Meiling 1107 

World War I Essay Test

“A Time of War, A Time of Virus”

World War I​ was the “F​irst World War”​ or “​Great War”​. It was an

international conflict in 1914–1918 embroiled most of the nations of ​Europe​ along

with ​Russia​, the ​United States​, the ​Middle East​, and other regions. The war

pitted the ​Central Powers​; mainly ​Ger​m​any​, ​Austria-Hungary​, and ​Turke​ against

the Allies; mainly ​France​, ​Great Britain​, Russia, ​Italy​, ​Japan​, and the ​United

States​. It ended with the defeat of the Central Powers. For the war, men needed

to leave their families and became soldiers for the armies that will fight in the war.

During the war, soldiers were struggling, they needed to live unsecure, they didn't

know that they would be alive for the next day or not and there were some

diseases established in that time which made many soldiers die. These situations

are some ways similar to the “Spread of Coronavirus” situation right now. Here

are some connections between these two situations.

Compared the World War I situation to the ​Spread of Coronavirus situation

that we are going through right now, we are going through this isolation a lot

easier. In our quarantine, we can still live with our families but the soldiers in

World War I can’t, they needed to leave their family behind and didn’t know that

they would be able to come back or not.​ We live in a comfortable house, sleep on

a fluffy bed while the soldiers need to live in trenches which are not clean and not

comfortable at all. We are now protecting ourselves from the disease but the

soldiers didn’t only need to protect themselves from disease but they also

needed to protect themselves from the enemies too. They needed to be aware of
the bombs, poison gas attacks, etc. Moreover, there is a huge difference

between the technology of that time and now. Now, we can contact our family

with just a click on our phone but they need to send long distance letters. We can

talk and know how our families are doing but they didn’t know anything about the

people that they leave behind so they were wondering all the time which could

make their mental health get worse. And when we get the virus, there is high

technology that can cure most of us but in that time the technology was too low

to cure most of the people.

The isolation that I’m going through, makes my family relationship much

closer. I get to spend more time with my family because I don’t need to live in a

dormitory. Me and my friend didn’t get to hangout together like usual. We didn’t

get to meet face to face but I didn’t feel like there is a distance between me and

my friends at all because we can still use our high technology phone to contact

each other all the time. I think in World War I, the soldiers' relationships with their

families were far apart from each other a lot but that might make them love each

other more because they lived a long distance so they would wonder about each

other more. The people that were at home would be very wondering about their

son and husbands too because they didn’t know anything about their son or

husbands at all. I think they needed to live unhappily and I believed that they

already prepared themselves to hear the bad news someday because everyone

knew that it was very risky to attend the war. And I think the soldiers also had no

idea about their family so they just thought about achieving their goals, to win the

war and make themselves returned safely back home. Communication had

changed a lot from that time to now. It is definitely different. At that time people
didn't usually have phones and the head who had the phone still had a low

technology phone that didn’t work effectively like in the present day. But here in

Coronavirus quarantine, we have high technology devices like computer, laptop,

phone, i pad, etc. All of these make us very convenient in communication. We

can talk and see others' faces in just a click that takes one seconds. We can

research some information about the virus and we can know how the world is

going. Our lives are a lot more convenient. Sometimes they even needed to run

as fast as they could to send a message to other people. It was very difficult to

communicate long distances at that time.

The feeling when I can’t see the enemy but I know it’s out there is the

worst feeling. I will feel concern, unsecure, and worry all the time. I won’t be able

to feel relaxed anytime because I need to be aware of the enemies all the time.

This feeling is similar to the feeling that I have right now in the Coronavirus

quarantine because if I go outside I always feel concerned about the people that I

walked past because I don’t know who is who and they might have the virus. I

think the soldiers felt in the same ways as I felt with the unseen enemy. The

soldiers dealt with unseen enemies by seeking inside the trench because they

could be shot any time if they put their head out. They were aware of bombs and

gas attacks all the time. What they did was to make the enemies become weak

by doing something such as trick them to release the gun with no benefit which

this will waste their troops and then the soldiers attacked the enemies on that

time because the enemies didn’t set up themselves properly. These must

psychologically affect the soldiers in the same ways as it makes me feel but it

must affect the soldiers more

 When World War was going, the technology was very low. There were

many types of disease that existed during the war which specialist or doctors

couldn’t create medicine for all kinds of diseases in time so many people died.

Doctors only had medicine for basic sickness, so doctors usually choose to cure

the people who had a basic sickness rather than cure the one who had very

serious symptoms because it was very hopeless to cure those who were very

sick. The best that they could do with the serious sickness cases were just to

make them live longer. Some of the diseases were Tetanus disease, Trench

disease, and Influenza. The greatest one was Influenza. It was caused by the

virus and it spreaded through camps rapidly. Now we have high technology in

medicine. We have a lot more better devices to study viruses or diseases like

how they were established, how they spread, and how to stop them. Now, we

can produce effective medicine that can cure most of the people. We can also

check how effective the medicine we created was. Which all of these help us

better in blocking the virus than in the past.

In conclusion, there are many differences in the World War situation and

the isolation that we are going through now. Our feelings and the soldiers’

feelings are not the same. The situation had affected us very differently

physically, mentally, and emotionally. Technology is a big main point that makes

these two situations different, it grew a lot from that time until now which makes

us go through this isolation much easier while the soldiers in that time needed to

go through the time much harder. It makes communication work very well. It

supports people’ relationships. And it also helps the world more on fighting

against the disease and curing people. Even now, we still don’t have the vaccine
that actually cures Coronavirus but we have medicine that can cure the

symptoms that exist in the people who have this virus and this can recover

people from the virus. However, we need to stay home, be careful and take care

of ourselves to be a part of helping the world.