The Frightful First World
War.
If you are caught in a gas attack:
The orders didn’t say what you should do if you didn’t fancy a pee!
(The Frightful First World War, p.28)
Comedy about the Great War moves through several key stages which become more sanctified as time passes. Distance from the war has not softened the cultural meaning of the war as a historical event, rather reinterpreted it in ways which forbid comic interpretation. The war has become no laughing matter, which is ironic as at the time there were many different types of comedy helping to diffuse its tensions. However, it was the subsequent writing of authors such as Owen and Sassoon that instilled an understanding of the war which prevented it from being deciphered in different ways. Unlike the Second World War, where comparable voices did not arise, historical readings of the Great War have little room for the entertainments and satires which took place. Therefore although many people know about the role of Vera Lynn entertaining the troops in World War Two, very little known about the work of people like Leslie Henson thirty years before.
Comedy thrives on displacement, satirisation and unfamiliarity, but there is no room in our modern understanding of the war for these devices to be employed successfully. Any that do risk censure. As the century progressed, only a handful of writers have tried to overcome these barriers, but their narratives are contained by the dominant cultural feeling that it is not done to discuss the war humorously. Blackadder and Oh what a Lovely War are both examples of comedy which has tried and failed to speak in more subversive tongues. Although they do not succeed, and in the case of Blackadder Goes Forth use the war scenario as little as possible, the fact that they are greatly appreciated and in many ways regarded as sacred is an indication of how firmly the mythology of the war is in place. Many people would still find an aggressive comedy about the war offensive and disturbing, even though many veterans of the war have died – it is still considered sacrilegious to the memory of “those who died and bled” for their country. Like Fussell’s list, there is a new language applied to the war which includes highly emotive terms “memory” “mourning” “the million dead” “futility” “pity” “innocence” “sacrifice”, “mud”, “poppies”. To disturb any of these is considered heretical, and ultimately all comedies must stumble before this barrier.
One of the problems with comedies about the war is that they must be created within these parameters. As the site has already discussed, this often means that war comedy is limited to individual characters in genre fiction, or to anarchic comedies which only bear passing reference to the situation that contains them. In Promenade, Neil Hannon summarises the aversion towards this value system in “A Drinking Song”
Well Heaven be thanked we live in an age,
Where no man need bother except on the stage,
With dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori,
But definitely not tonight.
New voices about the war are not allowed, a trait existing since 1929 with little to disturb it.
Comedic narratives cannot be salvaged from this structure; it is too well established and too strict to permit them. However, there is a new way of understanding the war through comedy. To avoid the Canonical pressures of representing the war, a new medium has to be found. Ironically, this is not only well-established, but vitally important: children’s education.
Since the mid 1990’s there has been a growing standard in high quality children’s non-fiction which encourages learning through extra-curricula activities. Terry Deary’s Horrible History books are one of the most popular non-fiction children’s series. Each book is approx 150 pages long, a mixture of prose and cartoons all dealing with the same era of history. Titles include The Awesome Egyptians, The Groovy Greeks, the Rotten Romans and the Cut-Throat Celts.
The series is extremely popular with children, who believe they are reading something “secret” – something which they can use to trick their elders and make themselves look more clever. Furthermore, the books encourage the idea that as children they are sheltered from the more unpleasant aspects of life. The horrible histories are self-proclaimed “history with the nasty bits left in”.Of course, to any child this is like a red rag to a bull – there is nothing better than finding out something the adults don’t want you to know. In reality, the series is an extremely well-researched series of lesser known facts about each time period, usually specialising in the scatological, the bloodthirsty, and the more eccentric events in history. There is a persistent theme of de-familiarisation, similar (but more coherent) the one practiced in Seller and Yeatman’s 1066 and all That. In many ways this is a far more effective learning resource than merely giving straight-forwards details –
The books are aimed at the 9-12 age bracket; a level at which most children are expected to be able to read unsupervised. This group understands the idea of history, but has hitherto been taught not in terms of dates but civilisations. For example, Key Stage 2 History includes Vikings, Greeks or Romans, Saxons and Egyptians. Children do not necessarily find the events of history coherent or cohesive, and are additionally approaching a subject like the Great War for the first time. To be able to understand this and capitalise upon it is essential to the way the horrible histories function. For example, Deary likens the Central Powers as “like street gangs…all it needed was for one gang to member to throw the first stone and a huge punch-up would follow.”(p.7) Possibly this is not how the war would be taught in schools, but it is a concept that a child can easily conceptualise and understand.
The genius in the horrible history series is the reliance on truth. Each book starts in the same way:
“History can be horrible. So horrible that some boring old fogies think young people should not be told the whole, terrible truth.
But if you never learn the truth you’ll miss out on some of the most useful things in life.” (p.5).
Not only does this recognise there are set ways of teaching history, but it also banishes approved readings. By bringing this to the attention of the reader, there is also an immediate tension between what they may have already learned, and what they are presented with in the books. With the First World War this is a particularly pertinent idea; “truth” having become one of the key signifiers in the myth-making process. Deary is pointing out that history has become an exclusive domain, one in which certain aspects – the unpleasant ones, have been excluded. This is already abundantly demonstrated on the site – comedy is excluded because it does not share the cohesive voice expressing the war myth. Although historical readings of the war are unanimously unsparing in their depictions of the unpleasantness of war, they still do not permit alternatives. Deary agrees with this, contending that:
“Of all the history in the world, the story of the First World War – also known as the Great War – is perhaps the most horrible. It’s a story of what happens when machines go to war and human beings get in the way. But it’s also a story of courage and craziness, brave people and batty people, friendships and fierce hatreds, love…and lice.”
(The Frightful First World War p.6.)
The book explains history through anecdotes, cartoons, lists, recipes, quizzes and short first-hand extracts, but it’s main focus is to present factual history in an interesting and exciting way. The two extracts show typical examples of how this is done. Deary as an author is particularly concerned that both history and literature should be continually subjected to reinvention, and not be allowed to become stale. He also feels very strongly that the “academic” voice should be removed from children’s non-fiction – if the child approaches a text and finds an authorial voice professing to know as little as they do, this is a far more engaging method of encouraging interest. In one interview (read it here) he says “In the past non-fiction was written by 'experts'. Let me tell you something – an "expert" should not be allowed within a hundred miles of a children's book. In fact an expert should be put up against a wall and shot if s/he even thinks about writing a children's book.” His books are abundant proof of the success of this strategy; as an author Deary’s narrative voice is one of excitement, curiosity and wonder.
The Frightful First World War typifies this ethos - describing the war in an entirely comedic way, paying lip-service to the cultural awareness of the war but continually reinventing and reinterpreting the ways it is presented. This is arguably a far more difficult task than many of the other books. Of the twenty-three books in the series, The Frightful First World War is amongst the more recently published, (1998), and it would be fair to say it would not have been possible to publish it as a stand-alone text. But it is undeniable that the book is one of the most subversive comedy readings of the war. The book has one major factor separating it from contemporary interpretations; it lacks irony. The book is humorous, but does not contain any of the sub-texts always apparent in more “adult” readings. Deary has rightly identified that irony is not a necessary quality: in fact in order to retain the freshness of his style it is essential to exclude it. Additionally, children are not aware of the writing dictating the war myth – for most the Horrible History books will either be the first they have read (or known) about the war, or they will be supplied in tandem with Key Stage 3 studies of the First World War. Therefore the war can be presented comedically without risking censure. Ironically, the only Horrible History to have received adverse critical attention was called Bloody Scotland; which was claimed by critics to have racist overtones. Otherwise the series has been unanimously praised by teachers and students alike.
The subject of the war is treated in several ways within the book. The “History with the nasty bits left in” concept frees Deary to discuss elements of the war such as courts martial, lice and trench lyrics (acknowledging that in many songs “the word ‘lousy’ was often replaced by a ruder word” p.83.) without having to add any further detail or self-justification. This also means Deary can satirise the behaviour of both armies:
God’s People.
Each side believed that they were in the right; that meant that God would be on their side. The Germans even went to war with a belt buckle that read ‘God mitt uns’ (God with us). British soldiers saw the word ‘uns’ and thought that proved what they knew – they were fighting the Huns! One very popular belief was that either God had your name and number on a bullet … or he didn’t. So, you may as well charge that machine-gun. After the war one soldier said “I was most amazed by the bullets that missed me!” (p.31)
Unlike the more dominant readings of the war, this description is not examined with pity or irony, but presented as an example of how daft people can be. The subversiveness of the book is in it’s factual presentation, enabling the contents to become foolish, silly, unpleasant, shocking and sometimes sad. There is no need to add the subtexts of the war myth because the tragedies of the war are conveyed within this humorous prose. Deary’s book is also careful not to dwell on the tragic aspects of the war but still make the reader aware of them. As he says in the introduction, it is a book “that’s not too embarrassed to tell you about the awful things people used to do” (p.5). This attitude encourages diverse readings of the war and there is an emphasis on learning from first hand accounts, not merely accepting historical readings of the war : “The truth is pretty nasty, but you’ll never understand how those people suffered unless you read their own true memories” (p.6). What Deary has done is write humorously and make his reader aware of the conditions of the war despite this. He uses neither black comedy nor satire, as these techniques are not needed. By not becoming subservient to the war myth in the way that Blackadder does, he has successfully produced a funny piece of writing about the war which in many ways remains more truthful than the other discourses. If Charley’s War becomes too gratuitous and exploit the myth instead of reinterpreting the war, Deary overcomes it by excluding the mythology from his narrative, aware that his audience are as yet unaware of the ways the war is written about and that they are unnecessary to understanding it.
The Frightful First World War serves as a coda for this study. It has brought an understanding of the comedy of the war back into public awareness by re-examining not the war itself, but the ways it is depicted in cultural production. Deary succeeds because he writes under the war myth, producing a text which is intentionally “nasty”, and “horrible”, and admitting that this is the only means to adequately describe the war. His book functions in the same way as the trench magazine – creating a genre and lauding it’s exclusivity, an exclusivity which enables it to break cultural restrictions and find new, inventive and subversive ways to describe the war. The Frightful First World War is a genuinely amusing book, and it also makes it’s point well. The last page, which exhorts people to find their war memorial, stand in front of it and say “never again”, is successful in a way that the end of Blackadder never manages to attain. This is because there is a genuine wish to learn from the war, rather than the condescending retrospection that many authors employ when describing it. Deary uses factual information, and in doing this he discards a huge amount of excess baggage. There are no poppies, no lost generation, and only a small puddle worth of mud. Deary’s writing regards the soldiers equably; they are not seen with pity, and the war is treated as just another historical event rather than the cataclysmic and futile disaster that it has become in cultural myth. All of these techniques combine to produce a truly original and fresh look at the war, one which is surprising and exciting.
Read The Extracts, Main Page.