Tag Archives: First World War

Lest We Forget

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You might know that I have a small collection of First World War postcards, here are photo postcards of three Scottish soldiers. The cards were all published in Glasgow, I often wonder what happened to them.

Photographers must have done a roaring trade. Most people probably didn’t get their photo taken much but obviously men in the forces wanted to have a photo of themselves in uniform, or maybe their wives and mothers wanted the photos taken, just in case they didn’t come home. They’re always sad, especially if they are smiling I think.

Soldier 1

Soldier 2

Soldier 3

Fighting on the Home Front by Kate Adie

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Fighting on the Home Front by Kate Adie is subtitled The Legacy of Women in World War One. I found it to be a really interesting read and although I’ve read numerous books about the war I learned a lot from this one. For instance, I had no idea that towards the end of the war there were thousands of women more or less right on the front lines. They had been recruited to free men up for fighting and they were doing all the cooking, cleaning, driving tasks and such – which men had been doing until then.

Did you know that there was an English woman in the Serbian Army? Her name was Flora Sandes and she was a sergeant major, she had started off as a St John Ambulance volunteer but begged to be allowed to fight when she saw that she was needed.

Women’s lives were changed radically but it was always known that the work they were doing was ‘only for the duration’ and they would have to go back to their domestic duties after the war. Although women got the vote due mainly to their war efforts, in some ways things went backwards so far that we still haven’t recovered the ground. It’s only now that women’s football is beginning to be taken seriously but during the war there were lots of female teams playing, due to the lack of men.

This book has interesting photos as well as lots of new (to me anyway) information. It’s a must read for anyone interested in the social history of the time. Kate Adie often adds in bits about what was happening within her own family in Sunderland at particular times during the war. Somehow those bits didn’t sit well within the book, especially as the Adie family was always described as her adoptive family, as if she was defending herself from any possible accusations of them not being her ‘real’ family. One mention of adoption would have been enough – not that I think it was necessary at all.

I believe that this book featured as a BBC Book at Bedtime.

You can find BBC podcasts about the role of women in World war 1 here.

Bullets and Billets by Bruce Bairnsfather

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bullets and billets

I’ve been collecting the Fragments From France magazines for years and I think I have just about all of them now, they contain the cartoons which Bruce Bairnsfather drew during World War I. I happened to be in the Oxfam bookshop in Perth on Saturday (it was the busiest shop in town) and I spotted an old copy of Bairnsfather’s book Bullets and Billets. As you can imagine, I snapped it up fast and it went straight to the top of my reading pile. It was first published in December 1916 and I have no idea how many were in the original print run, but my copy is a reprint which was also published in December 1916. I think it must have been a very popular book.

Bruce Bairnsfather was born in India, into a military family but he didn’t get into military college and had a career in advertising before World War I. Like most men at that time it was inevitable that he became involved in the war.

As Bairnsfather was a machine gun officer at the Front and he was writing the book in quiet moments, it’s all completely authentic and full of that black humour which was so vital in keeping men going through the horrors that they were experiencing. I’m about a third of the way through it, it’s actually a very quick read and I’d say that if you are at all interested in the Great War era then you’ll find it really interesting – and amusing of course. Luckily I’ve just checked Project Gutenberg and it is available for download, have a look here. If you prefer a real book then it has been reprinted lots of times over the years and is easy to get a hold of.

If you want to see some of Bruce Bairnsfather’s cartoons, look here.

If you want to know more about Bruce Bairnsfather have a look here.

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

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I dug a lot of books out of the attic during my recent clean up and decluttering binge, and one of them was Testament of Youth which is Vera Brittain’s autobiography from 1900 – 1925, definitely one for keeping and re-reading. This book was first published in 1933 and the BBC dramatised it years ago.

I think I saw the tv programmes first but soon after that I bought the book and the sequel Testament of Experience.

Vera Brittain was one of the very few women to get into an Oxford College in 1914 but after one year she gave up her studies to become a VAD nurse and ended up nursing in London, Malta and at the Front in France. It’s a heart-breaking read as all of the young men close to her are lost, including her fiance and her beloved brother Edward. But if you are interested in World War 1 then this is a “must read”.

Vera became a pacifist and was active in the League of Nations. She did get married and her daughter is Shirley Williams, who was once a lib-dem M.P. and is now in the House of Lords.

I think I’ll buy the dvds because I haven’t seen the series since it was first shown.
I like this anniversary cover although it isn’t the one which I have, mine has Cheryl Campbell on the front, she played the part of Vera in the series.

The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon

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Still on the subject of the First World War: My husband’s grandfather bought this slim volume of Siegfried Sassoon poems in 1919 and it’s one of the many books which we inherited from him. I found myself leafing through it when I was on one of my frequent hunts for a particular book. How many months of my life have been used up in searches for books?

Anyway, for some reason the poem below caught my attention.

Arms and the Man

Young Croesus went to pay his call
On Colonel Sawbones, Caxton Hall:
And, though his wound was healed and mended,
He hoped he’d get his leave extended.

The waiting-room was dark and bare.
He eyed a neat-framed notice there
Above the fireplace hung to show
Disabled heroes where to go
For arms and legs; with scale of price,
And words of dignified advice
How officers could get them free.

Elbow or shoulder, hip or knee,
Two arms, two legs, though all were lost,
They’d be restored him free of cost.
Then a Girl Guide looked to say,
‘Will Captain Croesus come this way?’

It seems to be saying that officers could get free artificial limbs, which implies that the other ranks had to pay for them. If this is so, I’m outraged. I know, it’s 90 years too late to do anything about it, but how could they justify such inequality, particularly when most of the ordinary soldiers would have been really poor and people like munitions workers were being paid far more than the men at the Front. All that suffering and then they were treated like muck.

The National Health Service came into being in 1948, so I’m now wondering what happened to anyone who lost a limb in World War 2.

There has been quite a lot of talk in the newspapers recently about injured military personnel having a bad time of it in hospitals, and just not getting the kind of treatment which they deserve. They shouldn’t have closed down military hospitals for one thing, but at least they don’t have to pay for anything nowadays.

Back to Siegfried and if you are interested in him you should read his books Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man.

Regeneration by Pat Barker

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This book was first published in 1991 and I’ve been meaning to read it since then. I’m glad that I got around to it at last as I really enjoyed it although it is quite harrowing in parts.

It is set mainly in Craiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland in 1917. It seems that just about every book I have picked up recently has a local flavour to it, sometimes to my surprise.

Army psychiatrist William Rivers has the job of treating shell-shocked soldiers and making them fit enough to be sent back to the front. We hear the stories of several of the patients as they are treated but the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen are the most prominent characters.

By 1917 Sassoon had had enough of the war and the stupidity of the politicians and generals. He wrote A Soldier’s Declaration which was going to be read out in the House of Commons which would have meant that it would have ended up in the newspapers which was just what the authorities didn’t want.

Sassoon is packed off to the hospital so that the authorities can say that he has suffered a severe mental breakdown. As the train is about to leave the station the guard blows the whistle which reminds Sassoon of the whistle which was blown in the trenches signalling the beginning of an advance towards the enemy. It had never struck me how horrific such a common-place sound must have been for soldiers at that time.

The pacifists are pressurising him to join forces with them but Sassoon still feels a great loyalty to his men still at the front.

If you are at all interested in World War 1 then you will enjoy reading this book even if you have already read Sassoon’s own book Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.

Regeneration has been made into a film which was nominated for a BAFTA award. For some reason they didn’t use the real Craiglockhart in the film, but chose to use Overtoun House which is set in the hills near Dumbarton.
Overtoun
As you can see it is in the Scottish baronial style, which I don’t find at all scary to look at but that might be because I’ve known this house since I was a wee girl, when any family walks up the hills usually took us in that direction.

The real Craiglockhart is now part of Napier University in Edinburgh and I think it must have looked a lot more forbidding and daunting to any poor nerve-racked soldiers.

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

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If the Armistice Day commemorations and the documentaries about The Great War have given you an appetite for more, then you might be interested in this book.

It is a fictionalised autobiography of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon’s experiences in the trenches during 1916 and 1917. The main character George Sherston is Sassoon himself and the action starts at the Army School and goes on to describe the characters and actions along the way.

Sassoon became disillussioned with the war and he ended up being sent to Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh, mainly because the poet Robert Graves (David Cromlach in the book) had managed to convince the authorities that Sassoon had shell shock.

It’s a great read if you are into the First World War. However, I was always aware that if Sassoon hadn’t been born into a very wealthy family with influential connections, he would have been put up against a post and shot.

For more information go to the online Sassoon manuscripts which I reached via this Guardian article.