2. The British government wanted to encourage men to enlist for war. They said the war would be safe, hardly any fighting, a “good lark” and over by Christmas. They used advertising posters to encourage this idea! A picture of soldiers going ‘Over the Top’

3. The reality of ‘going over the top’ was very different!

4. Soldiers were expected to carry all of their equipment with them at all times. They were supposed to keep it clean and in good condition – they were British after all.

5. How the uniform and equipment changed after just three weeks in the trenches…

6. Propaganda ► Used to encourage men to enlist ► Could be positive (patriotism) or negative (inspire fear towards another country) ► Some examples: news articles, public appearances/demonstrations, literature, artwork, songs, advertisements ► Most commonly used form = POSTERS (each country had their own style)

7. Positive Prop. Vs. Negative Prop.

8. German

9. Austrian-Hungarian

10. Italian

11. Russian: Proletarians of the World, Unite!

12. British

13. French

14. Belgian produced in 1919 appealing to the Belgium population to contribute to a war reconstruction loan.

15. Canadian

16. Propaganda never showed what war was really like

17. No smiling and relaxed faces… No clean uniforms… Their equipment is scattered everywhere… Boredom and lack of sleep are obvious…

20. Unfit living conditions

21. And constant attacks by enemy forces while living in the trenches.

22. People on the “Home Front” never really knew what it was like to live in the trenches, but trench warfare was a world of it’s own

23. Trench Warfare ► Trench warfare - a form of war in which both opposing armies have static lines of fortifications dug into the ground, facing each other. ► It arose when there was a revolution in firepower without similar advances in mobility and communications. ► The use of trenches reached peak brutality and bloodshed on the Western Front in the First World War. ► http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKUeeyVJeR4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKUeeyVJeR4

25. Defensive system ► Very early in the war the British defensive doctrine suggested a main trench system of three parallel lines with each line connected by communications trenches. ► The point at which a communications trench intersected the front trench was of critical importance and was usually heavily fortified. ► The front trench was lightly garrisoned and typically only occupied in force during "stand to" at dawn and dusk.

26. Defensive System Part 2 ► Between 70 and 100 yards behind the front trench was located the support (or "travel") trench to which the garrison would retreat when the front trench was bombarded. ► Between 300 and 500 yards further to the rear was located the third reserve trench, where the reserve troops could amass for a counter-attack if the front trenches were captured. ► This defensive layout was soon rendered obsolete as the power of the artillery grew; however, in certain sectors of the front, the support trench was maintained as a decoy to attract the enemy bombardment away from the front and reserve lines.

27. Defensive system - 3 ► Behind the front system of trenches there were usually at least two more partially prepared trench systems, kilometers to the rear, ready to be occupied in the event of a retreat. ► The Germans often prepared multiple redundant trench systems; in 1916 their Somme front featured two complete trench systems, one kilometer apart, with a third partially complete system a further kilometer behind. This duplication made a decisive breakthrough virtually impossible. ► In the event that a section of the first trench system was captured, a "switch" trench would be dug to connect the second trench system to the still-held section of the first.

28. German Trench Defenses ► The Germans made something of a science out of designing and constructing defensive works. ► They used reinforced concrete to construct deep, shell-proof, ventilated dugouts as well as strategic strong-points. ► They were more willing than their opponents to make a strategic withdrawal to a superior prepared defensive position.

29. German Trench Defenses - 2 ► They were also the first to apply the concept "defense in depth", where the front-line zone was hundreds of yards deep and contained a series of redoubts rather than a continuous trench. ► Each redoubt could provide supporting fire, and while the attackers had freedom of movement between the redoubts, they would be subjected to withering fire. ► The British eventually adopted a similar approach, but it was incompletely implemented when the Germans launched the 1918 "Spring Offensive" and proved disastrously ineffective.

30. Aerial view trench system July 1917 (Allies top left, Germans right side)

31. Trench construction ► Trenches were never straight but were dug in a square-toothed pattern that broke the line into bays connected by traverses. This meant that a soldier could never see more than 10 meters or so along the trench. ► Consequently, the entire trench could not be captured if the enemy gained access at one point or if a bomb or shell landed in the trench; the fragmentation could not travel far.

32. Trench Construction - 2 ► The side of the trench facing the enemy was called the parapet and had a fire step. The rear of the trench was called the parados. The parados protected the soldier's back from fragmentation from shells falling behind the trench. ► The sides of the trench were revetted with sandbags, wooden frames and wire mesh. The floor of the trench was usually covered by wooden duckboards. ► Dugouts of varying degrees of luxury would be built in the rear of the support trench. British dugouts were usually 8 to 16 feet deep, whereas German dugouts were typically much deeper, usually a minimum of 12 feet deep and sometimes dug 3 stories down with concrete staircases to reach the upper levels.

34. Trench construction ► To allow a soldier to see out of the trench without exposing his head, a loophole would be built into the parapet. ► A loophole might simply be a gap in the sandbags or it might be fitted with a steel plate. ► German snipers used metal-piercing bullets that allowed them to penetrate loopholes. ► The other means to see over the parapet was the trench periscope—in its simplest form, just a stick with two angled pieces of mirror at the top and bottom.

36. Digging the Trenches ► There were three standard ways to dig a trench: entrenching, sapping and tunneling. ► Entrenching, where a man would stand on the surface and dig downwards, was most efficient as it allowed a digging party to dig the length of the trench simultaneously. However, entrenching left the diggers exposed above ground and hence could only be carried out when free of observation, such as in a rear area or at night.

37. Digging the Trenches - 2 ► Sapping involved extending the trench by digging away at the end face. The diggers were not exposed, but only one or two men could work on the trench at a time. ► Tunneling was like sapping except that a "roof" of soil was left in place while the trench line was established and then removed when the trench was ready to be occupied. ► The guidelines for British trench construction stated that it would take 450 men 6 hours (at night) to complete 250 meters of a front-line trench system. Thereafter the trench would require constant maintenance to prevent deterioration caused by weather or shelling.

38. Life in the Trenches ► A typical British soldier's year could be divided as follows: ► 15% front line ► 10% support line ► 30% reserve line ► 20% rest ► 25% other (hospital, traveling, leave, training courses, etc.)

40. Death in the trenches ► The intensity of World War I trench warfare meant that about 10% of the fighting soldiers were killed. ► For British and Dominion troops serving on the Western Front, the proportion of killed was 12% while the total proportion of troops who became casualties (killed or wounded) was 56%. ► Considering that for every front-line infantryman there were about 3 soldiers in support (artillery, supply, medical, etc.), it was highly unlikely for a fighting soldier to survive the war without sustaining some form of injury.

41. Medical Services ► Medical services were primitive and life-saving antibiotics were undiscovered. ► Relatively minor injuries could prove fatal through the onset of infection and gas gangrene. ► The Germans recorded that 12% of leg wounds and 23% of arm wounds resulted in death, mainly through infection. ► The Americans recorded that 44% of casualties that developed gangrene died. ► Half of those who were wounded in the head died and only 1% of those wounded in the abdomen survived.

42. Wounded ► Three-quarters of the wounds inflicted during the war came from shell fire. The wound resulting from a shell fragment was usually more traumatic than a gunshot wound. ► A shell fragment would often introduce debris making it more likely that the wound would become infected. These factors meant that a soldier was three times more likely to die from a shell wound to the chest than from a gunshot wound. ► The blast from shell explosions could also kill by concussion. ► In addition to the physical effects of shell fire there was the psychological damage. ► Men who had to endure a prolonged bombardment would often suffer debilitating shell shock, a condition that was not well understood at the time.

44. Disease ► As in many other wars, World War I's greatest killer was disease. ► Sanitary conditions in the trenches were quite poor, and common infections included dysentery, typhus, and cholera. ► Many soldiers suffered from parasites and related infections. ► Poor hygiene also led to conditions such as trench mouth and trench foot. ► Another common killer was exposure, since the temperature within a trench in the winter could easily fall below 0C. (32 F)

45. The soldiers had very little decent food, and what food they had was often attacked by rats. These rats were the size of small rabbits and badgers because they had fed on the decomposing bodies of dead soldiers.

47. Collecting the Troops ► At various times during the war—particularly early on—official truces were organized so that the wounded could be recovered from no man's land and the dead could be buried. ► The higher commands disapproved of any slackening of the offensive for humanitarian reasons and so ordered their troops not to permit enemy stretcher bearers to operate in no man's land. ► This order was almost invariably ignored by the soldiers in the trenches, who knew that it was to the mutual benefit of the fighting men of both sides to allow the wounded to be retrieved.

48. Collecting the Troops ► As soon as hostilities ceased, parties of stretcher bearers, marked with Red Cross flags, would go out to recover the wounded, sometimes swapping enemy wounded for their own. ► One famous truce was the Christmas truce between British and German soldiers in the winter of 1914. German soldiers began singing Christmas carols and soon soldiers left their trenches. The soldiers exchanged gifts and stories, and played several games of football. ► As mentioned previously, the commanders of the warring nations disapproved of this cease fire, and the British court-martialed several of their soldiers.

49. Death and Burials ► Burial of the dead was usually a luxury that neither side could easily afford. The bodies would lie in no man's land until the front line moved, by which time the bodies were often unidentifiable. On some battlefields, the bodies were not buried until after the war. ► On the Western Front, bodies continue to be found as fields are ploughed and building foundations dug.