In the trenches

During world war I, the soldiers fought from inside trenches.

Task 1: Watch the video clip and explore the interactive:

World War One: Trench Life (by Auckland War Memorial Museum)

Task 2: Brainstorm things about what it may have been like in the trenches.

Need some extra help??

Task 3: Write a description of what it may have been like for a soldier in a trench.

Use the video and interactive above to help! There are some great descriptions and vocab there for you!!

• Think about the 5 senses:

• Smell
• Hear
• See
• Touch
• Taste

Start writing here: Trenches were long, narrow ditches dug into the ground where soldiers lived.

They were very muddy, uncomfortable and the toilets overflowed. These conditions caused some soldiers to develop medical problems such as trench foot.

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, which soldiers crossed to attack the other side and there sleep at 5am 'Stand-to' (short for 'Stand-to-Arms', meaning to be on high-alert for enemy attack) half an hour before daylight

5.30am Rum ration

6am Stand-down half an hour after daylight

7am Breakfast (usually bacon and tea)

After 8am Clean selves and weapons, tidy trench

Noon Dinner

After dinner Sleep and downtime

5pm Tea

6pm Stand-to half an hour before dusk

6.30pm Stand-down half an hour after dusk

6.30pm onwards Work all night with some time for rest (patrols, digging trenches, putting up barbed wire, getting stores)

Soldiers only got to sleep in the afternoon during daylight and at night for an hour at a time. During rest time they wrote letters and played card games. The Christmas Truce

During the first Christmas of the war, something unique happened in some parts of the Western front.

On Christmas Eve, soldiers from both sides put down their weapons and met in no man's land. They sang carols like 'Silent Night' ('Stille Nacht' in German).

Men from both sides gave gifts to each other. The Germans gave sausages to the British and the British gave the Germans chocolates.