Life in the Trenches
Information Sheet for Narrative Module
Module title: / Life in the TrenchesModule 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
Section 3: What Instruction?
Pacing / Skill and Definition / MINI-TASK / Instructional StrategiesProduct and Prompt / Scoring (Product “meets expectations” if it…)
Skills Cluster 1: Preparing for the Task
Day 1 / #7: Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words. / Eyewitness Guides
EW Guide World War One Cased 1st
Link 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 Process
Days 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 Special
Students 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 Worksheet
Each 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. / Warhorse
Trench warfare scene
WWI 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 Process
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 lined paper or paper provided by teacher
Essential 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.