Directions:
•As you read the documents, annotate/highlight the details that stand out to you and tell you about life for a solider during the war.
•Then write at least three journal entries or letters home as if you were a solider fighting in WWI (keep in mind that three means that you've done average work, so that would give you at max a C. To get a higher grade, go above and beyond.
–Each should be several months/years apart (NOT IN REAL LIFE OF COURSE).
–Write about your feelings of the war. Do they change over time? How/Why?
–Use specific details about what it is like living in the trenches or fighting in the war.
–Each letter/diary entry should be about a paragraph, typed and submitted to the WWI Blog.
•Be creative and realistic. You can be a solider from any nation you wish, challenge yourself by trying to think outside the box. Create a persona and a life story. You can be from any branch of the military, airmen, a medic, an infantryman, etc. It was not uncommon for soldiers to write poetry or draw in their journals.
•Then write at least three journal entries or letters home as if you were a solider fighting in WWI (keep in mind that three means that you've done average work, so that would give you at max a C. To get a higher grade, go above and beyond.
–Each should be several months/years apart (NOT IN REAL LIFE OF COURSE).
–Write about your feelings of the war. Do they change over time? How/Why?
–Use specific details about what it is like living in the trenches or fighting in the war.
–Each letter/diary entry should be about a paragraph, typed and submitted to the WWI Blog.
•Be creative and realistic. You can be a solider from any nation you wish, challenge yourself by trying to think outside the box. Create a persona and a life story. You can be from any branch of the military, airmen, a medic, an infantryman, etc. It was not uncommon for soldiers to write poetry or draw in their journals.
Dulce et Decorum est
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped shells that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
{“Dulce et Decorum est, pro patria mori”: Latin; "It is sweet and right to die for the homeland."}
War
by Woodbine Willy (alias for Revd. Geoffrey Kennedy)
There's a soul in the Eternal,
Standing stiff before the King.
There's a little English maiden
Sorrowing.
There's a proud and tearless woman,
Seeing pictures in the fire.
There's a broken battered body
On the wire.
Suicide in the Trenches
by Siegfried Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
Break of Day in the Trenches
by Issac Rosenberg
The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.
The websites below contain other poems written by soldiers during WWI. You can search online for "Trench Poetry" or "Poetry from WWI" if you would like to look for others.
http://voiceseducation.org/content/poetry-and-war-songs-trenches
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111ww1.html
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/FWW_index.html
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped shells that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
{“Dulce et Decorum est, pro patria mori”: Latin; "It is sweet and right to die for the homeland."}
War
by Woodbine Willy (alias for Revd. Geoffrey Kennedy)
There's a soul in the Eternal,
Standing stiff before the King.
There's a little English maiden
Sorrowing.
There's a proud and tearless woman,
Seeing pictures in the fire.
There's a broken battered body
On the wire.
Suicide in the Trenches
by Siegfried Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
Break of Day in the Trenches
by Issac Rosenberg
The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.
The websites below contain other poems written by soldiers during WWI. You can search online for "Trench Poetry" or "Poetry from WWI" if you would like to look for others.
http://voiceseducation.org/content/poetry-and-war-songs-trenches
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/
http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111ww1.html
http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/FWW_index.html