Langford - They Were There in 1914: Memories of the Great War 1914–1918 by those who experienced it

IN SEPTEMBER 1938, tensions were increasing throughout Europe as the Fhrer of Germany strutted and loudly demanded self-determination for Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. In a flurry of appeasement the British Prime Minister flew to Munich intent on placating the dictator. He returned on 30 September waving a piece of paper an Anglo-German agreement, signed by Herr Hitler and myself pledging that the two nations would never go to war against each other again.

This was the month when a new magazine was launched in Britain with the title The Great War: I Was There. It carried the sub-title Undying Memories of 1914-1918, and was published by The Amalgamated Press Ltd and edited by Sir John Hammerton.

In its editorial introductory letter it announced: The story of the Great War of 1914-18 has been told in many ways, but there has never before been collected in the scope of one work a narrative account of those years, every word of which has been written by an eye-witness of the actual events described. The declared intent of the publisher was to make effective use of personal narratives of those who experienced the events of the war to end all wars. Twenty years had elapsed since the Great War ended and in that period hundreds of books on the subject had been written by those who took part. It was from these published sources that extracts would be taken to bring to life the pages of the magazine I Was There. Each issue of the magazine would be on sale every Thursday for price of 9d (2.10 present-day value). There would be fifty-one parts in the first series taking its weekly publishing to 19 September 1939.

So it was, one year later to the month the final edition of I Was There was published and contained the announcement:

In view of the outbreak of the European War subscribers to I Was There will not be surprised to learn that the publishers have decided not to proceed with the issue of a proposed New Series.

With Hitlers invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. The Great War was about to be eclipsed by round two. The Second World War proved to be greater in terms of loss of life, material destruction and suffering than the Great War of 1914-1918. The First World War brought massive changes to the extent that the world of mankind would never be the same again, as empires disappeared and social norms altered forever; and the Second conflict completed those changes and ended with an even greater threat to security of mankind with a nuclear age and mutually assured destruction or MAD.

What lessons are really learned from history? And when learned, are applied by the decision makers in government to present-day affairs so as to bring about true peace? The League of Nations, set up after the First World War, had failed to prevent the dictator Mussolini from offensive actions in Libya, Ethiopia and Albania and finally collapsed with the outbreak of global conflict once more. It seems that mankind does not have the inherent ability to direct his own steps by means of self government.

Yet the stories of those who took part in the first world conflict of the twentieth century have a message for later generations that there is nothing glorious in armed conflict; the stories these witnesses tell are of fear, great suffering and the onset of a callousing with regards to the plight of his fellow man, who by politics and birth, must be viewed as enemy.

Those who had made a career of the army had been brought up on a diet of glory, on stories of daring-do as the heroes of the British Empire sorted out the cruel and blood-thirsty pagan natives in far away places such as Africa, India and the Far East.

Around the turn of the twentieth century there had been uneasy indications that all was not well with British imperialism; during the fighting with the Dutch settlers in South Africa. The Boer farmers, with their Mauser rifles and hit-and-run commando tactics, had, on numerous occasions, bested the British Army and dealt it a bloody nose. However, the British regular soldier and the Territorial warrior (part-time soldiers or Saturday Night Soldiers) would find out about the hardships and privations on a far greater scale in the conflict breaking out in Europe in 1914.

In John Lucys eye-witness account of the fighting in Sanctuary Wood, November 1914, he describes how a sergeant fell near him when a piece of shrapnel entered the back of his head: He lay unconscious all the day nodding his holed head as if suffering only from some slight irritation, and did not become still until evening. one young soldier wanted to put him out of his misery by shooting him. An older and more experienced man pointed out that the sergeant was already as good as dead and was not suffering. In the same account a German attempting to surrender is shot out of hand in reprisal for the death of another British sergeant who had been shot whilst attempting to rescue a wounded German. Yes, there are also tales of bravery and selfless acts which took place among that murderous activity, yet the callousness comes through.

As the next four years dragged on disillusion would set in among those who were wielding the weapons. The potential for this can be discerned in these accounts at the beginning of the Great War: near rebellion of elements of the demoralized British Expeditionary Force occured following the fighting at Mons. Furious soldiers could only look on helplessly as their headquarters staff crowded the last trains out of St Quentin leaving them, thoroughly exhausted by the retreat, to resist the enemy hordes bearing down on the British rearguards. Two British colonels took steps to surrender their commands to the Germans. There is the account of a British major, Tom Bridges, who rallied the surrendered men just before the enemy arrived to take them into captivity. How he twarted the surrender of two battalions and led them off to join the general withdrawal is remarkable. Tom Bridges achieved the amazing transformation with stirring words along with a tin drum and a toy whistle.

There followed the Battle of the Marne, which the French called a miracle when the invaders were stopped before Paris and the Allied counter-attack drove the Germans back to the river Aisne. The two sides carried out a series of outflanking movements, wheeling their tired formations in cross-country sweeps, which is refered to in history as the race to the Sea. The First Battle of Ypres took place when the Germans were halted in the north. With the Channel coast blocked and denied to the Germans the belligerents dug in, and glared at each other across a strip of ground which would become known as No Mans Land and which ran for 300 miles.