Tommy (105 page)

A.
I have a long-standing gripe that we generally come to the war through literature rather than through history, so I answer this question with some ambivalence! But I think the war produced such a huge amount of good (not to mention bad and indifferent) literature because it propelled more men into uniform than any previous conflict. It took volunteers and conscripts from across the whole social spectrum, and confronted them with a range of experiences that most could never even have dreamt of. And this was a generation used to expressing itself in writing: many men, not just middle-class officers, kept diaries, wrote long letters home, and contributed to ‘trench newspapers'.

The sheer variety of the contemporary literature is a constant delight. I am particularly fond of the diaries of Ernest Shephard, an NCO in the Dorset Regiment for much of the war, and killed as a newly commissioned officer in early 1917. Although he had left school at fourteen, he wrote a good hand, and his diaries are both descriptive and thoughtful. After the war, people wrote books and poetry for a whole mix of motives, and the conflict's status as ‘the Great War' inspired a stream of literature until well into the 1930s. Even the Second World War did not staunch the flow, and there was another burst of writing in the 1960s. C. P. Blacker's wonderful
Have You Forgotten Yet?
came out as recently as 2000.

However, I often feel uncomfortable about novels set during the war. This is, I am sure, largely my own fault: having steeped myself in the subject for so long, I am always too ready to detect inaccuracies (real or imagined!) and to become irritated by stereotypes. I suspect that most policemen probably don't enjoy crime series on the television. But the continued success of First World War literature is, I think, evidence that this huge and terrible war still casts its chilly shadow over our own times.

A.
It is impossible to prove a negative: we cannot tell what the world would have been like without the First World War, and quite what might have happened had conflict not broken out in 1914. Nor can we blame major figures in history for lacking our own knowledge: we can censure them only for making poor decisions on the basis of what they knew at the time. I believe that, although the war's outbreak might have been averted by more astute diplomacy, and the peace which followed it might have been better managed, it was not unreasonable for Britain to go to war in 1914.

Britain's participation did much to prevent a German victory, the consequences of which would probably have had dire results for the rest of Europe. The real pity of war, to borrow from both Wilfred Owen and Niall Ferguson, was that the victory of the men whose efforts this book examines was wasted. They did not return to a land fit for heroes to live in, and a whole host of factors – economic as well as political – ensured that the Treaty of Versailles was merely a twenty-year truce. So as we look back at the war now, ninety years on, I am not sure that much good did come from it. Many British soldiers were far more optimistic in November 1918, and in that shortfall between their expectations and the hard realities of the twenties and thirties lies the real tragedy.

A. From the British viewpoint, it concerns the way it was fought on the Western Front. First, generals did not attack there because they were stupid, vain bullies with no idea of the power of modern weapons – though doubtless some were! They attacked because the Germans had taken a great slice of territory belonging to our principal ally, France, and they did so at a time when weapons technology had made defence the stronger form of war. So battles like the Somme, which had sound strategic logic, nevertheless faced serious tactical obstacles. And it is important to remember that if means of killing had become more efficient in the years preceding the war, means of communicating had not kept pace: generals were forced to balance the difficulty of going forward in an effort to lead and staying back in an effort to command, and by no means all of them got the balance right. Next, the British army was tiny in 1914 and wholly unsuited for large-scale European war. The fact that British politicians persisted in a course of action very likely to get this small but good army embroiled in a war where only large armies would count was, it has to be said, not the fault of generals. In one sense, the history of the war is that of the evolution of an efficient mass army from the ashes of the old regular army, at a time when few long-term preparations had been made for raising, training or equipping this force.

This is emphatically not a book about British generals, although some reviewers evidently felt that it ought to be. And this, really, is the last element of the misconception. British generals (about whom I remain distinctly ambivalent) managed to perform no better and not much worse than their allies or opponents, which ought, perhaps, to give us some pause for thought, given the fact that the rapid wartime expansion of the army resulted in wholly unexpected promotion for many senior officers. The men who fought under them were neither untrained cannon-fodder nor a pitifully cowed herd, though we can find examples where men were indeed inadequately trained or where discipline was unfeelingly applied. They brought into the army all the strengths and weaknesses of the society that had produced them. They suffered and endured, joked, smoked and (when they got the opportunity) drank. Most, given the chance, would probably have never have become soldiers, and many, though certainly not all, looked back on the war with horror. But, unshaven and lousy, grumpy and cynical, they formed the greatest popular army in British history, and should be remembered for that, not cast as bit-players in a drama they would never recognize.

© Patrick Bishop
Patrick Bishop is a writer and foreign correspondent.

Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket

The bestselling history of the British soldier from 1700 to 1900, a period in which methods of warfare and the social make-up of the British army changed little, and in which the Empire was forged.

Wellington: The Iron Duke

The exhilarating story of Britain's greatest ever soldier. The Duke of Wellington's remarkable life and audacious campaigns are vividly recreated in this compelling book.

The First World War in Photographs

An astonishing and moving collection of images form the archives of the Imperial War Museum.

The Western Front

Richard Holmes captures the scale and intensity of the Great War in this heartfelt and gripping account of the bloodiest days of the First World War.

War Walks: From Agincourt to Normandy

For centuries, battles have raged over the area of Belgium and Northern France known as the ‘fatal avenue'. In
War Walks,
Richard Holmes explores six of the region's most intriguing battlefields, vividly recreating the atmosphere of their bloody history.

Battlefields of the Second World War

A compelling study of the major campaigns of the Second World War: Monte Cassino, El Alamein, Operation Market Garden and the RAF's bomber offensive against Germany. Using letters and the diaries of soldiers, Richard Holmes recreates what it was like to be involved in such bloody and brutal conflicts.

Forgotten Voices of the Great War: A New History of WWI in the Words of the Men and Women Who Were There

Max Arthur

A rich and moving record of First World War memories carefully compiled from the sound archives of the Imperial War Museum. This book evokes the scale of human experience within the conflict through the voices of those who lived it.

The First World War: A New History

Hew Strachan

An arresting, accessible and utterly convincing account of the Great War, and how it shaped the century that followed it, from one of the world's foremost experts. Exploring such theatres as the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans and Africa, Strachan takes a uniquely global view of what is often misconceived as a prolonged skirmish on the Western Front.

The War Poems

Siegfried Sassoon

An extraordinary testimony to the almost unimaginable experiences of a First World War combatant, this moving collection of poems explores the author's experiences as a soldier during the war, unforgettably evoking the horrors of that bitter and bloody conflict.

War Poems of Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen

When Wilfred Owen died in 1918, just one week before the Armistice, only five of his poems had been published. Now perhaps the most celebrated of the First World War poets, his work searingly evokes the horrors of daily life in the ‘seventh hell' of the trenches.

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque

Published in 1929, this classic First World War novel is a German author's masterful depiction – through the persona of a young, unknown soldier – of the lives of a generation of men who, though they may have escaped its shells, were ultimately destroyed by the war. Based on his own experience as a young infantryman in the German army during World War I, the book was banned in Nazi Germany and Remarque was forced into exile in 1930.

FILM

Gallipoli

Acclaimed as one of Australia's finest cinematic achievements, Peter Weir's
Gallipoli
is an extraordinarily moving anti-war film which centres on two young men caught up in the murderous battle for Gallipoli during the First World War. Their spirited youthfulness, thirst for adventure, and the exuberant mateship they share underlines the awful betrayal of the conflict. In the harrowing conclusion, Weir shows how quickly and pointlessly young lives can be destroyed.

From the reviews of
Tommy:

‘Indispensable for anyone who wants to understand what the life of a soldier on the Western Front was really like … Authoritative … Among the many virtues of his book, Holmes deploys a wonderful range of unfamiliar sources and voices. He captures the smell of the trenches, a mingling of “burnt and poisoned mud, and the stink of corrupting human flesh” … Holmes's book is full of good sense, yet never skimps the reality of the horrors'

M
AX
H
ASTINGS,
Daily Mail

‘What sets Richard Holmes apart is the sheer quality of his writing and his empathy with his subjects … Holmes's compassion for the men who endured and died movingly underpins the book … Powerful reading.
Tommy
will stand as a classic of First World War history'

Independent

‘Compelling … This is excellent popular history: scholarly, highly readable and utterly absorbing'

Daily Telegraph

‘Tommy
is Richard Holmes at his impressive best'

B
ERNARD
C
ORNWELL,
Evening Standard

‘Tommy
tells it as it really was … Every page of this is worth reading'

Time Out

‘A serious work of scholarship that is also eminently readable and utterly fascinating. It is perhaps the finest book on the First World War that I have ever read'

S
IMON
H
EFFER,
Country Life

‘First-rate, with enough breadth and detail to sway anyone who feels there is nothing more they need to know about the First World War … Rich and thoughtful'

Independent on Sunday

‘Closely argued and objective … 
Tommy,
a lively and carefully constructed antidote to received wisdom and blinkered prejudice, makes a calm and important contribution to reclaiming the true historical character and memory of Britain's finest military achievement'

TLS

‘A compelling picture of the soldier's lot, from general to private … Through the accumulation of detail and experience, it examines minutely the everyday experience of trench life'

Observer

‘[A] lively volume, packed with amazing facts and arresting anecdotes … a cornucopia of knowledge'

Sunday Express

‘There's no shortage of harrowing detail in the vivid first-hand testimony marshalled here, but there's philosophy, humour, camaraderie and excitement too'

Scotsman

ALSO BY RICHARD HOLMES

In order of publication

The English Civil War
(with Brigadier Peter Young)

The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French

Soldiers (with John Keegan)

Firing Line

The Road to Sedan

Fatal Avenue

Riding the Retreat

War Walks

War Walks II

The Western Front

The Second World War in Photographs

The First World War in Photographs

Oxford Companion to Military History
(general editor)

Battlefields of the Second World War

Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket

Wellington: The Iron Duke

In the Footsteps of Churchill

Dusty Warriors: Modern Soldiers at War

Marlborough: England's Fragile Genius

Shots from the Front: The British Soldier 1914–18

Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750–1914

Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors