-762000-584200 Essays - Military History By Country, Military

-762000-584200 Allene Dorr 10-04-2017 HUN 2250 Professor Landwer0 Allene Dorr 10-04-2017 HUN 2250 Professor Landwer A day at War As I stand in the trench The thunder gets louder My hands start to tremble The people around begin to pounder I travel up the ladder My eyes began to melt The sounds around get louder My soul begins to swelt I shot my gun I see the bodies starting to fall My mouth begins to water As I lay next to my foe The maggots begin to crawl As I lay being eaten and gone My body begins to dissolve Focus Paper: This poem is describing a single person's thoughts t owards the beginning of the war. I t starts with the moment this person is in the trench. The next line is describing thunder which is the gun shots going off and shaking the ground. The main character and everyone around him starts to get terrified , wondering if this was the end of their life. Time going by so fast they begin to travel into no man's land, their eyes and mouths melt from the mustard gas, an d other chemicals in the air. As these chemicals seep into the people's bodies, their souls and body begins to breakdown and slowly die. As on coming enemies begin charging towards them, he shot them and their saw bodies fall to ground, dead. His mind was racing with so much guilt, but knows t his is the way life with this job . He got shot, his mouth filling with blood as he fe ll to the ground next to all the enemies . T his body dies and soul begins to escape. Before the last seconds before death comes, he sees the maggots and bugs start to crawl from one person to the ot her. This reflects the time frame, this is the way war was. It was a scary and rough place and most would not come back alive. Living in the trenches took a lot of energy out of these soldiers. They "lived in long narrow trenches conditions were horrible and the soldiers had very little time to rest" (BBC). The trenches wreaked of decay and death. In between both sides of the trenches there were miles of open land but nothing lived or breathed in between those two parts. It was called no man's land, once you entered you never left. You lived in those trenches, whether it rains or shines. Soldiers lived in terrible conditions, with rain, lightning, and tornados . After WWI , the soldiers that did come back from war had long term effects. Some had what is called trench foot, is an infection in the foot from being in cold, moist conditions for a prolonged period of time. Others were exposed to emotiona l problems such as shell shock, "defined as a neurosis, and there was little sympathy for shell-shocked soldiers" (SM). It is a disease of the mind that jumbles up different scenarios and make up memories and facts. With shell shock, when the soldiers returned no one believed anything was wrong and they were making everything up. They could not live a normal life after what happened. They could still hear the scream of people dying, see the bodies lying on the ground. Some would recover from shell shock but often had night mares about what was happening. WWI was supposed to be a teaching lesson, that America didn't want anything like this to happen again. So many casualties and deaths, tearing families apar t. After the first world war, no one was the same. Still to this day we learn about the devastation , hoping that in today's life nothing like that will happen again. Work Cited: "Science Museum. Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine." War's Long-Term Effects , www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/war/effects . "What Was It like in a World War One Trench?" BBC Bitesize , BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z8sssbk .