TRENCH WARFARE EXERCISE D
SOURCE A
Total casualties in World War I:
Killed Wounded
Russia (incomplete) 3,000,000 5,000,000
France (incomplete) 1,385,000 4,200,000
British Empire 947,023 2,313,558
United States 115,660 1,300,000
Italy 460,000 4,247,143
Germany (incomplete) 1,808,545 3,620,000
Austria-Hungary 1,200,000 450,000
Turkey (very incomplete) 500,000
Total 9,500,000 21,000,000
SOURCE B
Dr Schlange, a German surgeon, commenting on shell fragments (quoted in Robert Weldon Whalen, Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War 1914 – 39, New York, 1984, Cornell University Press):
The power of these bits of iron is particularly violent. Even the smallest fragment rapidly penetrates the body and causes the most unpredictable damage; the larger fragments rapidly penetrate the body and cause frightful destruction of bone and tissue. Healing these irregular, jagged wounds is complicated by the fact that they are frequently dirty … even more by the fact that most are penetration wounds, which means that a large area of the wound is deprived of blood and hence subject to gangrene. This gangrenous condition in turn indicates substantial wound discharge, infection, bleeding and putrefaction.
SOURCE C
Letter from Lieutenant Alec Raws to a friend, August 4th 1916, quoted in Margaret Young and Bill Gammage, Hail and Farewell (Kenthurst NSW, 1995, Kangaroo Press):
My battalion has been at it for eight days, one third of it is left – all shattered at that. And they’re sticking it still, incomparable heroes, all. We are lousy, stinking ragged, unshaven, sleepless. Even when we’re back a bit we can’t sleep for our guns. I have one puttee, a dead man’s helmet, another dead man’s gas protector, a dead man’s bayonet. My tunic is rotten with other men’s blood, and partly splattered with a comrade’s brains … Several of my friends are raving mad. I met three officers out in No Man’s Land the other night, all rambling and mad. Poor Devils.
The wrecked villages … are utterly destroyed, so that there are not even skeletons of buildings left – nothing but a charred mass of debris, with bricks, stones and girders and bodies pounded to nothing. And forests! There are not even tree trunks left – not a leaf or a twig. All is buried and churned up again and buried again.
The sad part is that one can see no end to this. If we live tonight we have to go through tomorrow night – and next week – and next month.
SOURCE D
Extract from John Laffin, The Western Front Illustrated: 1914-1918 (Australia, 1991, Kangaroo Press):
During 1915, first the French and then the British discovered that No Man’s Land concealed another menace – German troops using Flamenwerfers, or flame-throwers. At Hooge in Ypres, the British troops first subjected to these weapons spoke of “liquid fire”, and this is what the great and terrifying gouts of flame must have looked like.
The Germans used three types of flame-thrower- the Grossflammenwerfer, the Klein, and, in 1917, the Wex, a lightweight apparatus. All used an oil mixture which burned for several minutes when it settled on a target. They were frightening weapons and the Germans made 653 attacks with them. Soldiers using them from No Man’s Land had a short life expectancy since scores of rifles and light machine-guns were fired at them.
[Note: Grossflammenwerfer translates as ‘large flame-thrower, Klein means ‘small’, and Wex is short for Wechselapparat, which means ‘replacement apparatus’]
QUESTIONS:
1. Use Sources B and C and your own knowledge to explain the high rate of casualties in trench warfare on the Western Front.
2. How useful would Sources B and D be for a historian studying the physical and psychological impact on soldiers fighting in the trenches on the Western Front? In your answer, consider the perspectives provided by the two sources and the reliability of each.
3. How useful would Sources B and C be for a historian studying the large number of deaths and casualties among officers and infantry on the Western Front? In your answer, consider the perspectives provided by the two sources and the reliability of each.