Martel Gordon. A Companion to Europe 1900-1945
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
218 tim travers
in obstinate cases of functional deafness, lip reading should be taught, or in obstinate
cases of blindness, the patient should plunge his head, with eyes wide open, into a
basin of cold water several times daily, while in cases of severe headaches, lumbar
punctures could be tried. In general, a spirit of optimism should greet every patient
on arrival.
Turning to the more sympathetic wing of the analytic therapy approach, the best-
known practitioner of this method was the psychoanalytically inclined doctor, W. H.
R. Rivers, who treated the poet and writer Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart hospital
in Scotland. Rivers was an early convert to Freudian ideas, and tried a different tack
in regard to alleviating underlying emotional problems. This was the idea that terrible
war experiences should not be repressed by the patient. Instead, Rivers advised
patients to face the unpleasant memories of the war experience, and actually deal with
them. Rivers cited a case in which his patient had gone out of the trench to seek a
fellow officer, and found his body with head and limbs lying separated from the trunk.
From that time forward
he had been haunted at night by the vision of his dead and mutilated friend. When he
slept he had nightmares in which his friend appeared, sometimes in the still more terrify-
ing aspect of one whose limbs and features had been eaten away by leprosy. The muti-
lated or leprous officer of the dream would come nearer and nearer until the patient
suddenly awoke poring with sweat and in a state of the utmost terror. He dreaded to
go to sleep, and spent each day looking forward in painful anticipation of the night. He
had been advised to keep all thoughts of war from his mind, but the experience which
recurred so often at night was so insistent that he could not keep it wholly from his
thoughts, much as he tried to do so. Nevertheless, there is no question but that he was
striving by day to dispel memories only to bring them upon him with redoubled force
and horror when he slept.
10
Rivers believed that the way to deal with this and similar cases was to stop the
patients, and in this case, the officer, from continually trying to repress their horrible
experiences, and instead to face the reality of their experiences, and to find some
aspect of their situation that was positive. Hence, in this particular case, Rivers drew
the attention of the officer to the fact that
the mangled state of the body of his friend was conclusive evidence that he had been
killed outright and had been spared the long and lingering illness and suffering which
is too often the fate of those who sustain mortal wounds. He brightened at once and
said that this aspect of the case had never occurred to him . . . He said he would no
longer attempt to banish thoughts and memories of his friend from his mind, but would
think of the pain and suffering he had been spared. For several nights he had no dreams
at all, and then came a night in which he dreamt that he went out into no man’s land
to seek his friend and saw his mangled body just as in other dreams; but without the
horror which had always previously been present. He knelt beside his friend to save for
the relatives any objects of value . . . a pious duty he had fulfilled in the actual scene,
and as he was taking off the Sam Browne belt he woke with none of the horror and
terror of the past, but weeping gently, feeling only grief for the loss of a friend.
11
The officer was on the road to recovery, according to Rivers, suffering later only one
other unpleasant dream with a different content. Rivers theorized that the recovery
the war in the trenches 219
of this officer and several others came about because of the effect of catharsis. Rivers
believed that catharsis occurred when a repressed or dissociated body of experience
was brought to the surface so that it could become reintegrated with the ordinary
personality. In conjunction with the cathartic process Rivers also applied the concept
of reeducation, which Rivers saw as helping the patient to a new view of himself and
his experience.
Unfortunately for Rivers and all those seeking to “cure” shell shock, whether
employing the analytic or discipline approaches, with the object of returning the
patient to the battlefield, shell shock, or post traumatic stress disorder, often remained
resistant to cures, and was often remarkably long lasting for the patient. This is dem-
onstrated by the statistic that in Britain, two years after the armistice, 65,000 ex-
servicemen were drawing disability pensions for neurasthenia, while 9,000 were still
undergoing hospital treatment. A typically poignant story, concerning a dairyman
who had served in World War I and had broken down under the strain, reinforces
the idea of long-lasting shell shock:
He nods and smiles every time one looks at him, frantic to please. He will sit in a chair
for hours, raising and lowering his eyebrows and fitting imaginary gloves to his fingers.
An inspecting general, pausing at his bed this morning, said, “A dairyman are you? Afraid
of horses are you? Then what do you do about cows?” He was pleased with his own
joke and the dairyman smiled too, his eyebrows shooting up and down like swallow’s
wings. Such jokes meant nothing to him. He is where no jokes but his own will ever
please him any more.
12
Execution of Serving Officers and Soldiers
Even more unfortunate was the perception that some shell shocked men might have
been executed during the war for cowardice. After the war, the 1922 British inquiry
into shell shock considered that of the 346 men executed during the war in the
British Expeditionary Force (including 25 Canadians and 5 New Zealanders), some
18 were executed for cowardice. This was an offense that might well derive from
shell shock, and undoubtedly some men were executed, especially early in the war,
who were in fact suffering from shell shock. For example, Private Harry Farr, in the
BEF, was executed in 1917 despite having suffered from traumatic neurosis during
the Somme campaign of 1916. Farr had refused to enter the line, saying he could
no longer cope with the sound of gunfire. In another case, 2nd Lieutenant Eric
Poole, also in the BEF, was executed in 1917 for desertion, despite witnesses testify-
ing that he suffered from mental confusion. In addition, courts martial in the British
army were often rather short and casual affairs, with little in the way of defensive
arguments. Other examples come from the Gallipoli campaign of 1915.
One such case concerned Private Davis of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, who faced
a court martial in late June 1915. Davis had previously been sentenced to be shot in
May 1915, which was commuted to 10 years in prison, but he reoffended by being
absent from duty and was awarded 28 days Field Punishment number 1 (being
strapped to a wheel, fence or wall, or other suitable structure for a number of hours
per day). Then on June 20, 1915, Davis was posted as a sentry at headquarters at
1 a.m. until 3 a.m., but was discovered to be absent from his duty at 2.30 a.m. by
220 tim travers
the sergeant in charge of sentries. Davis said that he had stomach cramps at 2.15
a.m., and went to the latrines for the remaining 45 minutes of his duty. Davis did
not cross-examine any of the witnesses or offer any plea for mitigation. Meanwhile,
the two witnesses were only asked whether Davis had been on duty or not, and not
whether he had been seen in the latrine area. The court martial proceedings were
very brief, there was essentially no defense, and Davis was sentenced to be shot, which
was carried out at 5 a.m. on July 2, 1915. In this case, Davis could certainly have
been suffering from dysentery, which was rampant in Gallipoli at the time, and he
may well have been suffering from mental instability, but he was probably executed
rather than being sentenced to a prison term because of his previous convictions.
13
One other example from Gallipoli is also of interest because it involved a sergeant
from the Wiltshire Regiment, by name, Robins. This was a high non-commissioned
officer rank, and the prosecution in Robins’ court martial had a difficult time explain-
ing why the regiment thought highly enough of Robins to promote him to this rank,
and at the same time suggest that he was a poor soldier. Robins’ crime was that he
refused to go on patrol on December 3, 1915, saying he was not feeling well. The
regimental medical doctor examined Robins but could not find any medical problem,
although he did give Robins some (unspecified) medicine. Robins claimed he had
contracted fever and ague from long service in India, and this was his problem on
December 3, 1915. Before sentencing, the acting regimental adjutant admitted he
could not produce Robins’ service record because it had been lost in the recent flood
on Gallipoli. Robins did not deny his actions, and he was sentenced to death and
executed on January 1, 1916. It is not clear why Robins was given the death sentence,
especially because the recent floods and freezing temperatures of November 1915
on Gallipoli had created very bad conditions, and many other soldiers had abandoned
their posts because of these conditions. Robins may well have suffered a reoccurrence
of his India symptoms because of the weather, but his execution probably occurred
because as a sergeant he held significant rank, and thus his crime could not have been
overlooked.
14
These two specific examples at the micro level show that various factors could go
into receiving the death sentence and subsequent execution. However, at the macro
level, the executions of serving men by their own justice systems reveal a strange
contrast among different countries involved in the trench warfare of World War I.
The facts are not entirely well established, and exact numbers are disputed. However,
it is considered during the war that the following numbers of men were executed:
18 Belgians; 346 British and Dominion officers and men; 700 French (a disputed
number since only 49 men were executed for participating in the large-scale French
mutinies of 1917); 35 US soldiers (only 10 of whom committed offenses in France);
48 Germans (allegedly); and the surprising number of 750 Italians. Numbers for
Russia, the Ottoman army, and the Austro-Hungarians are not available. It seems
that the Italian forces suffered the largest total number of executions, with 141 alone
being shot in November 1917, in order to halt the collapse of the Italian army after
the disaster of the battle of Caporetto, in late 1917. General Luigi Cadorna, the
Italian commander in chief, apparently resorted to floggings and summary executions
to stem the tide of indiscipline in the Italian army after Caporetto.
Of course, discipline had to be maintained, and there were then considered to be
legitimate reasons for maintaining morale through use of the death penalty. But the
the war in the trenches 221
Australian government refused to allow Australian soldiers to be executed in World
War I, and yet it is clear that Australian forces in World War I maintained their high
morale without the ultimate penalty. In regard to the differences between the execu-
tions of officers and men, while some officers were shot in all armies, it was generally
easier for officers to avoid punishment by simply getting themselves sent home to
some less dangerous job. On the other hand, the average soldier found it much more
difficult to avoid punishment. Yet even for the average soldier, the unit commander
would do much to avoid a court martial, and would try to deal with the soldier
within the unit. It should also be emphasized that a court martial death sentence did
not automatically result in execution, since most death penalties were commuted.
For example, in the BEF, there were 346 executions out of 3,080 convictions, for
a death rate of 11.23 percent of convictions. If the figures are roughly correct,
the French execution rate per conviction was very much higher, at 35 percent, while
the Italian rate was 18.62 percent, and the Belgian rate was relatively low at
8.18 percent.
15
There is no easy way to summarize these statistics, but a British memoir of the
war voiced what was probably the general sentiment among front line troops:
A man was shot for cowardice. The volley failed to kill. The officer in charge lost his
nerve, turned to the assistant provost marshal [APM] and said, “Do your own bloody
work, I cannot.” We understood that the sequel was that he was arrested. Officially this
butchery has to be applauded but I have changed my ideas. There are no two ways. A
man either can or cannot stand up to his environment. With some, the limit for breaking
is reached sooner. The human frame can only stand so much. Surely, when a man
becomes afflicted, it is more a case for the medicals than the APM. How easy for the
generals living in luxury well back in their chateaux to enforce the death penalty.
16
Self-Inflicted Wounds
If men could not stand the war in the trenches, and did not break down mentally,
and wanted to avoid the death penalty, there was always the hope that they might
get a “Blighty,” meaning a non-critical wound that might mean a period of time
in base hospital, convalescence in Britain, and hopefully, honorable discharge
from the war entirely. Some soldiers encouraged this possibility by raising hands or
even feet above the trench line, hoping for a disabling wound. And some went
even further by inflicting on themselves what were called self-inflicted wounds (SIWs).
As one extreme example, in the Canadian Corps, a soldier planted his foot and a
grenade in the ground, and blew his foot off. In all there were 582 detected
cases of SIWs among the Canadian Corps, but rarely as dramatic as the grenade and
foot method.
17
Joseph Murray, who wrote a fine memoir of his service on Gallipoli in 1915,
described an SIW in which he was unwillingly involved. Murray’s section was much
reduced by fighting, and his friend, nicknamed Tubby, was unable to stand the strain
any longer. Just before an attack, Tubby put his thumb over the mouth of his rifle
and pulled the trigger. Unfortunately, the thumb was not completely severed, and
Tubby danced around with blood squirting out. A bandage did not help, so Murray
decided to use his pocket knife to saw off the thumb. Despite much sawing this did
222 tim travers
not work, and Tubby howled in pain: “By now Tubby had lost a lot of blood.
Something had to be done quickly and the alternative was to try chopping it off. I
placed the thumb on the butt of his rifle, inserted the blade and, with a sharp tap
with my fist, the operation was complete.” With tears streaming down his face, Tubby
begged Murray not to report him. But now came the difficult part – how to explain
the powder marks on the remains of the thumb? A story was concocted that in the
excitement just before the attack, a fellow soldier had fired his rifle as Tubby was
climbing out of the trench. Somehow the officer believed the story, or what was far
more likely, the officer realized that Tubby would not be any future use in the
trenches anyway, and so Tubby was discharged back to Britain.
18
Fraternization with the Enemy
SIWs are often mentioned in memoirs, but the statistical side is difficult to analyze
due to the often disguised nature of the problem. Nevertheless, the existence of SIWs
can be balanced by more positive experiences, in this case, fraternization with the
enemy. It was to be expected that with opposing trench lines so close to each other
on the western front for three or four years, that there would be communication
between the two sides, and that this might develop into something more. There were
essentially five aspects to fraternization: truces during special times of year, such as
Christmas or Easter; medical truces to deal with dead and wounded in no man’s land;
a general system of “live and let live” in quieter sections of the line; communication
between trench lines that were close together; and finally, truces created by extreme
weather conditions.
The most famous truce occurred over the Christmas holiday of 1914. On Christmas
eve Allied soldiers in some sectors were surprised to see Christmas trees appear in
the German trenches and on their parapets, followed by singing of Christmas carols,
especially “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht” (Silent Night). Then on Christmas Day men
called across no man’s land to each other, and finally, small groups came out of the
trenches to shake hands and exchange gifts such as cigars, cigarettes, tobacco, and
newspapers. In some areas a Christmas dinner was shared, and it was rumored that
a soccer match took place between a Saxon regiment and a British regiment, with
the score 3–2 in the British favor. However, as senior officers began to hear of the
fraternization, orders went round the trenches on the evening of Christmas Day
forbidding such activity, and the next day, the war resumed, although at a low level.
In fact, in some places, the truce continued to New Year’s Day, while January 1915
remained remarkably quiet in the trenches. Yet in other areas there was no Christmas
truce, as Ernst Junger relates:
We spent Christmas Eve in the line. The men stood in the mud and sang Christmas
carols that were drowned by the enemy machine guns. On Christmas Day we lost a man
in No. 3 platoon by a flanking shot through the head. Immediately after, the English
attempted a friendly overture and put up a Christmas tree on their parapet. But our
fellows were so embittered that they fired and knocked it over. And this in turn was
answered with rifle grenades. In this miserable fashion we celebrated Christmas Day.
19
Medical truces were quite common, either to bring in the wounded or to bury
the dead between trench lines. A typical truce of this sort occurred on May 24, 1915,
the war in the trenches 223
in Gallipoli, after severe fighting. Bodies had begun to decompose in the heat, to
smell, and to attract swarms of flies, which posed a medical threat to both sides. It
may have been the Australian troops which first proposed the truce, after some
Turkish stretcher bearers had come out of the trenches the previous day, had been
captured, and then released. A truce was arranged for May 24, with both sides
wearing white arm bands to distinguish the burial parties. The burial parties took
identification from the bodies, and then buried the dead in mass graves. At a specified
time in the late afternoon, both sides retreated to their trenches, and the war
resumed. However, there had been opportunity for an exchange of cigarettes, and
some halting attempts at conversation. According to a New Zealand soldier: “Many
of the Turks expressed a wish to surrender to us but of course the conditions of
armistice do not permit of deserters being accepted during its existence.”
20
Similar medical truces took place throughout the war, but particularly in places
like Gallipoli where heat and disease were prevalent. More frequent perhaps was the
truce system known as “Live and Let Live.” In this system, sections of the line mutu-
ally “agreed’ to live in relative peace with each other, especially in the quiet areas of
the western front. These truces meant that firing would be restricted to certain times
of the day and night, sniping might be outlawed at meal times, and patrols might
“agree” not to be violent with each other. Charles Sorley, a British officer, wrote
later: “Without at all ‘fraternizing’ we refrain from interfering with Brother Bosch
seventy yards away, as long as he is kind to us.” Again:
All patrols – English and German – are much averse to the death and glory principle;
so, on running up against one another . . . both pretend that they are Levites and the
other is a good Samaritan – and pass by on the other side, no word spoken. For either
side to bomb the other would be a useless violation of the unwritten laws that govern
the relations of combatants permanently within a hundred yards of distance of each
other, who have found out that to provide discomfort for the other is but a roundabout
way of providing it for themselves.
Even without an understanding like this, conflict would sometimes be avoided,
as in the case of a German patrol in June 1916, with rifles slung over their
shoulders, which unexpectedly ran into a French outpost in the fog. A German non-
commissioned officer simply said in French: “Triste guerre, messieurs! Triste guerre!”
and the French simply allowed the patrol to fade away in the fog.
21
It was generally considered on the western front that Saxon regiments were the
German regiments most inclined to be passive. At St Eloi in 1915 it was understood
that when Saxons were in the line, there would be little shooting, and when patrols
went out, there would be a low warning whistle, and then both sides would exchange
food at night in the mine craters of no man’s land. According to one memoir of the
St Eloi sector, also in 1915: “The enemy shouted out ‘Good morning’ to me. When
I was in front of the largest crater, I watched six Germans coming out into the open
and getting into one of their advanced posts. Six more got out with their rifles slung
and with braziers in their hands yelling ‘Goodbye’ to me and went back to their main
trench.”
22
This Live and Let Live system did operate on quieter sections of the front, and
elsewhere from time to time, depending on the units in the line. But generally,
the overall attitude of the troops was to kill the enemy, and the war was normally
224 tim travers
prosecuted with some intensity. Nevertheless, trenches were often close to each other,
and communication did take place, although this did not amount to a Live and Let
Live system. Robert Graves, the poet and author, recalled that when he arrived at
the Cuinchy brickworks area on the western front, he found the Germans opposite
wanted to be friendly. They sent over messages in empty rifle grenades, evidently
intended for an Irish regiment that had just left, inviting the English over for a dinner,
and informing them that their pet dog had run over to the German trenches,
and was being looked after. Graves’ regiment did not respond. Edmund Blunden, a
junior officer, remembered an incident when a German officer and perhaps twenty
men emerged from their trench and called out “Good morning, Tommy, have you
any biscuits?” There was an exchange of shouted remarks and both sides then
returned to their trenches. Meanwhile, the junior British officers had told their men
not to fire and, for this lack of aggression, were placed under arrest. It is possible
that the German intention had simply been to find out how strongly the opposing
trench was held.
23
The closeness of the trenches and the similarity of their situations also led to some
reluctance to fire on the enemy. The French liaison officer Paul Maze wrote that he
once visited a British forward observation post and noticed a bald headed German
clearly visible opposite, but he was not fired upon. It seems that the German was
involved in the universal problem of delousing himself, and this was sufficient to
prevent him from being shot. Similar situations took place when rescuers went out
to find wounded men, or in the unusual case of Canon Frederick Scott, who on July
2, 1916 was allowed to walk around in no man’s land without interference, searching
for his dead son.
24
A more unusual form of communication occurred in Gallipoli, according to the
memoir of Joseph Murray. A bayonet fight had taken place in no man’s land between
some men of the Dublin Fusiliers and a Turkish unit. After the fighting died down,
a single combat continued between an Irish soldier and a Turkish soldier, both using
bayonets. The combat carried on until both men sank down, exhausted. Then some
men of the Dublin Fusiliers and of the Turkish unit got out of their trenches and
moved forward to collect their respective combatants. Murray wrote:
We were within arm’s length of each other, but no one spoke. We, and they, hauled our
men to their feet, both still holding their rifles at the ready. Both parties turned and
walked slowly away to their respective trenches. Not a shot was fired from either line
though there were at least a dozen men ambling about at point-blank range.
25
Finally, extreme weather could also force the two sides out into the open, whatever
their attitudes to each other. Ernst Junger, the German officer, reported an incident
in December 1915 after days of heavy rain:
One morning, when, thoroughly wet through, I went up out of the dugout into the
trench, I could scarcely believe my eyes. The field of battle that hitherto had been marked
by desolation of death itself had taken on the appearance of a fair. The occupants of the
trenches on both sides had been driven to take to the top, and now there was a lively
traffic and exchange going on in schnapps, cigarettes, uniform buttons, etc., in front of
the wire. The crowds of khaki-colored figures that streamed from the hitherto so
the war in the trenches 225
deserted English trenches had a most bewildering effect. Suddenly there was a shot that
dropped one of our fellows dead in the mud . . . Whereupon both sides disappeared
like moles into their trenches.
26
Trench Raids
However, a much more frequent element of life in the trenches was not fraterniza-
tion, but trench raids and patrols. Trench raids were called patrols if they were small
and essentially unplanned. Supposedly invented by the Canadians in 1915, trench
raids were almost always undertaken at night, and were conducted primarily to obtain
information about the enemy forces opposite. In the BEF, trench raids were also
used to theoretically maintain the morale and fighting offensive spirit of the troops,
who might lose that spirit by simply staying in their trenches. Trench raids and patrols
were also used to maintain dominance over the enemy in no man’s land. Finally, as
the war progressed, much larger trench raids took place, with considerable and precise
planning, artillery support, and lengthy orders. They were, in effect, minor offensives.
Whether trench raids maintained morale and offensive spirit is questionable, but
among BEF armies a number of trench raids were required to be launched every
month by each division, to show that that division was active in fighting the enemy
opposite.
A typical trench raid involved Ernst Junger, who on June 20, 1916 was asked to
go out into no man’s land to discover whether the enemy was mining or not. Junger
took three soldiers with him and crawled through the long grass toward the British
trenches: “Once there were loud crackling sounds behind us. Two shadows passed
along swiftly between the trenches. Just as we made ready to jump on them they
vanished. Immediately after, the thunder of two bombs in the English trench told
us it was two of our men who had crossed our path.” Junger paused, and then crawled
on. Suddenly, rustling in the grass indicated that the British had detected the patrol.
Junger’s breath came in gasps and he could hardly suppress the noise. The click of
Junger’s safety catch going back went through his nerves, as did his teeth grating on
the fuse pin of his grenade: “The fray will be short and murderous. You are aquiver
with two violent sensations – the tense excitement of the hunter and the terror of
the hunted.” However, the British soldiers had come out to repair wire and the raid
was undetected. Slowly, Junger and his men crawled back safely to their trench. But
the next night, Junger’s raid to capture a prisoner was discovered, and lights lit up
the dark ground. Rifle and machine gun fire swept across no man’s land, and it was
safer to stand up and run. By good luck, all returned safely.
27
Conclusion
Trench raids and patrols were a constant feature of trench life on the western front,
and were probably successful about half the time. It was always more dangerous to
attack than defend, but every day life in the trenches, despite the comradeship of the
men, was also full of tension, with the occasional moments of relief, as can be seen
from the previous discussion of the moment of capture, shell shock, executions, SIWs,
fraternization, and trench raids. Moreover, death and wounds could occur at any
time in trench warfare, so it is no surprise that the casualty figures for World War I
226 tim travers
are very large. Including wounded, prisoners, missing, and those who died from
disease, the statistics are: France 3,844,300; Britain 2,556,014; British Empire
646,850; Germany 6,861,950. Outside the Western Front, the numbers are equally
large: Italy 2,055,000; Russia 6,761,000; Austria-Hungary 6,920,000.
28
The tragedy
is that so much death and destruction in the trenches did not prevent another world
war twenty years later.
NOTES
1 An exception is Niall Ferguson,
The Pity of War (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp.
373–86.
2 Ernst Junger,
The Storm of Steel, From the Diary of a German Storm-troop Officer on the
Western Front (New York: Howard Fertig, 1996), pp. 262–3.
3 Cited in Tim Travers,
Gallipoli 1915 (Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2001), p. 192.
4 Lance Cattermole, “Attack on the Somme,” 92/26/1, p. 2, Imperial War Museum.
5 Ibid.
6 John Terraine,
To Win a War: 1918, The Year of Victory (London: Sidgwick and Jackson,
1978), p. 238.
7 Charles Edmonds,
A Subaltern’s War (London: Peter Davies, 1929), pp. 134–5.
8 Junger,
Storm of Steel, p. 102.
9 Charles Myers,
Shell-Shock in France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940).
10 Captain W. H. R. Rivers, “The Repression of War Experience,”
The Lancet 1 (1918):
174.
11 Ibid.
12 The World War I nurse, and author of children’s books, Enid Bagnold, cited in Denis
Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979), p.
135.
13 Davis Court Martial record, War Office 71/431, Public Record Office, London.
14 Robins Court Martial record, War Office 71/442, Public Record Office, London.
15 Statistics taken from David Englander, “Mutinies and Military Morale,” in
The Oxford
Illustrated History of the First World War, Hew Strachan, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), p. 192.
16 M. Evans,
Going Across (London: Constable, 1952), cited in Denis Winter, Death’s Men,
p. 140.
17 Desmond Morton,
When Your Number’s Up (Toronto: Random House, 1993), p. 249.
18 Joseph Murray,
Gallipoli 1915 (London: NEL, 1977), p. 106.
19 Junger,
Storm of Steel, pp. 53–4.
20 Travers,
Gallipoli 1915, pp. 86–9, 196.
21 Charles Sorley,
The Letters of Charles Sorley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1919), cited in Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Modern Age
(Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1989), p. 105; Leonard Smith et al., France and
the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 110.
22 F. Hitchcock,
Stand-To (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1937), cited in Denis Winter,
Death’s Men, pp. 218–19.
23 Robert Graves,
Goodbye to All That (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 116; Edmund Blunden,
Undertones of War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), p. 81.
24 Paul Maze,
A Frenchman in Khaki (London: Heinemann, 1934), cited in Denis Winter,
Death’s Men, pp. 217–18.
25 Joseph Murray,
Gallipoli 1915, p. 206.
the war in the trenches 227
26 Junger, Storm of Steel, p. 51.
27 Ibid, pp. 71–3.
28 Figures taken from Ferguson,
The Pity of War, p. 295.
GUIDE TO FURTHER READING
Edmund Blunden, Undertones of War (London: Penguin, 1982). A classic of trench warfare
by a young officer.
George Coppard, With a Machine Gun to Cambrai (London: HMSO, 1969). Evocative first-
hand account of trench war and daily life in the trenches.
Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London: Allen Lane, 1998). Some innovative chapters on
aspects of the war.
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That (London: Penguin, 2000). Striking vignettes of the war
by a junior officer and distinguished writer and poet.
Richard Holmes, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (London: Harper
Collins, 2004). The most recent account of the life of the British soldier, with a more posi-
tive view of the trench experience.
Ernst Junger, The Storm of Steel (New York: Howard Fertig, 1996). First-hand story of the
trenches from a German point of view.
Peter Leese, Shell-Shock: Traumatic Neurosis and the British Soldiers of the First World War
(Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2002). In-depth study of the medical approaches to shell
shock.
Desmond Morton, When Your Number’s Up (Toronto: Random House, 1993). The Canadian
experience of trench warfare.
Joseph Murray, Gallipoli 1915 (London: New English Library, 1977). A poignant account by
a soldier who served throughout the campaign.
Julian Putkowski, Shot at Dawn: Executions in World War One by Authority of the British Army
Act (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 1996). Accusatory examination of British army executions.
Leonard Smith et al., France and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003). One of the very few books to look at the French side of the war.
Hew Strachan, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998). Useful general studies of the war.
Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front, and the Emergence of
Modern Warfare, 1900–1918 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987). An overview of the prewar
and World War I experience of the British army.
Tim Travers, Gallipoli 1915 (Stroud: Tempus Publishing, 2001). An analysis of the campaign,
using new Ottoman and German material.
Denis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War (London: Allen Lane, 1978). The life of
the British soldier in World War I, emphasizing trench warfare and a critical view of the
conduct of the war.