-It shows the joyful celebrations of young men at the thought of going to war in 1914.
- School teachers encouraging young men to join the army and fight to defend the fatherland. They associate fighting with glory, strength, honour and bravery.
- That people were encouraged to put national ambition over personal ambition
- That there was peer pressure to join the army
-A general belief that the war would be over quickly
-Shows that the young men who joined because they wanted to go to war had little understanding of army rank and discipline when they first joined.
- It shows the hard training men were put through before they went to the front (training parades, crawling through mud, diving for cover immediately)
- That money was worth nothing on the front - it was all about goods - trading cigarettes for food.
- The scared reaction of soldiers on hearing/seeing a shell explode for the first time
- Soldiers putting barbed wire along the front of the trenches in the middle of the night, under a degree of enemy fire. The quick scramble for cover when enemy fire becomes too close – one man dies.
- Lots of men crammed into one dugout while the enemy is bombarding the trenches with artillery fire.
-The dirt and dust falling from the mud ceilings under fire in the dugouts, bits of roof collapsing in, hearing stories of other dugouts that have collapsed in on men.
-The explosions above ground
-The lack of food. No proper meals for weeks on end
- Evacuating casualties from trenches
- Men getting frustrated at being in a confined space with so many other men, having nothing do but wait till enemy bombardment is over, wanting to go out and fight – going crazy at the waiting.
- The rats in the trenches/dugouts
- The scramble to trench posts at the command of the whistle
- The enemy (Allies) going over the top and advancing across No-Mans Land
-The rolling/walking/creeping barrage
- The Allies being torn down by machine gun fire
- Combat in the trenches when the Allies reach the German lines
-Men climbing over dead corpses
-Various retreating and advancing between the German trenches
- Anger at enemy killing friends
- The soldiers querying who actually start the war – don’t actually know why they are fighting, or whose started the war.
- Cramped hospital wings. Moving the nearly dead to the dying room to clear beds for fresh casualties.
- Men thinking about dying for the first time
- The high casualty rates – a class of 20 joined – 9 dead, 3 wounded
- The realisation of actually killing a man, realising that the enemy is actually no different from themselves – just men – who had probably never laid eyes on a German, like they had never till this point laid eyes on a British man.
- Lack of female company, fantasying about girls from pictures.
- The rationing in France – women starving – soldiers trading food for company
- The horrific knowledge of losing parts of your body through amputation.
- Lack of food in Germany itself, best food goes to the front.
- The people had home had little idea of what war is really about, arguing other what the army would so next, talking about how glorious it is.
- Soldier refusing to back up school master who is telling his class how glorious war is. Soldier, who once looked forward to going to war, now describes it as painful and dirty.
- Soldiers wanting fighting to stop, people at home wanting then to fight on
- Soldiers lying to people at home about the poor conditions on the front
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