The First World War
Discussion
I am sure there were many war poets in WW2. They just haven't been "discovered" to the same extent - and they haven't been used as part of the social engineering that was being tried in education - especially in the 1960s.
All wars produce poetry (and art and prose and music) - as does practically any human experience.
For political and social reasons, the war poets of the Great War were seized upon and used as anti-WW1 propaganda - decades after the war had ended.
The need to do the same for WW2 did not exist.
All wars produce poetry (and art and prose and music) - as does practically any human experience.
For political and social reasons, the war poets of the Great War were seized upon and used as anti-WW1 propaganda - decades after the war had ended.
The need to do the same for WW2 did not exist.
Eric Mc said:
It was a waste
It was needless
They all died in vain
I can't see any other interpretation. There was a repeat some 20 years later. It was due to politics. All the 900,000 casualties might have felt that nothing was solved by the war.It was needless
They all died in vain
If you look at the way of life of the average Joe in the UK before the war and then realise that after the war nothing much had changed apart from getting a bit worse, you have to ask how any other outcome could have been worse.
The war solved nothing. All it did was to provide an opportunity that the politicians missed, threw away, ignored for their own purposes. They were blind.
And don't get carried away with modern revisionist historians. They talk as much rubbish as the previous ones. The only difference is that they are doing it from a distance, unlike the poets who were there.
Sod the poets, read the books by those who were in the Somme, the various Ypres, and other battles. All the propaganda in the world sort of flounders when it comes to actual experience.
In my day, in London, there were a considerable number of people who had fought in the war, a considerable number of next of kin, and the story they told had nothing to do with revisionist and more to do with experience.
Who you gonna believe? Surely not the politically inspired.
The war was an horrific waste of manpower.
Derek Smith said:
Eric Mc said:
It was a waste
It was needless
They all died in vain
I can't see any other interpretation. There was a repeat some 20 years later. It was due to politics. All the 900,000 casualties might have felt that nothing was solved by the war.It was needless
They all died in vain
The British tried to avert war in 1914 and then participated to stop a German victory, which would certainly have occurred if we hadn't joined the French.
JagLover said:
Derek Smith said:
Eric Mc said:
It was a waste
It was needless
They all died in vain
I can't see any other interpretation. There was a repeat some 20 years later. It was due to politics. All the 900,000 casualties might have felt that nothing was solved by the war.It was needless
They all died in vain
The British tried to avert war in 1914 and then participated to stop a German victory, which would certainly have occurred if we hadn't joined the French.
What comes into your mind immediately one hearing the words 'First World War'?
For me, and I bet for many others , it is an image of a whistle blowing and men going over the top to be cut down by German machine guns. Gallant British losers sent by incompetent officers against a ruthless war machine, following the tradition of Isandlwana / Rork's Drift / Charge of the Light Brigade, etc. The mental image is from the Somme and is not representative of the whole war.
What is often not remembered quite as much is that we won the Zulu War, the Crimean War and the First World war by killing a lot more of them than they did us. Gallant defeats make for better poetry than victories.
In WW2, after Dunkirk, we were on the winning side most of the time so less opportunity for pale mawkish poets to colour our perception.
For me, and I bet for many others , it is an image of a whistle blowing and men going over the top to be cut down by German machine guns. Gallant British losers sent by incompetent officers against a ruthless war machine, following the tradition of Isandlwana / Rork's Drift / Charge of the Light Brigade, etc. The mental image is from the Somme and is not representative of the whole war.
What is often not remembered quite as much is that we won the Zulu War, the Crimean War and the First World war by killing a lot more of them than they did us. Gallant defeats make for better poetry than victories.
In WW2, after Dunkirk, we were on the winning side most of the time so less opportunity for pale mawkish poets to colour our perception.
Ayahuasca said:
What is often not remembered quite as much is that we won the Zulu War, the Crimean War and the First World war by killing a lot more of them than they did us. Gallant defeats make for better poetry than victories.
Allied losses were higher on the Western Front than those suffered by Germany.Was an interesting program about the British and French use of colonial troops on the BBC last night. Apparently the Germans thought it rather unfair as they couldn't access their colonies due to Naval Blockade. The French used the Senegalese extensively as shock troopers, i was unaware of how important they were recapturing the forts of Verdun.
JagLover said:
Even the Somme was not the disaster many make out. German losses, though lighter than Allied ones, were still comparable.
What on earth makes a battle a disaster then? Jesus, the UK suffered 350,000 casualties. That's more than a third of a million, people like you and me. Three hundred and fifty thousand. And you reckon that was not a disaster. Let me know when you find one.That was one offensive.
In total, the allies lost 625,000. The Germans? Some 465,000. Just a bit under 2:1.
Now that is a disaster of some magnitude in my book.
These were human beings.
And we criticise the poets for being mawkish. I think if anyone earned the right to be heard it is those who suffered in the trenches.
If the Somme offensive wasn't a disaster then thank heavens we've never had one throughout the history of the world.
Why have we fallen for the current rewriting of history? WWI means 2,500,000 dead and wounded for the UK alone.
Someone suggested that the war poets created a myth. They were there you know.
And why if the poets created this myth of war being nasty, why did contemporary writers do the same? They are not mentioned so much as, presumably, poets are easier to dismiss. After all, they were probably all gay or intelligent or something.
We know better now, from a distance of 100 years.
I've talked to those who were in the trenches and who were in the ships. From what I know from these people who actually experienced the war, rather than read historian's views, the poets didn't go far enough.
Historians, those in the universities, have to publish and if they publish books and such saying that previous historians got it right, then they don't sell much and they lose credibility and, more importantly, the likelihood of their contract being renewed. That is why all historians are revisionists.
Six months ago seven books on the start of WWI were reviewed by The Spectator. Surprise, surprise, they all disagreed on fundamentals. That's historians doing what all historians do, disagree. Yet people feel they can pick the good from the bad. By all means pick which one you want and run with that but what you can't ignore is the casualty rate: 1,250,000 for the UK alone in the war.
WWI was a disaster of biblical proportions. The death of the first born all over again, but this time by a factor of thousands.
At the outbreak of WW1, the British public generally expected a swift victory by Christmas 1914, complete with gallant cavalry charges. Attrition by mechanised warfare was an alien concept.
At the outbreak of WW2, the British public generally expected a repeat of WW1 trench warfare, Guderian's arrival in Abbeville on May 20th 1940 was an alien concept; fortunately, Hitler hadn't planned for this.
At the outbreak of WW2, the British public generally expected a repeat of WW1 trench warfare, Guderian's arrival in Abbeville on May 20th 1940 was an alien concept; fortunately, Hitler hadn't planned for this.
Defeat, pain, suffering, sacrifice makes for better poetry than aggression, killing, stabbing, winning and winner's guilt.
Here is a poem about winning in WW1:
Wilfred Gibson (1878-1962)
"Back"
They ask me where I've been,
And what I've done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn't I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands...
Though I must bear the blame,
Because he bore my name.
Gibson did not serve in France but took his inspiration from talking to soldiers.
Here is another a 1917 poem by Thomas Hardy encouraging people to join up and regretting that he was not young enough to do so:
Up and be doing, all who have a hand
To lift, a back to bend. It must not be
In times like these that vaguely linger we
To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land
Untended as a wild of weeds and sand.
- Say, then, "I come!" and go, O women and men
Of palace, ploughshare, easel, counter, pen;
That scareless, scathless, England still may stand.
Would years but let me stir as once I stirred
At many a dawn to take the forward track,
And with a stride plunged on to enterprize,
I now would speed like yester wind that whirred
Through yielding pines; and serve with never a slack,
So loud for promptness all around outcries!
I think we can agree that poems about sacrifice and sorrow have a quality that the others do not, hence they have lasted longer and coloured our perception.
Here is a poem about winning in WW1:
Wilfred Gibson (1878-1962)
"Back"
They ask me where I've been,
And what I've done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn't I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands...
Though I must bear the blame,
Because he bore my name.
Gibson did not serve in France but took his inspiration from talking to soldiers.
Here is another a 1917 poem by Thomas Hardy encouraging people to join up and regretting that he was not young enough to do so:
Up and be doing, all who have a hand
To lift, a back to bend. It must not be
In times like these that vaguely linger we
To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land
Untended as a wild of weeds and sand.
- Say, then, "I come!" and go, O women and men
Of palace, ploughshare, easel, counter, pen;
That scareless, scathless, England still may stand.
Would years but let me stir as once I stirred
At many a dawn to take the forward track,
And with a stride plunged on to enterprize,
I now would speed like yester wind that whirred
Through yielding pines; and serve with never a slack,
So loud for promptness all around outcries!
I think we can agree that poems about sacrifice and sorrow have a quality that the others do not, hence they have lasted longer and coloured our perception.
Derek Smith said:
What on earth makes a battle a disaster then? Jesus, the UK suffered 350,000 casualties. That's more than a third of a million, people like you and me. Three hundred and fifty thousand. And you reckon that was not a disaster. Let me know when you find one.
That was one offensive.
In total, the allies lost 625,000. The Germans? Some 465,000. Just a bit under 2:1.
Now that is a disaster of some magnitude in my book.
These were human beings.
And we criticise the poets for being mawkish. I think if anyone earned the right to be heard it is those who suffered in the trenches.
If the Somme offensive wasn't a disaster then thank heavens we've never had one throughout the history of the world.
Why have we fallen for the current rewriting of history? WWI means 2,500,000 dead and wounded for the UK alone.
.
Now my maths says that it was 1.3:1 which is a reasonable rate of loss when you consider we were on the offensive and tactics had not yet developed sufficiently to allow for trenches to be attacked without heavy losses.That was one offensive.
In total, the allies lost 625,000. The Germans? Some 465,000. Just a bit under 2:1.
Now that is a disaster of some magnitude in my book.
These were human beings.
And we criticise the poets for being mawkish. I think if anyone earned the right to be heard it is those who suffered in the trenches.
If the Somme offensive wasn't a disaster then thank heavens we've never had one throughout the history of the world.
Why have we fallen for the current rewriting of history? WWI means 2,500,000 dead and wounded for the UK alone.
.
You might say why attack at all but it has to be considered that we were not in the war alone. The French were hard pressed at Verdun and the Russians also benefited from pressure being relieved on their front.
WW1 did indeed mean heavy losses for the UK so it is fortunate that our cause was just and it was partly thanks to their sacrifice that Europe, including Germany, is now a continent of liberal democracies.
You seem to be confusing the cost of a war with whether it was worth fighting in the first place. By your logic Russia should not have kept fighting in WW2 as it cost them 20 million dead.
The cost of WW1 was massive to the UK but was a war that needed to be fought to stop Germany. We did not seek the war and sought to avert it, but once war was underway had no choice but to prevent German domination of Europe.
V8 Fettler said:
At the outbreak of WW1, the British public generally expected a swift victory by Christmas 1914, complete with gallant cavalry charges. Attrition by mechanised warfare was an alien concept.
The British public may have done but Kitchener thought it would take a long campaign and I think I read somewhere the King warned it would be a long war as well (cant find a source at present)Ayahuasca said:
What technological developments with applications to civilian life ocurred during the war?
Obviously aircraft developed massively, and I believe that wrist watches became popular as a result of having to synchronise attacks.
Plenty, look at medicine. You have the introduction of the ambulance. The development of blood transfusions. Properly dosed anaesthesia. The pioneering facial plastic surgery. The first teachings of resuscitation.Obviously aircraft developed massively, and I believe that wrist watches became popular as a result of having to synchronise attacks.
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