Kevin Major St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada E-Mail

Teaching Aids - No Man's Land

The novel is presently be looked at by Departments of Education in several Canadian provinces. During the last school year Tom Graham, teacher at Holy Trinity Regional High, Torbay, NF (and the man behind the acclaimed student theatre production about the Battle of Beaumont Hamel) used the book in a pilot project novel study.

Teaching activities for No Man's Land are being developed. Here are some resources that would be useful to anyone working with the book.

BOOKS:

Cave, Joy B. What Became of Corporal Pittman?, St. John's: Breakwater Books, 1976. (The most complete documentation of the battle and its men. Out-of-print.)

Clarke, John D. (ed), First World War ('Living History' series), New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995. (Striking combination of text and photographs, directed to young people.)

Gwyn, Sandra, Tapestry of War, Toronto: Harper Collins, 1992. (Chapter 17 looks at the Newfoundland Regiment in Gallipoli and Beaumont Hamel, focusing in particular on two of its men who wrote about their experiences.)

Macfarlane, David, The Danger Tree
Toronto: Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1991. (Memory, war, and the search for a family's past.)

Miller, Elizabeth Russell, Arms and the Newfoundlander
St. John's: Harry Cuff Publications. (A collection of 30 poems written by Newfoundlanders during World War I.)

Murphy, Tony and Kenney, Paul, The Trail of the Caribou,
St. John's: Harry Cuff Publications, 1991. (A book of photographs of the Newfoundland Regiment in World War I.)

Nicholson, Col.G.W.L., The Fighting Newfoundlander, Gov't of NF, 1964. (Well-written regimental history. Out-of-print.)

Parsons, W. David, Pilgrimage
(A Guide to the Royal Newfoundland Regiment in World War One), St. John's: Creative, 1994. (A thorough guide to the battlefields and Newfoundland's part in the war, with maps and photographs.)

Winter, Denis, Death's Men (Soldiers of the Great War), London: Penguin, 1978. (An excellent look at the life of the soldier in the trenches and out.)

WEB SITES:

The Newfoundland Beaumont Hamel Memorial
Information on the memorial site in France and on the battle itself. Includes a map of the Western Front.

Battlefields:Beaumont Hamel
Part of a tour of the battlefields of World War I, developed by Hinchingbrooke School in England. Well worth joining.

World War I - Trenches on the Web
Every changing, ever interesting.

VIDEO:

Beaumont Hamel: A Battle Revisited
A co-production of Ocean Pictures Ltd. and Memorial University of Newfoundland. Running time: 53:50.

The Battle of the Somme (Official Pictures of the British Army in France), Imperial War Museum, London, 1987. 80 min.
Classic silent footage of the war, first shown in cinemas in August of 1916. Comes with a viewing guide book. (Available in NTSC format for North American VCRs.)

Consult the video and film catalogues of your school board and Department of Education for additional material.

For schools in Newfoundland, these include the following: