Film The Battle of the Somme Compared With the Real Event

Film The Battle of the Somme Compared With the Real Event

Casualty figures over 60,000 by the 19th December 1915. The Battle of

the Somme continues until General Haig calls a halt to the attack and

even then the British have only gained 8 km and lost over 400,000 men.

In August 1916, the film, 'The battle of the Somme' was released by

the British government to provide a realistic source of information

into what the war was really like for the General Public. Over the

past decades historians have all disagreed into whether this file

released by the Government really was a 'realistic' source of the War.

The way that the film portrays the Trench Conditions can be supported

by some of the Sources. The sources suggest that the trench conditions

were poor and men loathed them. The soldiers slept on a bed of mud and

lived with rats. For example: Extracts from a diary written by a

soldier when he was fighting explained that they were, 'Just rat

holes, one hell of an accommodation. No trenches at all in places just

isolated mounds.' A letter from a soldier to his daughter compared the

trenches as, 'Little rat holes.' Some sources also imply that the

Trenches stank and were unbearable to live in. This is shown in a poem

by Sidney Chaplin. His opening paragraph alleged that,

'You stand in a trench of vile stinking mud,

And the bitter cold wind freezes your blood,

Then the guns open and the flames light the sky

An, as you watch, rats go scuttling by.'

However other sources agree with the images and points put forward in

the film. Some sources suggest that the trenches were comfortable and

the men were happy to live there, there was a good level of hygiene

and the soldiers were enjoying themselves. For example, a photograph

taken by an official British photographer possibly after the war

showed men thoroughly enjoying themselves, they all had large smiles

on their faces and were all very clean. Overall I feel the evidence