10 Big Questions About World War 1

1914-1918

It is 100 years since Europe, and then the world, went to war.

Read on to find out 10 things you must know about this terrible global conflict From the makers of

WORLD WAR I

01 When are the most

02 How bad was life in the trenches?

important anniversaries?

F Dank and deathly – the front-line trenches offer little comfort to soldiers, as well as a near-constant threat of attack

L With fighting taking place across the globe, there are lots of anniversaries over the next four years. Here’s a selection of the most significant: E 28 June 1914: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand E 4 August 1914: Britain declares war on Germany E 25 December 1914: the Christmas truce E 25 April 1915: the Allied attack on Gallipoli begins E 31 May 1916: the great naval Battle of Jutland E 1 July 1916: 20,000 British troops are killed on the first day of the Somme offensive E 31 July 1917: the start of the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium E 20 November 1917: tanks make their first major impact on the war at the Battle of Cambrai in northern France E 3 March 1918: Russia leaves the war E 11 November 1918: the war ends as Germany signs the Armistice

L “The water in the trenches through which we waded was alive with a multitude of swimming frogs, red slugs crawled up the side of trenches and strange beetles… invaded the dugouts, in search of the lice that infested them.”

Frogs, slugs and beetles – not to mention the rats – couldn’t blow a man’s head off like a German shell, but they could make trench life pretty

unpleasant, as this report from an unnamed journalist makes clear.

Another challenge of life in the trenches was the stench – courtesy of rotting corpses, overflowing latrines, and men who hadn’t washed for days. Exhausted soldiers snatched sleep whenever they could and had to endure a diet of bully (corned) beef and teeth-breaking biscuits.

But the biggest challenge facing soldiers in the trenches was fear of death. In busy areas, trenches were continuously targeted by shells and enemy snipers. Novices had the habit of sticking their heads above the parapets – the last mistake that all-too many would ever make.

03 Why did

GEtty / Cover: Getty, thinkstock

America enter the war?

L On 6 April 1917, politicians across the Allied nations celebrated the news that many despaired of ever hearing: the United States had declared war on Germany.

When war broke out in August 1914, America had been quick to declare its neutrality, stating that it had no wish to become embroiled in what it regarded as a European squabble.

Yet over the following three years, a series of provocations slowly but surely nudged the American people towards the Allied camp.

First there was the news of German atrocities in Belgium in 1914, then the German sinking of the liner RMS 2

HISTORY REVEALED

G RMS Lusitania is torpedoed by the Germans off the coast of Ireland, killing many of the Americans on board

Lusitania (killing many Americans) in 1915. Yet perhaps most significant of all was the German decision to resume all-out submarine warfare on commercial

shipping heading to Britain, which would inevitably include American vessels.

This outraged America and, when the US government got wind of German plans to

strike up an alliance with America’s long-term rival, Mexico, the die was cast.

American president Woodrow Wilson felt he had no choice but to declare war.

WORLD WAR I

04 Did tanks

change the course of the war?

L To say that tanks were the difference between defeat and victory would be an overstatetment. However, they did play a significant role in Allied successes on the Western Front in the final two years of the conflict.

Both sides were desperate to develop an armoured fighting vehicle that could smash through enemy trenches. But it was the British led the way, unveiling ‘Little Willie’, the first completed prototype of a tank, on 8 September 1915.

Almost a year later, the vehicles saw action for the first time, when 36 British Mark I tanks went into battle

G A fleet of tanks, ready for action, behind the British front line in France, 1918

at Fiers-Courcelette on the Somme. They were slow and prone to breaking down, but a third broke through enemy lines bewildering the illprepared German defenders.

By the Battle of Hamel in July 1918 – where, used in conjunction with artillery, planes and infantry, they helped secure victory in just 93 minutes – tanks had

05 What did Adolf Hitler do in the war?

L The man who led Germany into World War II almost died in the first.

On the outbreak of war in 1914, Hitler, who had been living as an artist in Munich, signed up with the Bavarian army. He spent the next four years as a dispatch runner, delivering messages

between units on the Western Front.

Hitler spent much of his time behind the front lines, but that’s not to say he didn’t have his brushes with danger. He narrowly avoided death when a shell exploded next to him in a trench in October 1916 – he

spent two months in hospital with shrapnel wounds to the leg – and was awarded an Iron Cross for bravery after helping retrieve a stricken officer from no man’s land.

In October 1918, Hitler found himself back in hospital after being temporarily blinded by a British gas attack. It was while in recuperation that he learned Germany had lost the war. His bitterness at the news was among the reasons that he propelled Europe back into conflict in 1939.

F Barely recognisable, Hitler poses for the camera with his fellow soldiers during World War I

become an indispensable part of the Allies’ armoury. They would return to the battlefield with even more devastating effect as the Nazis swept across Europe 20 years later.

06 Who won the

Christmas Day truce football match?

L The Christmas Day truce of 1914 – when, for a few precious hours, British and German troops laid down their weapons and fraternised in no man’s land – is one of the most poignant events of the entire war.

We know that, at various points up and down the Western Front, the combatants emerged from their trenches and sang carols together, shared wine and cigarettes, and even donned fancy dress. And we’re also told that they took each other on at a game of football, which the Germans are said to have won 3-2.

The fact of the matter is that evidence for this friendly match is scant. While we know there were men that did play football that day, the players may well have been entirely British.

Either way, the military authorities took a dim view of the festive amnesty, and the two sides would return to killing each other within a matter of hours.

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WORLD WAR I

07 When was the first two

08 Why do we wear

minutes’ silence?

F Sombre commemorations take place at Piccadilly Circus, London, on the first anniversary of the Armistice

L On 4 November 1919, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, former British High Commissioner to South Africa, wrote to the war cabinet: “the hearts of our people… desire to find some lasting expression of their feeling for those who gave their lives in the war”.

Sir Percy suggested that expression could be made through a

regular “three minutes’ pause”. The war cabinet agreed and so, with King George V’s approval, set about planning a service of silence (though for two minutes instead of three) on 11 November 1919, the first anniversary of the Armistice.

When the clock struck 11 on the first Remembrance Day, Britain came to a standstill. Trams stopped running, workers put down their tools, emptied into the streets and bowed their heads.

As the Manchester Guardian reported the following day: “It was a silence which was almost pain… and the spirit of memory brooded over it.”

red poppies on Remembrance Day?

L The story begins with the death of a young soldier, Alexis Helmer, at the second Battle of Ypres in 1915. Helmer’s demise inspired his friend Lieutenant John McCrae to pen the poem In Flanders Fields, which references the red poppies that blanketed the fields.

McCrae’s poem struck a chord with people across the combatant nations. It certainly had an impact on American Professor Moina Michael. So moved was she by the lines “In Flanders fields the poppies blow… between the crosses, row on row” that she soon launched a one-woman campaign to have the poppy adopted as the official symbol of remembrance.

The campaign was hugely successful for, by the early twenties, poppies were being worn in France, America and – thanks to the support of Field Marshal Haig, co-founder of the Royal British Legion – much of the British Empire.

Today, the Royal British Legion produces over 40 million poppies a year.

09 Why was

Getty

Harry Patch dubbed ‘The Last Fighting Tommy’?

L When Henry John ‘Harry’ Patch died in July 2009 at the grand old age of 111, the horrors of trench warfare on the Western Front finally passed from living memory.

Somerset-born Patch was 18 when he was conscripted into the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, serving as an assistant gunner. Soon after arriving at the Western Front, he was injured by a shell at the Battle of Passchendaele, 1917, and was sent home for medical treatment. He was still convalescing when the Armistice was declared.

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HISTORY REVEALED

G Photographed in 2007 at the age of 109, Harry Patch was one of the last surviving British soldiers who saw action in WWI

He disappeared into obscurity until 1998, when he spoke to the BBC about his war experiences. Patch then became a bit of a celebrity,

publishing an autobiography The Last Fighting Tommy, meeting a German veteran and speaking with great poignancy about the trenches.

On the death of Henry Allingham on 18 July 2009, Patch became the last British trench survivor. Patch was to pass away seven days later.

WORLD WAR I

10 When were

wreaths first laid at the Cenotaph?

L The Cenotaph has been the centrepiece of services to remember the fallen since 1919.

It was, at first, a wood-and-plaster structure designed by the architect Sir Edwin Luytens for the London Victory Parade of 19 July 1919.

This was pulled down soon after. Yet such was the public demand for a war memorial that Prime Minister Lloyd George decided to replace it with something more permanent, and again commissioned Luytens to come up with a design.

King George V unveiled Luytens’ iconic Portland stone structure of an empty tomb – which is inscribed with the words ‘The Glorious Dead’, two wreaths and the dates of World War I – in London’s Whitehall on 11 November 1919. The Cenotaph has been the site of the annual National Service of Remembrance ever since.

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Indian soldiers salute the original, temporary Cenotaph as they march past during the victory parade held in London, July 1919

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