Trench warfare

mortals by God. The monotonous sound of raindrops thunder down on the helmets of the soldiers and echo like bullets. The thick floor of mud squelches beneath my feet as I struggle to march on. The repulsive stench follows me along the corridors of the trench; it overpowers my mind and causes the young recruits to spew endlessly, adding to the vile concoction of blood and sweat that my dead comrade’s lie immersed in. The deafening explosions of mortar over No Man's Land pierce my ears and dirt…

declared a state of emergency because of the North Korean guerrilla attacks. We got a command to hide ourselves around the area that the North Korean soldiers might pass. I and my co-soldier dug a trench to hide in a forest; our mission was spending five nights in the trench and watching the vicinity of trench. At the first two nights,…

The motive of many movies and poems is to entertain and educate. Over the years of endless English classes, we learn that entertainment is not always funny and education is not always facts and dates. By watching movies, the watcher gets to have a better understanding of how a situation actually went, rather than reading bullet points of facts on a PowerPoint slide. Poems give the reader visuals by having comparisons and detailed adjectives. A main event that is frequently brought up and taught…

written account by Hulse to an account recorded publicly in the newspaper presents the differences and similarities between the two. Hulse’s description of how the Christmas Truce of 1914 began involves four Germans leaving their trench and coming towards the British trench on Christmas morning. The Times also reported on the events of the Christmas Truce of 1914 but their account of how the event began differs from Hulse’s account. The Times article “Letters From the Front – Christmas Truce –…

Over the last century, since it happened on the 1st July 1916, the Battle of the Somme has been viewed and qualified as one of the most significant battles in history. It was the first major offensive of the war against the main enemy, the Germans, in which British troops played the leading part. Many different historians in different times have almost opposite opinions/facts about what happened. However, they all agree on one thing: it’s significance. Whether it was due to failures, successes,…

Journey’s End is set in 1918 in France when the German army was preparing a massive attack against the allies once again and is also set in the British Trenches in the days before the Battle of Saint-Quentin during the First World War – It is against this threatening backdrop that the play opens. The play is based on Sherriff’s real-world war experience – R.C. Sherriff was an officer in the East Surrey Regiment and was wounded in the battle of Passchendaele in 1917. Journey’s End only takes…

All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque, and the poem “Fulfillment”, by Robert Nichols, both convey the theme of horrors of war. They also share the literary device of imagery. The theme horrors of war informs the reader of the unromanticized effects and reality of the war. Both texts have heavy imagery that helps develop the scene for the reader. All Quiet on the Western Front is a book that follows soldiers through their battles, and “Fulfillment” is a poem that deals with a…

everything it could reach. My clothes hung limply off my body, dripping with the water that was flowing from the grey stained sky. The mud that was once hard turned into slush in seconds and splashed everything as I attempted to navigate my way through the trench only using the few metres that I could see in front of me. The sounds of battle cries pierced through the fog, along with the explosions of guns firing bullets…

Under Fire: The Story of a Squad was released by Henri Barbusse in December of 1916, still during the heat of World War I. The novel is written based off of Barbusse's own notes that wrote while in the trenches. It is one of the rare books about the war that released during the war and that painted the life of a soldier in such a realistic and brutal manner. The book is an important piece of war literature because it covers not only the intense scenes of fighting, but also the more mundane, but…

The last few days of my life have been something new to me. I truly know now what I’ve been taking for granted. The war isn’t the great adventure it seemed to be at first. In the past battle at Vimy, I’ve witnessed the death of thousands of young men just like me. During the nights of the battle, the constant deafening noises of the enemy shells, bombs, and explosives made gave me nightmares. The trenches would be infested by rats and maggots who would swarm the dead bodies. This would frighten…