World War

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.

Over the past week we’ve been studying soldiers in training.  Getting ready for the battle field, and being fit to fight is an important part in the life of a soldier.

It was actually harder than we thought to research this topic.  We couldn’t find a site that actually told us the training that soldiers had to undergo beyond the basics of physical fitness and drills.  We still managed to learn a bit, some of this based on what my lad is learning in army cadets this year.

Videos:

This video reminded my son of a reenactment he attended, where he had to practice running in a straight line carrying a gun.  I asked him, how would we practice this skill in real life.  He thought a while and then brought up the air rifles we have.  I suppose we too, can practice some of the skills to be soldiers in training. 

Surprise!  Horse training

One of the videos that popped us surprised us.  Army horse training.   In retrospect it makes sense, we just never really thought about how soldiers might need to be trained as well as the horses themselves.  First train the men, then train the horses. 

Gas Warfare

I never thought to think about soldiers in training having to focus on gas warfare, how to deploy it as well as how to protect themselves from it.   Last night we attended Christmas 1914 at Fanshawe Village and there was a fellow who talked with us a great length about gases used and the products used to protect the men from it.  It was hard and brutal and the knowledge gained was a big reason why it wasn’t used in World War 2. 

My son said when it was on you couldn’t see anything and it was harder to breathe.  Can you imagine trying to run and fight and carry a full load while wearing one?   Just a hard job for those soldiers.  Helps us better understand the struggles they went through.  The video below shows German troops. While watching I wondered aloud how many times they would kill themselves. Apparently this was something my son had wondered about earlier and researched and the answer was YES, lots of times.  

Being Canadian, we appreciated this video and we found ourselves talking through it, sharing knowledge we learned from our individual research.  Did you know that Canadian soldiers were known for their ferocity during the First World War?

Modern day training!   My lad is inspired.

We learned that training is there to increase skill levels and physical fitness but also to help the soldiers bond as they work together.  This was part of the advantage of having “Pals” units as you had some of that cohesiveness already built in. I see this in my lad with the Army Cadet unit he is part of.  The more the boys do things together, talking, working, exercising, the more the unit is coming together as a unit.  Neat to observe.  🙂

Websites too!

Lest you think we only watched videos, we also took in a few websites.

Learning about the Canadians training at Valcartiers.  We admittedly spent a fair bit of time at this site exploring images, delving into other topics etc.

We learned about the Kitchener blue uniforms of the british.

Studied a PDF of the American training program that gave us excellent ideas for our own training program.  It’s LONG and we only looked the ww1.

Learned about elderly training officers in Britain and some of the problems that created.

Talked our way through the 8 steps to becoming a soldier in WW1.  Which led to hearing some of the training done in the WW1.   The lad was surprised to learn what PAL units in the war were all about.

We learned why soldiers drop and crawl when they are on an infantry line.  Makes sense once you stop and think about it.   See if you can discover why HERE. 

We also looked back at our day for the World War 1.  This was an excellent day for the lad with learning about order, disciplines, different aspects of the wars and so forth.  He still talks about it. 

Hands-on aspects:

We’ll be starting a training regime… physical fitness anyone?

My son and I were talking today about some of the things he wants to do.  He wants it to be something that we do together.  So starting next week he’ll be running around the block (I will walk as quickly as I can) and he’ll eventually catch up to me again.  We’ll do (for me some modification) sit ups, planks, push ups, leg lifts and squats.  Hopefully we can get dad involved as well.   How to fit it all in will be a lovely challenge for us.  🙂

I am going to get him (hopefully tomorrow sometime) to put together a spreadsheet for us to use.  Need to see if we are improving our abilities as that’s something that soldiers do as well.

Follow our studies:

• Assassination
• Pre-war Alliances
• War Starts!
• Belgium