Trench Warfare essays

Trench Warfare essays World War I set a new precedent for wars to come, it was the first war to involve the new technologies in warfare we know of today. The machine gun and heavy artillery reduced the individual soldier to insignificance, leaving no room for heroes. Tanks, bombs, and poisonous gas were the new age of war, and left deep and psychological scars on the Western World long after the War. In the first few battles of the Great War a new style of combat called trench warfare was created. This new style of combat was created to protect the soldiers from large tanks and massive amounts of artillery. Life for the common soldier on the Western Front consisted of extreme unpleasantness for weeks spent in muddy, vermin-ridden trench communities, and the horrifying experience of battle. Each battle not only consisted of heavy artillery, machine guns, and barbed wire; but also of exploding bullets, liquid fire, and poison gas (P.P. pg 452). In this paper I will show how the new technologies of war gave little hope for a soldier to make it out of the War alive. In Alan Seegers Rendezvous he describes the feeling he has during his time in the War. He says, I have a rendezvous with death | On some scarred slope of battered hill, (P.P. pg. 454) This shows that Seeger has a strong feeling that he will not make it out of this war alive. He repeats this line over and over throughout the poem, I have a rendezvous with death (pg. 454) it gives the reader a sense that Seeger felt helpless and scared in this carnival of hell. Alan makes his strongest point in the last two lines of his poem, he writes, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous (page 454). Alan Seeger did not make it out of the war alive. He knew that this war was different and was like no other before; he felt he could not make it out alive and he was right. In Wilfred Owens Dulce...