The plays produced by the soldiers were a combination of familiar melodrama and more deviant themes produced by the conditions of war. Instead of a critique of the genre, a case study is presented instead, showing how these two aspects are incorporated into a more traditional theatrical narrative.

A Soldier Of Sorts was produced by soldiers at the Aldershot training Depot, and was performed Wednesday, November 28^th, 1917. The play was attended by local residents as well as the soldiers in the camp. Some of these soldiers were recovering after being wounded and were waiting to be sent back to the front lines, others were recruits or conscripts who had never seen active service. The play was written by two of the officers, but involved soldiers of all ranks as actors and stage production crew. As the play was performed in Britain, the only female character was acted by a local woman. The Aldershot Gazette reported it as "A most enjoyable and successful original play…which was hugely enjoyed and appreciated…the play dealt in a humourous manner with the various phases of life in the army, the acting being exceptionally clever…the proceeds were in aid of the Army Ordanance Corps Charitable Fund."

The play centres on Jack Christopher, a young and idealistic man just out of public school and working in a London firm. When war breaks out, he enlists quickly "to get a chance at a Sam Browne" (to become an officer). Despite his enthusiasm and belief that the war is right, he reads German literature and predicts that the Germans are strong enough to sustain the war for at least three years. Christopher is advised to get a job in the war office, but instead ends up at the front in France. Here he meets the two other main characters, the harsh but fair CO (Morley), and the irrepressible working class private (Tommy Tompkins). During a battle (possibly the Battle of the Somme) Christopher is wounded in the arm and sent to a field hospital, where one of the doctors (Dr Blade) tries to amputate the entire limb before it goes septic. Christopher has only a injury, however, and is saved a young nurse, who he recognizes as his potential sweetheart, Muriel from home. A sadist RAMC tries to send him back to the front in charge of a tank battalion (considered to be a suicidal job; there was little initial faith in the success of tanks), but he voluntarily takes a job as a stretcher bearer (an even more dangerous job). At this point it is mentioned that Christopher is some sort of inventor, and Muriel is posted back to England. She starts to investigate this. Back at the front, there is another battle (in which no-one is killed). Christopher leads several of his old battalion back when they get stranded in a shellhole, and again refuses both leave and a transfer to the information office. However, Muriel has discovered Christopher’s plans and shows them to a colonel in the information office, who finally arranges not only a transfer, but an entire department and 800 women to implement his plans, now revealed as something to do with "electric" and capable of stopping aircraft and submarines. Christopher gets engaged to Muriel, sings a song and thanks the audience.

On the surface, this seems a traditional melodrama with very little subversion or opinion to deviate from the accepted view of the war as a good thing. However, it is the secondary characters and the way in which Jack Christopher is perceived overall that shift the meaning of the play in a very particular way. The most dominant of these is that Christopher is seen by his peers and the men he commands as a fool. He is offered a transfer back to Blighty and safety, and yet he refuses to take it. Eventually he has to be ordered to leave the Western Front. This is quite clearly seen as idiocy by his fellow soldiers. His faith to his men at the front is again admired as a quality "I know a man when I see one, even if he is disguised as an officer" (Tompkins, Scene II), this is not only unusual, but he is seen as foolish for staying with them. This is a very unusual cultural suggestion, as propaganda and the public school ethos both condone this action and consider it at the heart of the officers’ duty to his men. It becomes clearer as the play progresses however, that Jack Christopher is generally considered too good to be a fighter in the front line. His life will be wasted if he becomes a casualty. The play condones not only the idea of actively trying to get posted away from the front, but also trying to avoid fighting when on duty. The title points to all of these aspects in it’s central protagonist this: Chrisptopher is A Soldier Of Sorts because he is not really meant to be a warrior; the first scene portrays him as a middle-class intellectual with great potential; his intellect is wasted at the front when he could be implementing his ideas in the war office or elsewhere. He is a "sort of" soldier - a promising and idealistic young man stationed in the place where harder, more bitter men ought to be. As an officer, albeit a good one, he is wasting his potential, the chance that he will become a casualty being an inappropriate risk for a man of his caliber. Christopher is therefore also "out of sorts" i.e. out of place. Finally he is also "A good sort"; middle-class slang for an honourable gentleman who epitomises the public school ethos. The play decries these ideals, seeing the truly heroic role in the war being one of self-preservation, especially if one has social value. This attitude is both surprising and subversive.

The depiction of Christopher is entirely unexpected in a play created by the military establishment, however it is couched in terms that the civilian audience possibly would not recognize. The play is full of terminology and phrases which they would find obscure, whilst the overall story is ostensibly that of traditional melodrama. The real message of the play is far less submerged than expected, and this is effected mainly through the secondary characters. Throughout the play Jack is willing to fight for his country and to defend the traditional values and codified behaviour of the young middle-class male at war. However it is the other characters who contextualise and define this position in a negative light. Many of the subsidiary characters are very traditional, and the playbill suggests that this was further exploited by a certain amount of role-reversal. Both of the pompous generals are played by privates. This kind of comedy would have been very effective at the time, with the lower ranks satirizing their superiors. There is a very keen awareness of the discrepancies between the actuality of war, and the statements being issued by the commanding officers behind the lines. The play contains the familiar discourses of idealism and patriotism, but every one of these appears to have been produced in an ironic form. Insinuated within these however, are the realism messages the army was attempting to communicate to the civilians. Although these are not always very clearly articulated, it is obvious that throughout the play, the soldiers were attempting to change the awareness of their civilian audience through the medium of the comedy by depicting some of the harsher realities of war.

One of the most critical discussions in this respect is that which takes up most of Scene II between two RAMC doctors. One, Lieutenant Wilson, was a friend of Jack Christopher’s in London. He does not share the intellectual bent of Christopher, but is the rival for Muriel’s affections. The older doctor, Sergeant Blake, represents the establishment view of the war and its casualties. Christopher has been badly wounded by a bullet in the arm, but Blake suspects him of malingering:

Ltnt Wilson: Don’t be so gloomy, the army isn’t what it was I know, but they are decent fellows for all that.

Sgnt Blake: Weaklings! The sooner they are killed off the better. War is a time for reducing the surplus population. Just look at the cases we are getting now, not a quarter of them surgical, its all either trench feet or rheumatism or shellshock and that sort of malingering cattle.

Ltnt Wilson: I don’t see why a man with broken nerves shouldn’t be treated with as much sympathy as a man with broken bones.

Sgnt Blake: Broken bones don’t need sympathy they need surgery. Nerves? All imagination. They never taught you anything about shellshock at college I’ll be bound.

Ltnt Wilson: Perhaps not. There wasn’t a war on then.

(Scene II).

This is an extremely surprising statement, especially one being produced by the army itself. Critically, the speech by Wilson emphatically states that shellshock ought to be treated. Furthermore it ought to be treated with sympathy, suggesting therapy rather than physical solutions. The army by this time had already prohibited the use of the word "shellshock" and insisted on the more technical sounding "neurasthenia". It is interesting that within the play it is a term used by not only by the soldiers in the Aldershot base, (including some who had not seen active service), but also must be familiar to the civilian audience. There is a lecturing note in this speech; the comedic figure of the sadistic sergeant almost entirely displaced by the message of the younger officer. The traditional discourses of the war are completely subverted; there is acknowledgement that shellshock causes as much mental as physical damage, and furthermore that it is an understandable conditiondeserving treatment.

This sort of displacement appears throughout the play. The romantic plot is entirely secondary to the wartime drama, and all of it is riddled with the soldiers’ need to convey the "real" circumstances of the war. There is a surprising amount of bitterness and resentment implicit in the play, and supplementing this is the fact that the enemy is not the Germans, but the officious and ignorant generals from home. Even the traditional cheerful cockney Tommy is harshly depicted, much of the humour he delivers being clumsy or overtly aggressive. Towards the play’s closure, Christopher finds him stranded in a shellhole and says "Tommy, fancy meeting you here. I thought you were dead.", to which Tompkins replies "No, I ain’t dead. I’m damned.". It is difficult to see any amusement in this interchange. Although there are noticeably no casualties in the play, it is surprising to find such an overtly critical narrative being performed within an army camp full of new recruits.

Photographs and Playbills. Troop Entertainments. Main Menu