4 exam-style questions with full mark schemes and model answers. Write your own answer and the AI examiner marks it against the mark scheme.
This question is about the British sector of the Western Front, 1914 to 1918: injuries, treatment and the trenches.
Describe two features of the system used to move wounded soldiers from the front line to hospital (the chain of evacuation). (4 marks)
This question is about the British sector of the Western Front, 1914 to 1918: injuries, treatment and the trenches.
Describe two features of the underground tunnels and dugouts used by the British in the Arras sector. (4 marks)
This question is about the British sector of the Western Front, 1914 to 1918: injuries, treatment and the trenches.
Source A — an invented letter written for this exercise, in the style of a letter home from a stretcher-bearer serving with a Field Ambulance unit on the Western Front, dated 1916.
Mother, you would not believe the state in which the wounded reach us. The shells throw up the soil, which is thick with the filth of years, and it is driven deep into the wounds, so that even a small hurt may turn bad within a day or two. The surgeons at the clearing station have taken to cutting away all the torn and dirtied flesh around a wound before they close it, which they say is the only way to stop the rot setting in. We have lost men to the gas gangrene who might have lived, their wounds swelling and blackening for want of being cleaned in time. The doctors are learning quickly, but the ground itself fights against us.
Source B — an invented report written for this exercise, in the style of an RAMC medical officer's report on the treatment of wounds, dated 1917.
The chief difficulty on this front remains the infection of wounds by the heavily manured soil of Flanders and Picardy, which gives rise to gas gangrene if not promptly checked. Experience has confirmed that the excision of all dead and contaminated tissue, followed by irrigation of the wound, greatly reduces the onset of sepsis. The Carrel–Dakin method of irrigating wounds with a mild antiseptic solution has been adopted in many clearing stations with good results. Speed of evacuation to the casualty clearing station, where such surgery can be performed, remains the single greatest factor in saving life and limb.
How useful are Sources A and B for an enquiry into the problem of wound infection and how it was treated on the Western Front? Explain your answer, using Sources A and B and your own knowledge. (8 marks)
This question is about the British sector of the Western Front, 1914 to 1918: injuries, treatment and the trenches.
Source A — an invented diary extract written for this exercise, in the style of a diary kept by a nurse working at a casualty clearing station on the Western Front, dated 1917.
A quieter night, for which we were thankful. Two of the worst cases came in with shattered thigh bones, and the orderlies had splinted their legs with the new long splint before they were carried from the line, which the surgeon says has saved many who would once have died of shock before they reached us. We were able to give one man a transfusion of stored blood, kept on ice, before his operation, and he rallied where last year he would surely have been lost. The doctors speak much of how blood may now be kept for some days rather than taken straight from a donor at the bedside. There is so much that is new since I first came out.
How could you follow up Source A to find out more about how new medical methods reduced deaths from severe wounds on the Western Front?
In your answer, give the detail in Source A that you would follow up, a question you would ask, a source you could use, and how this might help answer the question. (4 marks)