The Presentation of the Ordinary Soldier in the Writing of the Great War

The Presentation of the Ordinary Soldier in the Writing of the Great War

World War 1, the 'Great War' from 1914-1918, began as a conflict

between Austria - Hungary and Serbia on July 28th 1914, but was soon

to become a global war involving thirty-two nations. The immediate

cause of the war between Austria - Hungary and Serbia was the

assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo, capital

of Bosnia.

Soon the world was at arms and fighting each other in one of the most

brutal and horrifying wars ever known. Battles at the Somme, Ypres and

Vimy Ridge were particularly terrible because of the large loss of

life they were responsible for. Allied leaders, such as Field Marshall

Douglas Haig seemed to be sending thousands of innocent men to their

deaths.

Hostilities between the Allies and Central Powers continued until the

signing of the Armistice on November 11th 1918, a total period of four

years, three months and fourteen days. Casualties to land forces

amounted to approximately twenty-seven million with another ten

million civilian casualties.

Most of the twenty seven million casualties are those of the 'simple

soldier boys' and not the leaders of the First World War. These highly

regarded men instructed the ordinary soldiers from positions so far

away from the fighting and the terror that they were not always aware

of what they were sending these men into. The 'ordinary' soldiers did

not always fight however; they often waited for months on end, in

terrible conditions just waiting for something to happen. This waiting

was almost as traumatic as the fighting itself.

Siegfried Sassoon's short, but powerful po...

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...nks back to

his stretcher. Raleigh's determined, never-say-die attitude is a model

for the perfect soldier, patriotic and able to want to fight for his

country, even through the death and destruction around him.

As we can see from all the texts, the 'simple soldier boy' is

portrayed in many ways: patriotic, bored, scared and even suicidal. We

know that these soldiers suffered because of bad weather conditions

and the terrifying fact that they were probably going to die before

they ever saw their loved ones again. This inevitability of death must

have been one of the hardest things to get through when at the Front.

Also we can see the obvious contrast between the generals and the

'simple soldier boys', where the generals just talked and fed

propaganda to everyone, but the soldiers were the ones facing the

reality.