The First World War: A Documentary Record

Series One: European War 1914-1919, the War Reserve Collection (WRA -WRE)
from Cambridge University Library

Part 2: Trench Journals, Personal Narratives and Reminiscences

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION BY DR J M WINTER

Any selection of primary materials on the First World War must take account of the extraordinary phenomenon of trench journalism. This was the creation of 'house journals' of platoons, companies, regiments and occasionally even larger serving branches of the armed forces. The smaller they were, the closer they were to the minds of the men in the trenches. They are an indispensable source for any study of the military and social history of the Great War.

The sheer range of these papers is astonishing. The selection is primarily British, but includes Australian, New Zealander, Canadian, American, German and French material as well. They vary enormously in format and content. Many of the British and French trench journals are cyclostyled, and represent a high degree of ingenuity in finding (stealing?) the equipment necessary to produce a four- or eight- page collection of comments, drawings, doggerel and news of local affairs. German trench journals have a less spontaneous character and fewer jokes, veiled or unveiled, at the expense of the high command. Swagger and defiance are more to the liking of the Australian trench journalist, though savage comments are not unknown in other products of this extraordinary part of the soldier's cultural life.

You can imagine the way they were produced, and feel the intense camaraderie they proudly display. Some is amateur journalism of the schoolboy variety, but much of it is poignant and highly revealing of the ambivalence serving soldiers felt about the war and those not in the line. They all wanted to win; the will to victory was a sine qua non. But they had no time at all for armchair strategists or dainty diplomats. There is some anger at what soldiers took to be female ignorance of the hardships of trench life, but much longing for home as well. In short, these journals describe a world apart, but one still tied to the civilian landscape to which the authors (and readers) longed to return.

Reminiscences are entirely different. As one might expect, it is the contrast between the two forms of literature which is most revealing about what soldiers remember and what they forget. The memoirs reproduced from the Cambridge War Collection have all the features of the genre: selective memory alongside telling detail; oddity and regularity jostling for attention. In the passage of time, anger and indignation over the stupidity of military life and the 'eye-wash' of civilian journalism fades. What we see here are people who realize they have been through an earthquake of monumental proportions, and have lived to tell the tale.
Cambridge is among the few libraries rich in such material. The Bibliothèque du Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (BDIC), Paris and the Library of Contemporary History in Stuttgart are two others. The preservation of such sources in microfilm permits any library to join them in offering readers a resource to help them begin to make sense of a unique moment in history.

J M Winter
Pembroke College, Cambridge