ARtefact 1 & QR1 - The Talking Veteran

• Appropriate to KS1, KS2, KS3.
• History skills: inquiry, deduction and interrogation.
• Secondary history source – image.
• Primary history source – veteran's speech.

Activity

1. Put the poster image on your whiteboard or paste onto the centre of a piece of large paper. Using the questions:
2. What do you definitely know from the recording of the veteran?
3. What do you think you know?
4. What would you like to find out?

Write the answers around the edge of the paper.

QR1 will direct pupils to this webpage with a transcript of the veteran's speech.

Extension activity
Pupils conduct their own online research to find out the answers.

Transcript
Well on July 1st we were going over the top. My feelings in that morning was, after all the months of waiting, looking forward to the very day, it was happening. While I listen to him I was thinking well this is what we waited for and this is what we wanted. We were going over the top and we thought of that time, after all the training, and the...it was a cushy sector beforehand; we thought well, we should be alright here. Zero hour comes alright. Hear the whistles going down the line, over the top. Everybody's watch is synchronized. I take my Lewis gun team over. We get on fairly well until I realise......, how we were lagging behind. Going over the top is not going over a carpet floor or going over a road. It's going over a place, which has been pockmarked for nearly 12 month of shell fire.

QR2 leads to this page, containing an overview of women's roles in the war.