As the name suggests - a slideshow with plenty of hypertext links to utube clips which I use as an A level intro to the poetry of Wilfred Owen

1. The war to end all wars
1914-1918

3. “Bodies and bits of bodies, and clots of blood, and
green metallic-looking slime made by the explosive
gases were floating on the surface of the water.
Our men lived there and died there within a few
yards of the enemy. They crouched below the
sandbags and burrowed into the sides of the
trenches. Lice crawled over them in swarms. If
they dug to get deeper cover, , their shovels went
into the softness of dead bodies who had been their
friends. Scraps of flesh, booted legs, blackened
hands, eyeless heads came falling over them when
the enemy fired shells at their position.”

4. 1914

6. The Central Powers vs. The Allied Forces

7. Austria Hungary
The Patchwork Empire

9. Germany
The Insecure Superpower

11. The Central Powers Team Minor Players
Turkey & Bulgaria

12. Russia
The Slumbering Giant

14. France
Wounded Glory

16. Britain & The British Empire
The Colonial Flagbearer

18. The Allied Forces Team
Minor Players

19. H.G. Wells

20. The Black Hand Gang (Serbia)

21. Franz Ferdinand
Arch-duke of Austro-Hungarian empire

22. How can you kill 4 crayons with
one bullet?

23. How can you kill 10 million
people with two bullets?

24. 28th June 1914 – Sarajevo, Bosnia

25. Gavrilo Princip

26. Austrian Historical Museum - Vienna

27. Kaiser Wilhelm – Monarch of Germany

28. 4th August 1914
Germany invades Belgium

30. Public Schools & The Game
‘it will all be over by Christmas’

31. Henry Newbolt

32. Rudyard Kipling

33. And Did Those Feet In Ancient Times
‘Idyllic Albion’

35. ‘God is on our side’ – a Holy War

36. Bertrand Russell

37. Propaganda

40. Robert Bridges

41. Henry Asquith PM

42. Herbert Read

43. Laurence Binyon

44. Rupert Brooke

47. The Sweet Pea Treatment

48. Women & the War Effort

49. The Christmas Day Truce 1914

50. 1915

51. Trench Warfare

53. ‘Lice, rats, barbed
wire, fleas, shells, bombs, undergrou
nd
caves, corpses, blood, liquor, mice, ra
ts, filth, steel; that is what war is. It
is the work of the devil.’

54. ‘There were about 20 men. They
walked like living plaster statues. Their
faces stared at us like those of shrunken
mummies, and their eyes seemed so
huge that one saw nothing but eyes.
Those eyes, which had not seen sleep
for four days and nights showed the
vision of death. Was this the dream of
glory that I had when I had volunteered
to fight?’

55. New Technology

56. Zeppelins bomb England
The First Blitz

57. Submarines & Supply Routes

58. The Sinking of the Lusitania

59. Poison Gas

60. Not a good time to be a goldfish!

61. Edith Cavell

62. Field Hospitals & Surgery

63. ‘Never Light 3 cigarettes
with a single match’

64. Charles Sorely

65. 1916

66. Conscription

67. Katherine Tynan

68. Jessie Pope

69. The Battle of the Somme

70. Winston Churchill

71. Lloyd George Becomes PM

72. DORA
Defence Of the Realm Act

73. The Winter of Discontent

74. Siegfried Sassoon

75. 1917

76. America Joins the War

77. Mud & No End In Sight

79. Winifred Mary Letts

80. Shell Shock - Neurasthenia

81. Self-wounding & Suicide

82. Court Martial & Rough Justice

83. 1918

84. The Final German Push

85. 11th November – Armistice Day

86. Flu – The Unseen Enemy

87. Harry Patch – the last survivor