Trench Warfare
World War I set a new precedent for wars to come, it was the first war to involve the new technologies in warfare we know of today. The machine gun and heavy artillery reduced the individual soldier to insignificance, leaving no room for heroes. Tanks, bombs, and poisonous gas were the new age of war, and left deep and psychological scars on the Western World long after the War. In the first few battles of the "Great War" a new style of combat called trench warfare was created. This new style of combat was created to protect the soldiers from large tanks and massive amounts of artillery. Life for the common soldier on the Western Front consisted of extreme unpleasantness for weeks spent in muddy, vermin-ridden trench communities, and the horrifying experience of battle. Each battle not only consisted of heavy artillery, machine guns, and barbed wire; but also of exploding bullets, liquid fire, and poison gas (P.P. pg 452). In this paper I will show how the new technologies of war gave little hope for a soldier to make it out of the War alive.In Alan Seeger's "Rendezvous" he describes the feeling he has during his time in the War. He says, " I have a rendezvous with death | On some scarred slope of battered hill, (P.P.
"The sunken road now appeared as nothing but a series of enormous shell holes filled with pieces of uniform, weapons, and dead bodies. The ground all round, as far as the eye could see, was plowed by shells. You could search in vain for one wretched blade of grass. This churned-up battlefield was ghastly. Among the few living lay the dead." This shows how the poisonous gas had a terrible effect on the soldiers filling them with fear and if infecting the soldiers killing them slowly and painfully. Junger takes this quote by a soldier and displays it as how every soldier must feel during this time. Junger talks of the mass destruction that has been caused by the heavy artillery and bombs. "Where you fall there you lie. No one can help you. No one knows whether you will come back alive. They attack every day, but they can't get through. Everybody knows it is life or death." In Junger's account of the first Battle of Somme we are presented with atrocious graphic images that the heavy artillery of the war has done to a small town. In one's soldier describing the standoff between the British and the Germans he says,
Some common words found in the essay are:
British Germans, Poets Rickword, World War, Gas Quick, Seeger's Rendezvous, Western Front, War Soldiers, Battle Somme, Owen's Dulce, Junger German, pp pg, world war, poisonous gas, war alive, heavy artillery, pg 455, -pp pg, rickword wrote, blade grass, style combat,
Approximate Word count = 1326
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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