Paxman's Great War

Actually, the title of the BBC's new "flagship" documentary series on World War I is Britain's Great War, and it begins on BBC1 in a few days' time.  No doubt most of you have already heard the criticisms of the selection of Jeremy Paxman as the series presenter, so we won't dwell on the question of whether he actually knows enough about the subject.  Paxman himself has weighed in on the side of historian Richard Evans in the great debate the latter has been having with the UK Education Secretary Michael Gove about whether "the Left" belittles the efforts of the British Tommy and his allies by going against the current trend of viewing the war as justified and inevitable.

We won't go into that either.  I have a pretty good idea of what members of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship think.  Siegfried didn't hate the Germans; neither did he hate the generals, as some of his poetry might lead us to think.  His motivation for refusing to fight on in 1917 is fully described in the "Soldier's Declaration" and we need look no further.  He may have been suffering from what would now be called "post-traumatic stress", but he had not completely lost his reason.  The fashionable suggestion that we should view the bottom-up view of the war presented by Sassoon and Owen as somehow inferior by comparison with the top-down view presented in official histories is generally disregarded by our members. Ordinary people have, for many years now, been reading the poetry and memoirs of those who fought the war, and have found them simultaneously disconcerting and inspiring.  The fact that the authors were viewing the war from a particular perspective does not invalidate their views.

In the current issue of Radio Times, the BBC presents its schedule for commemorating the centenary of the war, and it is a combination of the predictable and the imaginative.  On Radio 4, you can listen to a 100-hour drama series, beginning in August, called Home Front.  37 Days, a three-part drama on BBC2, will chart the story of the events leading up to the war.  We can also look forward to the inevitable fictionalised portrayal of wartime nurses (personally I would have preferred a repeat of Testament of Youth), starring the BBC's current pet actresses and Charlie Chaplin's Spanish-born granddaughter.

Documentaries we can look forward to include Royal Cousins of War and Teenage Tommies, both on BBC2 - I think those titles speak for themselves.  Tommy and Jerry's Camera, on BBC4, will attempt to look at life in the trenches from both sides of the conflict.  Equally interesting to most Sassoonists, I suspect, will be the cultural contribution, though largely confined to radio (The Ballads of the Great War on Radio 2 and Music in the Great War on Radio 3).  Admirers of Andrew Graham-Dixon can, however, loo forward to Artists of War on BBC4; I see that he is "exploring the work of three British artists" and can't help thinking "what about all the others?".

The commemorative service at Westminster Abbey will be held on 4th August and broadcast live, as will the morning service at Glasgow Cathedral and the ceremony at St Symphorien Military Cemetery in Mons.  The Battle of Mons marked the start of fighting in earnest between British and German forces.  Many of the British were reservists - new conscripts hadn't completed their training yet - and found themselves driven back by the sheer fire-power of the opposition.  Private John Parr of the Middlesex Regiment, the first British soldier to be killed in action in 1914, had died two days earlier and is buried at St Symphorien, as are George Ellison of the Royal Irish Lancers and George Price, a Canadian infantryman, both of whom were killed shortly before the Armistice came into effect on 11th November 1918.  It makes this cemetery a particularly appropriate place to commemorate the war.

The Hydra v Siegfried's Journal

I’ve been invited to attend the opening, next month, of the new “Rivers Suite” at Craiglockhart – a conference and function suite that includes a “Siegfried Room” and a “Wilfred Room”.  This started me thinking forward to 2017 and the centenary of the two men’s first meeting, which we will of course be celebrating, in collaboration with the Wilfred Owen Association.  If anyone has any doubts about whether we should be celebrating the centenary of the war, there can surely be no one who will object to a celebration of the centenary of that significant meeting.

This led me on to look at Napier University’s on-line archive of material relating to the First World War, which contains some fascinating memorabilia dating from the days of Siegfried’s incarceration at what he called “Dottyville”.  You can find an on-line catalogue here: http://www2.napier.ac.uk/warpoets/   Most interesting of these documents, to my mind, are copies of The Hydra, a newsletter produced by and for the inmates, which can be browsed on-line.  The magazine, which owes its title to the origins of the building in which they lodged, as a “Hydro” or health spa, was famously edited by Owen, who approached Sassoon to persuade him to “write something” for its pages.

The Hydra, as was doubtless intended, is a cosy publication, and includes an “Arrivals” section in which newcomers such as 2^nd Lieutenant Sassoon (RWF) are welcomed; his name appears in number 8, dated August 4^th, 1917.  In the editorial at the beginning of the same issue, an “overheard” conversation is related, in which other ranks discuss the meaning of the word “Hydra”.   The most learned of the participants comes out with this gem: “A ‘ydra’s a ‘undred ‘eaded serpent, and the ‘eads grew again as fast as cut off, signifyin’ these ‘ere officers at Craiglockhart, for as soon as one gets too uppish, like, they cut ‘im off the strength, an’ another comes up in ‘is place.”  The wit in question was probably unfamiliar with the reasons for Sassoon’s presence and did not know that he had actually been brought to Craiglockhart for being rather too “uppish”.

In issue no 10, dated 1^st September, along comes the hoped-for contribution from Sassoon, in the form of that favourite poem of Dennis Silk’s, “Dreamers”.  Like many of the other original contributions, it is signed only with the author’s initials “S.S.”

The literary quality of the content would appear to have deteriorated somewhat with the advent of a new editor following Owen’s departure, and my attention was drawn to a letter printed in the July 1918 edition, from a Miss Violet Loraine.  I got excited on seeing this surname, thinking that the lady was possibly a relation of the Rev Loraine to whom Siegfried owed his unusual middle name and had perhaps heard of his presence there.  However, on further investigation I discovered that Miss Loraine was born Violet Tipton and adopted the surname as her stage name when she became a music hall star.  She became particularly associated with the song “If You Were the Only Girl in the World”, which she first sang as a duet with George Robey in 1916.

Miss Loraine writes encouragingly to the occupants of Craiglockhart to tell them “how proud I and all Britain’s women are of you and our splendid men”.  She bemoans her female status thus: "We women cannot go to war and fight, as you have done, but we are doing our best."  In words we would probably deride for their sentimentality nowadays, she goes on to say that "we are comrades all, meeting the most diabolical foe that ever trod God's earth, as one, shoulder to shoulder, we stand for liberty."  Punctuation was evidently not her strong point.  Nevertheless, I give her full marks for what she was doubtless attempting to do, making these men who had suffered so much feel that they were still part of the national effort and deserved praise for the service they had already given.

There is something about The Hydra that reminds me a little of our own publication, Siegfried’s Journal.  There is a kind of homeliness about it, as if to say, “If you are reading this, you understand me and I understand you”.  The group that had access to The Hydra was of course smaller than the readership of Siegfried’s Journal,  but ours remains a compact group.  I was complimented recently by a member on the sheer friendliness of the SSF, and it was suggested that this in some ways stems from Sassoon’s own sociability.   He was in many ways a shy man, but evidently he had a charisma that drew people to him and continues to do so.  In the Journal, however, we don’t only write about Sassoon (though connections will keep springing up, as they have been doing throughout my brief history of blogging). 

Siegfried’s Journal is, like The Hydra, a dual-purpose publication.  Under Owen’s editorship, the latter became a lifeline to the inmates of “Dottyville”.  How they must have looked forward to each new issue, keeping them up to date with the latest news, full of humour and fellow-feeling!  Despite its informality, it contained contributions of real literary merit, as well as many mediocre ones; this latter is one respect in which it differs from our Journal, which is painstakingly edited to present even the most mundane of contributions in the best possible light.  Shell-shocked officers would not, probably, have responded well to having their spelling and grammar corrected, whereas contributors to the Journal are only too pleased to be able to call on the support of skilled proof-readers and editors.

Looking back over past editions of Siegfried’s Journal, I am drawn to the humorous, friendly tone of many of the articles, as well as to the scholarly nature of others.  There are not many magazines that offer such an eclectic mix.  Articles that stand out in the memory include Christian Major’s hilarious – though heavily censored - account of the memorable minibus trip to Boar’s Hill in 2008 and Freddy Rottey’s imaginative musings on his visit to the Reform Club in the same issue (gosh, what an excellent read number 15 was!)  Aunt Evelyn’s problem page arose from the fact that there are so many little snippets of information that cannot be easily fitted into an article, and the occasional obituary allows us to pay tribute to all the members who have made this such a great society, as well as others who have contributed to Sassoon scholarship.    We have, over the years, published several original poems as well as rediscovering obscure or forgotten poets and novelists, and, more recently, have been allowed the privilege of printing extracts from a remarkable PhD thesis by the late Theodore W Bogacz (by kind permission of his wife Cynthia Haggard).

I would like to think that the bi-annual publication produced by our own small editorial team bears favourable comparison with what Wilfred Owen achieved as a one-man operation.  Just as reading The Hydra makes you long to be “on the spot”,  I defy anyone to read Siegfried’s Journal without thinking either “How lucky I am to be a member of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship!” or “I wish I belonged to this wonderful group of kindred spirits!”

Guest Post: by Jack Sturiano, Vietnam veteran

I loved the recent 1914 post because it evokes that elusive state that existed before war that is forever lost once it comes. That blissful Eden, perhaps of ignorance or just plain "human uneventfulness", as Siegfried says about much of life in Siegfried's Journey, where the "idea of oblivion attracts him after life's fitful struggle".  I also learned some American history of which I was unaware.

In April 1965 I joined the US Navy. In March 1965 a battalion of Marines had landed at Danang.  I did not know this. I joined under a program called 120-day delay - the object being to have the recruit finish high school.  I signed for a 4-year enlistment.  My father went with me.  There was a draft then and, since I had neither the grades nor the money nor the wish to go to college, if I didn't enlist I would have been drafted into the US Army. I turned eighteen in May and graduated on June 30th and was in boot camp on July 9th.

I had been there a few weeks when, one Sunday morning, a fellow recruit came running in with a newspaper that we weren't supposed to have and stated to us all "we’re at war with Vietnam!"  I was truly shocked.  Vietnam?  I had never heard of the place. In those days that part of the world was always referred to as Indochina, never as its individual states.

The newspaper article was in response to more marines having landed in Danang. That fellow that day said something very prophetic.  He said we were at war. The USA never declared war, and went out of its way not even to use the word, but it was war none the less.  After the war the USA didn't want to call it “war”.  It was the Vietnam "ERA" and we were its veterans.  I always thought it should have been “ERROR".

I was a boy, "ardent for some desperate glory".  Our parents brought us Vietnam and my high school that had so many smart kids graduated 730 of us on that June day.  Most went to college; a dozen, like me, went into the military. My high school probably graduated more draft dodgers than veterans.

I passed by one day a few years back. They actually had erected a small memorial to those alumni that had died in Vietnam. I knew one of the fellows very well. We used to work together stacking cans at a supermarket and taking beer as well as we left on Saturday nights for dances. He had a beautiful sister.

We never thought of war or saw it coming.

New Year 1914: a snapshot of world events

Since most people have the conception that no one in Britain anticipated the outbreak of war in 1914, I thought it would be interesting to take a look back in time to the start of that year - from a century later - and find out what was happening in the world.  Although the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo did not occur until June, signs of the conflict to come had been recognised by politicians for at least two years prior to the events that sparked the actual outbreak of war.

The fact that I couldn't find very much at all to help me indicates that most people's conception is probably correct.  The UK on 1st January 1914 seems to have been rather a quiet place.  One of the most exciting things happening in Europe was the international rugby match between France and Ireland in Paris, kicking off a new season of the Five Nations Championship.  Ireland scored two tries to defeat the home XV in a closely-fought but low-scoring match.  However, it would be England who emerged victorious at the end of the championship, beating off all-comers, a fact that the sports-loving Siegfried Sassoon no doubt noted.

Siegfried would have been even more interested in the third Test match played by the touring England cricket team in South Africa, which also began on 1st January.  England won the toss and chose to bat.  Their opener, the great Jack Hobbs, scored 92 to help them to an almost unassailable first innings lead; their victory gave them a 3-0 lead in the series overall.

Elsewhere in the British Empire, the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria were merged into one colony - still, of course, under British rule.  The name "Nigeria" seems to have been coined by Lady Lugard, the former ''Times'' journalist Flora Shaw.  Unusually for a woman, she had travelled widely in the course of her career and had been the paper's Colonial Editor; she came up with the name some years before she married Sir Frederick Lugard, who would go on to be the Governor-General of the new merged colony.

At 8am on 1st January 1914, a crowd of about three thousand people began to gather on the jetty at St Petersburg, Florida, USA, to watch the take-off of the first commercial flight in the history of aviation. The pilot was the memorably-named Antony Habersack Jannus; his sole passenger was Abram C Phiel, the town's former mayor, who had paid $400 for a 23-minute flight to Tampa, which would normally take three hours by train.  Pilot and passenger arrived safely at their destination, and thus began a regular passenger service.

Of more interest to those with an artistic bent, perhaps, is the expiry of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which had been in operation since 1886 (coincidentally the year of Siegfried's birth).  Neither the UK nor the USA had fully signed up to the agreement, but the Liceu in Barcelona did not miss the trick.  Five minutes after the convention expired at midnight, the theatre launched its new production of Wagner's opera Parsifal, previously the exclusive preserve of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.

Gustav Holst, a British composer of German and Eastern European ancestry, began composing his orchestral suite The Planets, which remains his best-known work, around this time.  Holst later denied any link between the "Mars" movement and the outbreak of war, claiming that it had been completed well before the summer's catastrophic chain of events.  The German composer Richard Strauss was simultaneously working on his score for the ballet Josephslegende, based on the Biblical story of Joseph.  It had not gone well, with Strauss remarking to a correspondent that he did not like the subject matter and composing it had been "a hell of an effort".  The work would, however, be ready by May 1914 when it was premiered at the Paris Opera. Thereafter, the choreographer Serge Diaghilev would restrict himself to working with French and Russian composers until the end of the war.

The New Year celebrations were muted for one community in South Wales.  At the Corymynydd Colliery in Cwmavon, David Howell, a widower aged 44, was crushed by a falling rock and killed instantly.  It was less than three months since the explosion at Senghenydd Colliery near Caerphilly had claimed 440 lives, the worst mining disaster in British history.  Life was hard for many in the industrial valleys, as Siegfried would witness at first hand in the post-war years when he went to Merthyr to report on the plight of striking miners.

At Christmas 1913, Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, had visited his home area of Criccieth in North Wales, where a reporter from the Daily Chronicle interviewed him to find out his views on the amount the nation was spending on armaments.  "I cannot think of any advantage," said the Chancellor, "which has been reaped by any country in the world from this increase of military and naval expenditure." With a curious lack of foresight (or perhaps a desire to keep the truth from the public), he went on to comment that "our relations with Germany are infinitely more friendly now than they have been for years".

Striking miners were not a peculiarity of the British Isles.  Following a disaster when over seventy people were crushed to death at a Christmas party in Calumet, Michigan, USA, resentment against the local copper mining company remained strong and a strike that had already been going on for five months continued until April 1914; the men involved had no idea that they were likely to find themselves in an even more dangerous situation if and when the USA was dragged into the war that threatened Europe.  Their president, Woodrow Wilson, was preoccupied with the national economy, and would spend the next three years doing his best to keep his country out of the war.  He had recently made the statement (often misreported in later years)  that "the United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest".

The Americans had plenty to be optimistic about.  The Woolworth Building, New York's first skyscraper, had opened in May, the Lincoln Highway in October, and in December Ford had introduced the world's first moving assembly line.  The USA had little to gain by supporting Britain and her allies.  Thus there was plenty of popular support for Wilson's strategy, and only the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 would turn the tide of opinion against him.

On the other side of the globe, Australians had no thought of being drawn into a European war.  The progressive young country had its own problems, but the future looked bright.  Australia was even advertising for "healthy British lads of good character" to work and live there; they wanted to get away from the idea that theirs was a nation descended from convicts.  As if to demonstrate how civilised they were, they would be quick to respond to the call to arms, when it came, from their mother country.

Italy and France were at least back on friendly terms.  On 30th December 1913, the Italian government returned the Mona Lisa to its neighbours.  The painting had been stolen from the Louvre in 1911; Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso were among the suspects, but the real culprit was an Italian employee who believed that Leonardo's masterpiece belonged in its homeland.  The thief was apprehended when he tried to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence on 12th December, but the authorities took advantage of their temporary possession to ensure the Italian public had a chance to view it before handing it back to the French as a kind of New Year present.

What about the enemy?  In October, Arthur Zimmerman, Germany's deputy Foreign Minister, told Edward Goschen, Britain's ambassador in Berlin, that Austria's recent ultimatum to Serbia "might lead to serious consequences".  The Second Balkan War had concluded in the summer of 1913, with the Treaty of Bucharest.  In Serbia, the country that had gained most from that treaty, the Black Hand, effectively a terrorist organisation, was on the rise, numbering Crown Prince Alexander among its supporters.  Alexander would soon become regent, when his father, the ageing King Peter I, decided to "retire" early in 1914.

In November 1913, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, the couple whose assassination seven months later would spark off the war, had been entertained at Windsor Castle by King George V and Queen Mary. Many European courts still declined to welcome the couple because the Archduke's wife, Sophie, had begun life as a commoner; theirs was a morganatic marriage.  In the same month, the elderly King Otto of Bavaria, who had for some years been confined under medical supervision at a palace in Munich, was deposed and replaced by a cousin, Ludwig III, who was stolidly pro-German.  He would be Bavaria's last king.  Among the volunteers who joined his army in early 1914 was 25-year-old Adolf Hitler.

Karl Barth, an eminent theologian born in Switzerland just a few months before Siegfried Sassoon was born at Weirleigh, had recently married and was serving as a pastor in the Reformed church.  Barth would quickly reject German Protestant liberal thinking when its proponents, such as Adolf Harnack and Wilhelm Hermann, came out in open support of the war.  His own country would remain neutral with difficulty, being forced to deploy troops the length of its border to maintain this position.

King Constantine I of Greece, who had become king following the assassination of his Danish-born father, King George I, in 1913, would have an equally difficult task in maintaining his country's neutrality. Considered a German sympathiser by the Allies, he would be forced to abdicate in 1917.  By 1939, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, Germany, Turkey, and of course Russia, would all have done away permanently with their monarchies.

How the world has changed in a century!  To me, most of the events I have recounted above seem so remote as to be almost unbelievable; and yet, when leafing through The Weald of Youth, I always find myself marvelling at Siegfried Sassoon's astute observations of human nature, as relevant today as they ever were.  If only things had changed enough in the past hundred years to reassure us that World War III will never take place.

A Christmas Truce

The latest edition of the IWM's First World War Centenary newsletter highlights the topic of "Christmas at War", which is a coincidence as that's what I was just going to write about.  Not really a coincidence, of course, since it's only five days until the big day is upon us, but certainly fortuitous from my point of view as it has given me a few thoughts beyond the obvious - the obvious being the well-worn story of the Christmas Truce of 1914.  For some reason, the first thing that always comes to mind when I hear the story is an episode of Steptoe and Son, in which evil old Albert Steptoe became sentimental when recollecting his experiences in the trenches.  "And then," he recounts to his son Harold, "he went back to his trench and I went back to mine."  "And then," adds Harold, "you shot him."  

It's the kind of dialogue Siegfried Sassoon could have written if he'd ever become a TV scriptwriter.  Wilfrid Brambell, who played Steptoe senior, never served in the war, having been too young at the time (and Irish to boot), but he would certainly have remembered it, and it always surprised me that jokes about the war were allowed, especially on the BBC, at a time when many viewers would have had clear memories of those terrible years.  Perhaps there were complaints.  There were certainly complaints about a later sitcom, Dad's Army, when it first appeared on screen in 1968, yet it went on to become one of the all-time jewels in the BBC's crown.

Dad's Army was based on the true experiences of writer Jimmy Perry, who had served in the Home Guard at the age of seventeen and modelled many of the characters on people he remembered, in much the same way as Sassoon fictionalised his own experiences in the Sherston trilogy.  It would not have done for those not personally involved in the war to have made light of it, but for soldiers to do so was almost de rigueur; how otherwise would they have kept their spirits up?

It has been estimated that over 100,000 men participated in unofficial truces up and down the front line at Christmas 1914.  It seems to have been the Germans who started it - the truce, that is - by decorating parts of their trenches with candles and Christmas trees, and proceeding to sing carols.  But there was so much more to Christmas 1914 than games of football in No Man's Land and the exchange of cigarettes.  In December, the women of Germany wrote an open letter to the "women of all nations", urging them not to let "the thunder of guns and the shouts of the jingoes" cause them to forget their humanity.  The letter was printed in a British magazine, and an Open Christmas Letter was issued in response by a group of prominent women led by Emily Hobhouse; the signatories included Margaret Bondfield and Eva Gore-Booth.  This letter had to be sent to the neutral USA for publication.

The restrictions on the French press were far worse; they were not allowed to report that French soldiers had participated in a truce with the enemy, and this led to the impression that the truce had happened only in British-held sectors of the Western Front and helped give it the status of a legend, resulting in the fact that many people in later years did not believe it had actually happened.

Thus we see that, long before Siegfried Sassoon began making his outspoken criticisms of the way the war was being handled, there were many people throughout Europe who did not approve of it and would gladly have ended it immediately if they had been able.  Most importantly, such people existed on both sides. However, just as Sylvia Pankhurst, who was speaking out against the war as early as October 1914, took the decision to support the British war effort by providing work and food for servicemen's wives, so the German Social Democratic Party went from protesting against the declaration of war to supporting their government, and the French socialists behaved in similar fashion; the assassination of the pacifist Jean Jaurès on 31 July 1914 was a major blow to their hopes of pulling back from the brink.

Could the war have been stopped at this stage?  I am no expert on either the politics of the time or the military strategies of the countries involved, but it seems to me that what caused it to continue, despite the sincere wishes of the common people, was an unwillingness on the part of their respective governments to give way, to be seen to "fail" or "lose" the war they had started.  Let us not dwell on that thought as we head towards the season of goodwill.  Let us just be grateful that there were men like Sassoon and Owen among the troops, to tell it like it was; if it were not for them, we might have forgotten.

Stand To!

No, I'm not referring to the Sassoon poem ("I'd been on duty from two till four", etc) but to the title of the Western Front Association's regular publication.  Right from the start of the SSF, we've had many shared members, but in recent years our collaboration with the WFA has reached new levels and, I trust, will continue for many years into the future.  "Stand To!" comes out three times a year, alternating with the equally excellent "Bulletin".  Both provide many potential hours of happy reading.

Needless to say, although we in the Fellowship have much common ground with the WFA, their focus is different.  One of our committee came close to offending a member, a little while ago, by referring to him as a "First World War enthusiast" - it goes without saying that he didn't mean it in the literal sense.  I don't think there can be anyone in the SSF who feels enthusiastic either about the fact that the war was fought or about the way that it was fought.  What our organisation celebrates is the resilience, courage and determination of those who fought it, and most of all the creative work that emerged as a result.  

The Western Front Association tends to have a more military focus.  Many of its members are ex-service people, and are naturally interested in the strategy and tactics, the technology and the terrain, but that does not make them war "enthusiasts" either.  Like us, they have a very broad range of interests.  On page 25 of the latest bulletin, which I received this week, is a beautiful reproduction of a painting entitled "In Flanders Fields", which was done by an American lady in the 1920s and uses the words of MacCrae's poem as the central feature of an Art Nouveau illustration in stunning colours.  Two types of inspiration - an outstanding piece of literature and an outstanding work of art - both born out of one of the most destructive and unhappy episodes in world history.

Reading the WFA's publications, however, it is clear that many of its members agree with Gary Sheffield that the war was neither pointless nor ill-conceived - a view I suspect few SSF members would share.  "We shouldn't rely on Wilfred Owen's version of events," wrote Professor Sheffield in The Guardian last June.  (I would like to think that he decided to lay off Siegfried after I gave him an SSF pen at an event in 2012.)  He described the war as "an existential struggle", which seems a fair description if you look at it from the point of view of the individual soldier.  

An alternative view, quoted by the editor of the Bulletin, is that of Professor Jay Winter: Speaking of the outbreak of war in 1914, Winter wrote: "what a disaster that moment was, a moment when the population of Europe was frogmarched in to an unnecessary war, and learned that the only way to win it was with hatred and violence".  When he had the leisure, Sassoon certainly recognised an unpleasant side of himself brought out by the war, a side that was capable of hating and killing Germans whom he would ordinarily have preferred to have as friends.  Yet when it came down to making his stand, he placed the blame squarely on the politicians, not on the military commanders.

The recent passing of Nelson Mandela has caused many of us to reflect on what might have happened, on how world leaders might have pursued a different course of action had they been capable of foreseeing how the war would turn out.  Perhaps only a reformed terrorist like Mandela can be expected to recognise how much more can be achieved by peaceful negotiation and settlement than by fighting.  Sadly, history has a tendency to repeat itself and we already know that, whatever the moral rights and wrongs of the situation, the lesson of the First World War is likely to have little impact on future events, or at least none for the better.

Children at War

Among many First World War-related items in the latest edition of BBC History magazine was a snippet about Sidney Lewis.  The name will be unfamiliar to many of those reading this blog.  Sidney Lewis has recently been confirmed as the war's youngest authenticated combatant, having joined up in August 1915 at the age of twelve, fooling officialdom into believing him some years older.

Lewis was one of the lucky ones.  Having run away from his home in Tooting, he spent several months in training before seeing active service with the 106th Machine Gun Company.  A year after joining up, his location became known to his mother, who duly sent off a copy of his birth certificate to the War Office, and received a response stating that "the lad will be discharged with all possible speed" (perhaps a rather unfortunate way of putting it). 

The story inevitably put me in mind of Dannie Abse's memorable poem "Cousin Sidney", even though the setting for the latter is the Second World War.  Unlike his namesake, Sidney Lewis survived his war experiences and was awarded a Victory Medal in 1920, by which time the teenager had attained the rank of Lance Sergeant (having re-enlisted in 1918).  When, in later years, he told his son Colin that he had fought on the Somme, Colin simply did not believe him; this must have been rather galling after the lengths he had gone to in order to enlist.

This may be rather a controversial statement, but it strikes me that war relies for its continuation on the fearlessness and inexperience of very young men.  When I asked my late uncle about his feelings on hearing of the declaration of war in 1939, a few weeks after he had joined the embryonic Fleet Air Arm at the age of fifteen, he said "we felt exhilarated, we weren't scared at all".  He was even luckier than Sidney Lewis, since he spent most of the war repairing aeroplanes in India, but he was not to know this at the time; if he had been able to foresee the form his military experience would take, the fifteen-year-old in him might have been disappointed.

In more recent years we have witnessed the horrific sight of children in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and other African countries being armed with rifles and trained to go into battle,  and the use of conscripted children by the Khmer Rouge in the Far East is legendary.  These children are forced into fighting; they may feel fear but it makes no difference to those who would use them for their own ends.  This is, of course, different from the military use of children by most of the countries who participated in the Second World War.  Jewish children participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, Yugoslav children formed a "Partisan Artillery", and in the UK the minimum age for Home Guard participation was lowered to sixteen in 1942.  The Germans formed an entire SS Panzer Tank Division from teenage members of the Hitler Youth. 

Today we have a more tender view of young people.  We believe in nurturing and protecting them.  Yet the minimum age for joining the British army is still sixteen; Christian and pacifist groups have recently been campaigning to have it raised to eighteen, so far without success.  Among their number are ex-soldiers, one of whom commented: "You're still a child.  At eighteen, you're going through massive life changes."

War can, as Siegfried Sassoon saw, make one grow up very quickly.