French Soldiers and Their Correspondence: Towards a History of Writing Practices in the First World War (original) (raw)
Related papers
Printing, Writing and a Family Archive: Recording the First World War
History workshop journal, 2013
On 14 August 1916, Eric Layton addressed a British Army Field Service Post Card to his brother Cyril, who was then serving in the Navy and based at Chatham. On the reverse of the card he deleted the phrases that didn't apply and signed it. Two days later it was stamped at Field Post Office 184, near where he was stationed in the Somme sector of the Western Front, and sent on its way. This postcard, no doubt one of many that Eric sent during his two years at war, has been preserved among the Layton family's papers (Figs 1 and 2). British Army Form A2042, the Field Service Post Card, offered the sender a list of statements to be left standing as printed or be deleted by hand. This Field Service Post Card is Eric Layton's last surviving writing. A paradoxical piece of writing, it begins with the printed instructions: 'NOTHING is to be written on this side except the date and signature of the sender. Sentences not required may be erased. If anything else is added the post card will be destroyed'. What Eric had actually 'written' was composed mainly by crossing out most of the printed statements: 'I have been admitted into hospital'; 'I am being sent down to the base'; 'I have received no letter from you lately/for a long time'. He left the remaining sentences, which did apply to him, uncrossed out: 'I am quite well'; 'I have received your letter dated'; 'Letter follows at the first opportunity'. And finally he filled in by hand four blank spaces: two dates, that of the last letter he received and that of the card he had just filled; his signature, next to the printed 'Signature only' (in bold); and, on the other side of the card, his brother's name and address. The Field Service Post Card, where the soldier had few choices and none that might express his state of mind, has been seen as the epitome of bureaucratization and alienation. In his classic study, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), Paul Fussell notes that 'millions and millions' of them were sent back from the front. 1 He suggests that 'the Field Service Post Card has the honor of being the first widespread exemplar of that kind of document which uniquely characterizes the modern world: the ''Form''. It is the progenitor of all modern forms on which you fill in things or cross out things or check off things. . .'.
SCS Conference 2016 Panel – (Self-)Writing in Wartime (Europe, 15th-17th century)
Panel abstract: Since the last forty years, the historiography of warfare has been considerably renewed. Being aware of the gaps and biases of the traditional " histoire-bataille " , historians and social scientists now try to envisage the concept of war as a " total social fact " which can be analyzed through various perspectives from political or constitutional history to gender studies. This panel seeks to approach the experience of war and warfare by the study of written sources considered as " ego-documents " delivering the personal testimonies of their authors. The selected period (15 th-17 th century) allows the authors to consider war as a part of the everyday life to which individuals (regardless of their social levels) were confronted. The Burgundian/Habsburg Low Countries offer a rich field of study because of the conflicts that took place there during the period. But far from being limited to a local perspective, this panel will also envisage these testimonies in an international perspective, as a European, connected experience of war. The three papers of this panel will investigate three classical categories of sources: legal, judicial, and narrative documents. The system of petitioning involved in the legislative process or the granting of a pardon offers a large amount of stories on both the logistical and social problems carried by war, from the funding of the armies to the confrontation between soldiers and populations, and give us information on the State's attempt to overcome these difficulties. These concrete problems deserve to be confronted with the ideological discourses elaborated in political writings and poetry. With these various sources here interpreted as ego-documents, the participants will emphasize the important contributions of various individual experiences to the elaboration of a collective identity. Finally, this panel tends to enlighten the relationships between wartime as a concrete life moment and different forms of writing.
The Soldiers' Press: Trench Journals in First World War
2013
I is one of the most studied topics of modern scholarship. Is it possible to say something about it that has not yet been said?' Graham Seal asks the question that must pop into the mind of many a reviewer when picking up a new volume on the First World War (although, curiously, he asks it in the final, rather than the first, paragraph of his monograph, by which time it might be rather too late for the reader). In this centenary year, it is difficult not to feel a little overwhelmed by the flood of material about the Great War, from books and magazine articles to television documentaries and public events. Thanks to the interventions of Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, moreover, the interpretation of the war has become a political battleground. (Gove probably wouldn't like this book, given Seal's description in his very first page of the 'palpable insanity' that frontline soldiers were forced to endure 'by forces beyond their control' (p. ix)). Fortunately, this is the sort of book that can help to shake off First World War fatigue and foster confidence that it is possible to view the conflict in fresh ways. There is, of course, always more to say. Seal's topic-the trench journalism of allied nations, found in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines produced by and for troops serving in the front-lines-is by no means unfamiliar. The author suggests, not unreasonably, that the trench press 'is an immensely rich and relatively under-utilised resource' (p. 223). It has, nevertheless, been examined in some depth by a number of scholars, including J. G. Fuller, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Alfred Cornbise.(1) It is also part of the popular memory of the war: the Wipers Times, edited by Captain F. J. Roberts of the 12th Battalion Sherwood Foresters, has been collected in a number of published editions, and provided the basis for a recent BBC2 drama penned by Ian Hislop and starring Ben Chaplin and Michael Palin.(2) The way in which trench journalism used humour as a coping strategy in the face of the grim and unpredictable realities of modern warfare is well known. Nevertheless, this study has several distinctive elements that, when combined, add a new dimension to our understanding of this genre of writing. It is the first full-length comparative study, examining English-language newspapers produced by troops from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States (and, on occasion, adding insights from French and German publications). It is concerned with all aspects of the production, content and reception of trench journalism, and does not merely use them as a prism to explore specific themes such as morale or national identity. As a Professor of Folklore, Seal reads the material slightly differently to most historians or literary scholars, and is particularly alive to implicit meanings, folkloric traditions, myth and rumour. Most significantly of all, though, the author develops an original and persuasive argument about the
2010
This thesis is a study of private diaries written during the Occupation of France, 1940-1944. The authors are not necessarily of French origin and did not always directly experience the Occupation. What they all provide is an insight into the period at the individual level. The aim of this thesis is to see how these individual testimonies contribute to a more comprehensive portrait of how the French lived during this period, and suggest new approaches for the historiography of the Occupation period. Although the analytical focus of this study is predominantly textual, there is, nevertheless, a determination to place this textual analysis in an historical, rather than a literary, context. This study privileges the diaries of Léon Werth, Charles Rist, Jean Guéhenno and Andrzej Bobkowski because these selected diarists provide the greatest historical insight into the Occupation period. In order to appreciate why these diarists are more historically relevant than the other selected diar...
European Journal of Life Writing
Around half a million Spanish exiles crossed the French border in the Pyrenees between January and February of 1939. They were looking for shelter in anticipation of the overthrow of the Spanish Second Republic. The reception of the exiles in France was rather hostile, and approximately a quarter of a million of them were locked up in internment or concentration camps that French authorities improvised or reactivated camps of WWI. The exiles were defeated and they were deprived of freedom and forced to live in insalubrious conditions. The refugees used writing and culture as a strategy to resist, and as a means to hang on to their personal, familial, social and ideological identities. As a result of their cultural activity, a wide range of newsletters and diaries were edited in the internment camps despite the scarcity of resources. The refugees used these writings as a means of entertainment but also to spread their own doctrines. This article analyzes some 30 newsletters produced...
A War Imagined: Postcards and the Maintenance of Long Distance Relationships during the Great War
War in History, 2021
This article explores the role of postcards in the maintenance of relationships between combatants and civilians during the First World War. By drawing on untapped archival material found during wider research into the morale of English infantrymen, it concentrates on the multiple uses of this medium in correspondence between the Western and Home Fronts. Following the ‘cultural turn’ in military history it has become increasingly apparent that the gulf between those fighting and those left at home was much narrower than previously assumed. This analysis charts the variety of ways in which postcards helped to bridge this divide.
The Soldier in French Literature of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
2009
This article traces the image of the soldier in representative French iterary works of the 20th and 21st centuries while relating the discussion to the development of French nationhood. Barbusse's Le Feu, Chamson's Le Puits des miracles, Vercors' Le Silence de la mer, and Ehni's Algérie roman will all be considered within the sociopolitical frameworks described by Weber and Bhabha.
Fighting and Writing. The Psychological Functions of Diary Writing in the First World War
Experience and memory of the First World War in Belgium. Comparative and interdisciplinary insights. Historische Belgienforschung , 2018
Rose Spijkerman, Olivier Luminet & Antoon Vrints, ‘Fighting and Writing. The Psychological Functions of Diary Writing in the First World War’ in: Experience and memory of the First World War in Belgium. Comparative and interdisciplinary insights. Historische Belgienforschung (Münster & New York: Waxmann, 2018), pp. 23-43.