BBC Schools - Trench food 18 February 2014Last updated at 17:06 British soldiers eating hot rations in the Ancre Valley during the Battle of the Somme, October 1916 Maconochie's meat stew advertisement Even though food was very short in Britain during World War One, families often sent parcels to their fathers and brothers fighting at the front. The parcels contained presents of chocolate, cake, tobacco and tinned food. At the beginning of the war, soldiers got just over one pound of meat, the same amount in bread and eight ounces of vegetables each day. Some soldiers worked in field kitchens which were set up just behind the trenches to cook meals for the soldiers who were fighting. By 1917 the official ration for the average British 'Tommy' was much smaller. 'Maconchie's meat stew' and hard biscuits was a meal that many soldiers ate. 18 February 2014Last updated at 17:06 British soldiers eating hot rations in the Ancre Valley during the Battle of the Somme, October 1916 Maconochie's meat stew advertisement
Life in the Trenches - History Learning Site Trenches and life within those trenches have become an enduring topic from World War One. Throughout the war millions of soldiers experienced and endured the horrors of trench warfare. Some wrote down for posterity what these experiences were and as time has moved on from World War One more and more of these written documents – frequently in the form of a diary – have come to light. Others wrote about their experiences in book-form. On the British side “Goodbye to All That” by Robert Graves is considered a classic. For the Germans, “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich von Remarque was considered to be such a potent anti-war book that Hitler banned it. However, regardless of who wrote what about the trenches, all have one consistent theme – the horrors experienced by the men who had to live in them. All of the soldiers who fought in trenches would have had a good idea of what a good trench was like and what constituted a bad trench.
BBC Schools - Life in the trenches 31 October 2014Last updated at 15:07 Two British soldiers standing in a flooded communication trench during World War One On the Western Front, the war was fought in trenches. Trenches were long, narrow ditches dug into the ground where soldiers lived all day and night. There were many lines of German trenches on one side and many lines of Allied trenches on the other. In the middle, was no man's land, so-called because it did not belong to either army. Rest Soldiers in the trenches did not get much sleep. Dirty trenches The trenches could be very muddy and smelly.
Somme History The Battle of the Somme, 1916 On 24 June 1916, British and French artillery began a seven-day bombardment which marked the start of what became known as the Battle of the Somme. It had been in preparation since an Allied conference in December 1915. On 14 February, French and British generals agreed that 1 July would be the opening day of the offensive, which would strike north and south of the river Somme. Barely a week later, however, the German army launched its own major campaign against the fortified town of Verdun on the River Meuse which would continue for most of the year, killing more than 250,000 French and German soldiers. For France, Verdun became synonymous with national resistance and pride, but also with the devastation of the war. With the French now committed at Verdun, Commonwealth forces assumed the main role at the Somme. A heavy howitzer of the Royal Garrison Artillery in action, Somme offensive, August 1916.
History - World Wars: Shell Shock during World War One Heros of 'India's Battle of the Somme' honoured by royal visit Battle of the Somme. Some of the Japanese soldiers had died of starvation and disease. By then end, more than 4000 allied soldiers were dead, and 5764 Japanese troops had been killed. Had they lost the Battle of Kohima, Japan would have taken the nearby railhead and air field at Dimapur, then in Assam, and used it as a base to sweep across Bengal. The heroism of the troops of Kohima has been the stuff of legend but their unique contribution to winning the war was finally recognised by Britain's royal family on Tuesday when the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, visited the town's Commonwealth War Cemetery. "It's very important for the modern generation, particularly across India, for people to remember and recognise the sacrifice that took place here, because without that sacrifice and that stand then the freedom that we now have … would not have been possible," he said. There's Captain John Randle of the Royal Norfolk Regiment. "It's part of our history, we can't deny that fact.
The Great War Archive (University of Oxford) Dec 25. The Christmas Truce Sergeant Bernard Brookes was a signaller who spent ten months in Flanders in the beginning of the War before he suffered shellshock and was invalided out of active service. 24 December 1914: "An officer went out (after we had stood at our posts with rifles loaded in case of treachery) and arrangements were made that between 10.00am and noon, and from 2.00pm to 4.00pm tomorrow, intercourse between the Germs [sic] and ourselves should take place. You can read more of Sergeant Bernard Brookes’s story on the Europeana 1914-1918 site.
First world war: Volunteers from the colonies - the forgotten soldiers | Worl... Racism in the trenches There was a time when George Blackman would have done anything for the mother country. In 1914, in a flush of youth and patriotism, he told the recruiting officer he was 18 - he was actually 17 - and joined the British West Indies Regiment. "Lord Kitchener said with the black race, he could whip the world," Blackman recalls. "We sang songs: 'Run Kaiser William, run for your life, boy'." Enthusiasm for the battle was widespread across the Caribbean. While Kitchener's private attitude was that black soldiers should never be allowed at the front alongside white soldiers, the enormous losses - and the interference of George V - made it inevitable. When they arrived, they often found that fighting was to be done by white soldiers only - black soldiers were assigned the dirty, dangerous jobs of loading ammunition, laying telephone wires and digging trenches. Yet there is evidence that some Caribbean soldiers were involved in actual combat in France.
The First World War Poetry Digital Archive The First World War Poetry Digital Archive is an online repository of over 7000 items of text, images, audio, and video for teaching, learning, and research. The heart of the archive consists of collections of highly valued primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas. This is supplemented by a comprehensive range of multimedia artefacts from the Imperial War Museum, a separate archive of over 6,500 items contributed by the general public, and a set of specially developed educational resources. These educational resources include an exciting new exhibition in the three-dimensional virtual world Second Life. Freely available to the public as well as the educational community, the First World War Poetry Digital Archive is a significant resource for studying the First World War and the literature it inspired.
Letters From Indian Muslim Soldiers Written In World War One Have Been Discov... Life In The Trenches | WW1 Facts There was nothing glamorous about trench life. World War 1 trenches were dirty, smelly and riddled with disease. For soldiers life in the trenches meant living in fear. Trench warfare WW1 style is something all participating countries vowed never to repeat and the facts make it easy to see why. Constructing WW1 Trenches The British and the French recruited manpower from non-belligerent China to support the troops with manual labour. 140,000 Chinese labourers served on the Western Front over the course of the First World War (40,000 with the French and 100,000 with the British forces). No Man’s Land The open space between two sets of opposing trenches became known as No Man’s Land because no soldier wanted to traverse the distance for fear of attack. The climate in France and Belgium was quite wet, so No Man’s Land soon became a mud bath. Hell on Earth There were millions of rats in ww1 trenches. 80,000 British Army soldiers suffered from shell shock over the course of the war.