Alan Filewod - Reliving the Trenches: Memory Plays by Veterans of the Great War

Cover page shows soldiers dressed in kilts and knee high boots marching through a desolate landscape. Some of the men carry their weapons over one shoulder. Two men in the first and third rows light a cigarette in their mouths. The top portion of the lone tree standing behind them is completely destroyed and there is a hole in the center of the trunk. The soldier in the third row turns to look at the remnants of war piled up to his right. An army helmet on a rifle stands on top of the pile. The jagged edge of a bayonet sticks up in the foreground. Large wooden Crosses are strewn about amongst the debris.

Memory Plays by Veterans of the Great War

edited by

Alan Filewod

Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. Funding provided by the Government of Ontario and the Ontario Arts Council. This work was supported by the Research Support Fund.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Reliving the trenches : memory plays by veterans of the Great War / edited by Alan Filewod.

Names: Filewod, Alan, 1952- editor. | Container of (work): Scudamore, H. B. P.B.I. | Container of (work): Atkinson, William Stabler, 1891-1963. Glory hole. | Container of (work): Jauvoish, Simon. Dawn in heaven.

Description: Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200416855 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210091398 | ISBN 9781771125024 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781771125048 ( EPUB ) | ISBN 9781771125055 ( PDF )

Subjects: LCSH : World War, 1914-1918Drama. | CSH : Soldiers writings, Canadian (English) | CSH : Canadian drama (English)20th century. | LCSH : World War, 1914-1918Literature and the war. | CSH : Soldiers writings, Canadian (English)History and criticism. | CSH : Canadian drama (English)20th centuryHistory and criticism.

Classification: LCC PS 8309. W 3 R 45 2021 | DDC C 812/.52080358403dc23

Front cover image: The Conquerors, Sir Eric Kennington. Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum, Accession No. 19710261-0812.

Cover design by Martyn Schmoll. Interior design by John van der Woude, JVDW Designs.

2021 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca

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University of Toronto Archives. 2002-85-23 MS

The playbill page reads, The P. B. I. or Mademoiselle of Bully Grenay. A four act Canadian war play by H. B. Scudamore B. A., Private Fourth Canadian Infantry, R. W. Downie, Lieutenant - Canadian Engineers, W. L McGreary M C. Captain: Thirty-Eighth Battalion Canadian Infantry, and H. R. Dillon M. C., Captain - O. F. A. Princess Theatre Week May Twenty-Fourth. Matinees - Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Mail orders now. The color painting shows the partial outer shell of a building stands in the center of an open field surrounded by nothing. A short, barren tree stands in the foreground.

Archivists are unsung heroes of historical research, and I extend my thanks and deep respect to the librarians and archivists at Mount Saint Vincent University Library. They are the keepers of the aging microfilms of the Canadian Drama Collection, and they made me welcome on my visits there. Without them this book would not exist, and I hope its publication demonstrates the importance of their collection.

Also unsung are the support staff that who make archival research possible. I give thanks to the workers at Library and Archives Canada who have spent years digitizing the service files of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. As a young man I had a summer job microfilming records in the Patent Office (now the Canadian Intellectual Property Office) in Ottawa and I remember the crushing grind of opening files and placing them under a camera, page by page, for hours on end. There are hundreds of thousands of service dossiers on LAC s Soldiers of the Great War site, each page handled by working fingers. That immense labour deserves recognition and gratitude.

I also thank Linda Warley for her sharp proofreading eye as this book developed, for her patience with my obsession for years and for her willingness to venture into the cold rain to tour the battlefields of Ypres and Vimy Ridge. The staff of WLUP Lisa Quinn, Siobhan McMenemy, and Murray Tong in particularhave been warmly supportive of this project, and I thank them for taking it on.

Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of Patrick ONeill. He was a persistent and tireless archival researcher whose work broadened our understanding of the theatre history of this country we call Canada. I have no doubt that without his labours these plays, and many others, would never have been discovered.

The three plays in this volume are important but overlooked literary documents of the First World War that relive and stage trench warfare as experienced by combat veterans. Two of them are published here for the first time, and the third for the first time in its entiretyparts of it having appeared serially in The Canadian Forum in 1921. Written between 1920 and 1934, these plays are rare examples of war memories framed in dramatic form to re-embody the lived experience of the war in the trenches and the rear echelons.

In the years after the war ended, many returning soldiers struggled to adapt to the new era of peace and to make sense of the horrors they had survived. It was a collective struggle. They formed veterans associations, held reunions, and raised funds for memorials. Their activities were fuelled by grief, by tribute, by trauma, and often, by pride in victory. At the University of Toronto, the Varsity Veterans campaigned to raise money to build what now stands as Soldiers Tower, attached to Hart House. Four returned soldiers whose studies had been interrupted by the war came up with the idea of gathering as many fellow vets as they could to mount a play about their experiences. In this they were helped by the availability of the new Hart House Theatre, the universitys experimental theatre that opened in 1919 in a basement space used as a rifle range during the war. When their play,