Please answer the following questions in your workbooks or on a word document under the heading ' the battle of fromelles'
1. When was this battle?
2. What was the goal of the battle?
3. What was the result of the battle?
4. What does this battle show about the ANZAC spirit?
Now read through the sources below and answer these questions in your workbook or word document.
1. How do these sources describe the way Australians fought on the Western Front? Use evidence from the sources to support your answer.
2. How does source B describe the war on the Western Front? What was the fighting like? Use evidence from the source.
3. What problems do you think would have been present for soldiers who survived the war?
4. Did you know about this battle? What information shocked you or did you find interesting about the Battle of Fromelles?
5. Do you believe these sources are useful for your study about World War 1? Why?
SOURCE A:
“Nothing could exceed the bravery of those boys. The first wave went down like ‘wheat before the reaper’. When the time came for the second wave to go over there was not a man standing of the first wave, yet not a lad faltered. Each glanced at his watch and on the arranged tick of the clock leaped over. In many cases they did not get any farther than the first wave. The last wave, though they knew each had to do the work of three, were in their places and started on their forlorn hope at the appointed moment.”
Patrick Lindsay, Fromelles, Hardie Grant Books, 2008, page 10
SOURCE B:
“Scores of stammering German machine-guns spluttered violently, drowning the noise of the cannonade. The air was thick with bullets, swishing in a flat, criss-crossed lattice of death. There were gaps in the lines of men – wide ones, small ones. The survivors spread across the front, keeping the lines straight ... The bullets skimmed low, from knee to groin, riddling the tumbling bodies before they touched the ground. Hundreds were mown down in the flicker of an eyelid, like great rows of teeth knocked from a comb, but still the line went on, thinning and stretching. Wounded wriggled into shellholes or were hit again. Men were cut in two by streams of bullets [that] swept like whirling knives. And still the line went on.”
Quoted in Peter Pedersen, The Anzacs, Gallipoli to the Western Front, Viking, Melbourne, 2007, page 130
2. What was the goal of the battle?
3. What was the result of the battle?
4. What does this battle show about the ANZAC spirit?
Now read through the sources below and answer these questions in your workbook or word document.
1. How do these sources describe the way Australians fought on the Western Front? Use evidence from the sources to support your answer.
2. How does source B describe the war on the Western Front? What was the fighting like? Use evidence from the source.
3. What problems do you think would have been present for soldiers who survived the war?
4. Did you know about this battle? What information shocked you or did you find interesting about the Battle of Fromelles?
5. Do you believe these sources are useful for your study about World War 1? Why?
SOURCE A:
“Nothing could exceed the bravery of those boys. The first wave went down like ‘wheat before the reaper’. When the time came for the second wave to go over there was not a man standing of the first wave, yet not a lad faltered. Each glanced at his watch and on the arranged tick of the clock leaped over. In many cases they did not get any farther than the first wave. The last wave, though they knew each had to do the work of three, were in their places and started on their forlorn hope at the appointed moment.”
Patrick Lindsay, Fromelles, Hardie Grant Books, 2008, page 10
SOURCE B:
“Scores of stammering German machine-guns spluttered violently, drowning the noise of the cannonade. The air was thick with bullets, swishing in a flat, criss-crossed lattice of death. There were gaps in the lines of men – wide ones, small ones. The survivors spread across the front, keeping the lines straight ... The bullets skimmed low, from knee to groin, riddling the tumbling bodies before they touched the ground. Hundreds were mown down in the flicker of an eyelid, like great rows of teeth knocked from a comb, but still the line went on, thinning and stretching. Wounded wriggled into shellholes or were hit again. Men were cut in two by streams of bullets [that] swept like whirling knives. And still the line went on.”
Quoted in Peter Pedersen, The Anzacs, Gallipoli to the Western Front, Viking, Melbourne, 2007, page 130
SOURCE C: The Moments before the attack. 19 July 1916. Men of the 53rd Battallion just before the attack at Fromelles. Only three of the men shown here came out of the action alive and those three were all wounded.
Photo from the Australian War Memorial
Photo from the Australian War Memorial