What was world war 1 like

Over a million men were killed or wounded, and it was the first time that a tank was used in combat. Both on the battlefield and back at home, some incredible creatures helped to transport soldiers and goods — and save lives. Almost a million horses were involved in the war. Soldiers on horseback were known as the Cavalry and horses also pulled some of the gigantic guns , ambulances and supply wagons. Gas from horse droppings could even be used to power lamps!

British families gave their pet dogs to the army so they could carry messages in special tubes on their collars see above. Dogs were fast, difficult to shoot at, and they also caught rats! Pet pigeons were drafted in to carry messages over long distances, often carrying news from the Front Line back to Britain — Germans trained hawks to kill any carrier pigeons they saw.

Goldfish did their bit too — after gas attacks, the gas masks were washed and rinsed. And if the rinsing water killed a goldfish that was placed in it, that meant the masks still had poison on them! Back on the Home Front , Britain was under attack from all sides. It was the first time in history that Britain had come under threat from the sky.

Gigantic German airships, known as Zeppelins below , carried out 52 bombing raids on Britain during the war — killing more than People were terrified of them!

To avoid Zeppelin attacks, no lights could be used after sunset and loud noises were banned, too. Large scale bombing raids on British cities were carried out during the day by German biplanes called Gothas. There were threats from the sea, too. Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby were the first seaside towns to be shelled by the German navy.

Battlecruisers , ships with huge guns, launched a surprise attack on 16 December — people were killed and injured that night alone. At the start of the war there were just , men in the British army. But by , there were 3. Mind you, in , conscription came in — a rule that said ALL healthy men aged 18 — 41 had to fight. But with the men away at war, help was needed in the workplace — and so millions of women went to work in offices, factories, shops, transport and on farms.

Many men were horrified by the idea of females working and, even worse, wearing trousers! But the women proved that they could do the work of men, and do it just as well. Though trenches offered some protection, they were still incredibly dangerous, as soldiers easily became trapped or killed because of direct hits from artillery fire. Undated photograph of a trench interior.

Click image for more information. British soldiers standing in water in a trench. American soldiers in a trench near Douamont, France, circa November After a failed attack on the Dardanelles the strait linking the Sea of Marmara with the Aegean Sea , Allied forces led by Britain launched a large-scale land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula in April The invasion also proved a dismal failure, and in January Allied forces staged a full retreat from the shores of the peninsula after suffering , casualties.

British-led forces also combated the Ottoman Turks in Egypt and Mesopotamia , while in northern Italy, Austrian and Italian troops faced off in a series of 12 battles along the Isonzo River, located at the border between the two nations. British and French—and later, American—troops arrived in the region, and the Allies began to take back the Italian Front. The biggest naval engagement of World War I, the Battle of Jutland May left British naval superiority on the North Sea intact, and Germany would make no further attempts to break an Allied naval blockade for the remainder of the war.

World War I was the first major conflict to harness the power of planes. At the dawn of World War I, aviation was a relatively new field; the Wright brothers took their first sustained flight just eleven years before, in Aircraft were initially used primarily for reconnaissance missions. During the First Battle of the Marne, information passed from pilots allowed the allies to exploit weak spots in the German lines, helping the Allies to push Germany out of France.

The first machine guns were successfully mounted on planes in June of in the United States, but were imperfect; if timed incorrectly, a bullet could easily destroy the propeller of the plane it came from.

The Morane-Saulnier L, a French plane, provided a solution: The propeller was armored with deflector wedges that prevented bullets from hitting it. The British Bristol Type 22 was another popular model used for both reconnaissance work and as a fighter plane. Dutch inventor Anthony Fokker improved upon the French deflector system in Though his most popular plane during WWI was the single-seat Fokker Eindecker, Fokker created over 40 kinds of airplanes for the Germans.

On April 1, , the British created the Royal Air Force, or RAF, the first air force to be a separate military branch independent from the navy or army. With Germany able to build up its strength on the Western Front after the armistice with Russia, Allied troops struggled to hold off another German offensive until promised reinforcements from the United States were able to arrive.

On July 15, , German troops launched what would become the last German offensive of the war, attacking French forces joined by 85, American troops as well as some of the British Expeditionary Force in the Second Battle of the Marne. The Allies successfully pushed back the German offensive and launched their own counteroffensive just three days later.

The Second Battle of the Marne turned the tide of war decisively towards the Allies, who were able to regain much of France and Belgium in the months that followed. All four regiments comprised of celebrated soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and American-Indian Wars , and served in the American territories.

But they were not deployed for overseas combat in World War I. Blacks serving alongside white soldiers on the front lines in Europe was inconceivable to the U. Instead, the first African American troops sent overseas served in segregated labor battalions, restricted to menial roles in the Army and Navy, and shutout of the Marines, entirely.

Their duties mostly included unloading ships, transporting materials from train depots, bases and ports, digging trenches, cooking and maintenance, removing barbed wire and inoperable equipment, and burying soldiers. Facing criticism from the Black community and civil rights organizations for its quotas and treatment of African American soldiers in the war effort, the military formed two Black combat units in , the 92nd and 93rd Divisions.

Trained separately and inadequately in the United States, the divisions fared differently in the war. The 92nd faced criticism for their performance in the Meuse-Argonne campaign in September The 93rd Division, however, had more success.

With dwindling armies, France asked America for reinforcements, and General John Pershing , commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, sent regiments in the 93 Division to over, since France had experience fighting alongside Black soldiers from their Senegalese French Colonial army. Despite the Turkish victory at Gallipoli, later defeats by invading forces and an Arab revolt that destroyed the Ottoman economy and devastated its land, and the Turks signed a treaty with the Allies in late October Austria-Hungary, dissolving from within due to growing nationalist movements among its diverse population, reached an armistice on November 4.

Facing dwindling resources on the battlefield, discontent on the homefront and the surrender of its allies, Germany was finally forced to seek an armistice on November 11, , ending World War I. At the Paris Peace Conference in , Allied leaders stated their desire to build a post-war world that would safeguard itself against future conflicts of such devastating scale.

As the years passed, hatred of the Versailles treaty and its authors settled into a smoldering resentment in Germany that would, two decades later, be counted among the causes of World War II.

World War I took the lives of more than 9 million soldiers; 21 million more were wounded. Civilian casualties numbered close to 10 million.