Trench

The treaty of Versailles was signed in November 1918, it signalled the end of the gruelling 4 years of trench warfare. The German’s attack was what finally broke the stalemate, but if the other factors weren’t taken into account, it could have been a very different story. What helped break the stalemate of trench warfare? […]

War deaths before WW1 The average annual strength of the army during the war was 210,000, of whom 5774 were killed in action, 2018 died of wounds and 13,250 died of disease, of which 8227 were killed by typhoid fever [2]. How many people died due to disease in ww1? Total losses in combat theaters […]

World War I (WWI) remains the only major American war of the 20th century not commemorated with a memorial in the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C. WWI lacks the deep historical reverence, at least among many Americans, that World War II or even the Civil War enjoys. Is there anyone alive that remembers ww1? As […]

Overall, there are approximately 1,500 reels of significant World War I footage preserved in over 30 different collections in the film vaults of the National Archives. Where can I find ww1 footage? The National Archives (NARA) is the largest repository of WWI and WWI-era motion picture film in the United States, and among the largest […]

Trench fever is a clinical syndrome caused by infection with Bartonella quintana. The condition was first described during World War I, when it affected nearly 1 million soldiers. How many people suffered from trench fever? Trench fever At the time, the cause of the disease was unknown. It is estimated to have affected 380,000 to […]

Rapid frontal assaults, such as head-on infantry attacks, became ineffective against modern weaponry like machine guns and heavy artillery, and soldiers on both sides had to dig protective trenches to try to avoid casualties, while maintaining hard-won territory. Why was trench warfare so ineffective? The development of armoured warfare and combined arms tactics permitted static […]

There were three standard ways to dig a trench: entrenching, sapping, and tunnelling. Entrenching, where a man would stand on the surface and dig downwards, was most efficient, as it allowed a large digging party to dig the full length of the trench simultaneously. How are military trenches dug? Each trench was dug in a […]

The weapon, which the author calls an “excrement trebuchet bomb” was a type of explosive device made from hemp string and filled with gunpowder, human shit, and poison, which was lit with a hot poker, before being flung at the enemy. Is poop a biological weapon? During an interview with the state television channel VTV […]

In World War I this condition (then known as shell shock or ‘neurasthenia’) was such a problem that ‘forward psychiatry’ was begun by French doctors in 1915. Some British doctors tried general anaesthesia as a treatment (ether and chloroform), while others preferred application of electricity. How did they cure shell shock? Shell shock victims found […]

It is known by other names including brewis (possibly a cognate with “brose”), cabin bread, pilot bread, sea biscuit, soda crackers, sea bread (as rations for sailors), ship’s biscuit, or pejoratively as dog biscuits, molar breakers, sheet iron, tooth dullers, armor plates (Germany) and worm castles. What biscuits did they eat in ww1? Army biscuit […]

The explosive rat, also known as a rat bomb, was a weapon developed by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in World War II for use against Germany. Rat carcasses were filled with plastic explosives, and were to be distributed near German boiler rooms where it was expected they would be disposed of by burning […]

They usually went for the eyes first and then they burrowed their way right into the corpse. Trench conditions were ideal for rats. Some of these rats grew extremely large. It was not uncommon for rats to start gnawing on the bodies of wounded men who couldn’t defend themselves. Which part of the body would […]

According to Peter Brown, a deaf historian at City Lit, an adult education college in London, approximately 30,000 of these soldiers were deafened. Did soldiers in WW1 go deaf? Results: Soldiers were exposed to up to 185 dB of sustained noise from new, high-energy weapons, which caused ‘labyrinthine concussion’. Traumatic injuries, non-organic hearing loss and […]

The combination of wire and firepower was the cause of most failed attacks in trench warfare and their very high casualties. Liddell Hart identified barbed wire and the machine gun as the elements that had to be broken to regain a mobile battlefield. Why did trenches fail? The widespread use of machine guns and rapid-firing […]

The three primary emotional experiences of combat, as I understood them to be, are fear, killing and love. Fear is obvious, and there’s obviously some state of mind connected with killing, but there’s also something that you could loosely call love. How does war make you feel? Filled with terror, pain and grief, it also […]

Results: Soldiers were exposed to up to 185 dB of sustained noise from new, high-energy weapons, which caused ‘labyrinthine concussion’. Traumatic injuries, non-organic hearing loss and malingering were also common. One source estimated that 2.4 per cent of the army was disabled by hearing loss. How many people went deaf in ww1? According to Peter […]

The most common food given to soldiers was bread, coffee, and salt pork. The typical ration for every Union soldier was about a pound of meat and a pound of bread or flour. The Confederacy started out following the same rules. As the war went on, they weren’t able to keep up. What kind of […]

Q. What was the average soldier’s age? The average Union soldier was 25.8 years old; there is no definite information on the average age of Confederate soldiers, but by the end of the war old men and young boys, who otherwise would have stayed home, were being pressed into service. How old were soldiers in […]

The repertoire of songs was dominated by the jauntily comic. Humorous stereotypes of domineering wives or mothers-in-law, the bourgeoisie, foreigners, Blacks and Jews were often subjects of songs. Many more songs were made up of tongue-twisters or other comic elements. How did WWI impact music? As with all other walks of life, the First World […]

When they finish, some of the British soldiers from Kent sing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” after which the Germans sing “Stille Nacht.” The British soldiers accompany them, singing in English, “and in two tongues one song filled up the sky.” The British troops are startled when their front line sentry cries out that What […]