Exercises on life in the trenches

One ​​of the most frequent problems that soldiers of the First World War faced in their daily lives inside the trenches was ailments and diseases of all kinds. Among them was:

a) the trench flu

b) the trench foot

c) leprosy

d) psychological blindness

e) typhoid fever

Read the following text and then tick the correct alternative.

Another French soldier described how infantrymen shot down by machine guns lay stretched out for a month in front of their trench, “aligned as if in a manoeuvre. The rain falls on them inexorably, and bullets shatter their whitened bones. One night Jacques, while on patrol, saw huge rats crawling out from under their faded coats. They were fat from the human flesh on which they fed. Heart pounding, he crept closer to a dead man. The helmet had rolled. The dead man wore a grimace on his fleshless face; the bare skull, the eaten eyes. A set of teeth had fallen into his decomposed shirt, and a filthy animal sprang from its gaping mouth.” (HASTINGS, Max. Catastrophe:1914 - Europe goes to war . trans. Beryl Vargas. Rio de Janeiro:Intrinsic, 2014.).

The description given by historian Max Hastings is of a World War I soldier who lived in the trenches on the Western Front. From it, we can see that the trench environment:

a) was in favor of defending the position.

b) was vulnerable and unhealthy.

c) had been abandoned for months.

d) was not common in World War I.

e) was not attacked by bombs, only by gunfire.

The territory that was between the enemy trench belts was called:

a) position fields

b) surrounding space

c) no man's land

d) arena of death

e) killer alleys

(Cefet-MG) The use of trenches in the First World War:

a) accelerated the end of the conflict between the belligerent countries.

b) ended the territorial disputes between European countries.

c) marked the memory of a generation in a traumatic way.

d) encouraged its use in later European struggles.

e) ensured the protection of the civilian population from the horrors of conflict.

Letter B

The trench foot consisted of the lack of blood circulation in the soldiers' feet caused by the cold and by the humidity and immobility, since they stayed a long time without leaving the same place. This lack of circulation, accompanied by frostbite, caused parts of the feet or even the entire foot to rot, which required amputations and the consequent disability of the soldier.

Letter B

As can be seen from the quote, life in the trenches was extremely dangerous and unhealthy. The soldiers were vulnerable to enemy fire, diseases caused by animals such as rats, and the climate of terror, accentuated by the rotting corpses of fallen soldiers.

Letter C

The “no man's land” was the territory disputed by both sides in confrontation. Each entrenched platoon sought to advance over that territory and delimit more space for its position.

Letter C

Trench warfare exposed all the horror of the destructive and deadly capacity of the machinery used in World War I:cannons, machine guns, toxic gases that made the skin burst into pustules of blood, unburied corpses inside and outside the trenches, all this tremendously marked an entire generation, especially of European nations. Writers such as Tolkien, Erice Maria Remarque, Ernst Jünger, who fought in the war, left this recorded in their works.