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    The Trench: Life and Death on the Western Front 1914-1918
    The Trench: Life and Death on the Western Front 1914-1918
    The Trench: Life and Death on the Western Front 1914-1918
    Ebook182 pages2 hours

    The Trench: Life and Death on the Western Front 1914-1918

    By Trevor Yorke

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    About this ebook

    The horrors of World War I scarred an entire generation at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now, one hundred years later, we are asked to reflect upon it and remember what a disastrous episode of history it was.This book offers a brief, straightforward, illustrated history of World War I. In particular, it explains the trenches and what it was like to live and fight in them.Using his own diagrams, illustrations, and maps, author Trevor Yorke explains the architecture of the trenches, with their command posts, sally points, tunnels, machine gun nests, duck boards, and sleeping billets. There are chapters to explain tactics, weaponry, and daily life. There are special features on the introduction of new weapons of war, such as tanks, early aeroplanes, and the first use of poison gas.These can bring home to us a real understanding of the unique inhumanity of the war, and why the dates 1914-1918 require all generations of today to remember and learn from them. As Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, says in his Foreword: 'As we begin to mark the centenary of the First World War, we should honour those who died, most certainly, and gratefully too, but we should never glorify. During these next four years of commemoration we should read the poems, the stories, the history, the diaries, visit the cemeteries—German cemeteries as well as ours—they were all sons and brothers and lovers and husbands and fathers too.'
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCountryside Books
    Release dateMar 4, 2014
    ISBN9781846748806
    The Trench: Life and Death on the Western Front 1914-1918
    Author

    Trevor Yorke

    Trevor Yorke is a professional author and artist who has studied and written about various aspects of England's architectural and industrial heritage. He has produced many illustrated books that introduce the reader to these topics and writes articles and reviews for various magazines. He lives in the UK.

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      Book preview

      The Trench - Trevor Yorke

      The Trench

      Life and Death on the Western Front

      1914-1918

      Trevor Yorke

      Foreword by Michael Morpurgo

      First published 2014

      © Trevor Yorke 2014

      Reprinted 2014

      All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted

      without the prior permission of the publisher:

      COUNTRYSIDE BOOKS 3

      Catherine Road

      Newbury, Berkshire

      To view our complete range of books,

      please visit us at www.countrysidebooks.co.uk

      ISBN 978 1 84674 3177

      The front cover photograph shows

      4th E. Lancs Rgt troops in 1917 (I.W.M.).

      Photograph of Gallipoli trench on page 50 by Steve Jacques.

      With many thanks to Michael Bode for his assistance in compiling this book.

      Maps and illustrations by the author.

      Designed by Roger Davis, Kingsclere Design and Print

      Produced by The Letterworks Ltd, Reading

      Printed by Berforts Information Press, Oxford

      Contents

      Foreword by Michael Morpurgo

      Introduction

      Chapter 1

      Opening Moves

      Battle Lines are Drawn

      Chapter 2

      The Trenches

      Design and Construction

      Chapter 3

      Life in the Trench

      Eating, Sleeping and Staying Alive

      Chapter 4

      Trench Warfare

      Tactics, Weapons and Tanks

      Chapter 5

      Going Home

      1918 and the Aftermath of War

      Appendix 1: The Origins of the First World War

      Appendix 2: Places to Visit

      Glossary of Terms

      Index

      The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ypres

      This dignified building of remembrance is dedicated to those British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in action locally and who have no known grave. It was built by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and unveiled in 1927. Ypres was of strategic importance during the First World War and no fewer than five major battles were fought around it. By the end of the fighting the town was a ruined shell and the allies had lost some 300,000 men in the Ypres Salient. The bodies of 90,000 of these were never recovered. German losses around Ypres during the war are thought to be around 200,000. Every evening at 8 pm the road through the gate is closed and buglers from the town’s fire brigade sound the ‘Last Post’.

      Foreword by

      Michael Morpurgo

      The picture opposite is of the Menin Gate at Ypres in Belgium. The caption speaks for itself. Ypres is a sad town but an enormously positive one. It’s one of the places that has grown out of its wartime ruins. I find it very moving that its inhabitants have taken the time and the trouble, and have had the spirit to rebuild their town, which was largely destroyed in the Great War. In my mind, it symbolises hope.

      Ypres isn’t the sort of place you go simply to enjoy yourself. You go for the experience – and I think all young people should visit the town and its surrounding cemeteries. You must also visit the excellent In Flanders Fields museum there, which is one of the best museums about the Great War that I’ve ever visited. It doesn’t seek to glorify the war in any way, it just tells it as it was - and I’d urge any visitor to the town to go there and perhaps take along the children (if they’re old enough), in order to give them a better understanding of this most terrible of conflicts.

      I always also visit at least one of the wartime cemeteries outside Ypres. Indeed, I came across the name of a Private Peaceful at one such cemetery, and it was that which inspired my book of the same name.

      When I came to write War Horse, I decided I would tell the story of that war seen through the eyes of a horse. Joey, I would call him. It would be an English story, but a German one too, and a French one. It would be a tale, as far as possible, of the universal suffering, not just in that war, but in all wars, and on all sides. That is the spirit in which the book was written, and in which the play is acted out now each night, not only in London and in the US, but also now in Berlin.

      To tell the story is the only way we have left to remember, and the only way to pass it on. And it is important to pass it on, important for the men who died on all sides, all now unknown soldiers, for those who suffered long afterwards and grieved all their lives. And important for us too. If they gave their todays for our tomorrows, then, I am sure, after all they went through, and died for, they would wish to see us doing all we can to create a world of peace and goodwill, a world that one day will turn its back on war for good. It is through their words and our stories that we must and will remember this and remember them. Then we really will be honouring their memory.

      In 2014, as we begin to mark the centenary of the First World War, we should honour those who died, most certainly, and gratefully too, but we should never glorify. We should heed the words of those who were there, who did the fighting, and some of them the dying. To Wilfred Owen, the words Horace had used to glorify war centuries before, ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’ - how sweet and fitting it is to die for your country - were simply ‘the old lie’.

      During these next four years of commemoration we should read the poems, the stories, the history, the diaries, visit the cemeteries - German cemeteries as well as ours - they were all sons and brothers and lovers and husbands and fathers too.

      There should be no flag waving, unless it be the lowering of the flags of all the nations who lost their sons, unless it be to celebrate the peace we now share together, unless it be to reaffirm again our determination to guard our freedom, but as far as humanly possible to do it in peace. And when we sing the anthems, let them be anthems of peace and reconciliation.

      Come each November over the next four years, let the red poppy and the white poppy be worn together to honour those who died, to keep our faith with them, to make of this world a place where freedom and peace can reign together.

      Michael Morpurgo

      Introduction

      Sepia photos of uniformed relatives in family albums; silent images from old newsreels of soldiers trudging through muddy trenches, and pictures of field artillery on wooden gun carriages, can make the First World War seem distant and irrelevant in the modern world. Current media has given a verdict that the war was run by pompous generals with outrageous moustaches and a nonchalant disrespect for life as they sent thousands of trusting soldiers to a casual oblivion. The scale of the conflict and the suffering it produced is frightening not only because of those lost on the front lines but through the millions of men, women and animals who also suffered in what seems a largely pointless war.

      At the time however, the First World War appeared new and challenging. Rapid developments in weaponry, armoured vehicles, aircraft, chemical warfare and defensive measures pushed designers and industrialists to the limits. Military planners and officers in the field were constantly revising tactics and devising new ways of coordinating their forces. Politicians and commanders had to try and predict the enemy’s next move while juggling their colossal fighting machines over the numerous fronts of the wide empires they controlled. The decisions made by these same leaders in the period immediately after the war ended has not only created conflict and tensions which are still felt today, but also began an irrevocable change in the world from one of monarchy and empire to democracy and independence.

      Despite the global aspect of the First World War (and the war was indeed global in that few countries in the world were not impacted in some way by it) this book concentrates upon what became known as the Western Front, where Germans became locked in combat with French, Belgian, British, and British Empire forces along a huge 450 mile complex of trenches. These were the killing fields between 1914 and 1918.

      Whether you are a student tackling the subject for the first time or wish to know more about the conditions endured by a long departed relative caught up in the conflict, I have set out to explain the war in the trenches using easy to understand text and clearly labelled drawings.

      The Western Front: A map showing the course of the Western Front with a Union Jack centred on the section which was manned by the British Forces. The exact location of the trenches and the length of the front patrolled by a certain country varied through the war so this representation is only approximate. The Front also continued south east from Verdun down to the border with Switzerland. It is important to note that the section highlighted as British was also manned by forces from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa and other parts of the Empire as well as soldiers from Allied countries including France and Portugal and construction workers from China. This emphasises the global scale of the conflict even though this area of the First World War was confined to the north east of France.

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