World War I

Eastern front

Western Front

Three Dimensional Warfare

spad

Newport, RI

Maxim machine gun

These terrible conditions caused the condition known as trench foot, when a foot started to rot, turned black and eventually it had to be amputated. Typhus and a disease named trench fever (a high fever for five or so days), killed some soldiers. Many soldiers went weeks without a good wash and this caused skin diseases and meant most front line soldiers caught lice.

In the trenches there was no time for burial so hundreds of bodies stuck half buried in the mud. The smell of rotting flesh hung heavy in the air and as well as scraps of food left around the trenches ﾊ this attracted Rats! One pair of rats could produce 880 offspring in a year so soon the trenches where full of them. Most of the Rats grew extremely large and could eat a man alive if he couldn't defend himself. On one body at least three rats where found; normally the victims eyes had been eaten first and then the rats ate the rest

of the body from there.

The Christmas Truce, 1914

"I never expected to shake hands with Germans between the firing lines on Christmas Day and I don't suppose you thought of us doing so. So after a fashion we've enjoyed our Christmas," wrote an Allied

soldier of World War I in a letter dated December 25, 1914.

Tunes of Glory ?

The youngest soldier to be killed in the Great War of 1914-18 was No. 2622 Private John Condon, of the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Regiment and came from Waterford in Ireland. Like a quarter of a million other boy soldiers from all over the British Isles, John was underage. He arrived at the Western Front in March 1915 and two short months later he was dead. Killed in a German Gas attack at a place called Mouse

Trap Farm near Ypres, Belgium on the 24th of May, a day they say when a greenish yellow mist crept from the German lines with deadly poison. John's grave is in

Poelcapple Military Cemetery and is now reputedly the most visited grave on the entire Western Front for obvious reasons. There, amongst thousands of white

headstones, there is usually an array of poppies, flags and ﾊwooden crosses around the final resting place of young John Condon and a gravestone that says it all.2622

Pte. J. Condon, 14 years old!

The youngest soldier to be killed in the Great War of 1914-18 was No. 2622 Private John Condon, of the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Regiment and came from Waterford in Ireland. Like a quarter of a million other boy soldiers from all over the British Isles, John was underage. He arrived at the Western Front in March 1915 and two short months later he was dead. Killed in a German Gas attack at a place called Mouse

Trap Farm near Ypres, Belgium on the 24th of May, a day they say when a greenish yellow mist crept from the German lines with deadly poison. John's grave is in

Poelcapple Military Cemetery and is now reputedly the most visited grave on the entire Western Front for obvious reasons. There, amongst thousands of white

headstones, there is usually an array of poppies, flags and ﾊwooden crosses around the final resting place of young John Condon and a gravestone that says it all.2622

Pte. J. Condon, 14 years old!

Tunes of Glory ???

The total deaths of all nations who fought in the war is thought to have been 8.5 million with 21 million being wounded.

• Britain : 750,000 soldiers killed; 1,500,000 wounded

• France : 1,400,000 soldiers killed; 2,500,000 wounded

• Belgium : 50,000 soldiers killed• Italy : 600,000 soldiers killed• Russia : 1,700,000 soldiers killed• America :116,000 soldiers killed

• Germany : 2,000,000 soldiers killed

• Austria-Hungary : 1,200,000 soldiers killed

• Turkey : 325,000 soldiers killed

• Bulgaria : 100,000 soldiers killed

Ossuary, Verdun

Ossuary, Verdun

• Within the Ossuary are the remains of 130.000 unknown French and German soldiers who fell on the battlefields of Verdun. Some rather alarmingly can be viewed from glass windows at the rear of the building, if this was designed to shock, then it succeeds. Inside there are 18 Alcoves, each containing a pair of Caskets. ﾊ Above each Casket there is an inscription showing the area of the battlefield from where the bodies were recovered. Each tomb covers an 18 cubic metre vault containing the remains of the fallen. The Ossuary is a place where one can contemplate man's inhumanity to man. Total silence is observed within the Ossuary as a mark of respect for the fallen.

Back to the Trenches

Celebrating the wartime alliance of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian

Empire, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and the Kingdom of Bulgaria.

Otto Dix

Albin Egger- Linz,”The Nameless”

The War To End All Wars ….