Stories About Soldiers, 1914-1930

Military Fictions Stories about Soldiers, 1914-1930. A thesissubmitted by GeorgeSimmers in fulfilment of the requirementsfor the degreeof Doctor of Philosophyat oxford BrookesUniversity 2009. ABSTRACT Much criucism of the fction of the Great War has relied on certain assumptions: that Britain's involvement in te War was gtile, and that good writing about it must necessarily be ironic; that only fghung soldiers knew War's tut, while civilians wer kept ignorant by censorship and propaganda; and that the disillusioned fction of the late tentie belatedly revealed the 'tuth about the War. This thesis asks what the literature looks like if these propsitions are not taken fr granted. It fnds in wartme Britain a 'culture of consent regulated more by public opinion than by ofcial interference, and argues that reticence need not imply ignorance. The dominant representation of the soldier, as controlled and responsible, did not necessarily lead to endorsement of unthinking patotism, but is fund in texts whose aj is to regulate war enthusiasm. Some unorthoox accounts of soldiers were written and published during wartime; some of the institutions of the literar world hampered witers' expression more than ofcial censorship. Dung the tenties, representations of War and soldiers were ofen determined by te time's anxieties, and by a need to understand te Was place in history; the conict was rarely show as gtie, even in fction tackling the difficult subject of military executions. Stories about ex-soldiers sometjes presented them as victims, sometimes as a disturbing presence in post-war society. Other ex-soldiers were seen as the answer to societys problems in the years before the Genera Ste. The war books published at the end of the tentes are more vried than has ofen been suggested, though many contemporary readers wanted them all to preach a message of was gtility. These and later fctions tell us as much about the times in whic they are written as about the Wa itsel. Tere is more to Great War fction than, fr example, the narow selecion fund on current educational sylabuses. Chapters Introduction 1 1. Backgrounds 17 2. Controlled, calm and responsible- the ideal soldier 57 3. outside the Consensus 97 4. The Twenties: Rewriting the War 124 S. Returning Soldiers 165 6. Truths about the War? 223 Conclusion 255 Bibliography 265 Introduction In 1915, Sir Douglas Haig, the newly appointed Conunander-in Chief of the British ExpeditionaryForce, told the corps of newspaperwar correspondentsthat he understoodtheir needs:'You want to get hold of little storiesof heroism, and so forth, and to write them up in a bright way to make good reading for Mary Ann in the kitchen, and the man in the street! Philip Gibbs,correspondent for the Daily Telegraph,later recorded 'the quiet passion with which thesewords were resentedby the journalists: We took occasionto point out to him that the British Empire which had sent its men into this war yearnedto know what they were doing and how they were doing, and that their patience and loyalty dependedon closerknowledge of what was happeningthan was told them in the communiqu6sissued by the Commander-in-Chiefhimself. ' In conflict are two opposingviews of war reporting. The journalists presentthemselves as unbiasedtransmitters of information, faitliftilly conveying'knowledge of what was happening',confident that truthful accountscan only enhancethe 'patienceand loyalty' of the whole British Empire. Haig is more aware of the differencebetween the confusionsof war and the simplifications and shapingsof narrative, possiblyrecalling the Duke of Wellingtons comment: 'Write the history of a battle? As well write the history of a ball." His phrasing offended,but his comment points towards a truth that journalists were perhapsavoiding. -' As Hayden White has convincinglyargued, all historical narratives must be seenas verbal fictions, whose explanatoryeffects depend on the operation of 'emplotmene,by which he means'the encodationof facts contained in chronicle as componentsof specifickinds of plot structures,in preciselythe way [that] is the casewith 1 Philip Gibbs,Realities of War (London: Heinemann,1920), 24. 2 Quotedin RichardHolmes, Acts of War. 7be Behaviourof men in Battle (London: Cassell,2004), 9. Haig's own war diaries are remarkablynon-narrative; typically a day's entry outlines the current position,with little elaborationof how it cameabout. The professionalsoldier has to be more interestedin tactical opportunity than in fitting pastevents into a narrative. 3 Haig must alsohave seensome point to the journalists'claims, however,since after this meetinghe allowedthe correspondentsto report more fully (especiallyconcerning the namesof troops) which helpedthem to write storiesthat appealedmore directly (to Mary Ann and others). GeorgeSimmers Military Fictions 1 fictions in general.' This thesis will examine the ways in which writers of many kinds converted the War into stories between 1914 and 1930, paying particular attention to the roles given to soldiers in such fictions - roles that were remarkably varied. In his 1927 novel, Young Orland, Herbert Asquith described the British soldiers who fought during the Great War as men of unsophisticated integrity, with the power to revivify the nation: 'Most of thesemen had had lives of toil: most had found it hard enough to keep themselvesand their families,,and had not had much time to think of other things. But now, when she called for defenders,England seemedsuddenly to live.'s Threeyears later, Helen Zenna Smith would considerthe samemen 'as senselessas a flock of senselesssheep obeying a senselessleader. ' The poet John Oxenhambelieved them to be 'Christs,allj'7 yet novelist JamesHanley depictedthem as 'mad dogs'.' The aim of this thesisis to understandthese extremely various representationsas responsesto the times in which they were written. It will also examinethem in the light of the controversyduring recent years about a disparity between the history of the War and its literary history. Historians such as Brian Bond and Gary Sheffield have accusedliterary critics of being highly selectivein the choice of texts that they have analysedand endorsed. Bond has suggestedthat by concentratingon the literature of disillusionment critics have risked falling into 'the trap of believing that two conflicting views of the war existedin British societybetween 1914 and 1918, the "true view" stressingwaste and horror, belonging to the fighting soldiers,and the "false view" that of deluded civilian belief in patriotism and the nobility of sacrifice.' 4 HaydenWhite, Tropicsof Discourse(Baltimore: Baltimore University Press,1978), 83. 5 HerbertAsquith, YoungOrland (London: Hutchinson,1927), 224. 6 Helen ZennaSmith, Not So Quiet. Stepdaughtersof War (London: Newnes,1930), 29. 7 Publishedin 'All 's Well! ': SomeHelpful Versefor theseDark Days of War (November 1915); includedin, (eds)Dominic Hibberd andJohn Onions,The Minter of the World: Poemsof the First World War (London: Constable:2007), 82. 8 JamesHanley, 'The GermanPrisoner' in The Last Voyageand Other Stories(London: Harvill, 1997),75. 9 Brian Bond, 7he Unquiet WesternFront. Britain's Role in Literature and History (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2002), 12. GeorgeSimmers Military Fictions 2 The most influential critic whosework has encouragedthe emphasison disillusionment is Paul Fussell,whose groundbreakingThe Great War and ModemMemory (1975) has set the tone for much of what has been written about the War in recebt decades.Some of the boolesmost important contentionsand assumptionsare these: 1. The important writing about the War is that which describesthe experienceof the individual soldier in combat.The crucial experience is that of soldiers in the trencheson the WesternFront. 2. There was an impassablegulf between the soldiere knowledge of the war in which they were engagedand the ignoranceof civilians, and 'even if those at home had wanted to know the realities of the War, they couldrethave without experiencingthem. "O tRigid censorship"' of the pressand of all letters home contnl)uted to civilian ignorance, as did the 'high' diction of propaganda." I The soldierswere fighting for no good reason.Fussell's only comment on the reasonsfor Britain!s entry into the conflict is the trivializing claim that: 'In the Great War eight million people were destroyed becausetwo persons,the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his consort, had been shot. 13He doesnot mention that Britain declaredwar on Germanyas a responseto the unprovoked invasion of Belgium, whose neutrality was guaranteedby treaty, and that the strong and continuing commitment of the British people to the war effort was largely impelled by reports of atrocities committed by Germantroops in Belgium during the early days of the War 4. The most important mode of writing about the War is the ironic, since industrial warfare has robbed the individual soldier of agency. Minimising the moral justification for the War allows Fussellto suggestthat the only significant war writing is the literature of Ifutility'. 10 Paul Fussell,7be Great War and Modem Memory (Secondedition) (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2000), 87. 11 7he Great War and Modem Memory,87. 12 The Great War and Modem Memory, 21-23. 13 The Great War and Modem Memory, 17-18. GeorgeSimmers Military Fictions 3 5. The 'catastrophe'of the Sommewas crucial in the progressfrom idealism to disillusionment," and the Battle of the Somme'can stand as the type of all the ironic actions of the war. "' 6. It was a qiterary war,

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