Theme Of Death In The Trenches

Soldiers did not die only from warfare casualties,especially the war atmosphere in the trenches brought health issues and diseases which caused most of the death during WW1.Some of this diseases were caused because of weather change , lack of hygiene and the filthy environment.Many of this diseases were insignificant colds but others were deadly as Shell Shock or Trench Foot.

Narrowly escaping death or seeing their comrades’ die has an everlasting effect on soldiers. Soldiers have to live with the constant fear of dying and anxiety. “They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak.” (O’Brien 14)

“It was dirty that’s for sure. The rats ate at your toes and the smell was horrible.”

The majority of fighting on the Western front during World War one was fought in trenches. These were long, deep ditch like structures where soldiers would live, fight and most likely die. The two armies would be stationed on parallel trenches where they would face each other in a long battle of attrition, there would be many different lines of trenches where armies would retreat to or advance to a captured trench. In between The two armies trenches would be no mans-land where the fighting happened.

There are many ways of thinking of military snipers. They can be compared to predators in the wild, a skillful killing machine that kills out of necessity and has the respect of their companions. Snipers can also be thought of as prey. They are given a challenging task that requires skill to elude the enemy and often preys upon their mental toughness. In Boyden’s book Three Day Road the author uses many passages to compare the role of a sniper to the role of both predator and prey in the wilderness. These comparisons help the reader relate to the experiences of two indigenous boyhood friends, Elijah and Xavier as snipers in World War 1. Instead of shooting caribou back home in Canada as boys, they are now shooting German soldiers in the trenches

Trench war is a type of land battle, in which opposing forces attack- counterattack and defend from permanent systems of trenches, troops are protected from the enemy`s arms fire and are sheltered from artillery inside the trenches dug into the ground.

The First World War was a global war centred in Europe that lasted 4 years. More than 9 million soldiers and 7 million civilians died as a result of the war, a casualty rate aggravated by the technological and industrial sophistication of the nations at war. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history. Trenches and life within them have become a lasting topic since World War One. Throughout the war, millions of soldiers experienced and endured the horrors of trench warfare.

Kenneth Slessor’s poem, Beach Burial, outlines soldiers being rolled up on to the beaches from the surf, unidentified, each being buried as an unknown seaman, irrespective of which side they were on. Slessor’s elegy for the dead soldier’s in World War Two illustrates a main message, the idea of hope and despair. Hope is that there is an afterlife and futility is what they have in common. It is the belief that once we die there is something after, something more, life does not just end. The last line of the poem, “Enlisted on the other front” suggests there is another line on the other side, an afterlife theory. The soldiers at war grasp onto any sort of hope they can, as their mortality is foreseeable. Inversely, there is a sense of complete absence and loss of hope, despair. Despair is the horrible nature of war and the wasteful nature of it, its complete uselessness. Slessor constantly refers to the idea of despair throughout the poem, “Whether as enemies they fought” and “Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfall” are both examples of the concept of despair. Just as their

The trenches were quite a terrifying place to be, the conditions were immense, unhygienic and brutal. The trenches were a key defence strategy implemented by the British and the Germans. For 4 years in the First World War the two sides inflicted onslaught upon each other ruthlessly on an industrial scale. The trenches were demoralising, horrifying and left strong men traumatized. Many men suffered and had to stand the strain of many unbearable illnesses both physical and mental; trench foot, trench fever, paranoia, pneumonia etc. There was “shell-shock” a term given to men who lost their wits. Some men got severe depression and also some soldiers got so fed up of life in the trenches which

Chapter one, Dying, explained the process of an individual soldier’s death and “the concept of the Good Death.” Following, the second Chapter, Killing, talks about the force of the war on the people who were involved and the how “killing was a battle’s fundamental instrument and purpose.” In Chapters three and four, Burying and Naming, the challenges of establishing names of the dead and giving them an adequate burial is debated. The question, “What should be done with the body,”

The putrefied smell of death hung over the battlefield. The soldiers in the front line dropped dead one after the other like trees being uprooted in a tornado. Men were “guttering”, “choking” and “drowning”, as molten red blood spurted from their wounds. The ground carpeted with rotting bodies and a vile smell arose which the horror of combat couldn’t mask. The explosions, bullets and the dying were screaming and it rang throughout the battlefield. War was unsympathetic and brutal, which caused the savagery deaths of hundreds of soldiers.

This past couple months have been a very hard time for me. I can’t say it enough about how much I miss the United States. Living in the trenches have been one of the most hardest time in my life. Seeing all the dead bodies and see and the helpless has made me think about how lucky I am to be alive and writing this letter to you. A lot of my friends that I was talking to this morning have been killed or wounded. I can no longer see them and talk with them. It is a shame for all the people I know who have sadly gotten killed. These people stood up and fought for their country.

The Western Front in World War One was a bleak place for soldiers. Men died from bullets, shrapnel, concussive blasts, gas, disease, dehydration, trench foot, and exposure. The life expectancy in the trenches was only six weeks (War History Online). In “Break Day in the Trenches”, Isaac Rosenberg documents the feelings of a sentry at dawn. The sentry watches the sun begin to rise and plucks a poppy to put behind his ear. He watches a rat and internally converses with it, before coming under attack by an artillery barrage. In “Break Day in the Trenches”, Isaac Rosenberg uses symbols of poppies and rats to support an implicit claim that death is always nearby on the front lines.

Death is inevitable in every person’s life, but death in these character’s lives is easily predicted to be early, and this represents the sadness and sorrows in the innocence of war. There are many ways to die, and war is the saddest way for that to occur, but at the same time,

Bear witness to the fatal carnage of war. United States soldiers have dedicated their lives to a cause. They live the life of a soldier, which means they are trained to fight, kill, and survive. Many have witnessed things that most civilians can only imagine: savage acts committed against them and their comrades, the annihilation of cities and people, the savage raping of women and children, and pulling the trigger and knowing what it feels like to take a life. Civilians cannot imagine reliving these experiences over and over in their mind, never knowing when a flashback could hit. Soldiers’ bodies and brains react as though they are actually experiencing these events again. It could be at their child’s birthday party, while taking a walk