The Trenches (11 page)

September 1914
First trenches of the Western Front are dug.

December 1914
Unofficial Christmas truce declared by Western Front soldiers.

April 1915
Battles of Aisne and Ypres.

September 1915
Battle of Loos. Italy joins War on side of Allies. Austro-German invasion of Poland.

February 1916
The longest battle of the War, Verdun, begins. Neither side wins, but there are an estimated one million casualties.

July–November 1916
Battle of the Somme – about a million casualties, but little ground gained by Allies.

December 1916
David Lloyd George is elected Prime Minister of Great Britain. Battle of Verdun ends.

March
1917
Tsar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates. Germany launches first of five major offensives to try and win the war.

April 1917
USA declares war on Germany. Mutinies in French army begin.

June 1917
Battle of Messines – British explode nineteen mines under the ridge.

October 1917
Battle of Passchendaele. Russian workers revolt against the ruling classes – leads to Armistice between Russia and Germany.

March 1918
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ends Russian participation in the War.

July 1918
Former Russian Tsar, Nicholas II and his family murdered by Bolshevik rebels.

August–September 1918
Allied offensive on Western Front forces German retreat.

November 1918
Allied-German armistice. German naval fleet surrenders. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates. Germany proclaimed a Republic.

June 1919
Treaty of Versailles signed between Allies and Germany.

July 1919
Cenotaph unveiled in London to commemorate the dead.

Experience
history first-hand with My Story – a series of vividly imagined accounts of life in the past.

While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Billy Stevens is a fictional character, created by the author, and his story is a work of fiction.

Scholastic Children's Books,

Euston House, 24 Eversholt Street,

London NW1 1DB, UK

A division of Scholastic Ltd

London ~ New York ~ Toronto ~ Sydney ~ Auckland

Mexico City ~ New Delhi ~ Hong Kong

First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2002

This edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2016

Text © Jim Eldridge, 2002

Cover photography © CollaborationJS, 2016

eISBN 978 1407 16570 7

All rights reserved

Produced in India by Newgen

The right of Jim Eldridge and CollaborationJS to be identified as the author and cover photographer of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical or otherwise, now known or hereafter invented, without the express prior written permission of Scholastic Limited.