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Men At War - Coggle Diagram
Men At War
Daily duties included cleaning their weapons for inspection, refilling sandbags, fixing barbed wire and repairing collapsed trench walls after bad weather.
Emptying the latrines (trench toilets) was a very smelly and dirty job and everyone tried to avoid getting that duty. In the wintertime, trenches were freezing cold and often flooded with water after rainfall.
'Trench foot' was a condition that many soldiers suffered from as a result of standing in water and mud for a long time. In serious cases, soldiers had to have their feet amputated (cut off).
At the start of the war, soldiers were given a generous ration of meat and vegetables each day. Parcels from home often contained treats like chocolate, sweet biscuits and tins of sardines.
As war went on, food became more limited and unpleasant. Soldiers survived on stale bread, hard and tasteless biscuits, pea soup and watery stew. Food was never hot and men often felt hungry.
Soldiers were given free time in the afternoon to rest, pick lice out of clothing and write letters home. If they were lucky, some even got to play cards to relax.
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5am 'Stand-to' (short for 'Stand-to-Arms', meaning to be on high-alert for enemy attack) half an hour before daylight
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After 8am Clean selves and weapons, tidy trench
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6.30pm onwards Work all night with some time for rest (patrols, digging trenches, putting up barbed wire, getting stores)
In a trench, it smelled bad.bed stroms would flood the trenches making them boggy, muddy, and could even block weapons and make it hard to move in battle.
Sustained exposure to the wet, muddy conditions could cause Trench Foot, which sometimes would result in the foot being amputated. Cold weather was dangerous too, and soldiers often lost fingers or toes to frostbite.
in a trench, the food was bully beef (caned corned beef) and bread and bread and biscuits. then as flower ran out ( 1916) they had to eat bread made of turnip chunks. The main food was now a pea-soup with a few lumps of horsemeat.
Trenches were long, narrow ditches dug into the ground where soldiers lived. The toilets overflowed.
Being on watch duty was a very important job as you needed to be alert for any sign of attack.
Sleeping at the post was a very serious crime and a soldier faced being sentenced to death or imprisonment if they were caught.
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Writing and receiving letters became a lifeline for many soldiers. They looked forward to hearing news from their loved ones at home whilst they served their country on the front line.
Many soldiers also kept diaries and journals which helped them to record their experiences and feelings about war.
Soldiers worked during the night and used the cover of darkness to observe enemy trenches. The only time they were able to sleep was in the daytime, but only after morning duties.