Private Peaceful A fine time! “My dear Son, I hope this letter finds you in good health…You can imagine our surprise and joy when I answered a knock on the door less than a week later to find your brother Charlie standing in the porch. He looks thinner than I remember him and much older too…He says that in spite of everything we read in the papers here you have been having a fine time together over in Belgium… Your loving mother.” …“So that’s what we’re having, is it?” said Pete suddenly and angrily. “A fine time. Why does he tell them that? Why doesn’t he say what it’s really like out here, what a hopeless bloody mess it all is, how there’s good men, thousands of them, dying for nothing – for nothing!” (Private Peaceful, Nearly Four O’Clock) Charlie wants to keep the two parts of his life separate – home is home, and war is war. He protects his mother from the realities he and Tommo are facing each day. Based on the descriptions of Tommo and Charlie’s time in the trenches in the book Private Peaceful, and from research about WW1, write a diary entry from Tommo written in the dugout. What was life in the trenches really like?
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Private Peaceful
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Private Peaceful Horrible-bleeding-Hanley Pete greeted me in the tent with a scowl. “You won’t be so ruddy happy, Tommo, when you hear what I’ve got to tell you.” “What?” I asked. “Our new sergeant. It’s only Horrible-bleeding-Hanley from Etaples.” …“Every one of us hated him like poison, a great deal more than we had ever hated Fritz.” (Private Peaceful, Twenty-five past Three) ...“Those were the darkest days we had ever lived through. Sergeant Hanley had done what all the bloody attrition in the trenches had never done. He had taken away our spirit, and drained the last of our strength, destroyed our hope.” (Private Peaceful, Nearly Four O’Clock) During WW1 there were sergeants like Hanley who, convinced of success, did not hesitate to send troops onto the frontline, despite growing losses. Boosting morale was not a part of their drill. It was Charlie who fulfilled that role and gave the other soldiers hope. Singing was one of the ways he did this. Can you write a rhyme for the soldiers that they can sing or chant to help boost their morale? .
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Private Peaceful
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Private Peaceful Your country needs you! ‘As I came round the corner I saw them. Behind the band there must have been a couple of dozen soldiers, splendid in their scarlet uniforms. They marched past me, arms swinging in perfect time, buttons and boots shining, the sun glinting on their bayonets. They were singing along with the band: It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go.’ (Private Peaceful, Twenty-Eight Minutes Past One) ‘“...Do you want the Hun here? Do you? ...Your king needs you. Your country needs you. And all the brave lads out in France need you too…And remember one thing, lads – and I can vouch for this – all the girls love a soldier.”’ (Private Peaceful, Twenty-Eight Minutes Past One) Propaganda is something that is used to promote a cause or political point of view. It was used in WW1 to recruit men and young lads to join the army. Sergeant majors, like the one Tommo met at the market that day, would promote British strength and determination, and tell tales of fictitious atrocities to promote a hatred for the enemy. Recruitment techniques included posters (like the one below), door-to-door visits, public shaming, songs and poems. At the beginning of the war, leaflets were widely used.
Can you design a leaflet or poster for Tommo to take home and show Charlie, Molly, Big Joe and Mother?
Private Peaceful Design your leaflet or poster below:
Private Peaceful “That’s not a foot, Tommo. That’s my ticket home.” “When World War One was declared there were street celebrations in most of Europe’s capital cities. No-one even envisaged trench warfare in August 1914 let alone the appalling casualties that occurred over 4 years of fighting.” (The History Learning Site) Exact numbers are not known, but it is estimated that between 8 and 9 million British men were sent to serve in World War One. Of those around 900,000 British soldiers were killed and between 2 and 3 million wounded. In the British Army wounds that resulted in a soldier being sent home to a hospital in England were termed ‘Blighty’ injuries. Strange as it sounds, the horrors of war meant that this was something some soldiers hoped for. However if there was suspicion that injuries were self-inflicted, the ultimate punishment was death by the firing squad. ‘“…So they heard it all from Sergeant Hanley, and they swallowed everything he told them, like it was gospel truth. I think there’s a big push coming, and they wanted to make an example of someone, Tommo. And I was the Charlie.” He laughed at that. “A right Charlie. Then of course there was my record as a troublemaker, ‘a mutinous troublemaker’ Hanley called me. Remember Etaples? Had up on a charge of gross insubordination? Field Punishment Number One? It was all there on my record. So was my foot.” “Your foot?” “That time I was shot in the foot. All foot wounds are suspicious, they said. It could have been self-inflicted – it goes on all the time, they said. I could have done it myself just to get myself out of the trenches and back to Blighty.” “But it wasn’t like that,” I say. “Course it wasn’t. They believed what they wanted to believe.”’ (Private Peaceful, Five To Five) What do you want to believe? Consider Charlie the Solider and older brother to Tommo, and then consider Charlie the father of a newly born baby son. Write two persuasive arguments. 1. Why Charlie would not have inflicted an injury to his own foot.
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Private Peaceful
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2. Why Charlie would have inflicted an injury to his own foot.
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