Source # 1 - Video Clip about the role of women on the Home Front - click here
Biography - Vera Brittain
Vera Mary Brittain was born in England in 1893 to a wealthy family. Her father owned a paper factory. Brittain had a close relationship with her brother, Edward, who was a year younger. In 1914, she attended Oxford University as a student and became interested in the women’s suffrage movement, which was fighting to win women the right to vote.
When the war began in 1914, Brittian described it in her diary as ‘the most thrilling day of her life”. Brittain’s brother Edward volunteered to be an officer in the British army – men from wealthy families typically were automatically made into officers. In 1915, Vera became engaged to Roland Leighton, one of her brother’s closest friends, who was serving on the Western Front. It was during this time that Brittain decided to leave her studies at Oxford and volunteer to become an army nurse. Her work as a nurse opened Brittain’s eyes to the horror of the war. She described this when she wrote to Leighton, “I have only one wish in life now and that is for the ending of the war. I wonder how much really all you have seen and done has changed you. Personally, after seeing some of the dreadful things I have to see here, I feel I shall never be the same person again, and wonder if, when the war does end, I shall have forgotten how to laugh.” In December of that year, while she was working as a nurse in a military hospital in London, she learned that Roland Lieghton had been killed by a German sniper. Six months later, in July 1916, she learned that her brother had been wounded in the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
Brittain was sent to the island of Malta to work as a nurse, but decided to return to England in June 1917 to care for a friend of her brother who had been blinded in the fighting. However, the friend died two weeks after her return. She then went to work as a nurse in a battlefield hospital in France where she cared for both wounded British soldiers and wounded German prisoners. During this time she wrote about the brutal and inhuman absurdity that she was caring for people were trying to kill her own friends and family. After several months in France, she had to return to England to take care of her sick parents and work in hospital there. In June 1918, she learned that her brother Edward was killed fighting in Italy. In the course of the war, she had lost her brother and all of her male friends. She continued to work as a nurse until 1919, when she returned to Oxford University to study history.
After the war, Brittain dedicated herself for working for peace. She wrote a book, Testament of Youth about her wartime experiences and the deaths of her brother, fiance, and their friends. She wrote to show that the war was not” glamour or glory, but abysmal grief and purposeless waste.” The book was a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the autumn of 1934 Brittain embarked on a successful lecture-tour of the United States. In 1937, as another world war threatened the work, Brittain became a pacifist who wrote and spoke out against war. After the war, she continued to write and work for peace until she died in 1966.
Source # 2 - Video clips from the movie Testament of Youth.
Note - you have to be logged into your Bedford Schools Google account to watch the videos
Video Clip # 1 - In this clip, Vera Brittain learns about the death of Roland Leighton - click here
Video Clip # 2 - In this clip, Vera Brittain is working as a nurse at a battlefield hospital - click here
Source # 3- Video about the sinking of the passenger ship the Lusitania by a German Submarine (U-Boat) - click here
Source # 4 - Propaganda posters from World War One. Propaganda is is a form of communication that is designed to affect the attitude of a population toward some cause. During World War One, all of the countries in the war used propaganda posters to recruit men to fight in the war and to keep the population working to support the war.
British Propaganda Poster
German Propaganda Poster
Source # 5 - Video about the propaganda used during the war - click here
