World War

I have to admit to feeling a bit surprised.   I thought, battles of the war, how complicated could it be.  BOY, was I wrong.  Led to a rather fierce discussion between the lad and I about how I could be so wrong!   But hey, we worked it through and have decided to divide this section into part.

Battles of the Western front, and the eastern front.  Then battles of Africa.   We’ll tackle sea battles and air battles.   But last week and this week we are just going for the general approach.. just getting a bit of an overview of the battles of World War 1. 

Movies Watched

To that end, we watched a few different movies.  Flyboys. and The Red Baron.  We tried watching The Trench (don’t recommend it).   We have plans to watch Warhorse documentary and War Horse but so far we can’t get a stream that works. 

Books Read

The lad read through these books below, just select pages that talked about battles of the war in generic terms, or as a broad overview.

The goal is to have him find a battle he wants to research from a Canadian point of view, but so far none of them are grabbing his attention.

We also read through a book called Vimy Oaks because I was just intensely curious.  It took us a couple of nights to read through.  Thoroughly enjoyed this book. We found it fascinating that the oaks from France eventually found a way back after all the destruction.

Videos Watched

Would we be us if we didn’t watch some videos as well?

Watching how the line moved so much at first and then just kind of stalled, reminded us of how HARD and kinda pointless trench warfare would have seemed to the men involved.

Resources Used

We used a variety of resources for this unit study.   These include writing prompts from Bonnie Rose.   Heather LeBlanc’s Major Battles and Events of WW1 and Military Geography from TOS.    We used a timeline from someone but I can’t find a link to it… Might have been a free unit we picked up somewhere, I can’t truly recall.

Other posts about world  war one

• Belgium
• Animals in World War One
• Soldiers in Training
• Assassination
• Pre_war Alliances
• War Starts
• Trench Warfare.
• Trench Foot Experiment.

Dry feet, new socks, dealing with gas, different trench designs, lice, rats, rain and misery.  This is what made up the soldier’s life fighting in the trenches of World War One.  A tough life for soldiers.

Trenches were 10 feet high with sandbags stacked around. Dug not only in dirt (like I thought) but also through rock, in sand etc. They went through coal mines, railroad tracks, streams and more.

Soldiers rotated through being in the front line to being in the support lines.   Different counties had their own routine… anywhere from five days to one month.

They had a daily routine of protect the trench (stand to), hate, breakfast, weapon and foot inspection, daily chores, and a lot of boredom and at night “stand to” (protect the trench).

Life in the Trenches

Together we discovered this interactive website that taught more about life in the trenches.

Duckboard and Poetry

Duckboard was a new word to us and so we learned that it is a board consisting of a number of wooden slats joined together, placed so as to form a path over muddy ground or in a trench.

We read the poem Break of Day in the Trenches by Isaac Rosenberg.

We learned about the life of a Canadian Soldier in the trenches.  It wasn’t an easy time for man or beast. A fair bit of time was spent examining the different parts to this section.   

We saw photos of life in the trenches.  Listening to people talk about their duties, adds realism, you know?

This video was very helpful in teaching us the terminology of the trenches.

This video taught us more about the support lines, and how the trenches were made.  Explained where they were placed as well.

This video demonstrated why trench warfare was so very difficult.  The armies, basically in a stalemate.  Both sides got their positions and simply held them.   Sometimes losing, but getting them back.  Back and forth, back and forth.  Not really going anywhere.

Of course battling in the trenches met fighting off pests like rats and lice (with could cause trench fever), and trench foot.  We learned more about combating trench foot here.

Hands-On

We took a couple of approaches to our hands-on work for Trenches.

First we made models of trenches.

We have plans to make sample trenches of the German trenches as well.   You can see what they look like on this page.

I thought it was important to truly understand what trench foot was like and how quickly it could hit the men.   We took some pigs feet, one we left just in a sock, another was washed and dried with a change of socks twice a day, and another was washed, dried and had Vaseline applied twice a day.  I will be writing up a post to tell you more about trench foot and our experiment. 

Resources to further understanding

We made use of a couple of resources as well. Click on image to go to resource.

SchoolhouseTeachers.com has a section on World War 1 as well.   It would be worth your time to check it out. 

Other World War Posts

• Belgium
• Animals in World War One
• Soldiers in Training
• Assassination
• Pre_war Alliances
• War Starts

Over the past two weeks my lad and I have been learning about animals in the war.  Camels, horses, dogs, donkeys, mules, cats, dogs, elephants and pigeons.  I also heard about a monkey and a turtle that were morale boosters during the war.   All these animals helped people in the war effort.

What Animals Served?

The imperial war museum tells of 15 animals that went to war.  Bbc talks of some of the unusual animals like Winnie the Pooh!  🙂

Horses, donkeys, mules and camels carried food, water, ammunition and medical supplies to men at the front.   Dogs served sentry, medical, messaging, and scout work, as well as raising morale.   They also killed vermin.  Pigeons carried messages very swiftly to high command.   Canaries detected poisonous gas.

Great war animals in the world war. Elephants, dogs, pigeons and horses.

Camels

Camels were part of the war effort.  The Imperial Camel troops that served in the Middle East. There were many good reasons to use camels in battle, but also some dangers as you can learn about at this site.

Horses:

Horses were used for a variety of tasks in the war. Pulling weapons, carrying officers, bringing in supplies and more.  I knew gas was used during the war, but never thought of the need for horses to have gas masks.

Some of the pictures in this videos were hard to view.  It was SO hard for the horses.  They suffered terribly right alongside the men they served with.  The soldiers did the best they could for the horses, but conditions were absolutely horrible.

Cats

Cats that were part of the war effort. Mostly as vermin control and morale officers, but some cats were trained to detect gas. Learn more about these amazing felines here.

Dogs:

Then of course we have the dogs of the war.  Sentries, scouts, companions, mascots, medical dogs, message runners and more.  Dogs were SO very useful in the war. 

Stubby the dog “Sgt stubby an American dog”  There is a cartoon version which the lad and I watched.  It was pretty good.  The full movie can be found on youtube. 

We learned about a dog trainer in Scotland named Major Edwin Richardson.  His name was mentioned in one of the videos so we looked him up.   He started the first British War Dog School.  Learn more here.

We also learned about other famous dogs of World War 1.

Elephants!

I have to admit I was shocked to hear about elephants in the war.  It seemed that most of them were used for publicity stunts.  None the less, elephants were definitely used in world war 1 by both sides. 

Pigeons

Pigeon training, homing pigeons. The lad was curious about how you train a pigeon to race home or carry a message.

Pigeons in world war 1.  In 1915, as stalemate and trench warfare set in, communication became very important.  Pigeons became important to the war efforts and homing pigeons were used to carrying message to High Command.  More than 100,000 pigeons were used.  Some of them received medals. They overcame cut telegraph wires and other communication difficulties, though they did face their own challenges of hawks, shell-fire and more.   Learn about some pigeon heroes’ on this page.  A Story about a brave pigeon that may or may not be true can be located on this site.   Some stories and pictures here.

We even ran across this innovative idea for gathering information.

In case you couldn’t guess, my son did his research paper on pigeons and how they were used in the war.   He’s not quite done, but he’s been fighting a nasty cold this week and having a hard time managing his time. 

Before I Go

This information was so cool to learn!  Look at this:  EVEN SLUGS were used!!!!!

Slugs
By the time soldiers noticed the presence of mustard gas on the battlefield, it was often too late. Dr. Paul Bartsch of the Division of Mollusks ……discovered that slugs could detect mustard gas well before humans could. The slugs would visibly indicate their discomfort by closing their breathing pores and compressing their bodies, and soldiers in the trenches would quickly put on their gas masks to protect themselves from harmful levels of gas. The “slug brigade” ended up saving many lives.   Source.

It’s been a great couple of weeks learning about Animals in the war.  I was surprised more often than I care to admit, but it was great.