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Canada and the Great War

Canada and the Great War. The Canadian government wanted to encourage men to enlist for war. They said the war would be safe, hardly any fighting, a glorious adventure and over by Christmas. A picture of soldiers going ‘Over the Top’. The reality of ‘going over the top’ was very different!.

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Canada and the Great War

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  1. Canada and the Great War

  2. The Canadian government wanted to encourage men to enlist for war. • They said the war would be safe, hardly any fighting, a glorious adventure and over by Christmas A picture of soldiers going ‘Over the Top’

  3. The reality of ‘going over the top’ was very different!

  4. How the uniform and equipment changed after just three weeks in the trenches…

  5. Mud, dirt and the smell of death… No clean uniforms… Rats, lice and dead bodies… Constant gunfire and shelling…

  6. Mass Devastation

  7. Freezing Winters

  8. The soldiers had very little decent food, and what food they had was often attacked by rats. These rats were the size of small rabbits and badgers because they had fed on the decomposing bodies of dead soldiers.

  9. Trench Foot

  10. Gas was often a double-edged sword capable of blowing back to its point of origin.

  11. Example 1 • To get a “cushy” one is all the old hands think about. A bloke in the Camerons wanted a “cushy” bad! Fed up and far from home he was. He puts his finger over the top and gets his trigger finger taken off and tow more besides. “I’m off to bonny Scotland!” he says laughing. But on the way down to the dressing station, he forgets to stoop low where an old sniper is working. He gets it through his head” -Robert Graves

  12. Example 2 • “Private A, South Staffordshire Regiment was tried by FGCM on the following charges: “Misbehaving in such a manner as to show cowardice”. The accused, when proceeding with a part for work in the trenches, ran away owing to the bursting of a shell and did not rejoin the party. The sentence of the court was to suffer death by being shot”

  13. Example 3 • If you have never had trench foot described to you, I will explain. Your feet swell to two or three times their normal size and go completely dead. You can stick a boyonet into them and not feel a thing. If you are lucky enough not to loose your feet and the swelling starts to go down, it is then that the most indescribable agony begins. I have heard men cry and scream with pain and many have had to have their feet and legs amputated I was one of the lucky ones, but one more day in that trench and it may have been too late…

  14. Example 4 • “The water in the trenches through which we waded was alive with a multitude of swimming frogs. Red slugs crawled up the side of the trenches and starnge beetles with dangerous looking horns wriggled along dry ledges and invaded the dugouts, in search of the lice that infested them”

  15. Canadian Trench Battles • Pg 88-89 • Create chart, on Canada’s major trench battles: • 1. Ypres • 2. Somme • 3. Vimy Ridge • 4. Passchendaele For each fill in the following: Battle name, date, location, key events involving Canada.

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