Serious side to fun day in trench

290415SPtrenches SOLDIERS: Carlton pupils get an idea of what life was like in the trenches of World War 1.

"I lost all sense of my feet. The water went right through my shoes!" I complained to Mum after school.
"But it was still heaps of fun."
What was I talking about?
Like almost everyone at school, our class had got really interested in World War 1 and Gallipoli, so a couple of teachers decided to make it even more fun.
Somehow they managed to find a man with a field and a digger to dig a trench for us. We had to wear a change of clothes so our school uniforms would be kept clean, and carry our school bags the whole time like soldiers' packs. We arrived with our old clothes and packs on, and faced the first challenge; to actually get down into the trench. I half-walked, half-slid down a slope and straight onto the wet, muddy ground. There was a lot of laughing and yelping as our feet hit the water left after last night's rain.
The teachers had to remind us that soldiers put up with wet feet and much worse for months on end. Then we were given our ration packs. It was actually an Anzac biscuit. Like almost everyone else, I ate mine straight away. Who knows what might have happened to it if I'd left it till later. Didn't want it to get wet too!
After we'd calmed down a bit, we were told the rules of the war. We could be handed a card and it would say shot, wounded or alive. If we were shot, we had to stay lying in one place and not move. Wounded "soldiers" crawled back into the trench and alive ones just ran and jumped back in. There would be challenges to test our soldier skills.
The best challenge was each group got a skipping rope and a newspaper (soldiers had skipping ropes at Gallipoli? Whaaaat?). Using them we had to try and get a can of food that was on the ground a little way away from the trench, into the trench. If you climbed out you were shot. That was really hard!
My group tried swinging the rope like a lasso to catch the can but instead it hit another kid on their head. So we ended up pretending the newspaper was an invisibility cloak like Harry Potter had and I climbed up the muddy trench wall by digging my fingers and feet into the side. I ran towards the can with the newspaper flapping, but the teacher shot me!
I clapped my hands over my heart and made gasping noises as I fell on to the grass. The rest of the group kept yelling, "Get the can! Get the can!" So I had to stand up and show them my card that said "shot" then die all over again.
So that's why I had cold feet. But at least at the end of the day I got to go home. Soldiers didn't.