Did the Soldiers Themselves Give a More Accurate

A detailed Summary of Did the Soldiers Themselves Give a More Accurate

In this essay I will be comparing official accounts, soldiers accounts, paintings, poems, and textbook sources based on trench warfare. Section A is a series of textbook sources and I will be comparing these to sources in Sections B, C, and D. I will be also comparing these sources to a video that e watched in class. Whilst I compare the sources I will be considering the reliability, accuracy, validity, and the source of every different account. To find out how accurate each source is I will be discussing the provenance, content, other sources and my own knowledge.

I have taken into mind that the historians and soldiers will have different views to one another. Most information in the form of paintings and photo's would have probably been censored. All of the soldier's accounts would have been from memory and might not be as reliable as the textbook sources that are very reliable because they are secondary evidence. I will also have to consider the time that the source was taken or recorded, the location and weather the writer had a motive or not. Depending on the position that the soldiers were will make some sources less reliable. This is because one source could say that the soldiers were in a good condition and one could sa

I think source D4 that was written by Wilfred Owen is a good source to conclude this essay with. In this poem he comments on almost everything that is mentioned in Sections A, B, C and D from Gas, to flares. This source is very reliable because Wilfred Owen is a famous war poet and the official accounts, paintings, poems, textbooks, and soldiers accounts back everything he says in this poem. So did the soldiers themselves give more accurate picture of trench life than the official accounts? I think they do. There are a lot of reasons for this and they are as follows. The writers of official accounts could have been sent for a purpose, they could be censored, usually people at the front do not write the official accounts and the official accounts do not get as much support from other sources as soldiers views do. For example sources B4 and C4 are pictures of trenches, both holding Australians soldiers and the Soldiers account [C4] gets backed up by sources in all the sections. On the other hand source B4 is only supported for its reliability in one source and no others.

Source C5 is written by Captain Burke and is explaining the common medical problems that faced the soldiers in the trenches. This source states that many men got Trench Fever and Trench Foot, and also agrees with the documentary that we watched because the source says that 'We lost more that way that we did from wounds' and the documentary says that 3.5 million soldiers died on sickness and disease. Source C5 is the first source in the booklet that I have studied that mentioned trench foot. This disease was mainly caught on the front line because soldiers had to sit still in mud and water and were hardly able to move and eventually they caught this disease. This source is supported by sources C2, C3, A2, A3, and A4 as each of these talk about the mud and sludge that filled up the trenches.

Source B1 is a piece of Text and a painting composed by John Singer Sargant. This source is commenting on how gas affected the lives of the soldiers at war. This was probably used to show Anglo German relations in the trenches and to turn people at home against the even more. The artist was a well-known painter before he signed up for war and was probably sent to war for a reason. This source links in with B7 as it is showing the pain and suffering that gas caused soldiers. However B7 doesn't show all the affects of gas, it is showing that gas blinded people, but it does not show that gas also chocked people to death. This source could be considered reliable because it is not hiding the fact that gas was being used at war. Source D1 also shows people dying from the gas attacks but this also only shows people blind and not being chocked. Because the painter was a professional before war he was probably sent there for a reason so this sources reliability must be questioned. Also there is only one other source that it links with ands that is an official photograph so the reliability is doubted again.

Source C2 is a source written by G. Coppard which was published in a book called 'With a machine gun to cambrai' in 1969. This source was written whilst this man was on leave from the front line and he is commenting on the conditions that the soldiers faced in the trenches. The book was published in 1960 so there is a strong chance that the writer would have forgotten some of the information that happened during his time on leave and at the trenches. Source A5 heavily supports this source because basically it is talking about the same thing. It comments on how soldiers found lice in between their clothes and the ways in which they killed them. These same ways are mentioned in C2. There is no mention of lice in Section B probably because the official accounts were told to hide all the rats and lice that swarmed around the trenches.

I have used the following source because it is a very similar source to one that I commented on in section B. Source C4 is showing a picture

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3577
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History