sources, this is because you can’t be 100% sure that they are totally true but sources A and B were written by people who were in the war so there is no reason to lie because they shouldn’t have to make any up, and C, D and E have all been researched which gives you a variety of views from different people. I think that source E is the most useful because it gives you a lot of different views from different rank soldiers and officers in the war so you get to see what it was like from all different angles.
Rebecca L’Affineur
