ATTAINMENT TARGET:
ATTAINMENT TARGET:
What was
They should pursue historically
They should understand how
life like in
valid enquiries including some
different types of historical sources
the
they have framed themselves,
are used rigorously to make
trenches?
and create relevant,
historical claims and discern how
structured and evidentially
and why contrasting arguments
supported accounts in
and interpretations of the
response.
past have been constructed.
1. Why did trenches happen in World War One?
2. How should life in the trenches be remembered? (Refer to the sources)
3. How significant was the impact of life in the trenches on those who
experienced them? (Refer to the sources)
4. Why do different views of World War One and life in the trenches exist?
SOURCES AVAILABLE :
You should refer to the following sources in your answer and suggested why the arguments/
interpretations may be different.
 Mitchell’s Golden Dawn Cigarette advert
 Siegfried Sassoon prose piece
 Your own interpretation and explanation
 Additional text sources and pictures
How significant were these events?
Source A : Mitchell’s Dawn
Cigarette Advert, 1915
“But I can remember a pair of hands
(nationality unknown) which protruded
from the soaked ashen soil like the roots of
a tree turned upside down; one hand
seemed to be pointing at the sky with an
accusing gesture. Each time I passed that
place, the protest of those fingers
became more expressive of an appeal to
God in defiance of those who made the
war. Who made the war? I laughed
hysterically as the thought passed through
my mud-stained mind. But I only laughed
mentally, for my box of Stokes-gun
ammunition left me no breath to spare for
an angry guffaw. And the dead were the
“My first spell in the line lasted three weeks.
dead; this was no time to be pitying them
Water was scarce, and even the tea ration
or asking silly questions about their
was so short there was none left over for
shaving. I had a nine days' growth of beard
outraged lives. Such sights must be taken
when we went down to rest. Some of us
for granted, I thought, as I gasped and
looked like Crimean veterans and we all
slithered and stumbled with my
began to feel like it. My socks were
disconsolate crew. Floating on the
embedded in my feet with caked mud and
filth and had to be removed with a knife.
Six months after the war I appeared in the
surface of the flooded trench was the
mask of a human face which had
detached itself from the skull.”
streets again as a civilian with a profound
hatred for war and everything it implies.”
Source C : Private Harold Saunders, Vimy
Ridge, 1916
Source B : Siegried Sasson – Memoirs of an
Infantry Officer, 1917
Source F : Clip from Black Adder Goes Forth, 1989
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2DCExerOs
A
Please be aware that Blackadder is usually a 15
certificate, so check permission first.
We did get to France at last, though; and into the trenches, too. The memory of that is
mainly-mud. There was the ominous donning of " um-boots, thigh"; the shell holes and
slithery duckboards (dear old Johnson and his "following each other about in the dark");
the front line, where, by constant baling, liquid slime could just be kept from lipping over
the dug-out door-sills.
And there in that nightmare of mud and wire, by the deathly light of occasional starshells from over the way, we learned the landmarks to guide us : "Left by the coil of wire,
right by French legs."
"French legs?" "Yes, we took over from the French; the legs of one they buried in the side
of the trench stick out a bit, you can't miss it." It was rather startling, but didn't seem to
merit a second thought.
Source D : Captain A. A. Dickson – left the war classified as unfit.
The trenches were about six feet deep, about three feet wide - mud, water, a duckboard if
you were lucky. You slept on the firing step, if you could, shells bursting all around you. Filthy.
From the time I went to France - the second week in June 1917 - until I left 23rd December
1917, injured by shellfire, I never had a bath. I never had any clean clothes. And when we got
to Rouen on the way home they took every stitch of clothing off us: vest, shirt, pants,
everything and they burnt it all. It was the only way to get rid of the lice. For each lousy louse,
he had his own particular bite, and his own itch and he’d drive you mad. We used to turn our
vests inside out to get a little relief. And you’d go down all the seams, if you dared show a
light, with a candle, and burn them out. And those little devils who’d laid their eggs in the
seam, you’d turn your vest inside out and tomorrow you’d be just as lousy as you were today.
And that was the trenches.
It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone
thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a
family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe,
nothing to it. I would have taken the Kaiser, his son, Hitler and the people on his side … and
bloody shot them. Out the way and saved millions of lives. T’isn’t worth it.
Opposite my bedroom there is a window and there is a light over the top. Now [when the
staff go into that room] they put the light on. If I was half asleep – the light coming on was the
flash of a bomb. That flash brought it all back. For eighty years I’ve never watched a war film,
I never spoke of it, not to my wife. For six years, I’ve been here [in the nursing home]. Six years
it’s been nothing but World War One. As I say, World War One is history, it isn’t news. Forget it.
Source E : Harry Patch – final soldier from WW1, speaking in 1998 after over 60 years of silence
on the topic.
End of Key stage 2 – ALL for L5
End of Key stage 3 – ALL for L8
You should continue to develop a
chronologically secure knowledge and
understanding of British, local and world history,
establishing clear narratives within and across
the periods they study.
You should extend and deepen their
chronologically secure knowledge and
understanding of British, local and world history, so
that it provides a well-informed context for wider
learning.
You should note connections, contrasts and
trends over time and develop the appropriate
use of historical terms.
You should identify significant events, make
connections, draw contrasts, and analyse trends
within periods and over long arcs of time.
You should regularly address and sometimes
devise historically valid questions about
change, cause, similarity and difference, and
significance.
You should use historical terms and concepts in
increasingly sophisticated ways.
You should construct informed responses that
involve thoughtful selection and organisation
of relevant historical information.
You should pursue historically valid enquiries
including some they have framed themselves, and
create relevant, structured and evidentially
supported accounts in response.
You should understand how our knowledge of
the past is constructed from a range of sources
You should understand how different types of
historical sources are used rigorously to make
historical claims and discern how and why
contrasting arguments and interpretations of the
past have been constructed.
WWW WHAT WENT WELL?
EBI EVEN BETTER IF?
LEVEL :