Does the film, 'The battle of the Somme' provide us with a realistic picture of what it was like to be a soldier in the Trenches?

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Does the film, ‘The battle of the Somme’ provide us with a realistic picture of what it was like to be a soldier in the Trenches?

Casualty figures over 60,000 by the 19th December 1915. The Battle of the Somme continues until General Haig calls a halt to the attack and even then the British have only gained 8 km and lost over 400,000 men. In August 1916, the film, ‘The battle of the Somme’ was released by the British government to provide a realistic source of information into what the war was really like for the General Public. Over the past decades historians have all disagreed into whether this file released by the Government really was a ‘realistic’ source of the War.

The way that the film portrays the Trench Conditions can be supported by some of the Sources. The sources suggest that the trench conditions were poor and men loathed them. The soldiers slept on a bed of mud and lived with rats. For example: Extracts from a diary written by a soldier when he was fighting explained that they were, ‘Just rat holes, one hell of an accommodation. No trenches at all in places just isolated mounds.’ A letter from a soldier to his daughter compared the trenches as, ‘Little rat holes.’ Some sources also imply that the Trenches stank and were unbearable to live in. This is shown in a poem by Sidney Chaplin. His opening paragraph alleged that,

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You stand in a trench of vile stinking mud,

 And the bitter cold wind freezes your blood,

 Then the guns open and the flames light the sky

 An, as you watch, rats go scuttling by.’

However other sources agree with the images and points put forward in the film. Some sources suggest that the trenches were comfortable and the men were happy to live there, there was a good level of hygiene and the soldiers were enjoying themselves. For example, a photograph taken by an official British photographer possibly after the war showed men thoroughly enjoying themselves, they all had ...

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