Title:
1Over the Top!
Trench Warfare
2- It reached peak brutality and bloodshed on the
Western Front in the First World War.
3What did they look like?
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8Birds Eye View
Zig-zagged pattern
Communication traverses
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10Why the zig-zagged pattern?
It prevented the enemy from being able to shoot
down the length of the entire trench
11This meant that a soldier could see no more than
10 meters along the length of the trench.
12Why barbed wire?
It was difficult to cut, and shelling it would
only make it more entangled, providing an extra
barrier from attack.
13Trench Cross-Section
14Why duckboards a drainage sump?
It reinforced the stability of the walls, and
allowed for drainage of rainwater, blood, and
other body fluids
15Why sandbags?
They protected soldiers from bullets and shrapnel
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17Why were trenches necessary in World War I ?
18Vickers Machine Gun
This new and powerful weapon could mow down
soldiers trying to attack
19Machine guns needed 4-6 men to work them and had
the fire power of 100 guns
20Gas Attacks
Chlorine and Mustard gas would slow down
attackers, causing burns and suffocation
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23Blind Alleys
These led nowhere and were built to confuse and
slow down the enemy
24Underground Saps
These tunnels were dug under enemy trenches so
that explosives could be placed under them and
detonated
25attackers couldnt cross no mans land fast
enough to avoid casualties
26no mans land varied in distance depending on
the battlefield. On the Western Front it was
typically between 100 and 300 yards, though only
30 yards on Vimy Ridge.
27Small trenches rapidly grew deeper and more
complex, gradually becoming vast areas of
interlocking defensive works
British trenches
German trenches
28What was lifelike in the trenches?
29Sanitary conditions in the trenches were quite
poor, and common infections included
dysentery, typhus, and cholera
30Rats became common, and grew large as they would
eat the soldiers food
31Medical services were primitive and life-saving
antibiotics had not yet been discovered
32Relatively minor injuries could prove fatal
through the onset of infection and gangrene
33Poor hygiene also led to conditions such as
trench mouth and trench foot
34official truces were organized so that the
wounded could be recovered from no man's land and
the dead could be buried
35But what was life REALLY like in the trench?
36At the age of 92, Arthur Savage was asked about
his memories of life on the Western Front.
- My memories are of sheer terror and the horror
of seeing men sobbing because they had trench
foot that had turned gangrenous. They knew they
were going to lose a leg.
37- Memories of lice in your clothing driving you
crazy. Filth and lack of privacy. Of huge rats
that showed no fear of you as they stole your
food rations. And cold deep wet mud everywhere.
38- And of course, corpses. I'd never seen a dead
body before I went to war. But in the trenches
the dead are lying all around you. You could be
talking to the fellow next to you when suddenly
he'd be hit by a sniper and fall dead beside you.
And there hed stay for days.