Introduction - "The Cause of Nowadays"

 

        This is a quick and more academic look at the theory behind this project. I want this site to be appreciated by as many people as possible and feel that it should not contain too much scholarly wiffle. However, I do feel that some of my own motivations and thoughts in investigating this subject should be explained. The site contains elements (for example the mock trench magazine and the War is Hell comic strip) which a truly academic site would not consider. Whilst I wish the site to be historically accurate, I want to present some resources that are by nature more derivative. I have done this because I feel the site should convey the ethos and atmosphere of the comedy that deals with the First World War. I consider the subject extremely important to reaching an understanding of the war, and I wish to convey this to as many groups as possible.

 

        But why is comedy so important? Can it even be used as a valid critical tool? Straightaway I admit that a lot of the things I have researched I found completely unfunny. This attitude is shared by most people and the proof of this general shift in understanding can be seen in television schedules - contemporary comedy about the war is rare. Having said that, Blackadder Goes Fourth is repeated about every two years and recognised as a classic piece of comedy. On the other hand, Chaplin films are rarely shown. Most of my friends when questioned could quote Baldrick or the trench sketch from The Fast Show, but could not name a single Chaplin film or wartime entertainer. What has caused this change? Why is modern comedy about the war so difficult to unearth, and why is there so little awareness of the types of comedy  available in the period 1914-18?

 

       There is a huge disparity between humourous representations of the war at the time and the ways we interpret it now. Comedy is usually aimed at a far wider audience than other mediums: because of this it provides a broader spectrum of public opinion. This should make it easier to understand, but I still found myself unable to decipher exactly why some of the wartime comedy was funny, endlessly reiterating that "it was different then". If so many people saw and appreciated these plays, or books, or music hall performances at the time, then why can't I do so now?

 

        The problem I kept coming up against is the cultural differences which affect the ways we understand and create comedy. I have had to conclude that it is impossible to completely understand cultural changes since the Great War. The war is mistakenly assumed to be a decipherable event merely because it happened in this century, and because of this, early comedy about the war has been misunderstood and therefore misinterpreted. Much of this comedy is subsumed by the assumption that there was only one perspective during the war; that of a hapless naivety which quickly turned to relentless cynicism and bitterness once the war was over. Comedy is dismissed as an infrequent tool to let off steam containing little content of valid historical import. Comedy is, after all, people making light of things, and the First World War is undoubtedly one of the most serious events in history. It defined and shaped the course of Europe in the Twentieth Century, and Sellar and Yeatman in 1066 and All That summarise its cultural importance by stating that the war resulted in "The end of history and the cause of nowadays...history therefore came to a . "

 

       However, scratch the surface of any aspect of the First World War and comedy becomes apparent. Humour is used when soldiers relate anecdotes to each other both during and after the fighting, to kill time in the mundane periods of active service, as ways to distract and entertain themselves behind the lines, and as a coping mechanism to diffuse the grimness, stress and tedium of war. Plays like "A Soldier of Sorts" (1917) clearly show discrepancies between our interpretation of the war against the actual experiences and attitudes of the soldiers. The play's content demonstrates that the soldiers who wrote and produced it were well aware of the casualties, incompetence and harsh conditions experienced on each front. The actors were all waiting to be posted - many had already seen active service. They were not naive young optimists waiting to be sent away for the first time. However the dramatic action of A Soldier of Sorts hinges on the friends of the noble hero trying to get him sent away from the trenches. In their opinion he is "too good a man" to die at the front. This connection between going to war and being almost instantly killed is made explicit throughout the play. This subversive view actively extoles shirkers and cowardice: A Soldier of Sorts encourages self-preservation and sees the main character as foolish for not trying to save his skin. Yet these attitudes were still sanctioned by the BEF (British Expeditionary Force - the name for the British army) in a training camp where recruits were expected to be stuffed with moraleboosting sentiment and nationalistic fervour.

 

This kind of deviant depiction is ignored by most WW1 historians who prefer to privilege the vision of Graves, Sassoon, Owen and Blunden. These writers are inncorrectly taught as if they were the dominant voices at the time. It was nearly ten years after the war that these books and poems were published with any success, their release causing outrage and disbelief. Although there is undoubtedly a strong element of truth in these accounts, it is my belief that depictions of the war which contradict these middle-class officer persprectives are no longer allowed into our historical construction of the First World War. Today we are encouraged to see the soldiers of the war as victims, puppets and naive fools, Wilfred Owen's "the pity of war" being a strongly enforced motif. This is offensive and patronising to the soldiers who served in the BEF, presenting them as if they had no independent will and were incapable of becoming anything more than shellshock victims or canon fodder.

      

      In  A War Imagined (1991, Bodley Head), Samuel Hynes explains this creation perfectly

 

"A brief sketch of the collective narrative of significance would go something like this: a generation of innocent young men, their heads full of high abstracts like Honour, Glory and England went off to war to make the world safe for democracy. They were slaughtered in stupid battles planned by stupid generals. Those who survived were shocked, disillusioned and embittered by their war experiences, and saw that their real enemies were not the Germans, but the old men at home who had lied to them. They rejected the values of the society that had sent them to war, and in doing so separated their own generation from the past and from their cultural inheritance."

 

     Proof of how incorrect this vision is can be demonstrated from primary sources produced during and just after the war. Prothero's List of Books on the Great War (1923, HMSO and IWM) has an entire section devoted to humour. This includes a surprising amount of cartoons, plays and books by soldiers from all sides. The anthology also contains a gigantic list of poetry anthologies with titles like "The Call of War" (S.P.C.K, 1917). These examples of contemporary attitudes are now erroneously presented as atypical.

 

       In Terry Deary's The Frightful First World War (1998, Scholastic), the author claims he is writing a history "So horrible that some boring old fogies think young people should no be told the whole, terrible truth" (p.5). It is my contention that this statement is true: there are many aspects of the war which are avoided simply because they do not fit in with the conventional and simplistic myth that has been created around it. Comedy is not represented because it is deviant - it suggests that the troops might have enjoyed themselves whilst on active service. The First World War may not have been all mud, blood, horror and poppies.

 

         I do not wish to suggest that the war was enjoyable. Comedy does not all have to be produced for "fun" reasons. Humour during the war is almost entirely aimed at diffusing tension and satirising fears. In this way it is an incredibly useful historical tool, providing insights into both the ways in which soldiers dealt with their fears and the ways in which they tried to subvert the situation around them. However, at present this concept is sidelined because it has no place in the "War is Hell" mythos. It is erroneous to assume that everyone shared the same experience of the war; that it was awful and bloody and that innocence died in the trenches. It is also wrong to think that everyone spent their time vapidly laughing at the circumstances they were presented with. But in contemporary history, there seems to be no middle ground - no admission that there were some good times, that the soldiers could be sarcastic, irreverent and often offensive.

 

     In principle, there is nothing funny about the First World War.The war was a terrible and bloody event that surrounds and binds the course of the next 100 years.  But despite this, morale was essential to the troops and comedy was one of those outlets in which frustrations, fears and social codes could be expressed and reinforced. It was vitally important to diffusing stress and worry and for bringing groups together both on the war and home fronts. It is convenient to believe the war myth as exposed by Hynes, but the fact is that people counter fear by trying to make light of it. In many ways the comedy produced at the time was a healthy reaction than modern interpretations where Osbert Sitwell's claim that it is "Very bad form/To mention the war" still holds true. Although the war was ultimately no laughing matter, it is for this reason it was satirised then and continues to be so today.