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Line of Fire (www.lineoffirebook.com)
Resources for Teachers of Key Stage 3
Here are teaching resources offering ideas and suggestions for discussion, activity and further reading, which aim to enhance students’ experience of Line of Fire and the inspiration this book can bring to their learning, understanding and creativity. The resources are cross-‐curricular, and can be used, in conjunction with the Line of Fire website, to support students’ work with KS3 National Curriculum subjects, including English, Art, and History. As Michael Morpurgo says in the introduction to Line of Fire, this is a remarkable book which speaks directly to us – yet at the same time there is the mystery that we do not know who wrote it, or how it came to be in the Paris skip where it was found nearly a hundred years later. Website contents include:
-‐ What we know about our soldier -‐ World War 1 from a French perspective -‐ Timeline of key dates and locations in our soldier’s diary -‐ Life as a ‘Poilu’, including details of kit and equipment; Glossary of military terms -‐ Line of Fire’s best kept secrets, as revealed to the book’s translator -‐ Links to where you can find out more about WWI history and reading recommendations
The discussion topics and activities in this pack can be used to support and inspire students’ work towards a range of National Curriculum aims, including the following: ENGLISH
-‐ Developing the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information -‐ Writing clearly, accurately and coherently, adapting language and style in and for a range of contexts,
purposes and audiences -‐ Using discussion in order to learn; being able to elaborate and explain clearly one’s understanding and
ideas -‐ Being competent in the arts of speaking and listening, making formal presentations, demonstrating to
others and participating in debate. HISTORY
• Gaining historical perspective by placing one’s growing knowledge into different contexts, understanding the connections between local, regional, national and international history; between cultural, economic, military, political, religious and social history; and between short and long-‐term timescales.
ART
• Developing creativity and ideas, and increasing proficiency in their execution; developing a critical understanding of artists, architects and designers, expressing reasoned judgements that can inform one’s own work.
Before reading, set the scene briefly for your students. Explain:
• how this World War 1 diary came to be found • we don’t know how it got there, or who the soldier is who wrote it – just that he is an
infantryman with a wife and family, and has been a soldier before • at the start of the diary it’s the very beginning of the war: Germany has invaded
Belgium and France and war has been declared; our soldier has already been mobilised and is en route to fight for his country, leaving his family and not knowing what may happen to them
• the diary covers most of August and part of September 1914: the first summer of the war. A sixth of the French infantry who died in the whole war were killed in these first 2 months – and the horrors and gruelling stalemate of trench warfare set in.
Let students experience the book as a whole – reading it all the way through, and with time to reflect on it and think about their response to it.
Discussion Get everyone to share their first responses to this book. This could be with the whole class – or students could discuss in small groups, and then share key feelings and questions with everyone. Ask lots of open questions to get people talking.
• How does this book make you feel? • Which bits do you remember most? • Did you skip any parts? Which ones? • Was there anything that took you by surprise? • Were there any bits you didn’t make sense of? • What was the thing you most liked finding out from the book? • What kind of a book did you think it was going to be? • If you gave up on this book can you say why? • What would you say about this book if you were telling someone what you’ve just
read?
Through discussion people’s ideas will change and develop, and of course there will be questions, things that students want to find out more about. The Line of Fire website gives much useful information, and the following activities and discussion ideas will also help to fill in the picture.
Watch this video of Barroux creating scenes from the diary: http://vimeo.com/75281034
-‐ and also the interview with Barroux about the creation of this book via: http://www.lineoffirebook.com/barroux/
Look at how Barroux draws the soldier, particularly the face and nose (beak). In most of Barroux’s drawings he usually rubs out the line for the nose, after the initial drawing, so that the nose appears to be seamlessly integrated into the soldier’s face. But for Line of Fire he chose to keep the ‘seam’ because it reminded him of the horrific war wounds suffered, and how the First World War was responsible for introducing reconstruction surgery which led to the development of cosmetic surgery.
The pictures are drawn in black, on a sepia background. What effect does this have for you?
Activity
• Redraw a scene from the book
• Draw a picture showing how the soldier or the book makes you feel
• Choose a picture from the book which speaks to you, and do a creative writing response to this picture – eg. a description of your thoughts and feelings about the picture; a dialogue with our soldier; a poem.
At the start of World War 1 ‘Newspapers arrive from Paris announcing that the bad news is official. War has been declared.’
Activity How else can you tell from the diary that these are the early days of the war? Collect on a flip chart all the things our soldier describes – including, for example, people’s hopes and fears as they cheer on the troops and offer food, wine and shelter; villages being abandoned; crops still growing in the fields.
Discussion ‘…our sense of duty makes us hold our heads high and soon we’ve joined the ranks, ready for the off.’ Talk about the responsibilities our soldier is feeling – to protect and fight for the safety of his family and his invaded country.
‘We’ll get them!’ The French title for Line of Fire is On Les Aura! which means roughly ‘We’ll get them!’ This is what soldiers in the early days of war wrote on the train carriages in chalk, when they all thought the war would be over by Christmas.
Discussion What do students think about ‘We’ll get them!’ as a possible alternative title?
Consider
• Any effects of 100 years of hindsight on the significance of these words • Connotations associated with possibly glorifying war and bloodshed – eg. the
controversial Sun headline ‘Gotcha!’ after the sinking of 900 Argentine soldiers in the Belgrano during the Falklands war
A soldier’s life
Activity & discussion Our soldier is an infantryman and on the website, in the section ‘Our soldier and WW1’, you can find out more about French soldiers -‐ their uniforms, equipment, rations, ammunition. The French World War 1 infantrymen were known informally as les poilus – ‘the hairy ones’, because of their beards and moustaches; they came from all backgrounds, but often a rustic, agricultural one. We know our soldier has already served in the army – note down some of the references he gives about this previous experience. Was this a recent experience, do you think? What does the diary tell us about life for soldiers – and about warfare of the day? The long marches, the advances, retreats, digging trenches, finding food and shelter; the boredom, and the horrors… Read together the entry for 22nd August when our soldier’s company is fighting near Saint-‐Rémy, then retreating. On this one day, 27,000 men were killed in fighting across France.
Activity Role play: Imagine you are a TV journalist reporting on the fighting of August 22nd. Write a script – what are the key things you will describe to the viewers? N.B. There is the wider strategic picture with Germany’s Schlieffen plan, and the reality for the soldiers actually fighting. You get to interview our soldier – what questions will you ask him? Work on this in pairs, developing the script. Then take turns to be the journalist, and the soldier, asking each other the questions.
Activity Our soldier is transported by train from Bercy in Paris to Lebeuville in north-‐eastern France. His platoon then marches further to villages and countryside on the Belgian border where the fighting is taking place. After he is wounded he is eventually taken by train to Auxerre.
On the Line of Fire website you can find a timeline of our soldier’s locations set against dates over these 2 months. Have a go at plotting his route yourself -‐ you could use a French road atlas or Google maps www.google.co.uk/maps/ It’s quite a twisting route, with advances and retreats; and you will need to choose the right location when you get several places with the same name.
Discussion Talk about why we write diaries – for example to record things, for ourselves, for others; to express our thoughts and feelings. Why do we sometimes stop or give up on writing diaries? Why do you think our soldier’s diary stops, after less than two months, and when he is in hospital?
The editor of Paroles de poilus, a collection of letters and journal entries from French soldiers, describes these as ‘written in haste amid the fire of action’. And one soldier wrote in his diary, ‘My notebook, my dear notebook! The most intimate thing I possess here!’
Think of our soldier writing his diary. When/where would he snatch time? Have a look at the entries – some are detailed, some are very short. Why might this be? He also writes letters, to his wife and family, and is very anxious to get news back from them, as the Germans are advancing, and villages being abandoned – and burned.
Activity
• Choose a section of the diary and write it instead as a letter from our soldier to his wife – think about how this might be different from what he writes in his diary. Are there things he might not want to tell her about, or things he might want to make sound better than they are?*
• Discuss what might be happening to his wife, with the German army’s advance. She may still be at their home, but fearful about the Germans coming nearer. Their village may already have been taken over. Write a postcard from her to her husband.
*This podcast from the Imperial War Museum may give useful background http://www.1914.org/podcasts/podcast-‐21-‐news-‐from-‐the-‐front/
Discussion What might be the story of this diary – how did it get to a Paris skip in 2009? Was it totally forgotten in a cupboard for a hundred years? Did it stay in the same family? Or pass through different hands?
Found with it were a medal and there are song lyrics in the pages at the back of the diary that carry on to 1917, which look to be in our soldier’s handwriting. These are song lyrics of existing, well known French wartime songs. How might these fit into the story?
If they were traced, what might the soldier’s family think about Barroux turning their relative’s diary into a book? How might they feel that a private journal has been turned into a commercially profitable book? How would the soldier feel?
Do you think Barroux, as the finder, has a moral responsibility to trace the soldier?* What are the advantages or disadvantages to not knowing our soldier’s identity?
*Barroux has donated the diary to the Cavern du Dragon, a museum in the north of France.
Activity
• Write what you think might be the story of our soldier’s diary from his time in the hospital in September 1914 until its rescue from the rubbish in 2009.
• Imagine you find a diary thrown away in a skip in a street near your house. What is it about? Who do you think has written it? What does it look like? Write an entry for your diary. How could your diary entry be a springboard for yourself and others to write a story?
Film of the book Activity Plan how you could turn Line of Fire into a film. Storyline: write a draft outline for the script – you could storyboard the key scenes. Think about what you might add to what is in the diary – e.g. flashbacks to life before the war; scenes with the family back home. Would you end at the hospital as the diary does, or take the story further on? Think about the medal, and the song lyrics at the back of the diary – how might these fit into the story?
What is our soldier like? We don’t have a name for our soldier but we know quite a bit about him from what he says and does. Would you prefer him to have a name? Why/why not? If you do, what might it be? Have a look at French Christian names – in the diary we meet Lucien, Réné, and Fernand. For Barroux, knowing little about our soldier freed up the book’s creative process. For your film, however, you would probably want to build up his character and his background. Note down all the clues you get from the diary, from the things he says and does.
• What do you think he looks like? How old is he? • What does he like? What doesn’t he like? What is he good at? • What do you know about his beliefs and opinions? • What job might he have done? • What do you think his home is like? And his family?
Which actor would you choose to star in the film as our soldier?
Telling the story to your grandchildren Activity You are our soldier – you have survived the war, and come home safely to your family. Your children grow up, and you have grandchildren, and they ask you about the war. Script your story and make a recording – audio or video – you can focus on these first weeks, covered by the diary, or take the story on from where the diary ends in the hospital. Before writing, think about and discuss:
• What may have happened to the family in these years of war and the occupation of France: do some research on how the war developed from 1914. What else might our soldier have taken part in?
• There are likely to be things which he will not want to remember or talk about
Power Point presentation Activity
You have found this diary thrown away in a skip in a Paris street; you realise it is something special and have taken it to a publisher. Now it is being turned into a book and will be published. In order to promote the book create a power point telling the story of the finding of the diary, its contents, and the mystery of who wrote it and what happened to him. Your audience is booksellers, librarians, and the general public – you want to attract their attention and interest, so that they read and buy the book – and get more people reading it too. First make a plan of what you want to say and what could go on each slide. Why do you think people will want to read your book? Include in your presentation:
• An attention-‐catching title and first slide • Simple, clear bullet points • Excerpts from the diary
Writing a review of Line of Fire Activity Have a look at some book reviews on websites such as Books for Keeps http://booksforkeeps.co.uk/reviews
Then write your own review of Line of Fire – make it at least 100 words in length.
• Give the essential information about the book: Title, author, publisher • Describe the book’s background and content – a brief outline is fine • Describe how the book’s content is put across, with its combination of diary and
illustration. • Say how you think this works. Do the illustrations connect well with the pictures? Is
there anything that doesn’t work for you? • Most important of all! -‐ What are your feelings and thoughts about the book? Do
you recommend it to other readers?
Graphic novels
Discussion Look at some other examples of graphic novels, such as Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi or The Hobbit: Graphic Novel illustrated by David Wenzel.
See also the interview with Barroux on the Line of Fire website, via: http://www.lineoffirebook.com/barroux/ Here he talks about his approach to the creation process of a graphic novel and how he decided on the images for each page of the book: Read also translator Sarah Ardizzone’s account of translating the words and pictures in Line of Fire: http://www.lineoffirebook.com/translation/ How does our soldier’s diary work for you as a graphic novel? What if it were plain printed text with no pictures? What if it were a facsimile of the original written version?
Activity and Discussion See below – here are three ways of presenting the diary: how do you respond to each one?
Does each format give you different kinds of information? Does it get you thinking about different things?
Facsimile from the actual diary
THURSDAY 6 AUGUST 0.500 hours: We de-‐train at Lebeuville in the morning rain. After a halt of an hour, during which we make coffee, we move off again. Slowly but surely, the sun rises and begins to warm us. My feet hurt. I’m off to a good start! We arrive within view of Saint-‐Mihiel and make a longer stop. I overhear a conversation between the major and the officer, to the effect that we’ll probably stay here for a few days. I take this opportunity to forward my address. We cross the town and reach our billet, which is the barracks of the 25th Battalion of Light Infantry. I’m starting to hobble. Everything is untidy, suggesting a hasty departure. The beds are unmade and kits are strewn across the floor. You’d think the battalion was just out on an exercise or a route march. From Line of Fire
Your own illustrations
Activity Have a go at illustrating a diary entry, with a single picture, or a series of pictures. You could
• Use the diary entry you created in section E • Choose an entry from Line of Fire • Choose an entry from another diary which you have read • Illustrate the following diary entry – this time from a German soldier, called Richard
Hoffman
22 SEPTEMBER 1914: Then we got going again on our endless, interminable march, on and on till nightfall; for we still had to take part in the combat. For the first time, we didn’t have our meals at the usual times, and then we had only had bread and coffee. At the end of the afternoon we had passed the French frontier without realising […] and we billeted in a village called Parray, or something like that […] Like all the French villages which I went through it was a dingy place: piles of manure and old rubbish along the road, and in front of the doors of great houses with narrow windows and dark and dirty rooms – and everywhere, makeshift repairs, done any old how.
Design your own book jacket
Discussion Talk about the book jacket for Line of Fire. What do you think about the front cover? Does it give you an idea of what the book is about, and get you wanting to read it?
Design a book jacket for your own book – the one which you imagined finding in a skip. (See section E.) Think about
• Overall design style: colours, type face/s • Front cover: Picture/s, title, author • Back cover: Blurb: attention catching – concise lines about content, quotes from
reviewers, maybe quotes from the book
More background
For first-‐hand accounts from soldiers in World War 1 listen to some of these podcasts from the Imperial War Museum http://www.1914.org/podcasts/, particularly those on
• Joining up (Podcast 3) – feelings, recruitment, propaganda • Off to the front (Podcast 6) – getting to the front, and those first months • Into battle (Podcast 7) • Over by Christmas (Podcast 8) – realising this was not to be… • News from the front (Podcast 21) – letters home • Logistics of the war (Podcast 40) – including rail journeys, like those of our soldier
At the start of the war Germany declared war on Belgium, France and Russia – and Britain declared war on Germany. As more countries entered the hostilities it became indeed a World War.
See this excerpt from a poem about American troops sailing from the States to fight in France – joining soldiers from countries including Britain, France, Belgium, India, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Troopship: Mid-‐Atlantic … staring at the magic with eyes adream That never till now have looked upon the sea, Boys from the Middle West lounge listlessly In the unlanthorned darkness, boys who go, Beckoned by some unchallengeable dream, To unknown lands to fight an unknown foe. W.W.Gibson (On the S.S. Baltic July 19)
Look at this feature in the Guardian about ‘what freedom means’ (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/21/on-‐liberty-‐edward-‐snowden-‐freedom)
In this piece, Michael Morpurgo says of World War 1:
We will ponder the lives of those who fought, and those who died, and ask ourselves why they went. Was it patriotism, was it because others went and you felt you had to go, was it for adventure, was it to fight tyranny, was it for freedom, their freedom, the freedom of those they loved, of those who came after them. Was it for many of these? Was it for us? And if so, was it worth it? Are we worth it? Do we value the freedom they left us, or simply take it for granted?
Commemorating World War 1 There is currently debate about how World War 1 is commemorated. In Line of Fire our soldier’s direct and straightforward account shows us the fears and the fighting, and also the boredom and banality. Barroux, the artist, and Sarah Ardizzone, the translator, have given us their interpretations of his story – and each of us reading it will respond in different ways. Here’s what Michael Morpurgo has said about commemorating the war:
In 2014, as we begin to mark the centenary of the first world war, we should honour those who died, most certainly, and gratefully too, but we should never glorify. We should heed the words of those who were there, who did the fighting, and some of them the dying. Wilf Ellis, Harry Patch, Sassoon, Thomas and Owen… During these next four years of commemoration we should read the poems, the stories, the history, the diaries, visit the cemeteries – German cemeteries as well as ours – they were all sons and brothers and lovers and husbands and fathers too.
Discussion Do you think the war experience for soldiers of all nationalities was the same? What common feelings do you think they shared? List and talk about these, and also the differences in their experiences. Remember that the French soldiers were fighting on their own soil, their country had been invaded, and their homes and families were at risk.
Think about what our soldier says “we leave with heavy hearts, but our sense of duty makes us hold our heads high…” Activity: Debate Prepare and debate the following proposition – using a formal debate structure with four speakers, proposing, opposing, and summary speeches, and questions and voting from the floor.
Proposition: War is war – no matter what uniform you are wearing
Tips for debating:
• Research your facts thoroughly – for both sides of the argument • Have notes, but just refer to them, don’t read them out like an essay • Make your points clearly, with persuasive arguments • Be confident in your speech and body language • Listen carefully to opposing arguments
Fiction about WW1 Sam Angus Soldier Dog Macmillan 978-‐
1447220053 Michael Morpurgo Private Peaceful HarperCollins 978-‐
0007486441 Michael Morpurgo War Horse Egmont 978-‐
1405226660 Linda Newbery Tilly’s Promise Barrington Stoke 978-‐
1781122938 James Riordan When the Guns Fall Silent OUP 978-‐
0192735706 Poetry Gaby Morgan (ed) Poems from the First World War Macmillan 978-‐
1447226161 Diaries, letters, first person accounts
Vera Brittain Chronicle of Youth – War Diary 1913-‐17 Weidenfeld & Nicholson
978-‐1842120941
Harry Drinkwater Harry’s War The diary of a WW1 British soldier
Ebury Press 978-‐0091957216
Jim Eldridge The Trenches: A First World War Soldier (My Story series)
Scholastic 978-‐1407103778
Jean-‐Pierre Gueno Paroles de poilus (in French) Letters & journals of French WW1 soldiers
Editions 84 978-‐2290038611
Sarah Ridley Brothers at War Franklin Watts 978-‐1445124056
Valerie Wilding The Road to War-‐ a First World War Girl’s Diary (*See other titles in the ‘My Story’ series – these are fictional, based on fact)
Scholastic 978-‐1407104614
Examples of Graphic Novels
Madeleine L’Engle A Wrinkle in Time: Graphic Novel
Farrar,Straus & Giroux
978-‐0374386153
Marjane Satrapi Persepolis Iran – a childhood & a return
Vintage 978-‐0099523994
Art Spiegelman The Complete MAUS Holocaust survivor’s story
Penguin 978-‐0141014081
J R R Tolkein David Wenzel (ill.)
The Hobbit: Graphic Novel Harper Collins
978-‐0007611621
Joann Sfar Trans. Sarah Ardizzone
The Little Prince (graphic novel version) Walker books 978-‐1406325447
Joann Sfar (Trans Alexis Siegel & Anjali Singh)
The Rabbi’s Cat Pantheon Books, Random House NY
978-‐0375714641
Marguerite Abouet and Clement Oubrerie
Aya (series name) Drawn & Quarterly
Other resources:
• Useful websites: o Imperial War Museum: First World War Centenary: http://www.iwm.org.uk/centenary o BBC Schools: World War One: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/0/ww1/ o BBC History: World War One: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww1
En français: o Guerre de 1914 -‐ 1918: http://www.premiere-‐guerre-‐mondiale-‐1914-‐1918.com o Mission Centenaire 14 -‐18: http://centenaire.org/fr
• Chatterbooks World War 1 Activity Pack for reading groups: http://readingagency.org.uk/children/003-‐tips/wwi-‐chatterbooks-‐activity-‐pack.html
• Your local museums and archive centres • Your own family’s history and reminiscences
©Phoenix Yard Books, 2014