Lesson video

Hello and welcome to lesson five of our six lessons enquiry about what are the stories of the 'often forgotten armies' reveal about the Western Front.

And today we're going to be looking at the story of Mike Mountain Horse.

So you remember that our enquiry, we're looking at those 'often forgotten armies' and thinking about what can they show us? What different perspectives maybe could they give us about the Western Front? What can we learn from those stories? And that's what we're going to continue doing today.

So this is Mike Mountain Horse.

This is a photo of him when he was a bit older when he had returned from the Western Front in sort of traditional costume.

And then this is a photo of him around the time when he was serving on the Western Front.

And you can see him maybe you can guess which one he is.

You can see him here in his army uniform.

And so we're going to be having a look at him and his story today.

Before we do that let's just have a quick recap on where we're at.

So in our first lesson or in the first lesson obviously we did an overview and in the second lesson we looked at the war beginning and the Race to the sea with Ganga Singh.

Then we had a look at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915 and the story of the Algerian soldiers, this was the first use of chlorine gas on the Western Front and their experience.

Last lesson we had a brief look at the Battle of the Somme and Battle of Verdun and what impact that had on British Military Strategy and the experiences of the Chinese Labour Corps.

And now we're into 1917 and where we're going to look at Mike Mountain Horse's story, but I think it's important for us to be aware that at the same time that he was on the Western Front, big changes were starting to happen in the war.

Russia was experiencing a revolution.

The United States had declared it was going to enter the war and were starting to get troops ready to arrive on the Western Front.

So it was a year of change.

And then as you know, the war ended in 1918.

So the Situation in Spring 1917.

The Battle of Verdun and Somme had come to an end.

And as we sort of talked about last lesson, by this point both sides had suffered millions of deaths.

The war had been going on for some years.

Russia was experiencing a revolution and America joined the war in April.

And those two things were really to be decisive.

But in spring 1917 there was still stalemate on the Western Front.

There was still big battles.

There were still men in trenches.

Sometimes they're experiencing not really very much movement.

Now in terms of the story of Mike Mountain Horse, his brother Albert Mountain Horse served in Second Battle of Ypres.

and was actually affected by the chlorine gas that hits the Algerian and the Canadian soldiers there.

And then his brother Mike Mountain Horse served and fought in particular in two battles.

One at a place called Vimy Ridge and one in Cambrai in 1917.

So before we go on and we look in detail about his story, I'd like you to do the same thing we've been doing for other lessons and just get your table ready.

So make sure you've got a space for Weapons and technology, Military strategy, Treatment of troops and life on the front line, and The psychological effects of war.

I'm going to ask you to pause the video, get that ready and then you can press play when you are ready to resume.

Okay, so these aren't things necessarily to write down.

These are just things to look out for the things we've kind of been looking at for, the typical presentation or the typical things we would maybe expect.

So, in weapons and technology we're looking at machine guns, big sort of shells, artillery, tanks, gas.

Obviously we talked about tanks and gas in previous lessons.

Think about maybe what you do see this time around.

In terms of military strategy.

Are we still in trench warfare? Are we seeing sort of Barbed wire and No Man's Land, big battles? What sort of treatment are the troops experiencing? Is it bad treatment and the bad conditions? And we're thinking again about psychological effects, things like shell shock.

So the story of Mike Mountain Horse, the text is as before on the website.

And if you want to follow along, then you can grab that text.

I'm going to read the story and have some images on the screen.

So you can just listen or you can have the text and follow along.

Okay, so the story of Mike Mountain Horse.

This calfskin once belonged to Corporal Mike Mountain Horse.

Mike was a member of a First Nation Tribe in Canada.

The tribe is called the Bloods.

After the colonisation of Canada by the British, the Bloods came under the rule of the new Canadian Government.

This government told the Bloods to give up their warrior traditions.

After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Britain called on its colonies to fight on the Western Front.

We've already seen the Indian troops were among the first soldiers to arrive in France.

Mike Mountain Horse's older brother Albert enlisted so signed up in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Albert fought in the First Battle of Ypres.

He was gassed three times and his lungs were damaged.

So he was sent home.

Albert died one day after reaching Canada in November, 1915.

Albert had been encouraged to join the army by a missionary.

So somebody who goes.

A Christian who goes out and encourages people to become Christian called Samuel Middleton.

After being told of her son's death, Albert's mother took a knife and tried to kill the Middleton.

She was dragged away by her other sons.

At the funeral the Bloods felt their warrior tradition reawaken.

"I felt a spirit" and this is Mike Mountain who was talking.

"I felt a spirit of revenge, just like gaze down on Albert, lying in his coffin.

Soon after my brother and I, Joe Mountain Horse and a number of Indian boys from neighbouring reserves listed in the 191st battalion for service overseas." Mike and Joe Mountain Horse arrived in France in 1917.

In the woods behind the front lines, they prayed together.

One of the Bloods called George Strangling Wolf, took a knife and cut a strip of flesh from around his knee, holding up the bloody offering towards the sun.

He prayed aloud, "help me Sun to survive this terrible war." He then buried his flesh in the mud of Northern France.

Strangling Wolf's official army records, sorry, Strangling Wolf's official army records list his religion as church of England, but he survived the war under the gaze of the Sun Spirit of his Blood ancestors.

Mike and Joe Mountain Horse fought a fierce battle called Vimy Ridge.

They then fought again in the Battle of Cambrai in November, 1917.

And it was the first mass tank attack in history.

At one point during the battle, Mike was buried under rubble for four days, he survived but he was later wounded.

He was shipped to England to convalesce or to get better.

In 1917 he returned to the Blood Reserve in Canada with the distinguished conduct medal on his chest.

Years later, Mike told of the story of his great war deeds to a friend and artist Ambrose Two Chiefs.

Ambrose painted the story onto calfskin in the traditions of the Indians of the great Plains.

And we can see that here.

And what I find really fascinating about this source, this sort of robe story as they're often called, is that it's not created in the order of time like chronologically, it's created in order of the kind of events that Mike Mountain Horse felt were most important to him.

I mean can you see some of those experiences being buried, the battles, the conflict.

And this source I feel like reveal something to us about the Western Front, that different people experience it differently and came to the Western Front with often very different cultures, but for alongside one another.

So, now I've kind of read that bit of the story to you and thanks again to Ms Worth for allowing us to use her story.

I'd like you to as we've done for the other lessons start filling in your table.

So you might want to think about what Mike Mountain Horse's life was like.

You might want to think about the new technology that we saw a little bit last lesson.

Remember we're thinking about the Chinese Labour Corp.

But also that Mike Mountain Horse would have seen as he was in the Battle of Cambrai.

Maybe think about if there's anything you can put down for the psychological effects of war, thinking a little bit here about Mike and why he signed up.

So I'm going to ask you to pause the video, to fill in your table and I will see you in a moment once you're done.

Okay, so welcome back.

These are some of my ideas, I'm sure you've got lots of excellent ones that maybe might be different to mine.

And that's absolutely fine.

So in terms of weapons and technology, I put down gas and how that had affected his brother Albert Mountain Horse.

I put tanks, the first kind of massed attack tanks had been used before in the Battle of the Somme, but this was like the first massed attack of tanks.

And that was at the Battle of Cambrai that Mike Mountain Horse served in.

In terms of military strategy, I feel like there's a focus on technology and an increasing use of tanks and maybe an increasing use of new technology as the war progressed.

That's how historians often look at the First World War and they look at how technology changed over time, often really quite rapidly.

And the continued use of colonial soldiers.

So, we saw obviously with Ganga Singh and the fact that the Indian soldiers were some of the first to arrive on the front line.

And that was something that continued in different forms as we looked at last lesson, but it also continued throughout the war.

Treatment of troops and life on the front line.

I talked about that kind of multiculturalism I know before we've talked about different.

How different languages were used, but I think here you can really clearly see different cultures in the actions of George Strangling Wolf, him getting the offering.

And then I put about how the front line, how the Western Front really affected home.

So, although these events were happening, thousands of miles away from Canada, the death of the son and brother, which was in many ways caused by the gas on the Western Front, really hit home in Canada.

And that was something that was repeated across the world.

As troops that have travelled from all over the world, came to the Western Front, many died on the Western Front.

but that news would have really impacted their families back home, whether it was in England, or Canada, or India.

And then another thing I thought was really interesting about Mike Mountain Horse's story was that he was treated in England.

So that was something that was relatively common.

The injured soldiers would be treated on the front line at the Western Front, but then would also often be sent back for example, to Britain to be treated and to get better at hospital.

And sometimes they would then go back to fight on the Western Front.

And then psychological effects of war.

I put grief, we can definitely see the grief that in many ways drove Mike Mountain Horse to sign up after his brother died.

And then I wasn't sure about this one.

So I put using religion as a support.

I think we don't hear a huge amount about George Strangling Wolf in the story just about what he did.

We don't really to know his motivations, but I put using religion as a way to maybe get through the war.

That things were really hard and that using religion or kind of rituals was maybe a way that many of the men sort of survived and kept going.

You might have lots of other brilliant ideas.

I'm sure you do.

I would recommend that if you don't have some of these, you pause the video now you give yourself a tick for any that you've got.

You may be add any that I've spoken about, that you like the sound of to your table, and then we'll continue in a moment.

Okay, so if you need a bit more time, pause the video we're going to keep going.

So tanks were first used successfully in a mass like lots of them, and in massed attack at the Battle of Cambrai.

What does this maybe reveal about the Western Front? I would like you to pick two of these options.

Maybe write them down and I'm going to read them out to you now.

So option one, The British were in trouble in 1917.

Option two, Soldiers were no longer important 'cause they had tanks now.

Option three, Leaders were trying new things to break the stalemate.

Option four, New technologies were being used in the First World War.

Write down your two options.

You're going to go one and two, one and four, write those down now.

Okay, so I thought I would go for leaders were trying new things to break the stalemate.

So in this instance they using tanks and that new technologies were being used.

So, we see that most clearly here, we saw it in a really gruesome and grim way with the gas attack at the Second Battle of Ypres Mike Mountain Horse joined the war after the death of his brother, Albert.

What does this reveal to us about the Western Front? Option one, Events on the Western Front touched families miles away.

Option two, The Western Front could be a horrible place to be.

Option three, Chemical weapons like chlorine gas are highly destructive.

Or option four, At first they thought it was just smoke.

I'd like you to pick your two, during the war after the death of his brother.

What could that reveal? So here I went for, Events on the Western Front touched families miles away.

I think that one's quite obvious.

And then option three, because his brother you remember died in a large part because of the kind of chlorine gas that he was subjected to.

I put the Chemical weapons are highly destructive.

So they were used on the Western Front.

Okay, last one, George Strangling Wolf buried a piece of his flesh in the mud of northern France.

What does this reveal? And this time you're going to only pick one.

That George Strangling Wolf was stupid.

That the Western Front could be a horrible place to be.

That soldiers were not always supported or cared for properly.

And the different cultures existed side by side on the Western Front.

Could you write down your option now? Okay, so I went for option four.

I think I wouldn't go for this one.

I don't think it shows us that George Strangling Wolf was stupid.

And I also feel like that's quite specific to him.

It's not really about the Western Front, but yeah I wouldn't that he was stupid.

I think you're good.

You could maybe argue that the fact that he did do this shows us that he was like.

The Western front was a horrible place to be that he did something so extremists like cut off a piece of his own knee.

But it's also potentially, we don't know.

Like I don't know for sure.

I think it's also potentially just an example of like different cultures of different cultures using different ways to kind of get through this experience or doing different things to support them during this experience of being on the Western Front.

So we've come to our questions.

I'll read them out to you, once I've done that you're going to want to do the normal thing.

Pause the video, write down your answers in full sentences.

And then I will give you the answers or we'll go through some of the answers at the end, once you've prescribe.

So, where was Mike Mountain Horse? From question number one.

Why did Mike Mountain Horse sign up to fight? What happened? What tragic thing had happened? Which battles did Mike Mountain Horse take part in? What piece of technology was first used in a mass attack in 1917? And what does Mike Mountain Horse's story maybe reveal to us about the Western Front? So as normal pause the video here and I'll see you when you're done.

Okay, so let's go through some of the answers.

So he was from Canada.

You might have been more specific and said that he was from the Kainai Blood Tribe reserve in Canada, but give yourself a tick if you put Canada.

Maybe give yourself two ticks, if you were more specific about where he was from in Canada.

Why did he sign up to fight? If you give yourself a tick it'll be probably because his brother died.

It'd be better if it was in a full sentence.

And if you gave a bit more detail about his brother and where he had fought.

Which battles did Mike Mountain Horse take part in? He took part in the Battle of Vimy Ridge and in the Battle of Cambrai.

What piece of technology was first used in a mass attack? Well done if you said, tanks.

Tanks have been used before in the Western Front, nice bit of details there, but they was first successfully used in a mass attack.

And then after that they became increasingly kind of important and kind of normal parts of fighting on the Western Front.

What does Mike Mountain Horse's story reveal about the Western Front? There are so many different answers that would be great for this.

If you put something about people from different cultures fighting on the Western Front, give yourself a tick, you obviously need to remember to put full stops.

And ideally you're writing in a full sentences.

In full sentences, so you might have written something like Mike Mountain Horse's story reveals several things about the Western Front.

That he joined up after his older brother Albert died shows what happened on the Western Front affected people thousands of miles away.

Moreover, that George Strangling Wolf gave an offering to the Sun Spirit gives us a sense of how multicultural the Western Front was.

And historians have really in more recent times kind of focused on that or looked at that.

That was the next day found the examples of different kind of religious symbols being like hidden in almost in the Western Front and then discovered like years later.

Which gives us a sense of just how sort of multicultural the Western Front was.

And just how many different groups of people shared that space in Northern France and Belgium.

So, thinking about the extension activity for today's lesson, there is a really fascinating documentary that is called or if you can search for MIKE MOUNTAIN HORSE WAR STORIES 1917.

ca Documentary.

And in that documentary, it goes into a lot more detail than I was able to in this lesson about his robe story.

There is one of his Mike Mountain Horses descendants talking about him, talking about his experiences, his time on the Western Front.

And you get a bit more of a sense of him and his life and his culture.

You might want to answer these three questions as you are watching the video or after you have watched the video.

And if you don't get a chance to do that, or if you feel like you're done for today, well done.

And remember that if you do the extension activity or not, make sure you do the end of lesson quiz to check your understanding.

Well done for today.

This is the end of the lesson.

And I really look forward to seeing you for our final lesson where we're kind of bringing all of our different stories together.

And we're thinking about answering that question about what do these stories of is 'often forgotten armies' what do they reveal to us about the Western front? So I look forward to seeing you for our next and final lesson.

See you later.