TRENCH WARFARE

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TRENCH WARFARE
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How They Looked
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How They Looked
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What the Trenches were like

• Filled with water and mud
• Duckboards along the bottom of the trench
• No privacy
• Dead bodies often left for days at a time
• Filled with rats and other rodents

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• A Duckboard is a platform made of wooden slats
  built over muddy ground to form a dry passageway.

A Duckboard is a
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Trench foot is a medical condition caused by
prolonged exposure of the feet to damp,
unsanitary and cold conditions
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Symptoms of Trench foot

• Infected feet
• Numb
• turning red or blue as a result of poor vascular
  supply
• decaying odor
• swelling
• Advanced stages involves
• Blisters and open sores
• Fungal infections (jungle rot).
• Untreated, trench foot usually results in
  gangrene which usually means amputation.
• If treated properly, complete recovery is normal.
  There is some pain and trench foot leaves
  sufferers more susceptible to it in the future.

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no coming back from this one
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Soldiers died

• Falling off duckboards into the mud
• Buried alive
• Suicide
• Killed by enemy snipers
• From diseases
• From lack of food

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Duties in the Trenches

• Replace barbed wire in No mans Land so done
  at night to avoid detection
• Repair flooded trenches
• Move supplies
• Often men were bored and simply waiting for a
  battle

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• No man's land is a term for land that is
  unoccupied or is under dispute between parties
  that leave it unoccupied due to fear or
  uncertainty.
• First World War the area of land between two
  enemy trenches
• No one wanted to take control of due to fear of
  being attacked by the enemy in the process.

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Alls Quiet on the Western front

• http//video.google.com/videoplay?docid7300946306
  109319965

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The Battle of Ypres

• April 1915 in Belgium (near city of Ypres, in
  region of Flanders)
• Task to hold 3.5 km of the line in the face of
  heavy German attack
• This battle saw the first use of chlorine gas by
  the Germans
• Canadians used makeshift gas masks to hold the
  line with British reinforcements
• 6000 Canadian casualties (dead, missing, or
  wounded)
• The poem In Flanders Fields was written at this
  battle by Doctor John McCrae

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The Battle of the Somme

• July to November 1916 in France
• Canadians fought as part of British forces, led
  by Sir Douglas Haig
• Allies used old tactics and were mowed down by
  German machine gun fire disaster!
• 58,000 Allied casualties in one day
• First use of tanks broke through barbed wire
  and gave Allies the advantage
• After 5 months gained only 8 km

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Battle of Vimy Ridge

• April 1917
• Canadas greatest victory succeeded where French
  and British had failed
• Well-prepared -used planes to gather information
  and constructed model ridge to practice
• 100,000 Canadians led attack
• New strategy called leap-frogging meant troops
  werent as tired
• 11,000 Canadian casualties
• Morale boost for Canada, beginning of national
  pride

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Battle of Passchendaele

• November 1917, near Ypres in Belgium
• Bitter disaster for Canadians
• Incredible mud horses and men sucked in and
  drowned
• Canadians led by Sir Arthur Currie, a Canadian
• 16000 Allied troops dead, 8000 Canadian
  casualties
• Gained only 7 km of mud that was soon lost again

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The last 100 Days

• August to November 1918
• USA entered the war, Germany desperate
• Germany launched huge attack along the Western
  Front
• Advanced within 80km of Paris but stopped by
  Allied counter attack (including Canadians)
• France and Belgium liberated
• Canadians defeated a quarter of the German army
  more than American force that was 6 times as big
• Germans surrendered on November 11, 1918
• Canadians treated as heroes by Belgians