Women In Voices From The Battle Of Somme

The Great War occurred between July 28, 1914 and November 11, 1918. This was the first-time war was fought not just on land and sea but also in the sky and below sea. World War I was made up of two sides, Allies (France, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, and United States) and the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire and Germany.) The war caused change in geo-political landscape and destruction of three empires: Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian. While the men were off fighting in the war, women had to work in the factories. “Voices From the Battle Of Somme” was written in 1916 about the battle in northeastern France. The authors tell of their lives during this battle and seeing horrible images from the trenches. Recalling memories

They helped one another while also felling helpless for the ones they could not save. Naomi Loughnan shows that during World War I, women’s views and experiences of war differed because they still were oppressed by men but also had a sense of pride while working. War zones have terrible images, smells, sounds, and can make you feel helpless. They lived in trenches, they don’t go home at the end of the day. They were fighting a war and had to stay sane and help others out as well as themselves. There was no resting, if there was then people were just getting drunk.
As men were in the trenches they would go mad just by the sound of constant gun shots. “Germans used to put over these big 5.9 shells and then they’d follow them up with shrapnel shells to catch anyone who was running away. But what really began to get me was the sounds of our own guns. The sound waves were going over your head all the time- You couldn’t get away from it. It went right down to your nerves. “ These rapid pings and bangs got into the minds of the soldiers. Sometimes this can turn into Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and haunt them after the war is

Men died even during this prosses of doing something moral for another. “-there were all these bodies lying out there – literally caught on the First of July. Some were without legs, some were legs without bodies, arms without bodies. A terrible sight. They’d been churned up by shelled even after they were killed. We just were dumping them into the crater – just filling them over.” Doing and seeing something like this can really mess with someone. Since it is war even if they were fighting they were getting shot at just for trying to do something