World War 1-Life in the Trenches

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                History Coursework

World War 1-Life in the Trenches

What can you learn from Source A about conditions in the trenches in World War 1?

Lieutenant Bruce Bairnsfather describes how the design of the trenches was ‘haphazard’- random and irregular, but how this was well though out. The first image was that it was ‘strange, wet and horrid’. Dug outs would often cave in, and would have ‘floated off down stream’ meaning there would have been a lack of places to sleep and stay in. Clearly it was very wet because it was the first noticeable characteristic of the trenches, but also as it was quite common for things to be floating off in the water. The lieutenant spent much of his first night trying to ‘find places for the gunners to sleep in’ implying either there were lots of people, there was a lack of dug-outs to sleep in, or the design of the trenches was so irregular, it was hard to actually find them. It was a very different experience, as everything seems to be curious to the Lieutenant. It is also very clear that overall it was horrible, as the lieutenant describes the trenches quite negatively. Although the trenches did fulfil some of the war’s practical needs, for example the lieutenant was able to ‘fix up machine guns at various points’.

Do sources B and C support the evidence in Source A about the conditions in the trenches in the First World War?

Sources B and C support Source A to some extent. Source B supports the idea in Source A that the trenches were very wet and sometimes even had streams of water. The edges of the trenches in Source B are crumbled and worn out which may suggest that dug outs caved in supporting source A. Though, because in source B the trenches are flooded, it might have been eroded by rain which caused the flooding. In source A it isn’t clear whether it is flooded, so it is hard to make a comparison to Source B. Source A doesn’t talk about barbed wire, whereas a lot of the text in Source C is about barbed wire. Though source C does say that it was very wet in some parts of the trenches. There is only one idea regular in all the sources- that there was a lot of water at some point.

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How useful are those sources in helping you to understand what conditions were like for soldiers in the trenches?

From Sources D, E and F we can learn about the pests, namely rats and lice. Clearly the trenches were very dirty, smelly and unhygienic, as these are the conditions rats in particular thrive on. There were an ‘extraordinary number of rats’ or ‘millions’ of them. They infested the trenches completely, everywhere from the dugouts to the duck-boards. They took food away from the soldiers, but also ate the dead bodies lying on the floor of the trenches. ...

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