Trench Warfare Reading Comprehension

One Australian soldier, Lieutenant John Raws, was a journalist before the war. He wrote several revealing letters to family
members before he was killed in 1916.

Extracts from John Raws’ letter Explain one key explicit meaning in your own
words (don’t quote from the source)
"You have no idea of the hell and horror of a great advance, old fellow, War was uncomfortable and horrible,
and I hope you never will have. We fought and lived as we stood, day because they were in constant danger, no
and night, without even overcoats to put on at night & with very little food, cold conditions and bodies everywhere
food. The place was not littered but covered with dead & as we were unburied.
under continuous fire & were moving about a lot, and when still were in
very narrow, shallow trenches, we could do no burying. The last meal I
had was one I shook from a dead German."
"One feels on a battlefield such as this one can never survive, or that if War is an unliveable place. Everyone that
the body lives the brain must go forever. For the horrors one sees and survives has to live with the unmanageable
the never-ending shock of the shells is more than can be borne. Hell trauma.
must be a home to it."
"The Australian casualties have been very heavy - fully 50 per cent in Everyone close to the soldiers died. They did
our brigade, for the ten or eleven days. I lost, in three days, my brother not get looked after once killed, most lay on
and two best friends, and in all six out of seven of all my officer friends the battle fields getting blown up and not
(perhaps a score in number) who went into the scrap- all killed. Not one buried. If they did get back to the trenches
was buried, and some died in great agony. It was impossible to help the there was nowhere to put them.
wounded at all in some sectors. We could fetch them in, but could not
get them away. And often we had to put them out on the parapet to
permit movement in the shallow, narrow, crooked trenches. The dead
were everywhere. There had been no burying in the sector I was in for a
week before we went there."
"One or two of my friends stood splendidly, like granite rocks round After experiencing the war the soldiers can’t
which the seas stormed in vain. They were all junior officers. But many handle it any more.
other fine men broke to pieces. Everyone called it shell shock. But shell
shock is very rare. What 90 per cent get is justifiable funk, due to the
collapse of the helm - self-control.”
"My battalion has been at it for eight days and one-third of it is left- all Materials are low and people are dead
shattered at that. And they're sticking it still, incomparable heroes all. everywhere. People that are dead with the
We are lousy, stinking, ragged, unshaven, sleepless. Even when we're equipment will have it taken off them to use
back a bit we can't sleep for our own guns. I have one puttee, a dead in war.
man's helmet, another dead man's gas protector, a dead man's bayonet
My tunic is rotten with other men's blood and partly splattered with a
comrade's brains. It is horrible but why should you people at home not
know."
"We got away as best we could. I was again in the rear going back and People are dead everywhere and people are
again we were cut off and lost. I was buried twice, and thrown down trying to get them back to the trenches.
several times - buried with dead and dying. The ground was covered
with bodies in all stages of decay and mutilation, and I would, after
struggling free from the earth, pick up a body by me to try to lift him
out with me, and find him a decayed corpse. I pulled a head off- was
covered with blood. The horror was indescribable."
"Shrapnel, minewerfers, whizz-bangs, bombs, lachrymose shells, gas So many corpses at war, cannot avoid being
shells,- and thousands of gaping dead. The stench, and the horridness in contact with them.
of it can but be mentioned. I have sat on corpses, walked on corpses
and pillaged corpses. I got many interesting German souvenirs and
could have secured cartloads from their trenches, but I lost most that I
took, and usually was too busy to pick up anything. I lost nearly all my
equipment and clothes and with them my curiosities but I brought back
one bonzer souvenir that I did not expect to bring back - myself. "
Additional questions

1. Are there any aspects of Lieutenant Raws' experiences and reactions that surprise you?
2. Were all soldiers brave? Did all show courage?
3. For soldiers who survived the war, what problems can you anticipate they might face after the war?
Synthesis:

Trench warfare was a harsh and traumatic experience for soldiers because of the lack of resources, unburied bodies and
constant loss and fear of death.