World war 1

1. World war 1 By Cathal Brogan and Mark Byrne

2. TRENCHES The trenches were built for cover in the land that was all mud. The trenches were a horrible place to live. Rats lived in the trenches and sometimes brought disease. If it rained the mud would go up to your knees. 20 million people died in the war. It was horrible .If someone wanted to leave they would be shot.

3. The Commanders • Arthur Edward Aitken General Duke Albrecht General Sir Edwin Alderson General Mikhail Alexeev Commander-in-Chief Sir Edmund Allenby Commander-in-Chief, Palestine Duke Aosta General Francois Anthoine General Edward Ashmore London Air Defence Commander Moritz von Auffenberg-Komarow General Alexandru Averescu Commander Gustav Bachmann Chief of Admiralty Staff Sir Reginald Bacon Commander, Dover Patrol Prince Louis of Battenberg First Sea Lord Max Bauer Artillery Commander Sir David Beatty Commander-in-Chief, Grand Fleet Fritz von Below General Otto von Below General William Shepherd Benson Chief of Naval Operations Henri Berthelot Chief of Staff Hans von Beseler Military Governor, Poland Edward Bingham Naval Commander Sir Noel Birch Chief Naval Adviser Sir William Birdwood General Tasker Bliss Chief of Staff

4. Disease • Diseases was a big killer in World War 1 because of the little medicine and medical knowledge. The Anzacs would have experienced many diseases such as influenza, typhoid, trench foot and trench fever.Trench foot is a disease which makes your foot turn blue or red and makes your foot very numb. It often involves blisters and open sores which allows fungal infections to enter. If the foot is untreated it can result into gangrene. Trench foot is caused by exposure to damp and wet conditions. In this case it was the soldiers walking bare foot in the wet trenches. This was bad for the soldiers because it delayed the time in which they could fight. Trench fever was a serious disease. It resulted in high fever, severe head aches and serious pains in the legs and back. It takes about 5 days for the disease to start taking affect. Recovery takes about a month or two. It was transmitted by body lice. This disease was bad, because of the time that it took to recover. In rare cases people could die from this disease.They would have got this disease from bad hygiene and filthy flies.

5. Christmas day • The Christmas truce was a series of widespread, unofficial ceasefires that took place along the Western Front around Christmas 1914, during World War I. Through the week leading up to Christmas, parties of German and British soldiers began to exchange seasonal greetings and songs between their trenches; on occasion, the tension was reduced to the point that individuals would walk across to talk to their opposite numbers bearing gifts. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, many soldiers from both sides—as well as, to a lesser degree, from French units—independently ventured into "no man's land", where they mingled, exchanging food and souvenirs. As well as joint burial ceremonies, several meetings ended in carol-singing. Troops from both sides were also friendly enough to play games of football with one another.[1] • The truce is often seen as a symbolic moment of peace and humanity amidst one of the most violent events of modern history. It was not ubiquitous; in some regions of the front, fighting continued throughout the day, while in others, little more than an arrangement to recover bodies was made. The following year, a few units again arranged ceasefires with their opponents over Christmas, but the truces were not nearly as widespread as in 1914; this was, in part, due to strongly worded orders from the high commands of both sides prohibiting such fraternization. In 1916, after the unprecedentedly bloody battles of the Somme and Verdun, and the beginning of widespread poison gas use, soldiers on both sides increasingly viewed the other side as less than human, and no more Christmas truces were sought

6. In the END • At 11 o'clock in the morning of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the First World War--known at the time as the Great War--comes to an end. • By the end of autumn 1918, the alliance of the Central Powers was unraveling in its war effort against the better supplied and coordinated Allied powers. Facing exhausted resources on the battlefield, turmoil on the home front and the surrender of its weaker allies, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice with the Allies in the early days of November 1918. On November 7, the German chancellor, Prince Max von Baden, sent delegates to Compiegne, France, to negotiate the agreement; it was signed at 5:10 a.m. on the morning of November 11. • Ferdinand Foch, commander in chief of all Allied forces on the Western Front, sent a message by telegraph to all his commanders: "Hostilities will cease on the entire front November 11 at 11 a.m. French time." The commanders ordered the fighting to continue throughout the morning of November 11, prompting later accusations that some men died needlessly in the last few hours of the war. As the historian John Buchan has written of that memorable morning: "Officers had their watches in their hands, and the troops waited with the same grave composure with which they had fought." As watch hands reached 11, "there came a second of expectant silence, and then a curious rippling sound, which observers far behind the front likened to the noise of a light wind. It was the sound of men cheering from the Vosges [mountains] to the sea.“

7. A Cathal and Mark project