In the trenches

Deirdre Newman

Imagine being stuck in a trench, surrounded by the stench of rotting

corpses, humongous rats foraging for food and the sporadic bursts of

poisonous gas as the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire continually

punctuates the air.

That’s the task that 135 Estancia High School juniors were faced with

Tuesday morning as their teacher, Jon Williams, tried to re-create the

tactical and sensory assault of World War I trench warfare.

Williams said he wants his students to taste the psychological trauma

the shellshocked soldiers experienced, from claustrophobia to fear to

paranoia. The culmination of the activity is when the students write

letters home to their families describing the ordeal.

“This is student-centered learning,” Williams said. “It gives them

critical-thinking skills.”

The students -- wearing pie tins as protective helmets -- had to crawl

under barbed wire to enter their classroom. There, they huddled in the

darkness in a makeshift trench, with lights flashing and a barrage of

machine gun fire emanating from loudspeakers. Williams used a fog machine

to re-create the clouds of poisonous gas that would descend on the

trenches and envelop the soldiers.

As the students became acclimated to their crowded conditions,

Williams showed slides of World War I trench warfare and read excerpts

from “All Quiet on the Western Front.” After each section, he asked the

students to try to relate to the soldiers’ conflicting emotions.

“Every time you leave the trench and return, you have cheated death.

What kind of things might you be feeling as your buddies are getting

killed?” Williams asked.

And Williams did not sugarcoat any of the gory details of war -- at

one point reading about a soldier having his brains blown out and taking

three hours to die.

Many of the students, who came from four social studies classes, said

they were struck by the visceral effect of dealing with trench warfare.

“I felt claustrophobic and just wanted to get out of there,” Cody Hess

said. “It puts you in the mind set that person would have been in inside

the trench.”

And although the methods of warfare have advanced since World War I,

some students said the classroom experience made the current war in

Afghanistan more tangible.

“It helps me understand what people from our country are going

through,” Clairisa Maygren said. “It makes me think twice about the war.”

-- Deirdre Newman covers education. She may be reached at (949)

574-4221 or by e-mail at o7 deirdre.newman@latimes.comf7 .