The Last Voices of World War One

The declaration of war in August 1914 was greeted with a wave of patriotic euphoria as the British Expeditionary Force was dispatched to Belgium and two million men volunteered for service War seemed like a glorious adventure but the experience of battle and the horror of the trenches was very different from what these young men expected

In the summer of 1916 there were high hopes of a big push a breakthrough that would end the war But the Battle of the Somme ended in stalemate and tragedy By November 1916 150000 troops had lost their lives on the Western Front

The aftermath of every battle was human carnage on an unimaginable scale One of the most demanding and heartbreaking jobs was that of the nurses doctors and medical orderlies who tended to the wounded and the dying Their stories are set alongside the victims the gassed the shellshocked and the amputees who always remembered who saved them

After surviving the freezing winter of 1916 the British attacked the Germans at Arras The battle that followed saw the highest daily casualty rate of the war In the summer the British advanced towards the village of Passchendaele in the most dreadful conditions Countless numbers drowned in mud in the battle that remains synonymous with the horror of mechanized warfare

It wasnt just men on the front line who suffered during the Great War At home the families left behind lived through Zeppelin raids food shortages and the constant worry that their husbands sons and brothers would not return With the arrival of the dreaded telegram announcing the death of a loved one the lives of thousands of families changed forever

In the spring of 1918 the war still hung in the balance But as the Germans launched their massive offensive 18yearold British conscripts were sent to France to make up the numbers Thousands were taken prisoner as the German advance continued and they suffered months of hardship at the hands of their captors But by the summer the tide began to turn