Station 1: The Schlieffen Plan: Germany s Plan for Success Assumptions! Russia would take at least 8 weeks to mobilize.! France would be easily defeated in a few weeks.! Belgium would not resist any German attack.! Britain would remain neutral. The Reality On 2 nd August 1914, the German army invaded Luxembourg and Belgium according to the Schlieffen Plan. The Germans were held up by the Belgium army, backed up by the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) which arrived extremely quickly. Russia mobilised in just 10 days and Germany was forced to withdraw troops from the Schlieffen Plan to defend her eastern border. Germany did not take the chance to take Paris, instead decided to attack east of the capital. They were met by French at the battle of the Marne (5-11 Sept) which halted the German advance.
Station 2: Weapons in World War One
Station 3: Christmas Truce Background information In the first months of the First World War, soldiers fighting in the trenches around Ypres held a truce. Over the Christmas period they set aside their weapons and met in No Man s Land. This Christmas Truce was an unplanned and unexpected event. It happened many times and in many places. German, French, British, Belgian and Indian soldiers were excited to meet one another. They sang Christmas songs together, exchanged souvenirs and took photos of one another. And in some cases, it seems that they even played football. It s very hard to pin down the story of the 1914 Christmas Truce and even harder to find out about the football matches. This wasn t planned, arranged and recorded, like much else in the war. It was spontaneous and informal. It was an example of fraternization when enemies met up, shared comforts and even became friends which naturally met with disapproval from military command. Where there had been recent fighting both sides took the opportunity of burying their dead lying in No Man s Land and in some places there was an exchange of small gifts and a little talk, the Germans expressing themselves confident of an early victory. Before returning to their trenches both sides sang Christmas carols and soldiers songs, each in their own language There was to be an attempt to repeat this old time warfare custom at Christmas 1915 but it was a small isolated one, and the fraternization of 1914 was never repeated. The Light of Peace in the trenches on Christmas Eve: A German soldier opens the spontaneous truce by approaching the British lines with a small Christmas tree.
Station 4: Life in the Trenches The Trench Cycle Typically, a battalion would be expected to serve a spell in the front line. This would be followed by a stint spent in support, and then in reserve lines. A period of rest would follow - generally short in duration - before the whole cycle of trench duty would start afresh. Daily Death in the Trenches Death was a constant companion to those serving in the line, even when no raid or attack was launched or defended against. In busy sectors the constant shellfire directed by the enemy brought random death, whether their victims were lounging in a trench or lying in a dugout (many men were buried as a consequence of such large shell-bursts). It has been estimated that up to 1/3 of Allied casualties on the Western Front were actually sustained in the trenches. Aside from enemy injuries, disease wrought a heavy toll. Trench Rats The corpses of dead soldiers attracted rats. One pair of rats can produce 880 offspring in a year and so the trenches were soon swarming with them. Some of these rats grew extremely large. One soldier wrote: "The rats were huge. They were so big they would eat a wounded man if he couldn't defend himself." These rats became very bold and would attempt to take food from the pockets of sleeping men. Two or three rats would always be found on a dead body. They usually went for the eyes first and then they burrowed their way right into the corpse. Richard Beasley, interviewed in 1993. If you left your food the rats would soon grab it. Those rats were fearless. Sometimes we would shoot the filthy swines. But you would be put on a charge for wasting ammo, if the sergeant caught you. Frank Laird writing after the war. Sometimes the men amused themselves by baiting the ends of their rifles with pieces of bacon in order to have a shot at them at close distances. Trench Foot