ia_2009_c_jacob

=Evaluation of Sources (250-400 words) Tips]=

War Horse is a valuable source due to its purpose; the author aims to raise people awareness on the significance of horse in the First World War **__1__**. Michael Morpurgo is a famous children’s author and was nominated the children’s Laureate 2003-2005 War Horse has limitations; due to its purpose, The book distorts reality. War horse inaccurately states that there were still several military charges after the outset of the war, whereas the last British military cavalry charge conducted in 1914. Secondly the book, is aimed at young teenagers, thus, some trench scene seemed almost glossed over, as this might be much too shocking for a young teenager. Whilst we reading the novel, we became aware that the separation between Albert and Joey is much more emotional than trenches, in which numerous humans and horses lay rotting dead.
 * Source 1**

Hundreds of dead…were strung out like wreckage washed up to a high water mark. Quite as many died on the enemy wire as on the ground, like fish caught in a net. They hung there in grotesque postures. Some looked as though they were praying: they had died on their knees and the wire had prevented their fall...it was clear that there were no gaps in the wire at the time of their attack. Concentrated machine-gun fire from sufficient guns to command every inch of the wire, had done it's terrible work. The Germans must have been reinforcing their wire for months. It was so dense that daylight could barely be seen through it…How did the planners imagine that Tommies would get through the German wire? Who told them that artillery fire would pound such wire to pieces, making it possible to get through? Any Tommy could have told them that shell fire lifts wire up and drops it down, often in a worse tangle than before. From With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, George Coppard.
 * Source 2**

The source: From With a Machine Gun to Cambrai, George Coppard is valuable, due to its origin. The origin of this source illustrate that this is a first hand source. This source also has limitations, also due to its origin. This source is from George Coppard’s memoir, meaning that although this source is a first hand source, the author has written a long time after the First World War, thus, he is only writing down what he can remember. He possibly only remembered the events which shocked him most. The trench warfare might have been such a ghastly and atrocious period that the author might have forced himself to forget.

__Footnote__
 * //1//** “I discovered also that at the end of the war most of our surviving horses were sold off to French butchers. Here was a strong story, I felt, the story of how it was to be a horse in the First World War.” (Michael Morpurgo, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/10/13/bthorse113.xml)