Great War first person narratives

[Seany]

I am thinking of researching issues of accuracy and veracity related to first person narrative accounts of military service in the Great war. Whilst I am about to embark on a literature review can anyone suggest very good and very bad examples of such memoirs?

thank you.

[Andy Wade]

I am thinking of researching issues of accuracy and veracity related to first person narrative accounts of military service in the Great war. Whilst I am about to embark on a literature review can anyone suggest very good and very bad examples of such memoirs?

thank you.

General Jack's Diary is excellent.

And then there's 'How I filmed the War' by Geoffrey Malins, who famously filmed the explosion at Beaumont Hamel and the men waiting in the Sunken Road before the attack the next day. Another excellent read.

[truthergw]

Intriguing idea. How do you intend to discover if a person is telling lies in a diary or simply mistaken?

[SteveMarsdin]

I seem to recall that a French author undertook a similar exercise in the 1930s (Norton-Cru) and his findings have always been contoversial; as Tom says how do you distinguish absolute truth ?

[Waddell]

Whilst I am about to embark on a literature review can anyone suggest very good and very bad examples of such memoirs?

Seany,

It would be well worth your while having a good look at some of the old threads in the book reviews section. Plenty of references there to books such as "Goodbye To All That" and "Somme Mud". Two books with some question marks over certain characters and events. Two books well worth reading.

When reading Great War Memoirs I think you have to accept sometimes that events didn't occur quite as written. Some of these memoirs were written years after the event and the writers recollection change.

Two books I have really enjoyed are the fictional works "Towards the Flame" by Hervey Allen and A.P Herbert's "The Secret Battle". Both were written fairly early after the war by old soldiers (1919 for Herbert and 1926 for Allen) and both read like fact dressed lightly as fiction.

Scott

[nigelcave]

I am thinking of researching issues of accuracy and veracity related to first person narrative accounts of military service in the Great war. Whilst I am about to embark on a literature review can anyone suggest very good and very bad examples of such memoirs?

thank you.

Well you could always look at classic examples that already have had a fair bit of analysis - eg Sassoon, Graves and Frank Richards' offerings (read in conjunction with The War the Infantry Knew (Dunnn) - but in the 1987 edition with Peter Scott's invaluable introduction; and of course Blunden; look at Douie, Bernard Adams, John Lucy and Sydney Rogerson for less well known but still classic reads. General Jack's diary has been mention and also very useful is the The Great War Diaries of Brigadier General Alexander Johnston. Norman Gladden's books, George Coppard's, 'Ginger' Byrne, IL Reid - all are great books as well. I have not touched on anything other than British memoirs and these ones have come off the top of my head. I have not mentioned any of the senior commanders' efforts. How you are going to gauge veracity as regards personal memoirs is going to be a difficult one. When they were written (ie with the benefit of hindsight and changing attitudes to the war), for what market, with what agenda... good luck to you! Brian Bond recently wrote a book, whose title eludes me and I cannot find it on my shelves at the moment, something along the lines of your inquiry.

[Seany]

Thanks everyone.

I think the issue to explore is very much about the nature of erroneous information contained in the average mans recollections of his experiences, perhaps measured against official records or contemporaneous accounts. I'm thinking this encompasses the date of writing a memoir (rather than publishing a diary) and how the fog of time impacts upon memory (my clinical speciality). Issues of veracity have intrigued me of late and in respect of 'The Reluctant Tommy' based on the memoirs of Ronald Skirth, have been discussed in this forum - the growing list of errors in that publication first caused me to pose the question, to my self, as to whether its a work of fact or fiction, and also if there could be a body of literature offered as historical record that is in fact almost the opposite.

You will note that at the moment its an half-formed idea floating around inside my head, but it currently interests me and worth thinking through a bit more.

[Muerrisch]

Comparing with official or contemporary accounts! Hardly the way to truth!

Which suggests the question: what is truth?

One soldier author who has been subject to very close scrutiny is Frank Richards DCM MM 2ndRWF. The modern annotated version of Old Soldiers Never Die has done just that. As I was co-editor, my opinion, for what it is worth, is that his account holds up remarkably well, truly remarkably, with what we know from other sources. The annotated version spotlights the editors' disagreements.

[Seany]

Maybe truth is not the right concept to explore, too perjorative, maybe accuracy of recall - my hypothesis is not that all narratives will be erroneous but some will, but to what extent, why and what may be the implications of that.

I'll read 'Old soldiers never die' as it sounds like a positive example.

Comparing with official or contemporary accounts! Hardly the way to truth!

Which suggests the question: what is truth?

One soldier author who has been subject to very close scrutiny is Frank Richards DCM MM 2ndRWF. The modern annotated version of Old Soldiers Never Die has done just that. As I was co-editor, my opinion, for what it is worth, is that his account holds up remarkably well, truly remarkably, with what we know from other sources. The annotated version spotlights the editors' disagreements.

[TEW]

seany

Not sure if this is the sort of thing you mean but there is a resource of downloadable mp3's from http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk I found some relating to Ralph Cooney of Tank Corps at 2nd Bullecourt and other times/places. His interview was recorded in 1974 and in the example below he is asked to describe the Tank Crews' work, function etc. He is unsure as to how many there were, starts with 5 runs through a bit and then states 'no there were 6, ---I think'. He then mentions the two 2lb guns they had and has to be corrected to two 6lb guns by the interviewee. Possibly this is more to do with memory problems but they are first hand accounts, just 50 odd years after the event. There seems to be 152 such recordings by various people.

Just hit the download button for the Cooney interview

 

Or to start at page 1

TEW

[truthergw]

I talked to quite a few men who had served in the Great war. I was lucky enough to sit with them at lunch, once a week in a club for Old Comrades. I worked as a vanboy with one of their mates. An ex artilleryman. We took our sandwiches in and enjoyed the banter and the hot fresh tea. Not at all interested in their war, I did learn what comradeship was and I learned that men were heavily influenced by what others thought. I heard 3 versions of a grenade going off by accident. None of these men were lying. Each believed their version of the event but after discussion and argument all came to a consensus of what had happened. My guess after all the years since that day is that I now had a fourth version of the incident and probably no more accurate than the three originals. A point that occurs to me is this. What will you judge the accounts against in your judgement of truth and accuracy? The war diaries and official histories will be compilations of reports which were made by the men, NCOs or officers. None of these are intrinsically more accurate than the diaries. We know some of them are inaccurate. In some cases, the private diary will actually be the sole record of what happened and the official version will be false. How will you know? I fear you are in hot pursuit of a will o' the wisp.

[Seany]

quote name='truthergw' timestamp='1294504979' post='1528716']

I fear you are in hot pursuit of a will o' the wisp.

.... more than likely, it needs thinking through a bit more.

It also moves me away from my normal area of writing towards something that I find, personally fascinating, but am still learning about. The first person narrative, the subjective experience, the influence of many individual factors measured alongside contemporary official records with all the caveats herein stated still strikes me as having merit in being considered.

I need to read a few more narratives.

[dfaulder]

Looking for analogies may help.

When I was working in Health and Safety, there were regularly claims that people involved in accidents were "fabricating their stories". I think this is unfair in that it is a slur on someone who has gone through a traumatic experience and has attempted to make sense of what has happened and has come to believe that their rationalisation is what actually happened.

When one of my colleagues made the "fabrication" claim, I asked him "what gear were you in when you had your last car accident?" (Somehow I was confident that he had been involved in a number!). He thought his way through his last accident, his left hand even imitating gear changes, before assuring me that he was in third gear! He had just rationalised the answer - he did not actually know - as he eventually accepted when other colleagues pointed out that they had watched him "work it out".

I think there is a fair amount in the academic pyschology literature on this issue.

HTH

David

[dycer]

We have to separate reality from post-War reflective narrative.

Immediate first person accounts,however inaccurate,are contained in personal letters to Family and friends.I would suggest,an immediately written daily diary is a base record.

The immediate post-War published personal accounts are accurate,within the reflective mind of the writer and what his Publisher felt would sell.

George

[Jack Sheldon]

Seany

Before you proceed further, may I recommend, strongly, that you obtain - as mentioned by Nigel - Brian Bond's 2008 book 'Survivors of a Kind': ISBN 978 1 84725 004 9. He brings a lifetime of study and knowledge to bear on Great War memoirs by several writers from Graves to Richards and a number of well known ones in between. You do not have to agree with his assessments, but you would do well to arm yourself with the knowledge he brings to bear, before launching out on your own ideas.

Jack

[Seany]

Sensible advice - will pop over to the library tomorrow.

Seany

Before you proceed further, may I recommend, strongly, that you obtain - as mentioned by Nigel - Brian Bond's 2008 book 'Survivors of a Kind': ISBN 978 1 84725 004 9. He brings a lifetime of study and knowledge to bear on Great War memoirs by several writers from Graves to Richards and a number of well known ones in between. You do not have to agree with his assessments, but you would do well to arm yourself with the knowledge he brings to bear, before launching out on your own ideas.

Jack

Looking for analogies may help.

someone who has gone through a traumatic experience and has attempted to make sense of what has happened and has come to believe that their rationalisation is what actually happened.

I think this is a useful position to start from and to explore in more detail, thank you.

[kenf48]

Acknowledging the observations above, on your trip to the library you might want to consider Paul Fussell's analysis in the 'The Great War and Modern Memory' which is arguably more relevant to a proposed study of the literature of the first person narrative. Samuel Hynes 'A War Imagined' (1990) is also relevant if you can get hold of a copy.

Neither Fussell nor Hynes could foresee the development of the publishing industry as we approach the centenary or the 'explosion of interest' in the common soldier, facilitated by online research and publishing into family history. That is not to say they are no longer relevant, Fussell, for example, considers the language in use at the time noting an innocence compared to when he first published, in 1975, he notes it was quite possible for a soldier to write to his beloved and say 'I'm thinking of you hard' with no suggestion of the double entendre we might apply to that comment.

This century, a number of memoirs of both officers and other ranks have been 'discovered', and edited accounts published. Two examples of the genre are 'Somme Mud' and 'The Reluctant Tommy', the latter a narrative originally 'discovered' in the IWM archive where, the IWM archivist apparently damned the original account with faint praise as, 'anecdotal, but interesting', even the editor Duncan Barrett discusses whether or not it is fiction.

(See 'Look Inside on Amazon at

http://www.amazon.co...t/dp/023074673X

Barrett brushes over these inconsistencies supporting his mother Michele, who originally published it as an autobiographical vignette in her 'Casualties of War'. A simple search on casualties reveals the incidents described could not have happened as they are recorded. As discussed elsewhere on the forum why this 'memoir' should be singled out for rigorous challenge is because it not only denigrates the memory and awards won by identifiable soldiers but has also caused justifiable anger to their descendants. I simply found Somme Mud irritating in its use of cliches and inaccuracies which if it had been a BBC programme would generated at leas 150 posts on this forum!

They are of doubtful provenance as first hand narratives, their original authors were long dead before they were 'discovered' let alone published. Interestingly both became teachers after the War and were frustrated authors drawing on their wartime experience. We can never know their intention or motivation in writing these accounts, they, unlike the publisher, are not in a position to profit from the publication but as this article from the Guardian news blog discussing hoax Holocaust Memoirs in 2008 concludes:-

"...will public humiliation deter further works of fiction masquerading as fact?

Or with such a big public appetite for overwrought tales, and the financial rewards so attractive, are the hoaxers here to stay?"

http://www.guardian....ust-memoir-fake

I'm not suggesting either of the above books are deliberate hoaxes simply that they were both memoirs that were not accepted for publication in the authors lifetimes.

In 1978 Martin Middlebrook, who along with Lyn McDonald (originally a radio producer), recognised earlier than most the need to capture the oral history of the war, wrote in his foreword to 'The Kaiser's Battle':-

'The sceptical reader will, with some justification, query the value of old men's memories.'

He then describes how the interviews and correspondence from veterans was 'tested'. He observes, 'A serious drawbacks to these personal accounts is the forgivable tendency for a man to present his own actions in the best possible light, while the man who has every reason to conceal his actions...rarely volunteers to help at all.'

Middlebrook concludes by saying he has made allowances for such distortions, which is surely what every editor should seek to do. Inconsistencies in the memory and recollection of events by veterans is recognised and understandable but there is a world of difference when their accounts are skilfully woven into historical analysis rather than presented as historical fact.

In the meantime, and this is just a personal opinion, to answer your original question of 'good and bad examples' apart from the classic first person narratives Graves, Sassoon et al listed at post 6 'Twelve Days on the Somme', Sidney Rogerson's account, originally published in the early thirties (unlike 'Somme Mud' which was rejected) is a short, balanced account by a veteran who was at least alive when his account was published. The introduction by Malcolm Brown in the most widely available edition is also well worth reading in pursuit of your research. Unfortunately as it was written by an officer, albeit a middle class 'temporary gentleman' rather than a languid disillusioned Oxbridge graduate, it still cannot feed the popular hunger for the story of the common soldier, or 'folks like us'.

As for 'bad' examples you must make up your own mind, as Middlebrook notes,"the more accounts that are read the more apparent inconsistencies become".

For example, a comparative reading of 'Twelve Days' against the cliches and inaccuracies of 'Somme Mud' makes the point far more graphically than I could.

Ken

Ironically as a personal postscript, my daughter's partner is a librarian and taking an interest in my collection of WW1 Books decided a suitable Christmas gift this year would be....'Somme Mud', to think I gave him a bottle of Glenlivet!

It does however illustrate the power of placement, advertising and celebrity endorsement to a non-specialist audience.

[Chris_Baker]

This century, a number of memoirs of both officers and other ranks have been 'discovered', and edited accounts published. Two examples of the genre are 'Somme Mud' and 'The Reluctant Tommy', the latter a narrative originally 'discovered' in the IWM archive where, the IWM archivist apparently damned the original account with faint praise as, 'anecdotal, but interesting', even the editor Duncan Barrett discusses whether or not it is fiction.

I had recent cause to examine in detail certain incidents described in "The reluctant Tommy". I could find not one "fact" that stacked up with official sources, namely war diaries, casualty records or other men's details. Well, other than the man's unit was in Italy.

[PMHart]

Hi,

I'm quite interested in the subject of memory and the value of oral history so I include here a sample from my (current) introduction to my upcoming oral history of the Great War based on the interviews I recorded as a young lad for the IWM Sound Archive in the 1980s to early 1990s.

Unfortunately, oral history in recent years has been attacked by people who disparage it as a knee-jerk reaction without much conscious thought. Perhaps many of them have never had the time, the opportunity, or the inclination to sit down and listen to hundreds of detailed interviews. One typical refusnik defended his decision by making reference to the ramblings of ‘general-issue’ veterans. Many ally this sceptical approach to oral history with a near-worship of contemporary sources: letters, diaries and official documents. In essence their outlook seems to be that if it was said, thought or best of all authoritatively stated at the time - then it must be true.

Any defence of oral history must start with an examination of the faults of other forms of evidence. Firstly, official accounts such as war diaries and their direct reflection in the pages regimental or official histories. The reverence displayed by some historians for the contents of war diaries can cause amusement to those more aware of their provenance within the command structure of a unit - where their prime function was to help absolve senior officers from any possible criticism of their performance in battle! Hence the unbelievable number of times that a battalion’s ‘retirement’ is ordered to ‘conform’ with the ‘retreat’ of the unit next in line to the right! Secondly, ordinary personal diaries are inevitably ludicrously partial, placing the writer at the centre of events. They are often inaccurate and above all reflect the transient contradictory emotions of the writer; in the sense that the views expressed can be entirely dependent on which date you chose to quote. Finally, the tone and content of letters depend to a large degree on the person destined to read them. Soldiers frequently under-exaggerate the risks and their fears for the future in letters to their mothers; while exaggerating the same to male contemporaries and making frankly nonsensical boasts to their girlfriends. Very rarely do men refer to the mundane horrors of war in any great detail – the lice, the stench and above all the deep personal humiliations inflicted upon them by the effects of diseases like dysentery. Such things, if mentioned at all, are concealed, rather than revealed, by coy euphemisms.

So what is oral history good for? Well if you want to know was life is really for the men fighting the Great War then oral history is as close as you can now get. Oral history is good for a level of detail that no-one would ever record in writing! How can such seemingly mundane material be interesting? Well it brings the past to life – revealing and explaining all the nitty-gritty fundamentals that define the zeitgeist of the moment, the little wrinkles that allow you to feel what people were going through. Some elements are strangely familiar, other once commonplace habits now seem to be from another planet. Oral history can also bring a convoluted situation to life. An amusing anecdote can cut through the complexities to reveal what was really happening in a way that no dry narrative can. But above all it is the emotions heightened by war that are revealed in interviews. Men and women open up as to what they were really thinking as opposed to the conventional viewpoints as expressed in regimental histories and hundreds of 'gung ho' memoirs. At its most basic it is very apparent in oral history interviews that once men were really aware of the reality of war, then few of them had much enthusiasm for fighting and many were just plain terrified. This makes their courage in carrying on and ‘going over the top’ all the more remarkable, but it rather undercuts the official sanctioned view that the lads were ‘dying to have another bash at the Hun. Terrible tragedies are often exposed in heart-rending memories of much loved relatives or comrades that were killed, mangled or mentally shattered by war. Historical evidence is made up of many constituent parts much in the fashion of the ‘All Arms Battle’ that eventually won the war on the Western Front in 1918. Oral history is just one part of the big picture, but it does have an important role in that it humanises history and provides ‘grounding’ and strong roots in reality. Rely solely on ‘contemporary’ documents and you will eventually end up with a sanitised ‘romantic’ view of war that criminally underplays the horror and squalor that defined the experience for the majority.

Yet it is undeniable that there are problems with the unthinking usage of oral history, normally by people who think of it as 'testimony'. In particular, veterans mostly of junior rank are inherently unlikely to understand the military strategy and higher tactics of the day. They may have been there, but in truth they did not know what was happening at the time. As such they are not authorities on what the generals were thinking, or of what should have been done. It is also true that some men, lacking confidence in their own recall of events, begin to inhabit a past that actually reflects the views peddled in post-war books or popular television programmes. These false memories can become their reality. Then again a very few sad fantasists have been lying about their exploits for years and could no longer distinguish truth from fiction. Such cases can generally be exposed by a combination of competent interviewing and diligent historical analysis; to put it bluntly, it is usually evident when veterans are unreliable informants. Yet one very real problem with oral history does remain: people in battle are under severe stress and often in a state of physical shock, with all the mental confusion and dislocation from events that this entails. The result is their recollections of actual fighting are often vague, sometimes dreamlike, or they may even have had a black-out and be reliant on what they have been subsequently told of the incident. Police officers trying to determine the exact course of a contemporary violent criminal incident will be familiar with this phenomenon. Witness statements can often differ radically just minutes after the event - never mind after a gap of several decades. Thus oral history ‘action’ stories always need to be carefully checked for internal inconsistencies and alongside other sources of evidence. In many ways interviews are best used to give a ‘sense’ of ‘what it was like’ to be in an attack rather than the fine details of what actually happened – in particular how they felt before they went over the top, the overall pattern of the fighting and the impact of the experience once it was all over. This might be described as exploring the commonality of a traumatic experience. Another avenue is to interview as many people as possible from the same unit so that the accounts criss-cross to provide a reasonably convincing overall account of what really happened. Sadly we were too late for this approach with our Great War oral history interview programme, although it has been pursued very successfully in our projects covering subsequent conflicts.

In the final analysis, oral history is not testimony - a word that provides wholly unnecessary smokescreen of reverence and whiff of legal statements, On the contrary as a source of evidence interviews are by no means perfect and the veterans are not plaster-saints. When using oral history you have to be sceptical. But this is surely one of the ground rules of any historical research: if something is frankly unbelievable then don’t believe it without a great deal of solid confirmation - whatever the source.

These are just some preliminary musings so I hope you won't rip my head off! But they are I think relevant to the subject at hand. I shalll be interested to see what people think.

Pete

[dycer]

It is not for me to question,first party reflections on WW1.

Except to say,that my Father lost his Brothers,in the conflict and was happy to buy a copy of their immediate post-War Battalion History.He signed the thing and apparently made sure it was handed on to me,complete with yellowing sellotape

My Father did not purchase any other WW1 Books,in his lifetime,to my knowledge,however,He was quite happy to buy post-WW2 "Victor" type comics for me.He did,however,receive a Readers Digest token one Christmas and one of the Compendiums he bought included "Covent with Death",which I was allowed to read

I can well understand an aspiring literary Author,seeking inspiration for a forthcoming 2014 Book,subject to Publishers needs etc.

But who published Shakespeare's Plays,which are now supposed to encapsulate the feelings of both "Love and War" and must have informed the WW1 fighting generation?

George

[kenf48]

These are just some preliminary musings so I hope you won't rip my head off! But they are I think relevant to the subject at hand. I shalll be interested to see what people think.

Pete

I edited my original post it originally read... "are skilfully woven into historical analysis by contemporary historians like Peter Hart, and others in the tradition of these pioneers, rather than etc" thought it sounded a bit pretentious and I couldn't think of any more like you

Sorry I deleted it now, far from 'ripping yer 'ead off', love your work.... and quite privileged to be in the same thread

and as a fan agree with your observations on oral history!

OK that's enough sychophancy for now - must remember my signature!

Ken

[PMHart]

Hi George,

But that is the point: if we want to use first person reflections in letters and diaries, published material or oral history interviews as part of the building blocks of history then they have to be questioned! If we just want to bow our heads in reverence to them as sacred texts then fair enough!

Pete

P.S. And thanks Ken that's really nice of you!

[Jack Sheldon]

Great contribution there from Pete. His thoughts on the effect of battle on the individual immediately brought Carrington to mind for me. I bought Soldier from the Wars Returning when It it first came out in 1965 and lost no time in acquiring the new edition to replace the one which someone had borrowed from me years ago and never gave back. I hear the ring of truth in much of what he wrote - with mature reflection - about the war and I personally believe every syllable of his comment on Passchendaele (p 197) 'During the last two days of this affair my mind was so numbed and my body so exhausted that I was utterly useless. Judging by their inactivity the Germans must have been in the same state. Why not? But they gave that zombie a military cross for his part in the battle and the live man was inordinately proud of it'. Those are the words of an articulate and honest man.

Jack

[kenf48]

I had recent cause to examine in detail certain incidents described in "The reluctant Tommy". I could find not one "fact" that stacked up with official sources, namely war diaries, casualty records or other men's details. Well, other than the man's unit was in Italy.

Interesting to see you're on the case, fwiw I did some analysis of the casualties of 293 Battery using Geoff. Eleven in total bookended by two 'died' one from pneumonia, one from influenza. Only two killed in action, the remainder 'died of wounds' indicating they were evacuated, including the only Scot. The service records of five survive-but you probably knew that

Ken

[Seany]

I thought that the contribution by Peter was absolutely superb and I've really enjoyed the contributions on this thread. Its put things more in perspective for me and my plan is to simply read around more, Peter's forthcoming book promises much, Nigel Bonds a must, but there are others that I'm enthused about - am waiting on a copy of Grumpy's which also seems essential. I'm perhaps not that interested in the memoirs of the famous but more the ordinary soldier.

I'm also slightly humbled by the responses and reminded that perhaps I should keep researching and writing about those things I know something about - that said I have some form publishing work on the first person narratives (in a totally different subject area) and those of the Great war are fascinating. This bl**dy, but marvellous, forum keeps fuelling my growing addiction in so many ways.

Regards to you all.