tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/wwi-11770/articlesWWI – The Conversation2024-03-10T13:13:33Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2249202024-03-10T13:13:33Z2024-03-10T13:13:33ZHow lessons from the First World War could help Ukraine in the war<p>As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third year, the war’s tactics increasingly seem to match scenes from the First World War: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2023/nov/07/21st-century-trench-warfare-ukrainian-frontline-in-pictures">soldiers huddle in trenches</a> along stagnant front lines and navigate intense barrages. </p>
<p>Beyond trench warfare, however, the Ukraine conflict resembles the strategic, operational and tactical situation faced by Allied commanders immediately prior to the <a href="https://www.theworldwar.org/learn/about-wwi/hundred-days-offensive">100 Days Offensive</a>, and its lessons remain applicable to contemporary wartime political and military leaders. </p>
<p>The successes produced by the 100 Days Offensive that began in the late summer of 1918 were primarily influenced by the Allies’ reliance on a strategy of maximum effort, flexible campaigns and advances in tactics.</p>
<h2>The 100 Days Offensive</h2>
<p>Having suffered <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA273082.pdf">significant losses</a> in the preceding months, and facing the possibility of growing German strength following the defeat of Russia, Allied leaders prioritized launching a decisive offensive before <a href="http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol13/no2/doc/Goldsworthy-Pages4656-eng.pdf">their own exhaustion</a> forced them to settle for peace. </p>
<p>These strategic considerations led Allied commanders to shift the balance of their forces to seize opportunities along the front. Beginning with a <a href="https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol2/iss2/11/">surprise attack on Amiens</a>, the Allies often rapidly <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/from-amiens-to-armistice-the-hundred-days-offensive">shifted</a> the centre of their offensive efforts. These moves forced the German High Command to commit additional resources along the front, weakening its defences.</p>
<p>While the Allies’ <a href="https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol2/iss2/11/">hurried tempo</a> led to higher casualties, maintaining momentum was critical to eventually piercing the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1179/072924799791201434">Hindenburg Line</a>, the Germans’ most significant prepared defensive position. </p>
<p>Allied tactics forced combat into the open. While aircraft had been introduced prior to 1918, the Allies were able to rely on <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA529831.pdf">near-total control of the air</a>. This allowed Allied forces to more effectively target their <a href="https://media.defense.gov/2010/Oct/13/2001329759/-1/-1/0/AFD-101013-008.pdf">artillery fire and rely on better reconnaissance</a>. </p>
<p>Moreover, the Allies were also able to introduce significant numbers of tanks to the battlefield. This development allowed Allied forces to gain localized fire support at key stages of the offensive and contributed to their string of victories. </p>
<h2>Wartime challenges</h2>
<p>The legacy of the 100 Days Offensive offers several strategic, operational and tactical lessons that remain highly applicable to the Ukrainian War. These include the importance of political timelines, the role of mobility in combat and the necessity of air power and infantry innovation. </p>
<p>Having dedicated a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/24/russia-economy-west-sanctions-00142713">significant portion</a> of its economy to war production, Russia will become more capable of replacing its wartime losses. This shift has occurred just as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/us/politics/military-weapons-ukraine-war.html">United States</a> and <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-military-industry-defense-buildup-war/">Europe</a> have struggled to fulfill orders for ammunition and other equipment for Ukraine due to domestic political complications. </p>
<p>Moreover, Ukraine faces <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraines-budget-2024">growing debt</a> due to the war and lacks <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/04/ukraine-mobilization-zelensky-russia/">large numbers</a> of available service personnel, <a href="http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol13/no2/doc/Goldsworthy-Pages4656-eng.pdf">mirroring</a> the state of the Anglo and French militaries in 1918 and raising doubts as to how long Ukraine can continue to engage in high-intensity combat.</p>
<p>Russia’s strength has also been bolstered by its capacity to enact further rounds of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/11/russia-conscription-military-mobilization-war/">conscription</a> and ongoing public <a href="https://www.norc.org/research/library/new-survey-finds-most-russians-see-ukrainian-war-as-defense-against-west.html">support</a> for the war. In contrast, conscription remains a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/world/europe/ukraine-conscription-mobilization-bill.html">highly contentious</a> topic in Ukraine, which may harm its future readiness.</p>
<h2>Lessons for Ukraine</h2>
<p>However, the Allies’ experience in 1918 is instructive. Even a weakened Anglo-Franco-American coalition remained capable of winning dramatic victories over a powerful adversary, so long as its political leaders remained fully committed to the war.</p>
<p>The operational challenges facing Ukraine and Russia are also akin to those faced by the Allies during the war. Russian forces have constructed miles of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-digs-ukraine-prepares-attack-2023-04-27/">prepared defences</a> on its occupied territories, much of which Ukraine has <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/seizing-initiative-ukraine-waging-war-defense-dominant-world">yet to overcome</a>. These defences have contributed to the static position of both militaries and will likely force Ukraine or Russia to shift their forces along the front in bids to make a breakthrough. </p>
<p>While Russia has continued to send waves of <a href="https://www.cna.org/reports/2023/09/training-in-the-russian-armed-forces">unprepared units</a> into <a href="https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/meatgrinder-russian-tactics-second-year-its-invasion-ukraine">intense combat</a>, Kyiv must be careful to conserve its combat power for future offensives. </p>
<p>Further, Ukraine should also maintain its commitment to <a href="https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-kherson-ruse-ukraine-and-the-art-of-military-deception/">misdirection</a>, as it did earlier in the war by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-disinformation.html">reportedly</a> focusing on Kherson before attacking Kharkiv, to prevent Russian forces from consolidating their lines. This tactic would follow the Allies’ attempt to spread German forces thin and prevent their reinforcement of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1179/072924799791201434">Hindenburg line</a>. </p>
<p>Lastly, the role of air power and innovative infantry tactics remain as critical to contemporary offensives as they were during 1918. Though neither Ukraine nor Russia has been able to establish <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2024/02/air-defense-shapes-warfighting-in-ukraine.html">complete control</a> over the air, Ukraine’s use of drones has allowed its forces to direct <a href="https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/evolution-not-revolution">pinpoint artillery fire</a> against Russian positions.</p>
<p>Additionally, the relative independence of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26920988">American Expeditionary Forces</a> and the <a href="http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol13/no2/doc/Goldsworthy-Pages4656-eng.pdf">Canadian Corps</a> allowed new tactics to be tested in combat, bolstering their contribution to the offensive. This model will continue to be beneficial to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-military-success-years-of-nato-training-11649861339">Ukraine’s push</a> to allow more junior officers to act on their own during combat. </p>
<p>Over the course of the 100 Days Offensive, the Allies managed to overcome three years of unrelenting trench warfare, along with a prolonged last-ditch German offensive, before bringing the war to an end. This series of events was precipitated by a growing strategic emphasis on waging a decisive campaign, adopting new operational doctrines, and relying on new tactical approaches, all of which remain applicable to the current war.</p>
<p>However, perhaps the lasting lesson of the 100 Days Offensive is that the campaign led to victory despite its failure to fully eject German forces from France. Looking towards the third year of the war in Ukraine, it is important to recognize that victory wears many disguises beyond golden laurels.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Long Burnham does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ukraine can borrow lessons from the First World War as the war with Russia enters its third year.John Long Burnham, Policy Research Assistant, China Institute, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2167892023-11-09T11:36:00Z2023-11-09T11:36:00ZRemembrance Day: five beautiful novels about war commemoration<p>Every autumn, the UK participates in an astonishing commemorative practice: the annual charity drive of the Poppy Appeal. From its origins <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/poppy">during the first world war</a> to the <a href="https://www.thewarhorsememorial.org/animal-purple-poppy-fund">purple poppy commemorating animals</a> in wartime, the artificial poppy has become a fragile but enduring symbol of remembrance. </p>
<p>Writers of fiction have frequently turned to ephemeral objects like the poppy (that is, fragile and disposable ones) as a vehicle to explore violent conflicts and their aftermath. Perhaps their fragility is precisely what is so appealing about items like postcards, sketches and keepsakes. Their lack of officialness opens up untold everyday experiences. </p>
<p>In our research on the links between literature and ephemera <a href="https://research.northumbria.ac.uk/warephemera/about/">related to war</a> <a href="https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/projects/dr-alexandra-peat/">and displacement</a>, we question the limitations of official narratives about conflict and investigate how literature can push back at these by harnessing the power of everyday objects. We use the term “<a href="https://research.northumbria.ac.uk/warephemera/ephemera/">ephemera</a>” to refer to any small, portable items linked to war, its commemoration and migration as a result of war or economic hardship.</p>
<p>Here are our recommendations for five novels that can give readers fresh insights into conflict and commemoration.</p>
<h2>1. In Memoriam, by Alice Winn (2023)</h2>
<p>In her breakout success, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/12/in-memoriam-by-alice-winn-review-a-vivid-rendering-of-love-and-frontline-brutality-in-the-first-world-war">In Memoriam</a>, Alice Winn uses a type of ephemera – public school magazines – to bring to life the experiences of schoolboy volunteers in a way that is engaging and thought-provoking. </p>
<p>Although it returns to one of the best represented perspectives in first world war writing – that of soldier poets like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Siegfried-Sassoon">Siegfried Sassoon</a> and <a href="https://poets.org/poet/robert-graves">Robert Graves</a>, on whom Winn modelled her protagonists – it conveys a sense of immediacy and pathos through its use of mocked-up magazine pages.</p>
<h2>2. A God in Every Stone, by Kamila Shamsie (2014)</h2>
<p>Published in time for the first world war centenary in 2014 and shortlisted for the <a href="https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/features/book/god-every-stone">2015 Women’s Prize for Fiction</a>, Shamsie’s novel broke new ground. </p>
<p>It shows the war we think we know from several fresh points of view. This includes a woman who refuses the self-sacrifice of nursing soldiers and pursues her archaeological dreams instead, the plight of the Armenian minority in the Ottoman Empire and Indian soldiers who return to Punjab with a burning sense of injustice that feeds the growing push for independence. </p>
<p>The novel culminates in a little-known display of colonial violence that was perpetrated against the peaceful <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25765949.2021.1992584">Khudai Khidmatgar movement</a>. </p>
<p>Shamsie uses the contrast between stone artefacts and ephemera (especially letters and notebooks) for a wide-ranging reflection on the ways history is written by those in power – and how those struggling to be heard can push back in their own small way.</p>
<h2>3. Afterlives, by Abdulrazak Gurnah (2020)</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2021/gurnah/facts/">Nobel prize-winner Gurnah</a> depicts a version of the first world war hardly ever taught or discussed in western Europe. </p>
<p>The novel traces the experience of a small cast of characters in what was then German East Africa (now Tanzania) leading up to, during and after the war. Gurnah’s signature stripped-back prose explores the violence of war visited on the multi-ethnic communities of east Africa. The depiction of the violence is forensic and harrowing, and linked to the fates of his protagonists. </p>
<p>At the heart of the novel is the story of Hamza, a young man broken by his time fighting for the German colonial army — the so-called <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/schutztruppe_east_africa_southwest_africa_cameroon">Schutztruppe</a> — and his return to life after the end of the war. </p>
<p>The novel highlights poignantly the limits of European narratives of war and especially the limitations of colonial archives for documenting and reclaiming the stories of Africans in the first world war.</p>
<h2>4. Summer, by Ali Smith (2020)</h2>
<p>The four novels that make up Smith’s <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/series/SQ/seasonal-quartet">Seasonal Quartet</a> are each concerned with Britain’s recent history, charting the shock waves of the Brexit referendum, anxieties about migration, climate change and the COVID pandemic. </p>
<p>While Smith’s books have been rightly <a href="https://post45.org/sections/contemporaries-essays/ali-smith-now/">celebrated for their nowness</a> – with each book being written and published within a few short months – they are also deeply rooted in history and memory, as she traces links between current events and past legacies.</p>
<p>Summer, the final book in the cycle, won the 2021 <a href="https://www.orwellfoundation.com/political-fiction/summer/">Orwell Prize</a> for political fiction. Here, the story of life in Britain during lockdown is juxtaposed with that of Daniel Gluck, a 100-year old man who, as a young German-British Jew was detained in an <a href="https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/collar-lot-britains-policy-internment-second-world-war/">Isle of Man internment camp</a> during the second world war. </p>
<p>Weaving together letters (both lost and sent), postcards and pieces of art, Smith shines light on a neglected aspect of British history. She connects it to the current treatment of refugees from conflict and deprivation in British detention centres. Smith’s novel offers a powerful meditation on the possibilities of hospitality.</p>
<h2>5. Small Island, by Andrea Levy (2004)</h2>
<p>This multi-award winning novel is a modern classic. It follows four protagonists, two British and two Jamaican, through the vicissitudes of the second world war and the post-war Windrush moment. </p>
<p>The novel charts fraught cultural encounters as it moves between the experiences of women on the home front, a Jamaican soldier visiting Britain for the first time as a volunteer in the army and a British soldier serving in south Asia. </p>
<p>As well as showcasing different voices and points of view, Levy emphasises the significance of travelling objects. A lost wallet, a family photograph and a trunk full of belongings from home all play pivotal roles in the plot. </p>
<p>The novel uses everyday objects to highlight questions of community and belonging in the aftermath of conflict. As the <a href="https://www.bcaexhibits.org/exhibits/over-a-barrel">Windrush</a> moment is itself being <a href="https://www.windrush75.org/">commemorated</a>, Levy expands our understanding of the intricate links between war and migration.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann-Marie Einhaus receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for her work on ephemera and war writing in Britain, 1914 to the present.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexandra Peat receives funding from the British Academy for her work on ephemera, migration and modern literature.</span></em></p>These novels can expand your encounters with war and commemoration.Ann-Marie Einhaus, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature, Northumbria University, NewcastleAlexandra Peat, Research Fellow, Northumbria University, NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2131802023-09-22T11:51:10Z2023-09-22T11:51:10ZUkraine war: beware all the talk of ‘breakthroughs’ or ‘gamechangers’ – it’s going to be a long, bloody and costly struggle<p>From some of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/02/everything-is-ahead-of-us-ukraine-breaks-russias-first-line-of-defence-in-stronghold">headlines</a> of late, you might be forgiven for assuming that the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/02/everything-is-ahead-of-us-ukraine-breaks-russias-first-line-of-defence-in-stronghold">worst was past</a> for Ukraine’s assault troops. That recent advances by Ukrainian forces constitute <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2023/09/ukrainian-progress-a-breach-or-a-breakthrough-of-russian-lines/">“breakthroughs” or “breaches”</a> and that it’s all downhill from here.</p>
<p>Ukraine has recently claimed to have taken a couple of small villages, Andriivka and Klishchiivka, near the totemic remnants <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/commander-ukrainian-forces-breach-russian-defensive-line-near-bakhmut/">of Bakhmut</a> the city in eastern Ukraine where, since August 2022. So many on both sides have given their lives for so little ground. This latest success, apprently, is another “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-general-says-klishchiivka-village-near-bakhmut-recaptured-2023-09-17/">important breakthrough</a>”. </p>
<p>But aren’t they all? Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, declares that the capture of ravaged, wrecked villages with pre-war populations of a few hundred are “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/18/ukraine-recaptures-klishchiivka-second-eastern-village-in-three-days">significant</a>” or “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/18/ukraine-recaptures-klishchiivka-second-eastern-village-in-three-days">strategically important</a>”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ukrainian troops raise the flag over the village of Andriivka, near Bakhmut.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In fact, there is nothing particularly strategic about either village. Their capture will not significantly affect the outcome of the war. But what choice does Zelensky have but to proclaim these small gains as a triumph? And what choice does Ukraine have but to continue this bloody grind?</p>
<h2>1916 redux</h2>
<p>Every month the resemblance to the slaughter of the first world war grows stronger – particularly the relentless bloody Somme offensives of 1916, where liberating now-forgotten villages such as Pozieres, Fricourt, Beaumont Hamel or Thiepval cost thousands of dead. A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html">report in the New York Times in August</a> estimated Ukraine’s military losses at 70,000 killed and more than 120,000 wounded. The casualty count has reportedly increased significantly since Ukraine began its counteroffensive.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, as in 1916, a parade of western generals have repeatedly made unrealistic promises. The Ukrainians would be <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-free-crimea-end-summer-us-general-ben-hodges-russia-counteroffensive-atacms-1808088">in Crimea by the end of</a> the summer, we were told. Now it’s “just one more push” that will cause the Russian army to “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21SVQY0ymZ8">crumble</a>”. These predictions are always suitably couched in vague conditions, of course. </p>
<p>The Russian army won’t crumble, and the Ukrainians aren’t going to be in Crimea this Christmas – or even next. Many of these same generals promised us much the same result with similar rhetoric in <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/10/29/how-we-won-in-iraq/">Iraq</a> and <a href="https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessonslearned/SIGAR-21-46-LL.pdf">Afghanistan</a>. </p>
<p>It has never been in Ukraine’s interests for this to be <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA2510-1.html">a long war</a>. And, with risks of <a href="https://www.rand.org/blog/2023/02/consequences-of-the-war-in-ukraine-escalation.html#:%7E:text=Ukrainian%20Escalation&text=The%20possible%20military%20gains%20from,concern%20of%20Ukraine's%20Western%20backers.">many forms of escalation ever present</a>, it certainly isn’t in the west’s.</p>
<h2>No quick victory</h2>
<p>But this is what it must face. It should be clear by now that there are not going to be major breakthroughs. Ukrainian tanks won’t be freed any time soon to range behind Russian lines. Neither will “gamechanging” weapons fundamentally alter the battlefield.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sandboxx.us/news/the-javelin-anti-tank-guided-missile-is-really-a-game-changer/">Javelin</a> and <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10499537/Ukrainian-troops-say-British-NLAW-missiles-game-changer-train-fight-Russian-forces.html">NLAWS anti-tank missiles</a>, the <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/how-american-m777-howitzers-turning-tide-ukraine-war-russia-1705184">M777 155mm howitzer</a>, the <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-gamechanger-himars-upgrade-win-war-dcipm-cluster-munitions-counteroffensive-artillery-1820071">Himars long-range missiles system</a>, the gift of a <a href="https://www.19fortyfive.com/2023/04/mig-29s-from-poland-a-game-changer-for-ukraine/">few MiG 29 fighters</a>, a few dozen German <a href="https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/research/spotlight-research/will-leopard-2-tanks-be-game-changer-ukraine">Leopard tanks</a>, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/uk-challenger-2-tanks-ukraine-conflict-2023-1?r=US&IR=T">14 British Challenger tanks</a>, <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ukraine-awaits-arrival-of-u-s-tanks-that-could-be-game-changer-in-fight-against-russia">31 US Abrams tanks</a>, a small number of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuQsQbvqsF0">Patriot anti-aircraft missile batteries</a>, the British <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuCwR7e-dA0">Stormshadow</a> and <a href="https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/08/15/germany-modifying-taurus-ukraine/">German Taurus</a> cruise missiles – I may have missed some – have all been “gamechangers”, apparently. </p>
<p>And yet the “game” remains largely unchanged. This is because single weapons systems may win battles, but do not win wars. </p>
<p>Perhaps the biggest “gamehcnager” is the regularly <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/22/biden-f-16s-ukraine-g7-00098243">announced</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/15/ukraine-pilots-trained-f-16-jets-nato-russia">and</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66551478">re-announced</a> 60 or so secondhand F-16 fighters to the Ukrainian air force. Less well publicised is the fact that these will not be in a position to be operationally effective until 2025 at the earliest.</p>
<p>The reasons for this are superbly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuyfkmEp9y4">explained</a> by the UK’s leading air power expert, Justin Bronk of the military think tank Rusi, who describes how the F-16 is a highly complex system requiring extensive training and years of experience for its potential to be drawn out. </p>
<p>We have <a href="https://www.rusi.org/news-and-comment/in-the-news/why-us-atacms-would-be-game-changer-ukraine">already seen</a> <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-atacms-missiles-storm-shadow-scalp-russia-1812437">similar rhetoric</a> being applied to the long-range ATACMS rocket artillery systems, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/us-send-long-range-atacms-missiles-ukraine-time/story?id=103031722">which the US is likely to grant</a> to Ukraine with – as with all the other “gamechangers” – a great deal of US reluctance.</p>
<h2>Will to win</h2>
<p>The key element in <a href="https://samf.substack.com/p/winning-through-attrition">this kind of war</a>, as in every war, is the will to fight combined with the means (including new equipment). The single essential enabler in Ukraine’s military effort – and the only real “gamechanger” – has been <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/08/elon-musk-starlink-ukraine-war/">Elon Musk’s Starlink</a> satellite system. Without the secure means to communicate that it has so far offered every Ukrainian military unit, Ukraine would be in a very different position. If units cannot talk to each other or to their command and control centres, they are in serious trouble. </p>
<p>Both sides are developing and reacting to each others’ technical advantages. The Russians are not stupid, have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/30/ukraine-war-vladimir-putin-prigozhin-russia">no desire for defeat</a> and <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/head-first-into-the-future-inside-the-race-to-win-the-drone-war-in-ukraine/">are matching</a> many of Ukraine’s innovative and effective approaches. </p>
<p>They have a strong history of <a href="https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/stormbreak-fighting-through-russian-defences-ukraines-2023-offensive">learning from mistakes</a> and battering their way to some form of success. </p>
<p>What’s more, following <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/south-korea-lend-500000-rounds-artillery-shells-us-report-2023-04-12/">South Korea’s “loan”</a> of artillery ammunition to the US, the likely deal between <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/vladimir-putin-kim-jong-un-meeting-weapons-rifle-glove-space-suit-gifts">Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un</a> was <a href="https://responsiblestatecraft.org/kim-jong-un-and-putin/">entirely predictable</a>. It will ease Russia’s concerns about ammunition, which is the key to this phase of the war.</p>
<h2>Horrors to come</h2>
<p>After the disasters of the Somme in 1916, even worse bloodbaths awaited the following year at Passchendaele and Verdun. As its army advances, Ukraine can expect similar horrors (though of a smaller scale) on its planned drive south to cut of Russia’s land bridge, at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65615184">Tokmak</a> or <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-zelenskiy-un-assembly-speech/32599088.html">Melitopol</a> – or other places most have yet to hear of.</p>
<p>I asked a friend in Kyiv, with the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66581217">deaths of over 70,000 soldiers in mind</a> how willing were people to carry on. “If we lose the war, we will lose the whole country,” she said “Everyone understands this.” </p>
<p>She pointed out that polls in Ukraine indicate that more than <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-war-latest-ukrainian-pilots-start-f-16-training-in-denmark-poll-shows-90-of-ukrainians-oppose-territorial-concessions-to-russia/">90% oppose doing a deal with Russia</a>.</p>
<p>Thankfully, some level of realisation of the inevitability of a long war is starting to <a href="https://www.kyivpost.com/post/21701">percolate through</a> western military staff. The west must hope that the people of its democracies understand the implications of the long war ahead. They must also hope, too, that their leaders are up to the challenge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213180/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Frank Ledwidge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The war in Ukraine is going to be a test of will, both for Ukraine’s troops and its allies in the west.Frank Ledwidge, Senior Lecturer in Military Strategy and Law, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1995162023-04-21T02:08:06Z2023-04-21T02:08:06ZChallenging the Anzac ideal: the tragic stories of two Australian deserters in WWI<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/510809/original/file-20230217-24-docyl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=21%2C34%2C1257%2C917&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An Australian Imperial Force memorial card for Nicholas Permakoff, a Russian-born Australian private who deserted the AIF during WWI.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Anzac Day continues to feature on the Australian calendar as a day for celebrating and commemorating the deeds of our military personnel. </p>
<p>Traditionally focused on the first world war, the mythology of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-anzac-day-came-to-occupy-a-sacred-place-in-australians-hearts-76323">Anzacs</a> – bronzed bushmen storming the cliffs of Gallipoli or walking fearlessly through artillery bombardments on the western front – has long clouded the reality of the experience of fighting in what was then an unprecedented conflict.</p>
<p>Many Australian soldiers did not fit this Anzac myth. Some were taken prisoner of war and some broke down with shellshock. Others were just “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anzac-legend-has-blinded-australia-to-its-war-atrocities-its-time-for-a-reckoning-151022">bad characters</a>”, whose trouble-making, both within and outside their units, caused endless headaches for military and civilian authorities. </p>
<p>Australian soldiers stationed in Egypt, England and France were charged with various transgressions, including insubordination, repeated malingering and theft. Some were accused of committing heinous acts, such as murder and rape. </p>
<p>In our research on these soldiers, we found that, in total, 115 Australians were court-martialled during WWI and sentenced to death for serious military crimes – primarily desertion.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-australia-is-still-grappling-with-the-legacy-of-the-first-world-war-126517">Why Australia is still grappling with the legacy of the first world war</a>
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<h2>Researching desertion</h2>
<p>Desertion needs to be distinguished from being absent without, or overstaying, authorised leave from one’s unit. Under the military law that governed members of the Australian Imperial Force during WWI, desertion was defined as leaving or refusing to enter the front lines or being absent from areas behind the front lines for more than four weeks. </p>
<p>Desertion was considered such a serious offence because the soldier had refused to do the duty for which he had enlisted, wasted resources, weakened military strength and endangered comrades.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the sanction was severe. More than 3,000 members of the British empire’s forces were sentenced to death for desertion and similar offences during WWI, of whom 361 were <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/military_justice">executed by firing squad</a>. (Among those were 25 Canadians and five New Zealanders.) The remaining deserters had their sentences commuted to something lesser – usually a substantial prison term. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522023/original/file-20230420-24-qmh94d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522023/original/file-20230420-24-qmh94d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522023/original/file-20230420-24-qmh94d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522023/original/file-20230420-24-qmh94d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522023/original/file-20230420-24-qmh94d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522023/original/file-20230420-24-qmh94d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522023/original/file-20230420-24-qmh94d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Shot at Dawn memorial in the UK, commemorating the British and Commonwealth soldiers executed for desertion and other offences during WWI.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But Australian law – specifically the Defence Act first passed in 1903 – effectively precluded the Australian Imperial Force from carrying out the death penalty. Soldiers could be sentenced to death, but none were executed.</p>
<p>In our research, we combed through amateur histories, theses and historical archives to unearth the 115 Australian soldiers who were sentenced to death in WWI (fewer than the <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/civilian_and_military_power_australia#1917__Australians_and_the_Death_Penalty">usually cited number</a> of 121, which we consider exaggerated). We then examined their service records, court-martial files and repatriation records. </p>
<p>Who were these men? We found them to be not just bad soldiers, but men for whom military service was just one unfortunate aspect of their lives. </p>
<p>As historians peering into their lives, we see them wrestle with their obligations in the armed forces and confront the military justice system. We witness their back-and-forth with the government repatriation authorities as they plead for financial and other assistance, and we all too often see their early or otherwise unfortunate deaths.</p>
<p>Two cases stick out for us: those of privates James McCormick and Nicholas Permakoff. Both had colourful service records prior to their sentences, including hospitalisation with venereal disease, insubordination and absences from their units. And both had sad and lonely, although very different, ends.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-anzac-legend-has-blinded-australia-to-its-war-atrocities-its-time-for-a-reckoning-151022">The Anzac legend has blinded Australia to its war atrocities. It's time for a reckoning</a>
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<h2>The chronic absentee</h2>
<p>McCormick enlisted in Western Australia in June 1915 at the age of 36. He hardly saw any action on the battlefield; he spent more time in hospital suffering from venereal disease, episodes of epilepsy and stomach issues (he was identified as an alcoholic by military authorities), or in military prison. </p>
<p>He absconded almost as soon as he arrived in France in June 1916 and was sentenced to one year of hard labour. Reflecting the manpower issues faced by the Australian Imperial Force, his sentence was suspended in early 1917 so he could rejoin his battalion.</p>
<p>Two months later, McCormick again disappeared. This time, he was charged with desertion and sentenced to death. This was later commuted to ten years of penal servitude and eventually suspended again. And in May 1918 he transferred back to his battalion. He was almost immediately hospitalised for chronic stomach issues and was sent to England, where he stayed until almost the end of the war.</p>
<p>McCormick was finally discharged from the force as “medically unfit” in December 1918. His less-than-glorious service record made him ineligible for <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/medals">war medals</a> or the war gratuity. He travelled around Australia picking up odd jobs, but continued to struggle from stomach complaints and alcoholism. He died in 1950. </p>
<p>McCormick’s body was found in a school shed in Albury, New South Wales, an empty wine bottle next to him and his feet in an old onion bag. The coroner attributed his death to chronic alcoholism and exposure. No next of kin was found, so the local police organised his funeral in Albury cemetery.</p>
<h2>The deserter shot by his own side</h2>
<p>An even more curious case – and just as sad – is that of Nicholas Permakoff. Born in Russia, he served for two years in the Russian Army before migrating to Australia where, at the time of his enlistment in 1916, he was a miner in NSW. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521231/original/file-20230417-23-xqm0nn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521231/original/file-20230417-23-xqm0nn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521231/original/file-20230417-23-xqm0nn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521231/original/file-20230417-23-xqm0nn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=971&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521231/original/file-20230417-23-xqm0nn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1220&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521231/original/file-20230417-23-xqm0nn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1220&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521231/original/file-20230417-23-xqm0nn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1220&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The headstone for Nicholas Permakoff in the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in France.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>He later claimed he joined the Australian Imperial Force on the bizarre promise that he could transfer to the Russian Army once he was back in Europe. By the time he got there, however, the Russian Revolution was underway and Permakoff had decided he didn’t want any part of the war.</p>
<p>In November 1917, he told his superior officer “yes, fuck you” – or words to that effect – when ordered to put on his pack and march towards the front, earning himself a six-month prison term. </p>
<p>After his release, he was essentially forced to the front line, despite telling his officers he would not shoot. That night, according to Australian sentries, he was spotted without his weapon walking towards the Germans. Permakoff was fatally shot by his own side – an action later endorsed by a Court of Inquiry.</p>
<p>He left very sketchy next-of-kin details: “Mrs Permakoff, Archangel, c/- Imperial Russian Consul, Sydney”. Efforts to contact his mother in Archangel, a city in Russia, were unsuccessful, and the NSW public trustee could not find anyone to claim his few assets. </p>
<p>Permakoff is one of only five Australians who died in WWI to be excluded from the Australian War Memorial’s Roll of Honour. He lies in a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in <a href="https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/2600/esquelbecq-military-cemetery/">Esquelbecq, France</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521229/original/file-20230417-16-4sr02z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/521229/original/file-20230417-16-4sr02z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521229/original/file-20230417-16-4sr02z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521229/original/file-20230417-16-4sr02z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521229/original/file-20230417-16-4sr02z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521229/original/file-20230417-16-4sr02z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/521229/original/file-20230417-16-4sr02z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The letter sent to Permakoff’s mother in Russia, returned to sender.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>Revealing the complexity of military service</h2>
<p>There were long public campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s in Britain, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Forces_Act_2006#Pardon">posthumously pardon</a> those executed during the war. </p>
<p>But Australian deserters sentenced to death have remained largely overlooked. This is perhaps because they were not ultimately executed (with Permakoff’s odd exception), so they have not aroused an indignant sense of injustice. </p>
<p>Moreover, they present an uncomfortable counter-narrative to the idealised Anzac character and feats.</p>
<p>Our research seeks to rescue these men, their experiences and their voices from the historical void. Doing so enhances our understanding of the complexity and diversity of Australian military experiences and highlights the impossibility – for most – of the Anzac ideal.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199516/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Crotty receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Part of this research was funded by an Australian Army History Unit grant.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Ariotti receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>We combed through historical records to shed light on the lives of these two soldiers to enhance our understanding of the complexity of the Australian military experience.Martin Crotty, Associate Professor in Australian History, The University of QueenslandKate Ariotti, ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2012672023-04-18T10:51:30Z2023-04-18T10:51:30ZUkraine war: why WWI comparisons can lead to underestimates of Russia’s strengths<p>The current conflict in Ukraine frequently elicits parallels with the first world war. It’s a comparison being <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/08/war-ukraine-trench-warfare-angus-king-00076925">made by politicians</a>, journalists, analysts and <a href="https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2022/11/13/7376017/">military personnel</a>. </p>
<p>Coverage over the past winter months, for example, has focused on how Ukrainians are fighting in WWI-like muddy <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2023/01/31/ukraine-in-wwi-like-battle-for-bakhmut-as-it-races-russia-for-arms/">trenches</a> in Bakhmut, while Russia suffers <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-64634760">almost WWI levels of casualties</a>. </p>
<p>It’s no surprise that commentators turn to these comparisons. The return of war in all its destructive might to Europe has awoken western society’s <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9780511675683.031">cultural</a> <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt32bq9m.14">memory</a> of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1q69znd">war on this scale</a>. Unfortunately, these comparisons are often unhelpful.</p>
<p>Many of the WWI comparisons <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11826411/Ukraine-Forces-fight-mud-repel-WW1-style-human-waves-Russian-troops-Bakhmut.html">stress</a> the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-using-world-war-i-era-machine-guns-sniper-traps-to-fight-off-russia-2023-3?international=true&r=US&IR=T">unmodern</a> nature of what is happening on Ukraine’s battlefields. This leads to ignoring the modern nature of what is happening, even in Bakhmut, thereby potentially underestimating Russia and overestimating the differences between Russian and Ukrainian forces. And, most importantly, by making these kinds of historical comparisons, we detach ourselves from the war’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-casualty-counts-from-either-side-can-be-potent-weapons-and-shouldnt-always-be-believed-198894">horrors and violence</a>.</p>
<h2>Unmodern and modern war</h2>
<p>It is striking how many of the WWI comparisons underline the <a href="https://www.kyivpost.com/post/13868">crude</a> nature of Russia’s military effort and the apparent <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/02/russia-vicious-tactics-ukraine-further-expose-weakness">failure</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-64634760">cold-heartedness</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63408506">irrationally</a> of Russia’s generals. In these comparisons, WWI does not serve as the benchmark of modern war, but as the haunted image of primitive industrial warfare from more than a century ago.</p>
<p>Netflix’s recent <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/how-netflixs-quiet-western-front-became-war-film-age/">prize-winning</a> <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/how-netflixs-quiet-western-front-became-war-film-age/">film</a> of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front helped to bring this WWI image to the fore again. </p>
<p>What’s so characteristic of WWI, and seems so unmodern, is its lack of progress. Four years of fighting on small strips of land with little to show for it. Modern conventional war is expected to be fast-paced, such as Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and the second US invasion of Iraq in 2003 (if we conveniently ignore the years of insurgency that followed), or like the fighter pilots in the film <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/may/26/top-gun-for-hire-why-hollywood-is-the-us-militarys-best-wingman">Top Gun: Maverick</a>, to provide another cinematic reference. And while we have seen drones and other hi-tech tools of war on the news, we haven´t seen much progress on pushing back the frontline. Instead we have seen images of trenches and read of massive casualties.</p>
<p>Western military planners have been <a href="https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2023/3/16/the-fallacy-of-the-short-sharp-war-optimism-bias-and-the-abuse-of-history">obsessed</a> with <a href="https://www.rand.org/blog/2023/03/americas-dangerous-short-war-fixation.html">short wars</a> for decades. One reason for this is the belief in swift results delivered by modern technology.</p>
<p>Yet the war in Ukraine is modern in the sense that it is what is expected in the given circumstances and conditions when roughly comparably equipped forces meet each other on the battlefield and do not have enough strength (yet) to fully overcome the other. </p>
<h2>Underestimating Russia’s objectives</h2>
<p>One of the consequences of using the WWI comparison might be to miss the point of what the Russians are trying to achieve. The unmodern is, of course, closely associated not just with the war in general, but especially with Russia’s conduct. I don’t want to suggest that Russia’s tactical and operational conduct of the war, especially during the last few winter months, has been impressive and successful – quite the opposite. But by tying Russia’s conduct to a stereotypical image of WWI fighting, we might stop analysing the full context. Russia’s conduct of the war is ridden with mistakes, but also rational when seen within the context of a rapidly expanded and ill-prepared military force, the dynamics of Russian politics and the regime’s ideology.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/drones-over-ukraine-what-the-war-means-for-the-future-of-remotely-piloted-aircraft-in-combat-197612">Drones over Ukraine: What the war means for the future of remotely piloted aircraft in combat</a>
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<p>At the operational and tactical level, the WWI comparison could prompt people to underestimate what Russia might be <a href="https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/07/myths-and-misconceptions-around-russian-military-intent">trying to achieve</a> and how it attempts to adapt its force structure and tactical <a href="https://twitter.com/WarintheFuture/status/1630089568195313669">practice</a> on the <a href="https://twitter.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1634799680126058502">battlefield</a>. One might also lose sight of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/us/politics/ukraine-russia-casualties.html">toll</a> the current fight might be taking on the “more modern” Ukraine’s forces.</p>
<p>Finally, by focusing so strongly on battlefield failure and success (and seeing this through the prism of a stereotypical WWI image), we might miss Russian interpretations of strategic and political success. While taking Kyiv and not losing Kherson is more attractive than the alternative for the Kremlin, it is wise to question how the Russian leadership understands the war. Is it a war against Ukraine, or a war against the west that happens to be fought in and over Ukraine? And as a result what is it that Russia needs to achieve on the battlefield in order to achieve its strategic and political goals, both in the short, intermediate and long term? While battlefield and strategic and political success are related, this connection is <a href="https://mwi.usma.edu/what-is-russias-theory-of-victory-in-ukraine/">anything but straightforward</a>. It might be the case that in its current assessment of the situation, a stalemate in eastern Ukraine serves the Kremlin’s purpose and (revised) goals. </p>
<h2>Disengaging from reality</h2>
<p>For some, the war in Ukraine is a return to the barbarism of <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_losses">early 20th-century</a> industrial slaughter. It serves as an indictment of Putin’s war and regime, but also stresses our own modernity: this should not be happening in 2023.</p>
<p>But that is a dangerous and misleading thought, as it isolates what is happening in Ukraine from our own times. What we see in Ukraine is not a historical horror show, it is the ugly face of full-scale <a href="https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2023/01/strategic-survey-2022-russias-war-in-ukraine">modern war</a>. Over the past decades, western society has become strangely unaware of what happens in a modern war. The war in Ukraine confronts us with these horrors.</p>
<p>It’s not that western powers or other powers haven’t fought wars over the past 50 years. But since most of these were relatively small scale, and have been fought beyond the west (with the exception of the 1990s Balkan wars) and against non-western powers (or among non-western powers), coverage of those people and societies on the receiving end of modern weapons of war has been limited. Now, with war so much closer to home (as far as Europe is concerned) and between comparably equipped forces, we are starting to see the <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/conflict-ukraines-donbas-visual-explainer">costs of a modern war</a>. </p>
<p>When future generations look for something to compare the horrors of their new wars with, they might not choose <a href="https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/get-involved/remembrance/about-remembrance/in-flanders-field">Flanders Fields</a> and turn instead to what happened in the fields of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kherson in the 2020s. I’m sure the Ukrainians will.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201267/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christiaan Harinck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Western society has become strangely unaware of the horrors of modern war, says an expert.Christiaan Harinck, Lecturer in the history of international releations and war , Utrecht UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1793542022-03-18T13:40:09Z2022-03-18T13:40:09ZFinding Shackleton’s ship: why our fascination with Antarctica endures<p>The discovery of <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/endurance-ship-found-antarctic-who-was-ernest-shackleton-history-death-b986968.html">Ernest Shackleton’s</a> ship <a href="https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/antarctic_ships/endurance.php">the Endurance</a> in pristine condition at the bottom of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea was one of the few good news stories this month.</p>
<p>It marked the coming together of modern stories of technological and logistical achievement with older tales of exploration and struggle. Located 3,000 metres down, 107 years after it was crushed by ice, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60662541">finding the Endurance</a> was a significant moment in polar history.</p>
<p>As a result of his egalitarian leadership style and the fact he “never lost a man”, Ernest Shackleton is one of the most admired explorers of Antarctica’s “<a href="https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/The_heroic_age_of_Antarctic_exploration.php">heroic age</a>”. This spanned a 20-year period of intense exploration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that became most famous for the race to the South Pole between Britain’s <a href="https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/captain-robert-falcon-scott">Captain Robert Scott</a> and Norway’s [Roald Amundsen] in the summer of 1911.</p>
<p>Shackleton’s Endurance expedition set out in 1914 with the goal of becoming the first to cross the whole continent, but the loss of his ship led instead to a desperate struggle for survival. Stories of polar exploration have always captured the popular imagination, but what are the implications of this enduring fascination? </p>
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<h2>Obstacles, goals and distractions</h2>
<p>The extreme environment of Antarctica features prominently in the story of the search for the Endurance, as the Weddell Sea is notoriously dangerous for shipping. The use of state-of-the-art technology adds an extra layer of interest, and the striking images produced by the <a href="https://endurance22.org/endurance-is-found">expedition</a> immediately transport us to this distant, murky, undersea world. </p>
<p>In the current tense geopolitical environment, there is something reassuringly optimistic about the search for the Endurance: a classic narrative of overcoming serious obstacles to achieve a spectacular goal.</p>
<p>A similar sense also helps to explain the excitement generated by the heroic age of Antarctic exploration in the early 20th century, much in the way space exploration excites people now. When the Endurance <a href="https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/Ernest_Shackleton_map_time_line.php">set sail for Antarctica</a> from London in 1914, this too was a time of geopolitical tension, with imperial rivalries escalating into the first world war.</p>
<p>The expedition was given instructions to proceed because the government thought the Antarctic adventure would serve as a morale-boosting distraction. But when his ship became stuck in the ice and then sank, Shackleton’s original goal of crossing the continent gave way to the simple desire to stay alive.</p>
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<h2>Heroes, problems and challenges</h2>
<p>While there is much to celebrate in the exploits of polar explorers, the enduring fascination with polar exploration also poses some challenges. A tendency to focus on the heroic age over all other periods of Antarctic history means that other interesting episodes are frequently overlooked. Just because Antarctic exploration served as a distraction from the complexities of imperial politics, for example, does not mean that the continent has stood outside wider imperial history.</p>
<p>In the early 20th century, Britain drew upon the exploits of its polar explorers and scientists in making its sovereignty claim to the Falkland Islands Dependencies, known today as the British Antarctic Territory. Assertions of sovereignty made by 19th century British explorers and whalers helped to justify the British claim in international law. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ats.aq/index_e.html">1959 Antarctic Treaty</a>, which functions as the overarching governing mechanism in the region, perpetuates the connection between science and politics by requiring a country to conduct substantial scientific research on the continent before it can be admitted as a full consultative member.</p>
<p>The number of consulative parties has increased from 12 to 29 today, with an additional 25 non-consultative parties having the right to attend meetings but not particpate in decision making. Taking a broader perspective not only widens an appreciation for the history of Antarctica, but can also add depth and nuance to the history of exploration. </p>
<p>Polar exploration also tends to be a history without much diversity. A single <a href="https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/antarctic_whos_who_shirase_nobu_kainan_maru.php">expedition</a> from Japan broke the near monopoly of white male explorers during Antarctica’s heroic age. While not surprising for the early 20th century, this lack of diversity raises important questions about who is included and who is excluded from heroic age narratives – and who benefits from the ongoing interest. If you can’t see yourself reflected in those who feature in prominent stories about Antarctica, it may be harder to make an emotional connection to the continent and want to pursue a career there, for example.</p>
<p>The same goes for <a href="https://explore.quarkexpeditions.com/blog/women-breaking-boundaries-in-the-polar-regions">women</a> and the contribution they have made to polar exploration over the last century. Very little is heard of their work and endeavours. Visiting Antarctica over the past few years, I have seen a growing gender balance in polar science. But the prominence of groups of white men in the publicity photographs of the Endurance search expedition gives the impression that not much has changed over the past century. </p>
<p>Another potential problem of the ongoing interest in exploration and adventure is that it tends to set up a relationship of conflict between humans and the non-human natural world. This is rarely binary, and explorers often demonstrate a <a href="https://2041foundation.org/robert-swan/">deep appreciation</a> for the polar environment. </p>
<p>But at the heart of interest in Antarctica during the heroic age was a desire to demonstrate individual and national prowess through the conquest of nature. Viewed from this perspective, interest in the heroic age might be seen as perpetuating the attitudes of control and dominance over the natural world that have contributed to our current environmental crisis. </p>
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<img alt="A sepia photograph of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453049/original/file-20220318-10592-sujqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453049/original/file-20220318-10592-sujqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=679&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453049/original/file-20220318-10592-sujqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=679&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453049/original/file-20220318-10592-sujqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=679&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453049/original/file-20220318-10592-sujqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453049/original/file-20220318-10592-sujqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453049/original/file-20220318-10592-sujqnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=853&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Ernest Shackleton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rwanda-circa-2009-stamp-printed-republic-237190588">Olga Popova/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>The finding of the Endurance is a welcome reminder of Shackleton’s incredible story of survival. But we need to start thinking a little more critically about the values and attitudes embedded in our continuing fascination with polar exploration and adventure.</p>
<p>Doing more to acknowledge the gender and racial politics of the heroic era might help to start a conversation about the enduring inequalities that persist in an effort to move towards a more diverse Antarctic community, and beyond the achievements of early 20th-century white men.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179354/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Howkins receives funding from the British Academy and the US National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>It’s undoubtedly exciting news, but polar exploration has a poor record when it comes to diversity and we need to rethink the values and attitudes that underpin our fascination.Adrian Howkins, Reader in Environmental History, Department of History, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1595282021-04-28T04:32:56Z2021-04-28T04:32:56ZIf Papua New Guinea really is part of Australia’s ‘family’, we’d do well to remember our shared history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397226/original/file-20210427-23-12nazs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Prime Minister Scott Morrison is fond of describing Papua New Guinea as “family”. He did so recently when announcing Australia’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dam-has-been-breached-a-covid-crisis-on-our-doorstep-shows-how-little-we-pay-attention-to-png-157323">assistance</a> with PNG’s COVID-19 outbreak. The urgent <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AusHCPNG/posts/3814885378589156">support</a> for PNG in the form of <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/eu-won-t-block-1-million-vaccines-for-crisis-hit-png-20210422-p57lmr.html">vaccines</a>, testing kits, medical personnel and training was “in Australia’s interests”, Morrison <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/17/theyre-our-family-australia-pledges-1m-covid-19-vaccine-doses-to-papua-new-guinea">said</a>, because it threatens the health of Australians, “but equally our PNG family who are so dear to us”. </p>
<p>These familial bonds are “<a href="https://png.embassy.gov.au/pmsb/home.html">born of history and geography</a>”. PNG is Australia’s closest neighbour. Only 4 kilometres separate the two countries in the Torres Strait, a fluid <a href="https://theconversation.com/destitution-on-australias-hardening-border-with-png-and-the-need-for-a-better-aid-strategy-135038">border</a> that has been redefined numerous times (most recently in <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/torres-strait/Pages/the-torres-strait-treaty">1985</a>). It is currently <a href="http://www.tsirc.qld.gov.au/community-entry-forms/treaty-png-border-movements">closed</a> due to the COVID outbreak. </p>
<p>But what about the long histories Australia and PNG’s share? The fluid border acknowledges ancient, unbroken Indigenous connections. This history is deep, fraught, complex and the very foundation for the present relationship. This past needs considered attention now to strengthen ties at this pivotal time and in the future. </p>
<p>As early as the 1850s, <a href="https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=gJQrAAAAIAAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP2">nationalists</a> envisioned “the great island of New Guinea […] will naturally […] fall into the hands” of Australia, forming part of an Australian Pacific empire. These ideas gained traction in the 1860s with the commencement of the Queensland labour trade, which controversially supplied the colony’s plantations with islander labourers. </p>
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<p>In 1878, a <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/1372476?afterLoad=showCorrections">Queensland</a> gold-seeking expedition attempted to establish a colony near Port Moresby. Though Britain disallowed the venture, Queensland persisted, securing the <a href="https://www.foundingdocs.gov.au/item-sdid-52.html">Torres Strait Islands</a> in 1879 and extending its border to virtually New Guinea’s shoreline, as it is today. </p>
<p>Politicians began championing “Australia’s Monroe Doctrine” that, like the <a href="https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=23">US’s 1823</a> declaration for the Americas, held that Australia exclusively presided in its region. Britain relented to Australian colonial pressures in 1883. Despite Australia’s rhetorical muscle-flexing, New Guinea was partitioned three ways in 1884 into German New Guinea (the north-east and surrounding archipelagoes), British New Guinea (the south-east) and Dutch New Guinea (in the west, the present-day <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/world/asia/indonesia-general-papua.html">troubled provinces</a> of Indonesia). </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dam-has-been-breached-a-covid-crisis-on-our-doorstep-shows-how-little-we-pay-attention-to-png-157323">'A dam has been breached': a COVID crisis on our doorstep shows how little we pay attention to PNG</a>
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<p>Despite its name, British New Guinea was administered and funded by Australia. From the outset, a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/8117935/_Remaking_Australia_s_Colonial_Culture_White_Australia_and_its_Papuan_Frontier_1901_1940_Australian_Historical_Studies_Vol_40_issue_1_March_2009_96_112">pattern</a> of harsh colonial rule took root, exemplified by infamous episodes of collective punishment known today as massacres. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/32892947/A_Lesson_in_Violence_The_moral_dimensions_of_two_punitive_expeditions_in_the_Gulf_of_Papua_1901_and_1904">Goaribari</a> Islanders suffered three in as many years, with more than 150 dead according to contemporary <a href="https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/126311/1/Readings_in_New_Guinea_History.pdf">accounts and inquiries</a>. </p>
<p>Following Federation, Australia assumed control over this territory, renamed Papua, in 1906. Politicians debated how to govern Papua more “gently” to better reflect Australia’s modern national image. Yet Papuans were barred from entering under the White Australia policy even though some politicians argued New Guinea <a href="https://www.academia.edu/8117935/_Remaking_Australia_s_Colonial_Culture_White_Australia_and_its_Papuan_Frontier_1901_1940_Australian_Historical_Studies_Vol_40_issue_1_March_2009_96_112">belonged</a> to Australia as much as Tasmania. Even today, Australian <a href="https://devpolicy.org/2016-census-reveal-about-pacific-islands-communities-in-australia-20170928/">population</a> figures reflect New Guineans’ continuing exclusion. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-white-australia-policy-74084">Australian politics explainer: the White Australia policy</a>
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<p>In 1908, <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/murray-sir-john-hubert-plunkett-7711">Hubert Murray</a> was permanently appointed lieutenant-governor of the territory to implement a more benevolent colonial rule. Though violence and exploitation reduced in Papua during Murray’s long tenure (1908-1940), the “Murray Method”, as it became known throughout the empire, was replete with paternalistic attitudes. Most damning was his belief Papuans need only be educated to elementary levels and employed in menial jobs. </p>
<p>In 1914, Australia’s presence in New Guinea dramatically expanded when Australian forces captured German New Guinea in the nation’s first action of the first world war. The seven-year rule (1914-1921) of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF) became notorious for flogging and labour recruitment practices. Murray, blaming unchecked settler colonial attitudes, was the ANMEF’s loudest critic. </p>
<p>Prime Minister <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/235680464?searchTerm=billy%20hughes%20new%20guinea%20paris%20peace%20conference">Billy Hughes</a> argued at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference that Australia was owed New Guinea as compensation for blood and treasure expended in the first world war. Securing it was also vital for national defences, as Australia now had a new foe: Japan.</p>
<p>In May 1921, the ANMEF was disbanded, when the League of Nations mandates system commenced. This meant Australia could now enact its own laws, but with international oversight. It was governed separately, and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25168333?seq=1">differently</a>, from Papua until the eve of the Pacific War.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/papua-new-guinea-forty-years-independence/exploration-gold">discovery of gold</a> in the mandate in 1926 triggered an unprecedented flood of Australians, also into back-country areas. Cycles of violence, often sparked by violations of women, escalated. A punitive expedition to avenge the killings of four prospectors (who were war veterans), known as the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/8117846/Australian_Historical_Studies_Reactions_to_Australian_Colonial_Violence_in_New_Guinea_The_1926_Nakanai_Massacre_in_a_Global_Context">Nakanai Massacre</a>, was launched. So great was the outcry, not least because a machinegun was used against people armed with spears, that many feared Australia would lose New Guinea to Germany.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/8117935/_Remaking_Australia_s_Colonial_Culture_White_Australia_and_its_Papuan_Frontier_1901_1940_Australian_Historical_Studies_Vol_40_issue_1_March_2009_96_112">Murray</a> was again vocal in his criticism of the mandate. The mistreatment of local people was not only inhumane, it was detrimental to Australia’s interests, because New Guineans were “dying out”. </p>
<p>Mistreatment only accelerated this demise. Murray (and many others) were convinced “industrial races of Asia” would take their place and “menace the Commonwealth”. New Guineans did not die out, the mandate remained shadowed by <a href="https://vimeo.com/360692348">colonial violence</a>, and the predictions of New Guinea being a defence buffer for Australia came to fruition from 1942. The ensuing <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/sites/default/files/svss_2012_rogerson_paper.pdf">second world war history</a> is the most remembered of Australia’s New Guinea past. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397263/original/file-20210427-21-cc15jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/397263/original/file-20210427-21-cc15jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397263/original/file-20210427-21-cc15jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397263/original/file-20210427-21-cc15jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397263/original/file-20210427-21-cc15jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397263/original/file-20210427-21-cc15jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/397263/original/file-20210427-21-cc15jb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=698&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Australian troops in Gona, New Guinea, in the second world war.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/AP</span></span>
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<p>In 2018, Morrison made a landmark <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/address-australia-and-pacific-new-chapter">speech</a> called “Australia and the Pacific: A New Chapter”. In it, he talked of “family” and the Pacific as “our patch” in his reworking of the 150-year-old imperial idea in the time of China’s rise. The speech was delivered in Townsville, the epicentre of the Pacific labour trade, though it or other defining histories were not mentioned. Australia’s historical debt went unacknowledged. </p>
<p>With PNG’s COVID crisis, Australia is commendably acting on this <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/eu-won-t-block-1-million-vaccines-for-crisis-hit-png-20210422-p57lmr.html">rhetoric</a>. But if a truly equitable new “chapter” in the relationship is to be forged, Australia must – urgently and aggressively – confront the Pacific’s needs, especially its highest-priority concern: <a href="https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-as-morrison-struggles-with-2050-the-climate-leaders-up-the-ante-for-2030-159559">climate change</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159528/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia A. O'Brien was an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. </span></em></p>Australia has sent help to its nearest neighbour to deal with its COVID crisis. But to really forge the next chapter in that relationship, we need to understand the history between the two countries.Patricia A. O'Brien, Visiting Fellow in the School of History, Australian National University, and Adjunct Professor in the Asian Studies Program, Georgetown UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1368592020-04-27T02:00:45Z2020-04-27T02:00:45ZCoronavirus lessons from past crises: how WWI and WWII spurred scientific innovation in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/330585/original/file-20200427-163098-1uy2hg4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C10%2C1675%2C2218&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.scienceimage.csiro.au/image/255/counting-influenza-cell-growth-in-cell-culture/">CSIRO Archives</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the wake of COVID-19, we’re seeing intense international competition for urgently-needed supplies including <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-25/coronavirus-queensland-ppe-mask-shortage-doctors/12086562">personal protection equipment</a> and ventilators. In Australia, this could extend to other critical imports such as pharmaceuticals and medicines. And when our manufacturing sector can’t fill unexpected breaks in supply chains, we all face risk.</p>
<p>However, Australians have lived through crises of comparable magnitude before. During and after the two world wars, scientific innovation played a crucial role in reform. It led to the creation of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and an array of subsequent discoveries. </p>
<p>Some may assume life will go back to normal once COVID-19 withdraws. But if the past is to be learnt from, Australia should prepare for a greatly different future – hopefully one in which science and innovation once more take centre stage.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-australia-played-the-worlds-first-music-on-a-computer-60381">How Australia played the world's first music on a computer</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<h2>The birth of the CSIR</h2>
<p>It was WWI that heightened awareness of the role of science in defence and economic growth. In December 1915, <a href="https://csiropedia.csiro.au/our-origins-1901-1926/">Prime Minister William (Billy) Hughes announced</a> he would set up a national laboratory “which would allow men of all branches of science to use their capabilities in application to industry”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329959/original/file-20200423-47804-1d42y9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329959/original/file-20200423-47804-1d42y9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329959/original/file-20200423-47804-1d42y9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329959/original/file-20200423-47804-1d42y9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329959/original/file-20200423-47804-1d42y9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329959/original/file-20200423-47804-1d42y9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329959/original/file-20200423-47804-1d42y9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329959/original/file-20200423-47804-1d42y9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A CSIR council meeting in 1935, held at the McMaster Laboratory in Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.scienceimage.csiro.au/image/2407/a-csir-council-meeting/">CSIRO Archives</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This led to the formation of the CSIR in 1926, and its <a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/About/History-achievements/Our-history">rebirth as the CSIRO in 1949</a>. <a href="https://csiropedia.csiro.au/csiro-annual-reports-1927-2000/">In the years after WW1</a>, the CSIR contributed greatly to improvements in primary production, including through animal nutrition, disease prevention, and the control of weeds and pests in crops. It also advanced primary product processing and overseas product transport.</p>
<p>In 1937, the CSIR’s <a href="https://www.defence.gov.au/news/raafnews/editions/2001/4308/story14.htm">mandate was expanded</a> to include secondary industry research, including a national Aircraft and Engine Testing and Research Laboratory. This was motivated by the government’s concern to increase Australia’s manufacturing capabilities and reduce its dependence on technology imports.</p>
<h2>War efforts in the spotlight</h2>
<p>The CSIR’s research focus shifted in 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbour. Australian war historian Boris Schedvin <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/book/137/">has written</a> about the hectic scramble to increase the nation’s defence capacities and expand essential production following the attack, including expansion of the scientific workforce. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329960/original/file-20200423-47832-1ca49za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329960/original/file-20200423-47832-1ca49za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/329960/original/file-20200423-47832-1ca49za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329960/original/file-20200423-47832-1ca49za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329960/original/file-20200423-47832-1ca49za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329960/original/file-20200423-47832-1ca49za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329960/original/file-20200423-47832-1ca49za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/329960/original/file-20200423-47832-1ca49za.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Minister John Dedman died in 1973.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dedman#/media/File:John_Dedman.jpg">Wikipedia (public domain)</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>The John Curtin government was commissioned in October, 1941. Curtin appointed John Dedman as the Minister for War Organisation and Industry, as well as the minister in charge of the CSIR. Dedman’s department was concerned with producing military supplies and equipment, and other items to support society in wartime.</p>
<p>Dedman instructed the council to concentrate on “problems connected with the war effort”. The CSIR responded robustly. By 1942, the divisions of food preservation and transport, forest products, aeronautics, industrial chemistry, the national standards laboratory and the lubricants and bearings section were practically focused on war work full-time.</p>
<h2>Scaling up production</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://csiropedia.csiro.au/chemicals-and-polymers-1988/">Division of Industrial Chemistry</a> was the division most closely involved in actual production. It was formed in 1940 with Ian Wark as chief, who’d previously worked at the Electrolytic Zinc Company. </p>
<p>Wark was familiar with the chemical industry, and quickly devoted resources to developing processes (using Australian materials) to produce essential chemicals to the pilot plant stage. They were soon producing chemicals for drugs at the <a href="https://www.fishermansbend.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0022/31675/Heritage-Study_Biosis_November-2016.pdf">Fishermans Bend site</a>, including the starting material for the synthesis of the anaesthetic drug <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/how-long-does-novocaine-last">novocaine</a> (procaine). </p>
<p>The researchers developed a method to separate the drug <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-professions/ergot-alkaloid">ergot</a>, which is now essential in gynaecology, from rye. They also contributed directly to the war effort by manufacturing the plasticiser used in the nose caps of bullets and shells.</p>
<h2>CSIRO today</h2>
<p>In response to the current pandemic, CSIRO at the <a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/Do-business/Services/AAHL">Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness</a> in Geelong, Victoria, is working with the international Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness to improve understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They are currently <a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2020/CSIRO-begins-testing-Covid-19-vaccines">testing two vaccine candidates</a> for efficacy, and evaluating the best way to administer the vaccine.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7_iY1dqxD9g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">CSIRO’s directors Trevor Drew and Rob Grenfell share progress on COVID-19 vaccine testing being carried out at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australian scientists have made monumental contributions on this front in the past. In the 1980s, CSIRO and its university collaborators began efforts that led to the creation of <a href="https://csiropedia.csiro.au/relenza/">anti-flu drug Relenza</a>, the first drug to successfully treat the flu. Relenza was then commercialised by Australian biotech company Biota, which licensed the drug to British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. </p>
<p>The CSIRO also invented the Hendra virus vaccine for horses, launched <a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/BF/Areas/Protecting-Animal-and-Human-Health/Zoonotic-capability/Hendra">in 2012</a>. </p>
<p>Prior to that, Ian Frazer at the University of Queensland developed the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine which was launched in 2006.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-developed-the-hendra-virus-vaccine-for-horses-10429">How we developed the Hendra virus vaccine for horses</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What can we take away?</h2>
<p>COVID-19 is one of many viral diseases that need either a vaccine or a drug (or both). Others are hepatitis B, dengue fever, HIV and the viruses that cause the common cold. Now may be Australia’s chance to use our world class medical research and medicinal chemistry capabilities to become a dominant world supplier of anti-viral medications. </p>
<p>As was the case during WWI and WWII, this pandemic drives home the need to retain our capabilities at a time of supply chain disruption. While it’s impossible for a medium-sized economy like Australia’s to be entirely self-sufficient, it’s important we lean on our strengths to not only respond, but thrive during these complicated times. </p>
<p>In 2020, Australia has a much greater and broader research and production capacity than it did in 1940. And as we march through this pandemic, we can learn from the past and forge new paths to enhance our position as pioneers in sciencific innovation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the 1980s, CSIRO and its university collaborators set into motion a chain of events that would lead to the production of relenza, the first drug to successfully treat the flu.Tom Spurling, Professor of Innovation Studies, Swinburne University of TechnologyGarrett Upstill, Visiting Fellow, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1348612020-04-24T06:59:56Z2020-04-24T06:59:56ZCoronavirus: learning from the second world war’s industrial pioneers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325695/original/file-20200406-74206-1emm562.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Royal Air Force De Havilland MosquitoI in flight on September 30 1944.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:DH98_Mosquito_bomber.jpg">wikimedia/ww2incolor</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Wars often generate “inspirational” tales of underdogs overcoming insurmountable odds. But the heroes in question are normally soldiers, risking their lives behind enemy lines. They don’t usually sit in a board room, or design musical instruments and furniture, or run a company which produces kitchen tiles. But that is exactly what some of the unlikely heroes of the second world war did – before they turned their firms upside down and inside out to create wooden fighter-bombers, harbours, airfields and ocean pipelines for the Allied forces.</p>
<p>It was this 1940s spirit which UK prime minister Boris Johnson was trying to invoke when he met with industry leaders and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-call-with-uks-leading-manufacturers-16-march-2020">called on them</a> to help the country step up production of vital medical equipment and ventilators in the fight against COVID-19. Just as Winston Churchill called on industry to switch to critical fighter aircraft production, the prime minister was surely hoping he could boost the effort by sheer political will. </p>
<p>Over the crucial summer of 1940, Spitfire production was indeed raised just enough to keep ahead of Germany’s fighter aircraft production and so survive the gruelling war of attrition in the skies above southern England that became known as the Battle of Britain. Now Dyson, McLaren and Rolls-Royce – as well as <a href="https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/scuba-diving-masks-nhs-trusts-18073588">smaller independent innovators</a> – appear to be stepping up to the plate in the battle for ventilator production, while debating the virtues of designing from scratch or copying tried-and-tested methods. </p>
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<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>Politicians are keen to hark back to the “Blitz spirit” because during world war two Britain was forced to re-arm from a virtual standing start. The war offers a possible blueprint for confronting current and future crises, and essential lessons in prompt retooling for mass production and the transformation of a supply chain to respond to immediate global demands.</p>
<h2>From houses to harbours</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325704/original/file-20200406-103690-t628kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325704/original/file-20200406-103690-t628kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325704/original/file-20200406-103690-t628kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325704/original/file-20200406-103690-t628kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325704/original/file-20200406-103690-t628kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325704/original/file-20200406-103690-t628kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325704/original/file-20200406-103690-t628kk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">William S Knudsen when he was a lieutenant-general in the US Army.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_S_Knudsen.jpg">wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Speaking after the war, the US director of war production, William Knudsen, <a href="https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2019/01/10/how-capitalism-won-wwii-this-is-capitalism-and-expert-rob-citino-explain/">declared</a>: “We won because we smothered the enemy in an avalanche of production, the like of which he had never seen, nor dreamed possible.” Behind Knudsen’s statement was a military-industrial complex that in less than six years had transformed itself. Firms that had previously manufactured furniture for the mass market converted production lines at an unprecedented pace in order to fabricate high-spec components for Allied combat aircraft.</p>
<p>The initiation of hostilities in 1939 compelled large sectors of British industry to modify their manufacturing to support wartime inventories. Overnight, the country’s housing industry collapsed with a government-led ban on construction in an effort to conserve key materials and direct skilled labour for essential war work.</p>
<p>In the midst of this strategic re-prioritisation, the building firm of Wates (under the chairmanship of <a href="https://emanuelschoolatwar.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/the-mulberry-harbours-in-commemoration-of-the-70th-anniversary-of-d-day/">Norman Wates</a>) recognised the importance of reconfiguring production in order to obtain contracts for vital war projects. From 1940, Wates transitioned from civil housing to building airfields, subterranean bomb shelters, petrol barges and 500 floating pontoons (codenamed <a href="https://www.wates.co.uk/articles/news/mulberry-harbours/">BEETLE</a>) to support bridging equipment to be towed across the English Channel, forming part of the £2 billion project to build artificial Mulberry Harbours.</p>
<p>The artificially constructed floating docks enabled 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles and four million tonnes of supplies to land off the French coast after D-Day. They were designed and built in secrecy by around 50,000 British engineers in the seven months leading up to the landings.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323807/original/file-20200329-146662-jo5lj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323807/original/file-20200329-146662-jo5lj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323807/original/file-20200329-146662-jo5lj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323807/original/file-20200329-146662-jo5lj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323807/original/file-20200329-146662-jo5lj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323807/original/file-20200329-146662-jo5lj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323807/original/file-20200329-146662-jo5lj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Wates BEETLE on a slipway. The BEETLE units were designed as floating pontoons to support the mobile bridging deployed inside the Mulberry Harbours.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wates Group</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wates had successfully tailored its manufacturing base to complete projects of which it had no previous experience. Before the war, many of its subcontractors had been responsible for producing garden railings or, in the case of the <a href="https://www.marley.co.uk/about/from-the-archives-episode-two">Marley Company</a>, tiling for the retail market. </p>
<p>This rapid transition was paralleled by a new assurance regime which secretly tested the Mulberry Harbour components. Large, detailed scale models were scratch built to demonstrate that the new technological solutions could survive the exacting environment in which they had to operate. To meet this requirement, the former model train makers were contracted to fabricate large models of every sub-component, which were then rapidly tested in specially designed tanks under the supervision of the National Physical Laboratory. The successful completion of Mulberry Harbours is testament to industry’s ability to adapt to a new and unique engineering environment and deliver on time, within strict cost and performance frameworks. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/324320/original/file-20200331-65543-gyaw5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/324320/original/file-20200331-65543-gyaw5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324320/original/file-20200331-65543-gyaw5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324320/original/file-20200331-65543-gyaw5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324320/original/file-20200331-65543-gyaw5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324320/original/file-20200331-65543-gyaw5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/324320/original/file-20200331-65543-gyaw5o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bassett-Lowke model company preparing a model warship for trials.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steve Masters</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The upscaling of industrial production and reconfiguration to deliver new product lines was borne out by the expansion of the aviation industrial base. A government initiative called the “<a href="https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Shadow_Factories">Shadow Factories Programme</a>” paid for additional industrial plants and other resources for selected car manufacturers including Rover and Rootes. This allowed them to expand their production floor space and acquire the necessary materials and labour at pre-agreed ramp-up rates.</p>
<figure>
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<h2>From furniture to fighter planes</h2>
<p>Cars made way for bombers and fighters and, as the industry expanded, all manner of businesses and experts were drawn into the production effort. The case of the <a href="https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/the-de-havilland-mosquito-was-a-wwii-classic.html">De Havilland Mosquito</a> fighter-bomber represents one of the most unusual, yet successful, examples of collaboration between furniture and musical instrument manufacturers that before 1939 had no experience of fabricating aircraft. </p>
<p>With a fuselage built out of plywood and balsa, the Mosquito was described as “revolutionary” because the methods and material used in the design were a complete departure from those employed in the military aircraft of the late 1930s. With aluminium in short supply, balsa was identified as a bona-fide substitute material.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325694/original/file-20200406-74216-f8udwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/325694/original/file-20200406-74216-f8udwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325694/original/file-20200406-74216-f8udwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325694/original/file-20200406-74216-f8udwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325694/original/file-20200406-74216-f8udwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325694/original/file-20200406-74216-f8udwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/325694/original/file-20200406-74216-f8udwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">De Havilland DH Mosquito ExCC.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ingenious solution resulted in an aircraft that was available in large numbers at relatively modest outlay with the added bonus that it was easy to repair. Canadian press baron and Daily Express owner Lord Beaverbrook – installed as minister for aircraft production by Churchill – declared: “Its methods of construction lent itself to the all-important requirement of dispersal”, to protect plants from bombing.</p>
<p>Eventually, more than 400 factories were tasked with manufacturing different components for the project. The Mosquito illustrated the ability of both private industry and government departments to quickly match resources with demands and adapt to shortages in critical materials and the constant redirection of labour to other wartime contracts.</p>
<p>These production initiatives could also be exported – and when Britain realised that it did not possess the capacity to produce certain products, it reached out beyond the Empire. With the demand for continuous aircraft engine design and a lack of domestic production capacity, Arthur Purvis, the British purchasing agent in the US, approached Knudsen to explore the option of US manufacturers fabricating the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine. The Packard Motor Car Company accepted the challenge and, under contract, Rolls-Royce dispatched the classified engine plans aboard the battleship HMS Nelson.</p>
<p>At a time when the US Congress was still being persuaded to emerge from its <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1937-1945/american-isolationism">isolationist policy</a>, the knowledge transfer and rapid retooling of US firms to complete British contracts illustrated the ingenuity and flexibility of US manufacturers. The fact that before the first engine was built all technical specifications had to be transferred by hand from British imperial to US imperial measures are further proof of the engineering community’s determination.</p>
<h2>Ocean pipelines</h2>
<p>Industry’s expertise in rapid technology transfer was further underwritten by the completion of the unconventional underwater delivery system for fuel transfer across the English Channel to the Allied assault into northwest Europe. Designated <a href="https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/operation-pluto-oil-gasoline-game.html">Operation PLUTO</a>, the idea stemmed from members of the oil industry who envisaged the laying of a sub-sea pipeline from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg and overland distribution to the fighting echelons.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>By early 1944, every cable, pipeline and rubber manufacturer across Britain had been mobilised to fabricate lengths of specially designed pipeline. By this stage, however, Britain’s production capacity was at saturation point and, as in the case of the Merlin engine, British manufacturers took the designs to the US to supplement their own efforts.</p>
<p>In less than three months, four US firms were manufacturing pipeline for the project. Many companies had no previous experience of fabricating marine pipelines and in the case of one firm, <a href="https://www.combinedops.com/pluto.htm">Phelps-Dodge</a>, the directors committed to building an entirely new factory including dock facilities and railway yards to ensure the contract was completed. </p>
<p>Such examples of Allied wartime industrial expansion illustrate the capacity of private enterprise to expand and retool at pace and meet technically demanding criteria. For the modern observer, lessons from these selected projects should provide confidence in industry’s ability to adapt and adopt new manufacturing techniques to meet the new global threat of COVID-19. </p>
<h2>Today’s ventilator challenge</h2>
<p>At the start of the year, there were just 4,000 UK ventilators available to the NHS. This is what galvanised the prime minister to request British industry to adapt and make 20,000 “safe, efficient, oxygen conserving, easy to use portable and non-fixed supply” ventilators (<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1125e39e-8a76-4769-b6ca-f482efca5bf5">totalling about 30,000</a> when adding overseas orders and increased UK production). Typically 4.7% of COVID-19 patients become critical and require a ventilator. So these extra ventilators could potentially save 30,000 lives and significantly improve the hospital care capacity of even more infected patients until a vaccine arrives.</p>
<p>Ventilators are complex to build, combining electro-mechanical parts, integrated circuit boards, processors and tight health standards and manufacturing tolerances. Many parts are also sourced via global supply lines that are now <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/supply-chain-recovery-in-coronavirus-times-plan-for-now-and-the-future">potentially compromised</a>.</p>
<p>There are just two UK ventilator manufacturers, one being <a href="https://breas.com/contact-us/united-kingdom/">Breas Ltd</a> in Warwickshire and Penlon in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/uk-scraps-plans-to-buy-thousands-of-bluesky-ventilators-coronavirus">Oxfordshire</a>. The US has the largest market share of ventilators produced by firms such as Medtronic, Becton, Dickinson and Teleflex. Europe has the next biggest share led by Philips, followed by China, which is rapidly catching up and which supplies many of the critical parts for other countries.</p>
<p>Despite a standing start – as in both world wars – British industry is responding with heavy equipment manufacturers including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/26/how-the-uk-plans-to-source-30000-ventilators-for-nhs-coronavirus">JCB and Rolls- Royce</a> getting in on the act.</p>
<p>Increasing supply requires knowledge-transfer and tooling with three solution options: </p>
<ul>
<li>Expand production of existing designs</li>
<li>Simplify existing designs with new or fewer, cheaper parts, or</li>
<li>Re-engineer and reinvent more effective <a href="https://www.scitepress.org/papers/2015/58860/58860.pdf">new designs</a> (like the Mosquito) using novel concepts.</li>
</ul>
<p>The first option enables faster production unless the second can achieve a similar capability with more plentiful or redesigned parts available. The third option takes longer, unless the novel change can use the unique flexible modular architecture involved in microprocessor computing. This enables new programs and software to carry out the rapid innovative improvement.</p>
<h2>Business rivals collaborate and innovate</h2>
<p>Re-engineering and fast supply requires multidisciplinary collaboration. So many companies are focusing on production of simpler, positive pressure ventilators to increase capacity. This is what the Dyson vacuum cleaner company has done. Its digital motor capability and the technical knowledge within the company has enabled it to design a new battery-powered “CoVent” ventilator in conjunction with naval defence firm Babcock. It was done in just ten days and fittingly from their plant in a former second world war parachute factory in Wiltshire. Dyson has promised 15,000 ventilators.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>Rival UK vacuum cleaner company Gtech responded with the second option – reducing the number of parts with an innovative oxygen-powered ventilator design using existing off-the-shelf parts. They repurposed a syringe, instead using it as a piston to inflate a standard hand resuscitation bag. This is mechanically controlled by an improvised pneumatic valve to adjust breaths per minute. The company has made the design publicly available. Company owner <a href="https://www.gtech.co.uk/ventilators">Nick Grey said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We designed the ventilator entirely from parts that can readily be made from stock materials or bought off-the-shelf. This means that Gtech ventilators can be made by almost any engineering and manufacturing company around the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Other rivals are also putting aside their commercial differences and working with universities and suppliers. The “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52087002">VentilatorChallengeUK</a>” consortium includes Airbus, BAE Systems, Ford, Rolls-Royce and Siemens. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-inside-story-of-how-mercedes-f1-and-academics-fast-tracked-life-saving-breathing-aid-136028">Coronavirus: inside story of how Mercedes F1 and academics fast-tracked life saving breathing aid</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Meanwhile, Mercedes F1 has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52087002">teamed up with University College London</a> to improve upon an existing design for a non-invasive breathing aid using a pressurised airtight hood delivering air. Oxford University and Kings College’s <a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-03-31-ventilator-project-oxvent-gets-green-light-uk-government-proceed-next-stage-testing">OxVent</a> project also re-engineered the basic ventilator (the third option), reducing multiple components and controls to a single new reprogrammable microprocessor-controlled valve regulating pressure/volume combinations from an air supply inflating a resuscitation bag, to force air into the lungs.</p>
<p>Removing sensors and alarms simplifies manufacturing, enabling fast production by anyone using freely available plans. But while these innovations help, they are a stopgap and lack the detailed air-mix and sophisticated sensors that are needed to fully protect a patient’s lungs from damage in more critical cases. </p>
<p>Developing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/23/carmakers-make-nhs-ventilators-coronavirus-uk-government-nissan-rolls-royce">a suitable ventilator</a>, even a simplified design, is no easy task, as they need to pass clinical trials and meet a range of standards on size, reliability and oxygen mix. For example the Renault F1/Red Bull team’s “BlueSky” ventilator <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/uk-scraps-plans-to-buy-thousands-of-bluesky-ventilators-coronavirus#maincontent">was rejected</a> from consideration as it was not capable of meeting regulatory approval requirements for adjustable settings. So redesigns continue in search of better.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, all these companies are echoing great British engineers such as Robert Whitehead, who created the <a href="https://www.britannia-naval-research-association.org/the-bnra-journal/">locomotive torpedo</a> from scratch in 1866 to help improve a clockwork boat bomb for the Austrian Navy. These engineers don’t copy, they create new superior solutions.</p>
<p>They are innovators using disruptive technology, such as 3D printing, which enables new ideas to be quickly designed, tested and reproduced by individual printer owners. For example, Italian ventilator air valve supplies were increased by mechanical engineer <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/17/21184308/coronavirus-italy-medical-3d-print-valves-treatments">Alessandro Romaioli</a> who redesigned a plastic valve in just three hours, to avoid patent infringements, and then 3D printed and tested it in a day, going onto <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/coronavirus-3d-printing-respirators-supply-hospitals-italy-covid-19-a9408961.html">widescale printing production</a>.</p>
<p>The range of plastic, metals and complex geometries <a href="https://www.scitepress.org/Papers/2016/62224/62224.pdf">that can be printed</a> has enabled medical goggles to be produced in China and the <a href="https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/3d-printed-valves-convert-snorkel-gear-into-ventilator-masks-for-coronavirus-patients">re-engineering of a snorkel</a> into a ventilator mask by a firm in Shropshire.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>And there is no shortage of individual engineers and inventors to help, with <a href="https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/03/15/1584291965000/Could-a-bunch-of-internet-denizens-give-us-more-ventilators--/">3,400 volunteers</a> joining the group “helpful engineering”. The project has 40 different sub-groups, each of which is working on a different strategy for helping to deal with the coronavirus crisis in an open-source and collaborative way.</p>
<h2>War improved us – can COVID-19?</h2>
<p>The second world war showed that British industry can respond to a crisis with innovation, invention and skill. We need that now and fast. The single specialist manufacturer in the UK highlights the false reliance on service solutions and the lamentable loss of a once thriving and world-leading technology base that supported us through two world wars. Ventilators are critical to the fight to overcome COVID-19 and could save many thousands of lives. They are complicated and specialised pieces of equipment. </p>
<p>Hopefully, the inventiveness and collaboration we are seeing will continue long after this crisis has ended. The government – along with business and academia – must continue to promote, reward and grow this spirit of innovation which helped overcome the odds in previous times of emergency. </p>
<p>The second – perhaps most important lesson – is that the UK needs to design, fabricate and control many more of its own products, particularly strategic goods to reduce supply-chain trauma. Finally, the government must invest in Britain over the long term as the re-engineered intelligent workshop of the world to ensure scientists, engineers and mathematicians are valued and supported to work together and so reduce the folly of short-term profits for long-term pain.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=112&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313478/original/file-20200204-41481-1n8vco4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-future-do-airlines-have-three-experts-discuss-135365?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">What future do airlines have? Three experts discuss</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-will-the-world-be-like-after-coronavirus-four-possible-futures-134085?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">What will the world be like after coronavirus? Four possible futures</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-model-a-pandemic-134187?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">How to model a pandemic</a></em></p></li>
</ul>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The second world war offers a possible blueprint for confronting the ventilator challenge.Dr Jacob Thomas-Llewellyn, PhD Candidate and Military Researcher, University of ReadingVaughan Michell, Programme Director MSc Business Technology Consulting, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1336052020-04-17T12:11:15Z2020-04-17T12:11:15Z1918 flu pandemic killed 12 million Indians, and British overlords’ indifference strengthened the anti-colonial movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327346/original/file-20200412-8893-1ihy43t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C56%2C4200%2C4011&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cremation on the banks of the Ganges river, India.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crémation-sur-les-bords-du-gange-à-benarès-inde-circa-1920-news-photo/833384176?adppopup=true">Keystone-France via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In India, during the 1918 influenza pandemic, a staggering <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-012-0116-x">12 to 13 million people died</a>, the vast majority between the months of September and December. According to an eyewitness, “There was none to remove the dead bodies and the jackals made a feast.” </p>
<p>At the time of the pandemic, India had been under British colonial rule for over 150 years. The fortunes of the British colonizers had always been vastly different from those of the Indian people, and nowhere was the split more stark than during the influenza pandemic, as I discovered while researching <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=zQnyI1cAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">my Ph.D. on the subject</a>. </p>
<p>The resulting devastation would eventually lead to huge changes in India – and the British Empire. </p>
<h2>From Kansas to Mumbai</h2>
<p>Although it is commonly called the Spanish flu, the 1918 pandemic likely <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/twentieth-century-american-history/americas-forgotten-pandemic-influenza-1918-2nd-edition?format=PB">began in Kansas</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwy191">killed between 50 and 100 million people</a> worldwide. </p>
<p>During the early months of 1918, the virus incubated throughout the American Midwest, eventually making its way east, where it <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/210420/worldwide_flu_outbreak_killed_45000_american_soldiers_during_world_war_i">traveled across the Atlantic Ocean</a> with soldiers deploying for WWI. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=639&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327347/original/file-20200412-138728-1tayb5b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indian soldiers in the trenches during World War I.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/indian-soldiers-in-the-trenches-world-war-i-1914-1918-news-photo/463957843">Print Collector / Contributor via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Introduced into the trenches on Europe’s Western Front, the virus tore through the already weakened troops. As the war approached its conclusion, the virus followed both commercial shipping routes and military transports to infect almost every corner of the globe. It <a href="https://www.macmillanlearning.com/college/us/product/Influenza-Pandemic-of-1918-1919/p/0312677081">arrived in Mumbai in late May</a>.</p>
<h2>Unequal spread</h2>
<p>When the first wave of the pandemic arrived, it was not particularly deadly. The only notice British officials took of it was its effect on some workers. A report noted, “As the season for cutting grass began … people were so weak as to be unable to do a full day’s work.” </p>
<p>By September, the story began to change. Mumbai was still the center of infection, likely due to its position as a commercial and civic hub. On Sept. 19, an English-language newspaper reported 293 influenza deaths had occurred there, but assured its readers “The worst is now reached.” </p>
<p>Instead, the virus tore through the subcontinent, following trade and postal routes. Catastrophe and death overwhelmed cities and rural villages alike. Indian newspapers reported that crematoria were receiving between 150 to 200 bodies per day. According to one observer, “The burning ghats and burial grounds were literally swamped with corpses; whilst an even greater number awaited removal.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327348/original/file-20200412-1397-po6zou.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the British Raj out for a stroll, circa 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-british-raj-walking-together-in-an-indian-news-photo/3398825?adppopup=true">Fox Photos/Stringer via Getty images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But influenza did not strike everyone equally. Most British people in India lived in spacious houses with gardens and yards, compared to the lower classes of city-dwelling Indians, who lived in densely populated areas. Many British also employed household staff to care for them – in times of health and sickness – so they were only lightly touched by the pandemic and were largely unconcerned by the chaos sweeping through the country. </p>
<p>In his official correspondence in early December, the Lieutenant Governor of the United Provinces did not even mention influenza, instead noting “Everything is very dry; but I managed to get two hundred couple of snipe so far this season.”</p>
<p>While the pandemic was of little consequence to many British residents of India, the perception was wildly different among the Indian people, <a href="https://www.saada.org/item/20130823-3118">who spoke of universal devastation</a>. A letter published in a periodical lamented, “India perhaps never saw such hard times before. There is wailing on all sides. … There is neither village nor town throughout the length and breadth of the country which has not paid a heavy toll.” </p>
<p>Elsewhere, the Sanitary Commissioner of the Punjab noted, “the streets and lanes of cities were littered with dead and dying people … nearly every household was lamenting a death, and everywhere terror and confusion reigned.” </p>
<h2>The fallout</h2>
<p>In the end, areas in the north and west of India saw death rates between 4.5% and 6% of their total populations, while the south and east – where the virus arrived slightly later, as it was waning – generally lost between 1.5% and 3%. </p>
<p>Geography wasn’t the only dividing factor, however. In Mumbai, almost seven-and-a-half times as many lower-caste Indians died as compared to their British counterparts - <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/001946468602300102">61.6 per thousand</a> versus 8.3 per thousand. </p>
<p>Among Indians in Mumbai, socioeconomic disparities in addition to race accounted for these differing mortality rates.</p>
<p><iframe id="9Mq9o" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/9Mq9o/2/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The Health Officer for Calcutta remarked on the stark difference in death rates between British and lower-class Indians: “The excessive mortality in Kidderpore appears to be due mainly to the large coolie population, ignorant and poverty-stricken, living under most insanitary conditions in damp, dark, dirty huts. They are a difficult class to deal with.” </p>
<h2>Change ahead</h2>
<p>Death tolls across India generally hit their peak in October, with a slow tapering into November and December. A high ranking British official wrote in December, “A good winter rain will put everything right and … things will gradually rectify themselves.” </p>
<p>Normalcy, however, did not quite return to India. The spring of 1919 would see the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Jallianwala-Bagh-Massacre">British atrocities at Amritsar</a> and shortly thereafter the launch of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/noncooperation-movement">Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement</a>. Influenza became one more example of British injustice that spurred Indian people on in their fight for independence. A <a href="https://www.saada.org/item/20130128-1271">nationalist periodical stated</a>, “In no other civilized country could a government have left things so much undone as did the Government of India did during the prevalence of such a terrible and catastrophic epidemic.”</p>
<p>The long, slow death of the British Empire had begun.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct that the final quote is not from a periodical published by Mahatma Gandhi, but rather a separate nationalist publication of the same name based in New York.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133605/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maura Chhun does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the 1918 influenza pandemic struck India, the death toll was highest among the poor.Maura Chhun, Community Faculty, Metropolitan State University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1210862019-11-05T19:37:19Z2019-11-05T19:37:19ZBattlefields around the world are finding new purpose as parks and refuges<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/300119/original/file-20191104-88399-nyaqvs.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1196%2C900&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Antietam National Battlefield, Maryland, site of a savage Civil War battle on Sept. 17, 1862.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nps.gov/anti/planyourvisit/the-final-attack-trail-part-2.htm">NPS</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The horrors of war are all too familiar: lives lost, homes destroyed, entire communities forced to flee. Yet as time passes, places that once were sites of death and destruction can become peaceful natural refuges. </p>
<p>One of the deadliest battles fought on U.S. soil, for example, was the <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/gettysburg">Battle of Gettysburg</a>. Tens of thousands of men were killed or wounded in three days of fighting. Over 150 years later, <a href="https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/">millions of visitors</a> have toured Gettysburg Battlefield. </p>
<p>Across the U.S., <a href="https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/national-park-system.htm">25 national battlefield and military parks</a> have been established to protect battlefield landscapes and memorialize the past. Increasingly, visitors to these sites are attracted as much by their natural beauty as their historical legacy. </p>
<p>Our book, “<a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-18991-4%20">Collateral Values: The Natural Capital Created by Landscapes of War</a>,” describes the benefits to society when healthy natural habitats develop on former battlefields and other military landscapes, such as bases and security zones. Environmental scientist <a href="https://www.clemson.edu/cbshs/faculty-staff/profiles/machlis">Gary Machlis</a> coined the phrase “collateral values” – a spin on the military expression “collateral damage” – to describe the largely unintended and positive consequences of protecting these lands.</p>
<p>These benefits include opportunities for picnicking, hiking and bird watching. More importantly, former military lands can support wildlife conservation, reduce water and air pollution, enhance pollination of natural and agricultural areas and help regulate a warming climate. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299970/original/file-20191103-88378-sp2vz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299970/original/file-20191103-88378-sp2vz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299970/original/file-20191103-88378-sp2vz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299970/original/file-20191103-88378-sp2vz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299970/original/file-20191103-88378-sp2vz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299970/original/file-20191103-88378-sp2vz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299970/original/file-20191103-88378-sp2vz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299970/original/file-20191103-88378-sp2vz2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Watershed adventure camp at Staunton River Battlefield State Park, Virginia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/f5rWEc">Virginia State Parks</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>From battlefields to parks</h2>
<p>In addition to federally protected sites, hundreds of battlefields in the U.S. are preserved by states, local governments and nonprofits like the <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/preserve/saved-land">American Battlefield Trust</a>. Collectively, these sites represent an important contribution to the nation’s public lands. </p>
<p>Preserved battlefields include <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-18991-4_4">old fort sites</a>, like the 33 that have been designated public lands in Oklahoma and Texas, marking wars fought between European settlers and Native Americans. They also include <a href="https://www.nps.gov/fopu/learn/historyculture/the-third-system.htm">coastal defense forts</a> built in the first half of the 1800s along the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards. While some battlefield parks are quite large, others are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2013.12.025">small sites in urban settings</a>. </p>
<p>Internationally, the United Kingdom has an <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-18991-4_3">active program</a> to preserve its battlefields, some centuries old. Other Western European countries have preserved World War I and World War II battlefields. </p>
<p>For example, one of the most brutal battles of WWI was fought in <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-18991-4_5">Verdun, France</a>. That trench warfare site is now 25,000 acres of regenerated forest that attracts more than a quarter-million visitors annually. It protects a biologically rich landscape, including wetlands, orchids, birds, bats, newts, frogs, toads, insects, mushrooms and “survivor trees” that still bear scars of war.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299574/original/file-20191030-17908-12n0d5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299574/original/file-20191030-17908-12n0d5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299574/original/file-20191030-17908-12n0d5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299574/original/file-20191030-17908-12n0d5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299574/original/file-20191030-17908-12n0d5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299574/original/file-20191030-17908-12n0d5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299574/original/file-20191030-17908-12n0d5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299574/original/file-20191030-17908-12n0d5i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=469&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Landscape in Verdun Forest.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/2e95bed8-5fef-4156-acbe-af3df9b29531">Lamiot</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Borders: The Iron Curtain</h2>
<p>The largest, most ambitious plan in Europe for transforming a military border centers on the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Iron-Curtain">Iron Curtain</a> – a line of guard towers, walls, minefields and fences that stretched for thousands of miles, from Norway’s border with the Soviet Union above the Arctic Circle down to the Mediterranean coastal border between Greece and Albania.</p>
<p>Communist Russia and its allies claimed they had to build a system of military barriers to defend against <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/North-Atlantic-Treaty-Organization">the NATO alliance</a> of Western European countries and the U.S. But keeping their own citizens in was equally as important. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40200305">Hundreds died</a> trying to escape. </p>
<p>The collapse of the USSR in 1991 ended the Cold War, and the utility of the Iron Curtain and associated military facilities. With the <a href="https://youtu.be/jnCPdLlUgvo">fall of the Berlin Wall</a> that divided the city into halves, a reunified Germany began to develop its section of the Iron Curtain into a system of conservation areas and nature trails, known as the <a href="http://www.europeangreenbelt.org/">European Green Belt initiative</a>. </p>
<p>One great challenge of this project was <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334779089_Legitimizing_Militarization_or_Legitimate_Conservation_Collateral_Value_and_Landscapes_of_the_Iron_Curtain_Borderlands">balancing the values</a> of conserving nature while preserving the tragic historical legacy of conflict. Most efforts to build collateral values on former landscapes must grapple with this trade-off.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299573/original/file-20191030-17908-g6bdv3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299573/original/file-20191030-17908-g6bdv3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299573/original/file-20191030-17908-g6bdv3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299573/original/file-20191030-17908-g6bdv3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299573/original/file-20191030-17908-g6bdv3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299573/original/file-20191030-17908-g6bdv3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299573/original/file-20191030-17908-g6bdv3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299573/original/file-20191030-17908-g6bdv3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Iron Curtain Greenway: Europeans are creating a system of parks and natural areas stretching across the continent, all connected by the greenswards that have grown along the former Iron Curtain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://europeangreenbelt.org/">European Green Belt Association</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other militarized borders around the globe are also becoming conservation sites. For example, the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea has been strictly off-limits for people for decades, allowing it to grow into the most important, <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030189907">albeit unofficial, biodiversity reserve</a> on the Korean peninsula.</p>
<p>Similarly, forests have grown up in the extensive minefield created along the Iran-Iraq border during those nations’ war in the 1980s. These forests <a href="https://www.biographic.com/patience-peace-and-persian-leopards/">support Asian leopards</a> and other rare wildlife species. There are proposals to formally protect them as nature reserves. </p>
<h2>Hope after tragedy</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299971/original/file-20191103-88428-1ont5qj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299971/original/file-20191103-88428-1ont5qj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299971/original/file-20191103-88428-1ont5qj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299971/original/file-20191103-88428-1ont5qj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299971/original/file-20191103-88428-1ont5qj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299971/original/file-20191103-88428-1ont5qj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299971/original/file-20191103-88428-1ont5qj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299971/original/file-20191103-88428-1ont5qj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=653&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As open space becomes scarce in many parts of the U.S., Civil War battlefield parks have become havens for grassland birds like this grasshopper sparrow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/battlefield-birds.htm">NPS/Sasha Robinson</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ecosystems of protected areas, such as parks and preserves, provide vital benefits for humans and nature. Unfortunately, the world is in danger of <a href="https://www.csp-inc.org/public/CSP%20Disappearing%20US%20Exec%20Summary%20011819.pdf">losing at least one-third</a> of its protected areas to development and other threats. Recognizing the collateral values that have developed on protected former battlefields and border zones may help reduce degradation and loss of these lands. </p>
<p>One recent study estimates that nearly 1 million square miles – 5% of the Earth’s dry land surface – <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12155">is currently designated as military training areas</a>. These zones could be protected with relatively little investment when combined with social, cultural and political goals, such as memorializing historical events, and could become ecologically valuable places.</p>
<p>No one should forget the brutality of the conflicts that gave rise to these landscapes. However, given the scale of threats to natural habitats around the world, conservationists cannot ignore opportunities to cultivate and preserve natural places – even those that arise from the horrors of war.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to provide the correct location of Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland.</em></p>
<p>
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<p><a href="http://www.aag.org">Todd Lookingbill is a member of the American Association of Geographers</a></p>
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<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121086/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Todd Lookingbill receives funding from the National Park Service. He is also a member of the American Association of Geographers.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Smallwood has in the past received funding from the National Science Foundation for research on public lands, and has worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Opinions expressed here are those of the authors, not necessarily of their employers or funders.
</span></em></p>Protected from development, natural landscapes worldwide are emerging from the violence of war.Todd Lookingbill, Associate Professor of Geography and the Environment, University of RichmondPeter Smallwood, Associate Professor of Biology, University of RichmondLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1089872018-12-19T23:52:01Z2018-12-19T23:52:01ZWhat Australian soldiers ate for Christmas in WWI<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251456/original/file-20181219-27761-h57tyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cover of the menu for the AIF Christmas Dinner, Hotel Cecil, London, in 1916. Illustration by Fred Leist. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museums Victoria collection, donated by Jean Bourke</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We have just concluded four years of commemoration of the centenary of the first world war and, although the guns fell silent in November 1918, by Christmas many Australians were still separated from their loved ones. </p>
<p>For Australians serving overseas in WWI, celebrations such as Christmas were particularly difficult, a reminder that the war had laid waste to their routines and taken them away from their families.</p>
<p>We can see from historical documents that every effort was made to reproduce the form and content of a traditional Christmas meal, whether that be on board a ship, in the mess or even in the trenches</p>
<h2>On active service</h2>
<p>Maintaining the traditions of Christmas could be logistically difficult. It was often simply a slightly larger amount of food than the normal rations, with additional treats, such as the half pound of Christmas pudding that Major-General John Monash procured for every man in his Third Division in 1917. Alcohol was a welcome addition. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251436/original/file-20181219-27764-9tk17j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251436/original/file-20181219-27764-9tk17j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251436/original/file-20181219-27764-9tk17j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251436/original/file-20181219-27764-9tk17j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251436/original/file-20181219-27764-9tk17j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251436/original/file-20181219-27764-9tk17j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251436/original/file-20181219-27764-9tk17j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251436/original/file-20181219-27764-9tk17j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women distribute Christmas billies to men in Cairo, Egypt, December 1915.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/anzac-christmas-hampers">Christmas hampers</a> and billies sent from home provided particular joy to those lucky enough to receive them.
Some, however, experienced Christmas dinners like that of <a href="https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/391264">Private John Chugg</a> of 1st Light Horse Field Ambulance, who complained “it was a miserable Xmas” in Egypt in 1914: “boiled beef unpeeled potatoes and tea without milk… [and] no mail or anything to cheer us”. </p>
<p>Sapper Alfred Galbraith described Christmas day in Ismailia Camp, Egypt, in December 1915 in a letter to his family. Each man chipped in to <a href="https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/380308">purchase a turkey</a> and</p>
<blockquote>
<p>chickens more like humming birds, soft drinks and a few biscuits. The chickens were dealt out 1 between 5 men and some of them would not feed one let alone 5 men, the one we got we tossed up to see who would get it & I won but I half it with my pal & then the two of us went & bought some […] biscuits & some tin fruit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Alf is depicted in <a href="https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/803316">a photo of the dinner</a>, sitting awkwardly on canvas at the end of a row of soldiers, mess tins in front of each and an occasional bottle, likely of beer. Alf’s Christmas letter concludes nostalgically “Dear Australia the land of my Birth which we will all be glad to see again … it will be a glorious day if I live to see it out … ” It was to be his last Christmas.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251431/original/file-20181219-27752-1g8r2c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251431/original/file-20181219-27752-1g8r2c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251431/original/file-20181219-27752-1g8r2c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251431/original/file-20181219-27752-1g8r2c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251431/original/file-20181219-27752-1g8r2c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251431/original/file-20181219-27752-1g8r2c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251431/original/file-20181219-27752-1g8r2c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251431/original/file-20181219-27752-1g8r2c7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">AIF troops celebrating Christmas at Ismailia Camp, Egypt, in December 1915.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museums Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A special meal could have the effect of making the war recede, if briefly, for the soldiers who partook of it. This is the impression gleaned from the menu for the 1917 Christmas dinner at the “A” Mess of the 3rd Australian Divisional Headquarters in France, led by Monash. </p>
<p>The hand-drawn menu features bucolic sketches of rural French life, and a list of dishes in a mix of French and English, signalling the prestige of the officers’ dinner. </p>
<p>The 10 courses included <em>hors d’oeuvres</em> (olives and “<em>Tomato au Lobster</em>”), <em>potage _(“_Crème de Giblet</em>”), <em>poisson</em>, <em>entrée</em> (chicken), <em>viands</em> (pork and ham), legumes, sweets (three choices) and a cheese tart, ending with wine and coffee. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251460/original/file-20181219-27773-19shqlx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251460/original/file-20181219-27773-19shqlx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251460/original/file-20181219-27773-19shqlx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251460/original/file-20181219-27773-19shqlx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251460/original/file-20181219-27773-19shqlx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251460/original/file-20181219-27773-19shqlx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251460/original/file-20181219-27773-19shqlx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251460/original/file-20181219-27773-19shqlx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The menu served at an AIF Christmas Dinner in 1916.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museums Victoria collection, donated by Jean Bourke</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “B” Mess dinner at the Headquarters was almost as sumptuous, but with fewer courses. Its more simple menu included a humorous script, poetry and parodies. When the food concluded a toast was made to “Absent Ones”, drunk “while softly murmuring the words ‘Not lost but gone to CORPS’”. Notably, the term “Lest We Forget” was used to remind diners of good etiquette!</p>
<h2>Christmas in transit</h2>
<p>The voyage to active overseas service was a mixture of excitement, trepidation and monotony. Food service broke the boredom of long days at sea. On board the SS Suffolk on Christmas day 1915 diners were treated to a multi-course dinner, opening with olives, mock turtle soup and salmon cutlets in anchovy sauce. The next course featured iced asparagus, beef fillets with mushrooms and prawns in aspic, before the food became even more serious, with four types of meat, baked and boiled potatoes, and beans. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251435/original/file-20181219-27764-r8qlio.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251435/original/file-20181219-27764-r8qlio.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251435/original/file-20181219-27764-r8qlio.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251435/original/file-20181219-27764-r8qlio.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251435/original/file-20181219-27764-r8qlio.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=998&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251435/original/file-20181219-27764-r8qlio.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1255&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251435/original/file-20181219-27764-r8qlio.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1255&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251435/original/file-20181219-27764-r8qlio.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1255&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the 4th Australian Field Ambulance at Christmas in Lemnos in 1915.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian War Memorial</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Four deserts followed, including plum pudding with both hard and brandy sauces. Like many special occasion menus of the war, diners signed their names on the back.</p>
<h2>Aprés la guerre</h2>
<p>The desire to be “home by Christmas” had been widely expressed from the very first year of the Great War, yet when the armistice finally came in 1918, Australians on active service still had a long journey ahead of them and faced another Christmas away from home. </p>
<p>In 1918, the 2nd Australian pioneers officers’ Christmas dinner took place “somewhere in France”, featuring a menu entirely in French save for the words “plum pudding” and “God Save the King”. Two half pages of the menu were dedicated to “Autographs”. </p>
<p><a href="https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/381846">The souvenir menu card</a> from the 13th Australian Field Ambulance 2nd anniversary dinner, held on Christmas Day 1918 in the Palace of Justice, Dinant-Sur-Meuse, Belgium likewise has a page for autographs. The festive menu features an extensive list of desserts.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251459/original/file-20181219-27770-gvkoym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251459/original/file-20181219-27770-gvkoym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/251459/original/file-20181219-27770-gvkoym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251459/original/file-20181219-27770-gvkoym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251459/original/file-20181219-27770-gvkoym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251459/original/file-20181219-27770-gvkoym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251459/original/file-20181219-27770-gvkoym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/251459/original/file-20181219-27770-gvkoym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The menu served to the 13th Australian Field Ambulance on Christmas Day 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museums Victoria collection, donated by John Lord</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Christmas dinner in 1919 saw Australians who had served in Europe returning home on the SS Königin Luise, a German ship allocated to Britain as part of war reparations. <a href="https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/396763">A menu</a> saved by Sergeant Tom Robinson Lydster bears no references to the war. </p>
<p>A wreath of holly frames an eclectic menu including “<em>Fillet of Sole au Vin Blanc, Asperges au Beurre Fondu</em>” but also “Lamb cutlets, Tomato sauce, Roast Sirlion of Beef”. The Christmas element is provided by “Plum Pudding, Brandy Sauce, Mince Pies”. More than a year after the end of the war, some surviving Australians were yet to celebrate Christmas on home soil.</p>
<p>Christmas traditions for Australian soldiers, nurses and medics helped maintain cultural normalcy during overseas service. Yet Christmas on active service could be a time of significant stress, a reminder of loved ones far away and of fallen friends. Unfortunately, for those who returned to Australia, forever changed by their experiences, Christmas was not always what they remembered or had imagined.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108987/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Merle Benbow receives funding from The McCoy Seed Fund. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deborah Tout-Smith works for Museums Victoria, which has received external funding, including government-funded, foundation and research council grants. The research in this article was supported by the McCoy grant. Deborah is the Vice-Chair of the board of ICOM (International Council of Museums) Australia, sits on the ICOM-ITC Program Committee, and is a former board member of the History Council of Victoria. She has also held offices in the American Alliance of Museums and Museums Australia.</span></em></p>For Australians serving overseas in WWI, Christmas was particularly difficult. Menus reveal how soldiers tried to maintain the traditions of home.Heather Merle Benbow, Senior lecturer in German and European Studies, The University of MelbourneDeborah Tout-Smith, Senior Curator, Society & Technology Department, Museums Victoria Research InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1066262018-11-15T10:00:24Z2018-11-15T10:00:24ZBibliotherapy: how reading and writing have been healing trauma since World War I<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245557/original/file-20181114-194500-14phsyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Viacheslav Nikolaenko via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bibliotherapy – the idea that reading can <a href="https://inews.co.uk/opinion/comment/wodehouse-stig-abell/">have a beneficial effect</a> on mental health – has <a href="https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/The%20Book%20as%20Cure%20conference%20programme_September_2018(2).pdf">undergone a resurgence</a>. There is mounting clinical evidence that reading can, for example, help people <a href="https://readingagency.org.uk/news/media/new-report-impact-of-reading.html">overcome loneliness</a> and social exclusion. <a href="https://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/booksonprescription">One scheme in Coventry</a> allows health professionals to prescribe books to their patients from a list drawn up by mental health experts. </p>
<p>Even as public library services across Britain are cut back, the healing potential of books is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/05/books-cure-loneliness-closing-libraries-reading">increasingly recognised</a>.</p>
<p>The idea of the healing book has a long history. Key concepts were forged in the crucible of World War I, as nurses, doctors and volunteer librarians grappled with treating soldiers’ minds as well as bodies. The word “bibliotherapy” itself was coined in 1914, by American author and minister <a href="https://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/biographies/samuel-mcchord-crothers/">Samuel McChord Crothers</a>. Helen Mary Gaskell (1853-1940), a pioneer of “literary caregiving”, wrote about the <a href="https://oro.open.ac.uk/54285/1/54285.pdf">beginnings of her war library</a> in 1918:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Surely many of us lay awake the night after the declaration of War, debating … how best we could help in the coming struggle … Into the mind of the writer came, like a flash, the necessity of providing literature for the sick and wounded.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The well-connected Gaskell took her idea to the <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/7726">medical</a> and <a href="https://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/haldane.htm">governmental</a> authorities, gaining official approval. <a href="http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/28th-november-1931/3/a-victorian-lady-lady-battersea-who-died-on-sunday">Lady Battersea</a>, a close friend, offered her a Marble Arch mansion to store donated books, and The Times carried multiple successful public appeals. As Gaskell wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What was our astonishment when not only parcels and boxes, but whole libraries poured in. Day after day vans stood unloading at the door.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gaskell’s library was affiliated to the Red Cross in 1915 and operated internationally – with depots in Egypt, Malta, and Salonika. Her operating principles, axiomatic to bibliotherapy, were to provide a “flow of comfort” based on a “personal touch”. Gaskell explained that “the man who gets the books he needs is the man who really benefits from our library, physically and mentally”. </p>
<p>Her colleagues running Endell Street Military Hospital’s library <a href="https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/100-years-votes-some-women">shared similar views</a> about the importance of books in wartime. On August 12, 1916, the Daily Telegraph reported on the hospital, calling the library a “story in itself”. Run by novelist <a href="http://www.natgould.org/beatrice_harraden_1864-1936">Beatrice Harraden</a>, a member of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Womens-Social-and-Political-Union">Womens Social and Political Union</a> and also, briefly, the actress and feminist playwright <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/Wrobins.htm">Elizabeth Robins</a>, the library was a fundamental part of the treatment of 26,000 wounded between 1915 and 1918. </p>
<p>“We learned,” Robins wrote in Ancilla’s Share, her 1924 analysis of gender politics, “that the best way, often the only way, to get on with curing men’s bodies was to do something for their minds.”</p>
<p>The books the men wanted first were likely to be by the ex-journalist and <a href="http://www.natgould.org/nat_gould">popular writer Nat Gould</a>, whose novels about horseracing were bestsellers. Otherwise, fiction by Rudyard Kipling, Marie Corelli, or Robert Louis Stevenson rated highly. In the <a href="https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=cornhill">Cornhill Magazine</a> in November, 1916, Harraden revealed that the librarians’ “pilgrimages” from one bedside to another ensured what she called “good literature” was always within reach, but that the book that would “heal” was the one that was most wanted: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>However ill [a patient] was, however suffering and broken, the name of Nat Gould would always bring a smile to his face. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The literary caregivers at Endell Street worked responsively, and without judgement, a crucial legacy.</p>
<h2>Library on the frontline</h2>
<p>Literary caregiving also took place closer to the front. Throughout the war, <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/young_mens_christian_association_ymca">the YMCA operated</a> a network of recreation huts and lending libraries for soldiers. After losing his only son, Oscar, at Ypres, the author <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hornung-ernest-william-6736">E. W. Hornung</a> offered his services to the YMCA. Hornung – a relatively obscure figure now, but a literary celebrity then – authored the “<a href="https://strandmag.com/the-magazine/articles/raffles-the-gentleman-thief/">Raffles</a>” stories about the gentleman thief of the same name.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245558/original/file-20181114-172710-8y1ayv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245558/original/file-20181114-172710-8y1ayv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245558/original/file-20181114-172710-8y1ayv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245558/original/file-20181114-172710-8y1ayv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245558/original/file-20181114-172710-8y1ayv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245558/original/file-20181114-172710-8y1ayv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245558/original/file-20181114-172710-8y1ayv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Longshaw Lodge Convalescent Home for Wounded Soldiers, Grindleford, near Sheffield.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Arriving in France in late 1917, Hornung was initially put to work serving tea to British soldiers. But the YMCA soon found him a more suitable job, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265724806_E_W_Hornung's_Unpublished_Diary_the_YMCA_and_the_Reading_Soldier_in_the_First_World_War">placing him in charge</a> of a new lending library for soldiers in Arras. Dispensing tea and books to soldiers helped him process his grief. Hearing soldiers talk about their favourite books played a key role in his recovery – but he also sincerely believed that reading helped soldiers keep their minds healthy while they were in the trenches. Hornung wrote in 1918 that he wanted to feed “the intellectually starved”, while “always remembering that they are fighting-men first and foremost, and prescribing for them both as such and as the men they used to be”.</p>
<h2>Writing a new future</h2>
<p>Present-day veterans encounter the potential of reading and writing in equally participatory ways as interventions with the charities Combat Stress UK (CSUK) and Veterans’ Outreach Services demonstrate.</p>
<p>In CSUK, we read widely from contemporary work before undertaking writing exercises. These were designed to help provide detachment from the internal repetition of traumatic stories that some with PTSD experience. The director of therapy at CSUK, Janice Lobban, says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Collaborative work … gave combat stress veterans the valuable opportunity of developing creative writing skills. Typically, the clinical presentation of veterans causes them to avoid unfamiliar situations and the loss of self-confidence can affect the ability to develop creative potential. Workshops within the safety of our <a href="https://impact.ref.ac.uk/casestudies/CaseStudy.aspx?Id=40629">Surrey treatment centre</a> enabled veterans to have the confidence to experiment with new ideas.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another approach, in workshops with <a href="http://www.vosuk.org/">Veterans’ Outreach Support</a> in Portsmouth in 2018, explored the role of writing in training veterans to become “peer-mentors” of other veterans wanting to access VOS services, ranging from physical and mental wellness to housing benefits to job-seeking. </p>
<p>The results show that veterans responded positively to opportunities for imaginative writing. Trainee peer-mentors responding to a questionnaire told us that the exercises helped them to write fluently about their own lives. For people who spend so much time filling out forms to access various benefits, the opportunity to write creatively was seen as a liberating experience. As one veteran put it: “We are writing into ourselves”.</p>
<p>For 100 years now, reading and writing have helped veterans build relationships, gain confidence and face the challenges of their post-service lives. Our current research charts the influence of wartime literary caregiving on contemporary practice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siobhan Campbell received seed funding from HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) for Creative Writing workshops with Combat Stress UK (2011-13).
Siobhan is a consultant 'literature assessor' for ACNI (Arts Council Northern Ireland).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edmund King and Sara Haslam do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How books can help veterans overcome physical and mental trauma.Sara Haslam, Senior Lecturer in English, The Open UniversityEdmund King, Lecturer in English, The Open UniversitySiobhan Campbell, Lecturer of Creative Writing, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1063902018-11-13T11:04:27Z2018-11-13T11:04:27ZHome Front: 100 years on, BBC’s groundbreaking four-year experiment brought real people to life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245295/original/file-20181113-194497-tm7cgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">From August 2014, the BBC's four-year project followed the lives of ordinary people facing the stress of war on the home front.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the debut of the BBC Radio Four World War I drama <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b03thbcj">Home Front</a> aired in August 2014, it was <a href="https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/birmingham-made-bbc-radio-drama-tells-7599958">described as</a> “the most ambitious radio drama project embarked on by the BBC for half a century”. Over four years and 600 episodes, Home Front brought to life the stories of individual lives during World War I, with each episode set exactly 100 years from the day of broadcast.</p>
<p>Home Front, which finished on the day before Remembrance Sunday, is a fictitious drama – but told against the <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/were-using-the-same-aga-and-belfast-sink-as-jill-archer-how-radio-4-made-home-front/">factual background of World War I</a>, drawing on a kaleidoscope of different perspectives, compelling storylines are melded around the events at the time. </p>
<p>This is a story, not about the war, but about how the country was changed by it. Based variously in the southern English seaside town of Folkestone, the north-eastern shipbuilding centre of Tynesmouth and Devon in England’s west country – it brings to life crucial changes in national consciousness. This includes how limitations on male-only jobs were swept aside by the desperate <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/entries/9656419c-7269-495d-927e-51423950e31e">need for women</a> to fill <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/27WcbTgjzwnGSR9CJ54dPdK/6-surprising-stories-from-the-home-front-in-world-war-one">posts left vacant</a>; the appetite for new forms of spiritualism to make contact with lost sons and husbands; and the sharp disenchantment with established values, as eager young recruits are returned damaged or dead.</p>
<p>There may no longer be any “Tommies” left alive – but there are still plenty of people who remember a parent or great grandparent who had been shaped by the war. For a younger generation, Home Front draws on shared memories to reclaim a sense of the personal and communal from the desolating image of the trenches.</p>
<p>This is also a <a href="https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/rj/2014/00000012/F0020001/art00010">pivotal time</a> in how we mark shared events. As radio competes with <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2017/02/age-podcasts-era-communal-listening-over">on-demand digital platforms</a>, Home Front feels like the chance to make an impact when there is still a shared listening audience <a href="http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2018/podcasts-and-new-audio-strategies/">in the UK at least</a>.</p>
<h2>A fine line to tread</h2>
<p>The challenge is to turn fine intentions into good drama. Telling complex stories involving 65 characters into 12-minute episodes is a tall order. As consultant to the series, historian <a href="https://www.historyextra.com/period/first-world-war/sanitising-the-past-should-historical-drama-reflect-modern-sensibilities/">Maggie Andrews</a>, notes: child-beating, chauvinism and anti-German vitriol were all present at the time, but portrayed too frequently and the audience may lose sympathy in the characters. Used well, however, and it can be a powerful source of drama. In one poignant scene, a vicar’s wife writes to her husband about the death of their infant child, the husband having left for France being unable to recognise their mixed-race child, as his own.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245062/original/file-20181112-83567-eo819d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245062/original/file-20181112-83567-eo819d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245062/original/file-20181112-83567-eo819d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245062/original/file-20181112-83567-eo819d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245062/original/file-20181112-83567-eo819d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245062/original/file-20181112-83567-eo819d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245062/original/file-20181112-83567-eo819d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Home Front set out to portray the ordinary lives of people facing the hardships of World War I.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In order to address the vastness of the shared experience, while also keeping a sense of the personal, the production uses the clever trick of telling each episode from a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/writersroom/entries/dc24c0c6-74ec-3071-8265-4a8184713d9a">different viewpoint</a>. In individual episodes stories may seem domestic – but listen across seasons and you experience <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p054rr2x">air-raids</a> in Folkestone, industrial disputes in Tyneside, espionage in Belgium and coastal hospitals overwhelmed by the injured. Despite this, individuals are never lost in the epic sweep of the series.</p>
<h2>‘Event listening’</h2>
<p>The series has not been without its critics. Some bemoan a <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-may-be-world-war-i-overkill-but-home-front-is-essential-listening-34883">morbid fascination</a> with the war, others observe a Radio Four tone of dialogue-heavy content, as opposed to the trend for confessional-style podcasts or strongly soundscaped action-dramas such as Stardust (Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs) or Home Front’s companion series Tommies. </p>
<p>But with an audience of up to three million per week it is among the the most listened-to radio dramas in the UK, behind The Archers. To put that in context, top US fiction podcasts have reached <a href="https://www.werealive.com/blog/">100m downloads</a> – but as a radio production and podcast, Home Front has achieved more than 300m listens.</p>
<p>There is also a passionate following on social media and a surprisingly international audience. In researching the series, I talked to audio drama producer Austin Beach from Kentucky, who admired the authenticity of the characters and settings, as well as a French listener who ran a petition to extend the series. There was also a German listener who praised the characterisation of Germans as being “as real as their British counterparts”, and observing “you might even like them.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1060876906910924800"}"></div></p>
<p>These successes notwithstanding, it’s an open question whether something like Home Front might be repeated in the future. When commissioned in 2013 Radio 4 was unequivocally the dominant story-telling medium in the UK, now it <a href="https://theconversation.com/netflix-of-the-spoken-word-big-changes-in-the-world-of-audio-for-2017-70553">competes for market share</a> with podcasters, publishers and the Amazon audiobook subsidiary, Audible. Will public service broadcasting continue to have the shared, unifying power of radio, in a world of on-demand multi-channel listening?</p>
<h2>Public service broadcasting in a new era</h2>
<p>Home Front is a remarkable series, full of subtle humour and some breathtakingly poignant moments. But more than this, it transports listeners to a world that lies on the cusp of memory and history. In this sense it is a triumph of the Reithian values: to inform, to educate and to entertain.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245063/original/file-20181112-83593-1qqa1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245063/original/file-20181112-83593-1qqa1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245063/original/file-20181112-83593-1qqa1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245063/original/file-20181112-83593-1qqa1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245063/original/file-20181112-83593-1qqa1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245063/original/file-20181112-83593-1qqa1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/245063/original/file-20181112-83593-1qqa1s0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Event radio: Home Front is among the the most listened-to radio dramas in the UK.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As BBC radio embarks on a new era, with the <a href="http://www.musicweek.com/digital/read/it-is-a-really-significant-landmark-bbc-sounds-launches-with-artist-curated-content/074284">launch of the digital platform BBC Sounds</a> designed to appeal to younger audiences, I hope that it continues to champion the public interest by backing big initiatives like Home Front. But I also believe it has a role in coordinating and nurturing talent. </p>
<p>In a recent project I was involved in, the <a href="http://www.11thhouraudio.com/">11th Hour Audio project</a>, podcasters from all over the world collaborated to create new horror-themed productions for <a href="https://www.audiodramaday.com/">World Audio Drama Day</a>. The BBC does not always need to commission content; competitions, sharing studio time or co-productions could be an alternative route to reaching new audiences in commemorating national events.</p>
<p>As the last bugle sounds on this epic production, BBC Radio should be congratulated on commissioning a risky but rewarding series. Many will miss it, some will not, but there is no denying the ambition which proves the value of public service broadcasting. And if you haven’t had the chance to listen, it will continue to be available for 10 years online.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Brooks works for the Institute of Coding funded by the Office for Students.</span></em></p>Over four years, this BBC Radio 4 drama chronicled the daily lives of ordinary people dealing with the hardships of World War I.Richard Brooks, Research Associate - Centre for Business in Society, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1064082018-11-12T10:56:13Z2018-11-12T10:56:13ZPalestine and Britain: forgotten legacy of World War I that devastated the Middle East<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244547/original/file-20181108-74766-1daohpk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rare photograph of the formal transfer of Jerusalem to British rule. </span> </figcaption></figure><p>For those of us of an age to have known only peace in Western Europe,
the centenary of the end of World War I is a an opportunity to learn something of the extreme consequences of the failure to solve political differences peacefully. And when the world marked the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/armistice-61797">100th anniversary of the Armistice</a>, millions fell silent to remember the pain and sacrifice of that conflict.</p>
<p>But another anniversary that fell this year – that of the end of the British Mandate for Palestine in 1948, a seminal moment in a conflict that continues to this day – has been largely ignored. It should not be. Britain’s role was pivotal – and, if it is forgotten in the UK, it is remembered in Middle East. </p>
<p>For one of the consequences of the end of World War I was the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The December before the Armistice in November 1918, troops under the command of <a href="https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/edmund-allenby">General Sir Edmund Allenby</a> (nicknamed “The Bull”) captured Jerusalem. After the end of the war, The League of Nations “mandated” (<a href="https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/232">handed over</a>) what was then Palestine to British rule. That rule lasted until 1948. Then the British withdrew. The region’s Jewish and Arab populations were <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/arab-israeli-war">left to to fight it out</a>. The Jewish forces prevailed and, in May 1948, the <a href="https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/231">State of Israel was declared</a>. </p>
<p>The conflict is remembered by Israelis as the War of Independence; by the Palestinians as “<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/nakba-day-in-palestine-past-catastrophe-future-conflict-26723">al-nakba</a></em>” (the catastrophe). In Britain – whose retreat after a period during which “the purpose of the mandate was never entirely clear to most of those serving in Palestine”, as Naomi Shepherd put it in her <a href="http://www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/41024">1999 book</a> Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine – it is barely remembered at all.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nakba-day-in-palestine-past-catastrophe-future-conflict-26723">Nakba day in Palestine – past catastrophe, future conflict?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In a sense, this is all the more surprising because of the scale of British involvement. The numbers are staggering today. The National Army museum website gives a figure of <a href="https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/conflict-Palestine">100,000 British troops in Palestine in 1947</a> – compared to a total of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39968776">78,000 fully trained troops</a> in the entire British Army in 2017.</p>
<p>In another sense, it is not. The task faced by the mandate authorities was not easy. They left the region riven by conflict which continues to this day. Seeking international Jewish support during World War I, Britain had – in the words of the <a href="https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/jaro2009/SOC763/um/7373230/lecture_1/_6-19__1a-Hobsbawm.pdf?lang=cs">late historian Eric Hobsbawm</a> – “incautiously and ambiguously promised to establish a ‘national home for the Jews’ in Palestine”. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-century-on-the-balfour-declaration-still-shapes-palestinians-everyday-lives-86662">Balfour Declaration</a> – as that pledge was known – was made in 1917. Its centenary in 2017 was barely noticeable compared to the attention the Armistice has generated. Like the end of the mandate, the Balfour Declaration is an anniversary Britain has mostly preferred to forget. The same cannot be said in the land that was Mandate Palestine.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-century-on-the-balfour-declaration-still-shapes-palestinians-everyday-lives-86662">A century on, the Balfour Declaration still shapes Palestinians' everyday lives</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>No brass bands</h2>
<p>As a correspondent newly arrived in Gaza to take up a posting during the second Palestinian <em><a href="https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2017/01/24/what-is-an-intifada">intifada</a></em>, or the uprising against Israel, I was soon welcomed by an elderly resident of a refugee camp – and then chastised by the same gentleman for the Balfour Declaration. The year was 2002, but he traced his wretched fate – his breeze-block house had just been demolished by the Israeli Army – to that document from 1917. </p>
<p>In his memoir, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ever-the-diplomat-confessions-of-a-foreign-office-mandarin-by-sherard-cowper-coles-xl78q62fpd6">Ever the Diplomat</a>, the former British ambassador to Israel, Sherard Cowper-Coles, recalled an encounter he witnessed between the then Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and the British Middle East envoy, Lord Levy. An increasingly undiplomatic exchange ended when Sharon’s “massive fist came thumping down on the desk”, as he shouted: “The British Mandate is over.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244806/original/file-20181109-39548-1ixzumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244806/original/file-20181109-39548-1ixzumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244806/original/file-20181109-39548-1ixzumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244806/original/file-20181109-39548-1ixzumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244806/original/file-20181109-39548-1ixzumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244806/original/file-20181109-39548-1ixzumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244806/original/file-20181109-39548-1ixzumq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British leaving Haifa in 1948.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">תא</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is hard to imagine now, but when the mandate did end in 1948, it was a huge story in the British press. Research for <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137395122">my book</a>, Headlines from the Holy Land: Reporting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, led me to archived newspaper articles where the first draft of the history of that era was written. The morning that British rule ended, May 14 1948, the Daily Mirror did its best to rouse patriotic pride:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When British rule began, says the Colonial Office, Palestine was primitive and underdeveloped. The population of 750,000 were disease-ridden and poor. But new methods of farming were introduced, medical services provided, roads and railways built, water supplies improved, malaria wiped out.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The next day’s Daily Mail painted the stirring picture of the “weather-beaten, sun-dried Union Jack” which had flown over British Headquarters in Jerusalem being brought back to “the airways terminal building at Victoria” in central London. </p>
<p>Where the story has found its way into contemporary newspapers it has had a fraction of the attention granted to the end of World War I in Europe – a lack of public commemoration which suggests a combination of ignorance and shame. </p>
<p>“There were no brass bands playing when they came back. They were treated as if they’d been involved in something dirty”, the organiser of the Palestine Veterans Association told the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/last-post-for-veterans-of-palestine-revolt-30hdkl3hq">Sunday Times</a> recently. </p>
<p>Ignoring anniversaries such as these – especially at a time when the <a href="https://theconversation.com/wearing-the-poppy-has-always-been-a-political-act-heres-why-106489">poppy appeal</a> is given ever greater public prominence – amounts to selective commemoration, which acts against learning from military and diplomatic mistakes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106408/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Rodgers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The British Mandate in Palestine had its origins in the end of World War I and lasted until 1948. What happened next has devastated the Middle East ever since.James Rodgers, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1065932018-11-08T22:25:58Z2018-11-08T22:25:58ZAn infinity of waste – the brutal reality of the First World War<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244614/original/file-20181108-74757-15ijmc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scholar takes a pilgrimage of the Western Front to try to comprehend the loss of lives of the First World War. Here British soldiers in a battlefield trench, c. 1915-1918.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the armistice signing on <a href="https://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/11/nov-11-1918-world-war-i-ends/">Nov. 11, 1918</a>, it was all over: one of the greatest conflagrations the world had seen, the butcher’s bill, in the end, totalling <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/weimar-republic-fragility-democracy/politics/casualties-world-war-i-country-politics-world-war-i">6,000 soldiers per day</a> for four of the longest years ever experienced. A century on, over the past four summers, I undertook a pilgrimage walk along the complete length of the Western Front from the Swiss border to the English Channel, to bear witness to this inconceivable loss. It was a distance of more than nine hundred kilometres, with side trips ranging over the major killing fields and eastward to the location of the first and the last battles at Mons.</p>
<p>Throughout, I was conscious, often to the brink of heart-rendered grief, of the overwhelming death count. Traversing the landscape slowly on foot rather than by motorized travel enables one to develop a private and profound intimacy with both the terrain and what it reveals, as well as the way in which memory is invoked. </p>
<h2>Heaps of bones</h2>
<p>The first year’s walk ended in Verdun, a place which set the template in terms of pointless wastage for that which was to come. Here, the Germans hurled everything they had, and the <a href="https://www.theworldwar.org/explore/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/they-shall-not-pass">French adopted their “They Shall Not Pass”</a> motto, the result being more than 700,000 dead on both sides. The remains of many these victims are visible today as vast heaps of bones glimpsed through the observation windows at the massive ossuary there.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244597/original/file-20181108-74766-1bohxwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244597/original/file-20181108-74766-1bohxwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244597/original/file-20181108-74766-1bohxwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244597/original/file-20181108-74766-1bohxwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244597/original/file-20181108-74766-1bohxwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244597/original/file-20181108-74766-1bohxwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244597/original/file-20181108-74766-1bohxwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Menin Gate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Canada War Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When standing in front of the <a href="https://www.cwgc.org/find/find-cemeteries-and-memorials/80800/thiepval-memorial">Thiepval Memorial</a> or <a href="https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/objects-and-photos/archival-documents/personal-documents/menin-gate/">the Menin Gate</a>, many find it hard to wrap their heads around the tens of thousands of names inscribed of those who are “missing,” having no known graves. It may be easier to comprehend this immensity when one can witness a sign of the individuality of loss. This happened to me when crossing a field at the Somme, and coming upon a human jaw bone emerging from the recently plowed spring soil. </p>
<p>There was nothing to do. Out of respect, I took no photo. I unshouldered my backpack and dropped to the ground and shared some moments with the individual before I gently pushed his bones back into the receiving embrace of the earth.</p>
<h2>“Sacrificed to the fallacy that war can end war.”</h2>
<p>As impressive as the major national memorials are – nowhere more so perhaps than the giant <a href="http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/first-world-war/road-to-vimy-ridge/vimy7">twin-pronged tuning fork of that of Canadians at Vimy Ridge</a> – it is the small, makeshift and private ones, occurring along lonely rural roads, that most resonate the feeling of loss. As fine as is the justifiably famous<a href="http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/belgium-belgique/bilateral_relations_bilaterales/route1915-17.aspx?lang=eng"> “Brooding Solider” memorial to Canadians exposed to the first use of poison gas at St. Julien</a>, I was affected more by a small, private memorial nearby. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244599/original/file-20181108-74775-5m2bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244599/original/file-20181108-74775-5m2bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244599/original/file-20181108-74775-5m2bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244599/original/file-20181108-74775-5m2bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244599/original/file-20181108-74775-5m2bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244599/original/file-20181108-74775-5m2bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244599/original/file-20181108-74775-5m2bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canadian tank with soldiers advancing with Infantry at Vimy, April 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Canadian_tank_and_soldiers_Vimy_1917.jpg">Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There, a British family had included a photograph of their relative killed, along with a description of what had transpired. He had lain severely injured in the field immediately in front of where I was standing for a remarkable six days before being recovered and evacuated to a hospital behind the lines, where he soon expired. Lying there unmoving, all alone, among his dead companions for that period, with no water and no doubt in constant pain is unbearable to contemplate. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244602/original/file-20181108-74778-l7zw9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244602/original/file-20181108-74778-l7zw9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244602/original/file-20181108-74778-l7zw9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244602/original/file-20181108-74778-l7zw9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244602/original/file-20181108-74778-l7zw9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244602/original/file-20181108-74778-l7zw9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244602/original/file-20181108-74778-l7zw9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244602/original/file-20181108-74778-l7zw9s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Private memorials along a small country road to several British soldiers killed in the field immediately behind, one of whom lay there struggling for life for six days.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert France</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Of all the tens of thousands of graves seen, it is worth explicitly mentioning those of three individuals. </p>
<p>The last cemetery I visited lay outside of Mons, in Belgium. Here, separated by a distance of about 30 metres, lie the graves of <a href="https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/3403342">John Parr, the first British Commonwealth soldier killed on Aug. 21, 1914</a>, and of <a href="https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/war-museums-victory-1918-exhibit-commemorates-final-days-of-first-world-war">Canadian George Price, the last, killed at 10:58 am on Nov. 11, 1918</a>, tragically just two minutes before hostilities ceased. </p>
<p>They are separated in time by the deaths of 953,000 of their compatriots. A gruesome math exercise reveals the true magnitude of that horrific statistic: if you stacked up all those bodies between the two gravesites, the wall of corpses would tower almost 32 kilometres high. It is unfathomable. </p>
<p>That is only the toll for the British Commonwealth; both France and Germany lost more men. And then there are those from all the other nations. </p>
<p>One grave, above all others, stands out in sharp contrast. Its inscription is remarkably different from the oft-quoted “for King and Country” slogan. It is located near Ypres and is for Arthur Young. Written by his father — tellingly a diplomat — it is a bitter indictment to the purposeless waste of a generation, and reads: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Sacrificed to the fallacy that war can end war.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is no better testament to sum up the whole enterprise. And there is, of course, nothing that is ultimately more depressing. </p>
<h2>The war did not end all wars</h2>
<p>The absolute saddest thing I observed during my entire pilgrimage was the series of red and white banners hung at the exit from <a href="http://www.toerisme-ieper.be/en/page/334-337-338/other-great-war-museums-.html">the war museum in Ypres</a>. On them are listed, one after another, all the wars that have transpired in the years since ‘The War to End All Wars’ finished in 1918. Each name leaps out as a stark and shameful reminder of our collective failure. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244603/original/file-20181108-74787-tgrj7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244603/original/file-20181108-74787-tgrj7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244603/original/file-20181108-74787-tgrj7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244603/original/file-20181108-74787-tgrj7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244603/original/file-20181108-74787-tgrj7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244603/original/file-20181108-74787-tgrj7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244603/original/file-20181108-74787-tgrj7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244603/original/file-20181108-74787-tgrj7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">List of global armed conflicts occurring since the end of the ‘war to end all wars’ in 1918, with space left at the end to add more names.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Robert France</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I counted 101 armed conflicts throughout my six decades of life; and to my embarrassment, there were names on that banner of armed conflicts about which I had never head. Worst of all, however, was that the last panel contained space…waiting to be written on in the future. </p>
<p>Remembrance is essential, but it is not enough. More than a tenth of a million people have lost their lives due to armed conflict in 2018. </p>
<p>When we remember the end of the Great War on this Nov. 11 and subsequent remembrance days and think of Ypres, we must reflect upon Yemen; when we mourn the dead at the Somme, we must rue the deceased in Syria. And somehow we need to shift from contemplation to action. </p>
<p>While the rise of right-wing populism in the West is meritoriously troubling, in the end, both America and most of the rest of us will survive another two or six years of U.S. President Donald Trump. Most, but not all. For the same cannot be said for the hundreds of thousands whom will die in wars distant from North America and Europe <a href="https://newint.org/features/2012/09/01/media-war-coverage">which receive correspondingly little or even no media coverage</a> over that same time.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106593/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert France does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From the Swiss border to the English channel, a scholar describes his pilgrimage of the Western Front as a tribute to fallen soldiers and to learn more about the devastating loss of life.Robert France, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Landscape Studies, Dalhousie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1004622018-09-02T20:10:55Z2018-09-02T20:10:55ZWorld politics explainer: The Great War (WWI)<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230516/original/file-20180803-41331-10t1dv8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Understanding the first world war is an exercise in comprehending the depth of human commitment to destruction, violence and resilience at a scale never experienced before 1914.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90322117.r=trait%C3%A9%20de%20versailles?rk=1158804;0">BNF France</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is the first in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/world-politics-explainer-59420">series</a> of explainers on key moments in the past 100 years of world political history. In it, our authors examine how and why an event unfolded, its impact at the time, and its relevance to politics today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In October 1918, a young man was temporarily blinded on the Western Front and evacuated to hospital. For four long years, he had served in the German Army alongside 11 million men. </p>
<p>Whether his blindness came from a gas attack or a sudden bout of nerves is <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/did-hitler-fake-being-a-victim-of-gas-warfare/">still being debated</a>. But it is clear that, like hundreds of millions of people at the time, his wartime experience shaped the rest of his life. </p>
<p>This was during the first world war – the foundational event of the violent 20th century – and that young man was Adolf Hitler.</p>
<h2>What happened?</h2>
<p>Sparked in the <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/july_crisis_1914">Balkans</a> as a result of <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/nationalism">European nationalism</a> and <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/imperialism">imperial</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/08/first-world-war-imperial-bloodbath-warning-noble-cause">rivalries</a>, the first world war raged from July 1914 to November 1918. It pitted the 48 million soldiers of the Allies – led by the French, British and Russian empires – against the 26 million soldiers of the Central Powers – led by the German, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, who lost the war. </p>
<p>It was a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-the-first-world-war/97A15F86A086DDCC0475D19D717FBC42">truly global conflict</a> fought on battlefields across the world, but also on the home front – in people’s <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/womens_mobilization_for_war_newfoundland">living rooms</a>, <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/food_and_nutrition_austria-hungary">fields</a> and <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/militarized_workers_italy">factories</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/flies-filth-and-bully-beef-life-at-gallipoli-in-1915-39321">Flies, filth and bully beef: life at Gallipoli in 1915</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The impact of the Great War</h2>
<p>Over four long years, the world collapsed in what was then the largest <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/science_and_technology">industrial war</a> ever fought. The conflict left over 10 million soldiers and 6 million civilians dead. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230504/original/file-20180803-41354-18h9w54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230504/original/file-20180803-41354-18h9w54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230504/original/file-20180803-41354-18h9w54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230504/original/file-20180803-41354-18h9w54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=930&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230504/original/file-20180803-41354-18h9w54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230504/original/file-20180803-41354-18h9w54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230504/original/file-20180803-41354-18h9w54.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1169&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A wounded soldier.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.biusante.parisdescartes.fr/histoire/images/index.php?refphot=CISA1146#">BIU Santé (Paris)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Over 20 million men were wounded – both <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/mutilation_and_disfiguration">physically</a> and <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_psychiatry">mentally</a> – rendering them unable to resume civilian life. What’s more, the war facilitated the spreading of the <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/influenza_pandemic">Spanish flu</a> pandemic, which killed at least 50 million people in 1918-19.</p>
<p><em>And for what?</em></p>
<p>The Allies’ “victory” in 1918 did not result in a safer and better world, and the first world war failed to become the “war to end all wars”. </p>
<p>Conflict raged on in the <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/post-war_societies_middle_east">Middle East</a> and colonial outposts right through the 1920s. <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/post-war_societies">For many</a>, war did not stop with the Armistice of November 11, 1918. </p>
<p>In fact, given the scale of devastation across Europe, it is not clear who won what. </p>
<p>“Winners” and “losers” alike lost population, resources and infrastructure. Yes, there were marginal gains here and there for some, but most countries came out of the bloodshed crippled financially. Some were politically crippled, too.</p>
<p>Perhaps one clear winner did emerge from the conflict, however: the United States. </p>
<p>The US sold materials and lent money to the Allies during the war and, as a result, amassed gold reserves that underpinned its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/books/review/the-deluge-by-adam-tooze.html">post-war global economic dominance</a>, while other countries were gripped in an <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/post-war_economies_east_central_europe">inflationary spiral</a>. </p>
<p>To a lesser extent, <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/warfare_1914-1918_japan">Japan</a>, too, benefited from the conflict. Fighting on the same side as the Allies fuelled the country’s militarisation and imperial ambitions in Asia.</p>
<p>Another outcome of the war was the disintegration of the centuries-old Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman empires, alongside the more recently-formed German empire, forever transforming the world’s political landscape. </p>
<p>The first world war also prompted the <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/revolutions_russian_empire">Russian Revolution</a>, which further altered the course of the 20th century. </p>
<p>The “winners” were not immune from turbulence, either. France and Britain were confronted to <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/colonial_empires_after_the_wardecolonization">various challenges</a> in the colonies that had supported them throughout the conflict, in <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/post-war_societies_africa">Africa</a> or in <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/post-war_societies_india">India</a> for instance. Local populations demanded more autonomy and at times even rebelled against their colonial masters. </p>
<p>The new world that emerged from this global conflict was one filled with hope, but riven by unrest, revolutions and ethnic conflicts. </p>
<p>A series of peace treaties, the most memorable one being the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000002-0043.pdf">Treaty of Versailles</a> of June 1919, endeavoured to secure and build a global peace, laying the basis for new international institutions such as the League of Nations. Its role was to prevent future wars through conflict resolution and diplomacy. But the treaty also required the demilitarisation of Germany, demanded that Germany acknowledge its responsibility for causing the war, and inflicted severe war reparations on the country. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230517/original/file-20180803-41331-dtmk8h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230517/original/file-20180803-41331-dtmk8h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230517/original/file-20180803-41331-dtmk8h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230517/original/file-20180803-41331-dtmk8h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230517/original/file-20180803-41331-dtmk8h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230517/original/file-20180803-41331-dtmk8h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230517/original/file-20180803-41331-dtmk8h.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Woodrow Wilson at Versailles, 1919.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b530177909.r=trait%C3%A9%20de%20versailles?rk=729617;2">BNF France</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The end of the fighting also brought more challenges. Tens of millions of soldiers were demobilised and returned home, prompting issues related to <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/venereal_diseases">public health</a>, <a href="https://voxeu.org/article/walking-wounded-british-economy-aftermath-world-war-i">unemployment</a> and <a href="https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/39949">domestic violence</a>. Hitler, for example, returned to Munich with no family, no career prospects and no place to stay. He would resent the Treaty of Versailles his whole life, and claim that Germany was not defeated on the battlefield, but <a href="https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/stab-in-the-back_myth">stabbed in the back</a> by internal enemies – the Jews, the left and the republicans.</p>
<p>But let it not be said that the first world war caused the second, nor that it made Hitler who he subsequently became. In the late 1920s, Germany was doing pretty well under the Weimar Republic – so well that this period was dubbed “the Golden Age”. Pacifism was a strong bipartisan force in 1930s <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198222958.001.0001/acprof-9780198222958">France</a>, <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/1415">Britain</a> and Belgium. Another future was entirely possible.</p>
<h2>Contemporary relevance</h2>
<p>Yet, in the inter-wars years, the repercussions of the first world war remained omnipresent. </p>
<p>Old empires had left a vacuum for new states like Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia to form, and the borders of those new states were soon contested. </p>
<p>Even the 1929 financial crash was partly related to the first world war. This was because states accumulated debt to finance the conflict, and their debt increased even more as they continued borrowing to pay war reparations after the war had ended. This contributed to global inflation and financial insecurity, two factors of the 1929 crash. The first world war – or rather, its consequences – seemed endless.</p>
<p>And it is those consequences which undeniably created some of the conditions which set the second global conflict ablaze. Not least through armament, such as tanks, military aviation, submarines, chemical weapons – all of which became weapons of choice during the first world war and played a crucial role in the second. </p>
<p>But the second world war had its own intrinsic causes not directly related to the first world war. These included the development of new totalitarian ideologies, mass media, anti-Semitism, and the failures of the League of Nations as well as liberal democracies to oppose dangerous regimes. </p>
<p>Interestingly, some historical actors and historians believe that the two world wars cannot be separated, and form, in fact, a Thirty Years’ War. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233620/original/file-20180827-149490-w4d0po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233620/original/file-20180827-149490-w4d0po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233620/original/file-20180827-149490-w4d0po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233620/original/file-20180827-149490-w4d0po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233620/original/file-20180827-149490-w4d0po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233620/original/file-20180827-149490-w4d0po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233620/original/file-20180827-149490-w4d0po.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Injured WWI soldiers in a battlefield trench, 1915-1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bandaged-british-world-war-1-soldiers-248207848?src=169pvd5MAuOYFfl9tQR1WQ-1-2">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Certainly, the repercussions of the first world war are still being felt today. Intergenerational grief and family history spurs hundreds of thousands of people to engage in <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-remembrance-day-digital-commemoration-makes-it-impossible-to-forget-65560">digital commemorations</a> or <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14443058.2014.921635">commemorative tourism</a> at former battlefields.</p>
<p>The land, too, remains deeply affected. In Belgium and France, for instance, war-time explosive devices <a href="https://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_ypres-un-obus-de-la-1ere-guerre-mondiale-explose-et-fait-deux-morts?id=8226445">continue to kill</a> people, and will still be found for hundreds of years to come. </p>
<p>In some places, the soil is so contaminated by <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19475020.2017.1393347">chemical agents</a> from the first world war that nothing has grown there since. </p>
<p>Finally, much of the geopolitical struggles of modern times date back to the first world war. The Middle East is a case in point. Decisions taken during and after the war laid the basis for <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-politique-etrangere-2014-1-page-187.htm">ongoing conflicts</a> due to contested boundaries and spheres of influences in the region. </p>
<p>The end of the war was not the victory the Allies claimed it was. But politicians and military leaders had to justify the dead and the enormous sacrifices they had demanded from their people. Thinking back, the most chilling part of the vain bloodbath is that the citizens of the belligerent nations did support the war and its sacrifices for years, some until the breaking point of revolt.</p>
<p>The first world war was a turning point in history as it irremediably altered political, economic, social and cultural life around the globe. First world war studies remain one of the most active fields of historical research today precisely because of the relevance of the conflict throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. </p>
<p>Understanding the first world war is thus an exercise in comprehending the depth of human commitment to destruction, violence and resilience at a scale never experienced before 1914. But it also reminds us of the fragility of peace, and of our duty as citizens to remain vigilant of nationalism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100462/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Romain Fathi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More than 16 million people lost their lives in world war one. Over a century later, we are still asking – for what?Romain Fathi, Lecturer, History, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/896322018-02-06T15:15:51Z2018-02-06T15:15:51ZThe Great War’s hidden stories reveal heroism and tragedy in equal measure<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205078/original/file-20180206-14089-e8p8ji.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C5%2C597%2C386&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Blyth Spartans team of 1917, including Bella Reay (front row, centre) who scored a hat-trick in the Munitionettes Cup
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yvonne Crawford</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>World War I is still seared into the national consciousness thanks largely to Remembrance Sunday. Most people, even those who might not consider themselves to be students of history, will know the general themes of that conflict: the devastating loss of life, the gruelling trench warfare and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/0/ww1/26439020">new jobs for women</a>. But during my film research for <a href="http://asunder1916.uk">Asunder,</a> I found stories that had been hidden from view.</p>
<p>My film highlights nine real-life accounts based in Sunderland and the north-east, a vulnerable area during World War I due to its shipyards and munitions factories. These extraordinary tales, found during research in more than 20 local and national archives, include accounts of the immense changes for women and the challenges of working women’s suffrage activism.</p>
<p>In contrast, there are also tales of conscientious objecting, pacifism, and what it was like on the first day of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-battle-of-the-somme-marks-a-turning-point-of-world-war-i-60741">Battle of the Somme</a>. </p>
<h2>The goal scorer</h2>
<p>On Christmas Day 1917 the citizens of Blyth in Northumberland turned out in large numbers to see <a href="http://www.blythspartans.com/">Blyth Spartans</a> play their Munitionette Cup rivals Gosforth Aviation, in aid of the Duke of Wellington Social Club’s Parcel Fund. The final score was a 6-0 win for Spartans, including a hat trick from a 17-year-old <a href="https://blythspirit.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/ladies-doing-it-for-themselves/">Bella Reay</a>. </p>
<p>Reay, the daughter of a coal miner, was a munitions worker in the South docks of Blyth. She took any opportunity to kick a football around on the nearby sands during factory work breaks and would go on to become a top footballer, scoring 133 goals as centre forward in a single season. During World War I, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-tyne-26360608/world-war-one-at-home-football-playing-munitions-women">thousands of women munition workers played football</a>, but Blyth Spartans Ladies’ FC were exceptional.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205038/original/file-20180206-14096-szsugg.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205038/original/file-20180206-14096-szsugg.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205038/original/file-20180206-14096-szsugg.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205038/original/file-20180206-14096-szsugg.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=891&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205038/original/file-20180206-14096-szsugg.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205038/original/file-20180206-14096-szsugg.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/205038/original/file-20180206-14096-szsugg.PNG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Blyth Spartans leading goal scorer Bella Raey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yvonne Crawford</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Spartans were unbeatable (from 33 games in one season, they won 29, and drew four), winning the Munitionettes’ Cup Final on May 18 1918 at Middlesborough’s Ayresome Park in front of a crowd of 22,000. In a time of austerity and fear, Reay and her team not only kept the crowds in good spirits but also raised over £2,000 for the local community. </p>
<p>Women’s football during the war was both competitive and highly skilled. But as the war came to an end and munitions factories closed, teams crumpled and disbanded. A few women continued to play until 1921 when the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30329606">FA banned women’s football on their grounds</a> - a ban not lifted until the 1970s. </p>
<p>Reay married and became Mrs Henstock, having two daughters. She worked for years in the shipyards at Blyth. After retirement she was enticed back to play a few matches to help raise funds, playing for Cowpen, Cambois, and a team known simply as Blyth. She could still score goals, scoring all four in Cowpen’s 4-0 win between Cowpen and Bebside.</p>
<p>I spoke to Yvonne Crawford, Reay’s granddaughter, who told me how ladies football was used as a way to raise funds for the soldiers wounded in the war and how Reay took to it. She said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She loved her football, she loved it. Everybody wanted her, because she was such a good goal scorer. She played for the Munitionette’s, she played for Blyth Spartan’s, she played for Northumberland, she played for England. She used to say to me, ‘I was good, but mind I knew I was’.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Shot by firing squad</h2>
<p>Not all the stories I found were so uplifting. <a href="https://www.sunderlandecho.com/our-region/sunderland/service-held-in-belgium-to-honour-the-sunderland-soldier-shot-at-dawn-1-8653905/amp">Robert Hope</a>, was a 19-year-old soldier and former shipyard caulker in Deptford, Sunderland. Hope enlisted under the pseudonym of Private James Hepple, and on initial training in Ireland, he met and married a 15-year-old Derry girl called Rosina McGilloway. </p>
<p>Once posted to the 1st Battalion in <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-century-on-gallipoli-campaign-should-be-more-than-just-a-symbol-of-futility-53084">Gallipoli</a>, the couple never saw one another again. Robert had been shot at, shelled and gassed in some of the bloodiest battles of World War I. After fighting in the Somme, Robert went absent without leave for 11 weeks. On being captured, he was charged with desertion and, after a hearing that lasted just ten minutes, he was killed by firing squad on the July 5 1917, one of 306 soldiers shot at dawn during the conflict.</p>
<p>One of the most heartening aspects of the film’s research was tracking down and meeting living relatives of the people that feature in Asunder. I contacted Bernard Hope, second cousin to Robert, who said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was never told about Robert when I was growing up … he was written out of our family history. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I also met Geoff Simmons, the great-nephew of Captain Alan Lendrum, the soldier charged with shooting Robert. He recounted how his great-uncle was court-martialled in July 1917 for refusing to take charge of the execution because he knew Robert personally. He was subsequently demoted from captain to lieutenant but, in view of his continued bravery in the field, this was overturned.</p>
<p>Robert’s young wife married again and had ten children – none of who were told about Robert. Some family members in Derry were led to believe that he had run off with another woman, such was the shame and scandal attached to what happened to him. But Rosina still thought enough of him to pay for an inscription on his grave.</p>
<p>This was a unique period in history and it contains some truly amazing characters, all of who deserve to be remembered for their own part in the story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89632/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asunder was commissioned as part of 14–18 NOW’s WW1 arts programme. Directed by Esther Johnson, the film incorporates oral histories, letters, memoirs and contemporaneous newspaper items within a script by Bob Stanley. It is narrated by Kate Adie and Alun Armstrong, alongside a specially commissioned score by Sunderland’s Mercury-nominated Field Music and Newcastle’s Warm Digits, performed with the Royal Northern Sinfonica and The Cornshed Sisters. Screenings in 2018 include a performance with live music at the Sage Gateshead scheduled for the Armistice centenary on November 11 and a screening at The Women's Library, LSE in conjunction with their Suffrage 18 exhibition. See <a href="http://asunder1916.uk/events/">http://asunder1916.uk/events/</a> and <a href="http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/suffrage18">http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/suffrage18</a> for more information.</span></em></p>A top class female footballer and tragic young soldier who was shot for ‘desertion’ despite fighting in some of WW1’s bloodiest battle fields are two hidden stories of The Great War.Esther Johnson, Professor of Film and Media Arts, Principal Lecturer in Film and Media Production, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/867682017-11-10T01:52:29Z2017-11-10T01:52:29ZFlowers, remembrance and the art of war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194106/original/file-20171110-13296-gy6opb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Poppies at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/canberra-australia-march-18-2017-poppy-613609064">katatrix/shuttershock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before 1914, flowers in everyday life spelt beauty, femininity and innocence; they were seen as part of women’s culture. But during the first world war, that changed. Men gathered posies of flowers on battlefields and dried them in honour of the dead, they turned to wild flowers as motifs for paintings and photographs, and they recognised in blue cornflowers and red poppies the fragility of life.</p>
<p>Historian Paul Fussell referred to the red poppy, <em>Papaver rhoeas</em>, as “an indispensable part of the symbolism” of WWI. When, on November 11, those who fought and died in WWI are commemorated, the sanguine colour of the red poppy, a flower that grew in profusion on Flanders Fields, is a vivid reminder to the living of the cost of sacrifice in war.</p>
<p>At the end of the conflict, artificial replicas of the Flanders poppy were sold in Allied countries to be worn in honour of the dead. Their resistance to decay became an embodiment of everlasting memory. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194084/original/file-20171109-13329-1x6k3gr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artificial poppies left at the Waitati cenotaph in New Zealand (2009). The white poppy is used as a symbol of peace.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anzac_poppies.JPG">Nankai/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, the red poppy was not always adopted without criticism. After 1933, in opposition to the symbolism of it, peace ceremonies appropriated the <a href="http://www.ppu.org.uk/whitepoppy/index.html">white poppy</a>. Each flower expresses a different view on war: red embodies commemoration of sacrifice; white opposes political violence and remembers all war victims. </p>
<p>As living forms, as art, and as symbols, the wildflowers that soldiers encountered in WWI Europe help us negotiate the unimaginable enormity of war and deepen the solemnity of remembrance. </p>
<h2>‘We are the dead’</h2>
<p>Among the most affecting, but least talked about, Australian war paintings that officially commemorate and remember the fallen soldiers of the First World War, is George Lambert’s <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C176421">Gallipoli Wild Flowers</a> (1919). Painted while Lambert served as Official War Artist, the work is unusual for the absence of soldiers’ bodies shown in action or in death. Yet it alludes to both by the inclusion of an empty slouch hat and a cluster of battlefield wildflowers. At the centre of the array of blossoms is the Flanders poppy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194068/original/file-20171109-13311-aljxpg.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=607&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">George Lambert, ‘Gallipoli wild flowers’, oil (1919).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C176421">ART02838/Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The painting is a floral still-life. It exudes the melancholy of life stilled, and challenges popular conceptions that flowers are feminine, passive and beautiful. If the flowers in Lambert’s painting are beautiful, it is beauty tempered by the knowledge of human suffering. And they break with convention by relating to men, not women. </p>
<p>The dark centres of the poppies stare at us like the eyes of men who fought at Gallipoli. The message they communicate is the same one relayed by poppies in the lines of John McCrae’s mournful poem <a href="https://www.army.gov.au/our-history/traditions/in-flanders-fields">In Flanders Fields</a> (1915): “we are the dead”.</p>
<p>Other Australian artists deployed by the Australian War Memorial tried to render the same power, and the same symbolisms, as George Lambert’s wildflower still-life, although with less intensity. Will Longstaff, for example, painted <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C172234">Menin Gate at midnight</a> (1927), a monumental commemoration to men who were buried in unmarked graves on the Western Front in which the ghosts of the dead rise up among blood red poppies that grow in the same soil where their bodies decayed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194070/original/file-20171109-13323-d1v46s.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Will Longstaff, ‘Menin Gate at midnight’, oil on canvas (1927).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C172234">ART09807/Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Flowers and the battlefield</h2>
<p>On churned up war landscapes, masses of wildflowers covered <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/index.php/collection/C351426">derelict tanks</a> and blanketed the ground where the dead lay, juxtaposing cold metal and the destructive power of men with the organic growth and regenerative power of nature.</p>
<p>Such contrasts presented Frank Hurley, Australia’s Official War Photographer working in Flanders and Palestine from August to November 1917, with many of the war’s most powerful images. Hurley could not ignore the cruel irony of all that fragile beauty growing free in the midst of industrialised warfare, mass killing, and the corpses of the dead. </p>
<p>Hurley’s <a href="http://www.greatwar.nl/kleur/anemones.html">Lighthorseman gathering poppies, Palestine</a> (1918) is a rare colour photograph from the period. Hurley well understood the power of the poppy. He knew that for the image to become a national icon of comradeship, the flowers had to be coloured red because it is the poppy’s redness that made it the <a href="https://anzacday.org.au/the-poppy-is-for-sacrifice">official symbol</a> of sacrifice. Yet Hurley’s photo is pastoral, and in its vision of ideal life suggests the antithesis of war.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194074/original/file-20171109-13296-93tgbc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frank Hurley, Australian lighthorseman gathering poppies, colour photograph (c1918).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C979439">PO3631.046/Courtesy of the Australian War Memorial</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It may also be that flowers have a particular power over our perception. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2928665?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Elaine Scarry</a> argues that the high colouration of a flower’s face is more perfect for imagining and storing images to memory than the faces of people. Official and unofficial WWI records lend support to Scarry’s theory. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/LIB34556">Cecil Malthus</a>, a New Zealand soldier at Gallipoli in 1915, found himself under attack, it was not the faces of the soldiers around him that he remembered, but the faces of self-sown poppies and daisies on the ground.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86768/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann Elias does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The wildflowers that WWI soldiers encountered in Europe become symbols of remembrance and the fragility of life. The red poppy in particular is a powerful motif in Australian war art and photography.Ann Elias, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/745852017-04-04T00:44:38Z2017-04-04T00:44:38ZHow World War I ushered in the century of oil<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163681/original/image-20170403-21938-g2xqwd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Navy converted to oil from coal a few years before the U.S. entered World War I, helping to solidify petroleum's strategic status.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.history.navy.mil/our-collections/photography/numerical-list-of-images/nhhc-series/nh-series/NH-121000/NH-121653.html">Naval History and Heritage Command</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On July 7, 1919, a group of U.S. military members dedicated Zero Milestone – the point from which all road distances in the country would be measured – just south of the White House lawn in Washington, D.C. The next morning, they helped to define the future of the nation. </p>
<p>Instead of an exploratory rocket or deep-sea submarine, these explorers set out in 42 trucks, five passenger cars and an assortment of motorcycles, ambulances, tank trucks, mobile field kitchens, mobile repair shops and <a href="http://www.goarmy.com/soldier-life/becoming-a-soldier/advanced-individual-training/signal-corps.html">Signal Corps</a> searchlight trucks. During the first three days of driving, they managed just over five miles per hour. This was most troubling because their goal was to explore the condition of American roads by driving across the U.S.</p>
<p>Participating in this <a href="https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/zero.cfm">exploratory party</a> was U.S. Army Captain Dwight D. Eisenhower. Although he played a critical role in many portions of 20th-century U.S. history, his passion for roads may have carried the most significant impact on the domestic front. This trek, literally and figuratively, caught the nation and the young soldier at a crossroads. </p>
<p>Returning from World War I, Ike was entertaining the idea of leaving the military and accepting a civilian job. His decision to remain proved pivotal for the nation. By the end of the first half of the century, the roadscape – transformed with an <a href="https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/finalmap.cfm">interstate highway system</a> while he was president – helped remake the nation and the lives of its occupants. </p>
<p>For Ike, though, roadways represented not only domestic development but also national security. By the early 1900s it become clear to many administrators that petroleum was a strategic resource to the nation’s present and future. </p>
<p>At the start of World War I, the world had an oil glut since there were few practical uses for it <a href="https://danielyergin.com/publishing/the-first-war-to-run-on-oil/">beyond kerosene for lighting</a>. When the war was over, the developed world had little doubt that a nation’s future standing in the world was predicated on access to oil. “The Great War” introduced a 19th-century world to modern ideas and technologies, many of which required inexpensive crude. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163669/original/image-20170403-21933-1uwmp8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163669/original/image-20170403-21933-1uwmp8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163669/original/image-20170403-21933-1uwmp8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163669/original/image-20170403-21933-1uwmp8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=358&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163669/original/image-20170403-21933-1uwmp8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163669/original/image-20170403-21933-1uwmp8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163669/original/image-20170403-21933-1uwmp8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oil drilling in Beaumont, Texas in 1901. The U.S. supplied crude to its allies in World War I and relied on domestic production after its entry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Watchf-Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Finance-T-/ae5f2d8c75924b06965ef25e235314f4/2/0">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Prime movers and national security</h2>
<p>During and after World War I, there was a <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11951#">dramatic change in energy production</a>, shifting heavily away from wood and hydropower and toward fossil fuels – coal and, ultimately, petroleum. And in comparison to coal, when utilized in vehicles and ships, petroleum brought flexibility as it could be transported with ease and used in different types of vehicles. That in itself represented a new type of weapon and a basic strategic advantage. Within a few decades of this energy transition, petroleum’s acquisition took on the spirit of an international arms race. </p>
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<p>Even more significant, the international corporations that harvested oil throughout the world acquired a level of significance unknown to other industries, earning the encompassing name “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Oil">Big Oil</a>.” By the 1920s, Big Oil’s product – useless just decades prior – had become the lifeblood of national security to the U.S. and Great Britain. And from the start of this transition, the massive reserves held in the U.S. marked a strategic advantage with the potential to last generations. </p>
<p>As impressive as the U.S.’ domestic oil production was from <a href="https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus1&f=a">1900-1920</a>, however, the real revolution occurred on the international scene, as British, Dutch and French European powers used corporations such as Shell, British Petroleum and others to begin developing oil wherever it occurred. </p>
<p>During this era of colonialism, each nation applied its age-old method of economic development by securing petroleum in less developed portions of the world, including Mexico, the Black Sea area and, ultimately, the Middle East. Redrawing global geography based on resource supply (such as gold, rubber and even human labor or slavery) of course, was not new; doing so <a href="https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/185-general/40479-great-power-conflict-over-iraqi-oil-the-world-war-i-era.html">specifically for sources of energy</a> was a striking change. </p>
<h2>Crude proves itself on the battlefield</h2>
<p>“World War I was a war,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=C6pGQvVqNAoC&pg=PT246&dq=And+these+machines+were+powered+by+oil&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjL-637l4bTAhUJxoMKHYs0Bq8Q6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=And%20these%20machines%20were%20powered%20by%20oil&f=false">writes historian Daniel Yergin</a>, “that was fought between men and machines. And these machines were powered by oil.” </p>
<p>When the war broke out, military strategy was organized around horses and other animals. With one horse on the field for every three men, such primitive modes dominated the fighting in this “transitional conflict.”</p>
<p>Throughout the war, the energy transition took place from horsepower to gas-powered trucks and tanks and, of course, to oil-burning ships and airplanes. Innovations put these <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-the-us-entered-world-war-i-american-soldiers-depended-on-foreign-weapons-technology-75034">new technologies</a> into immediate action on the horrific battlefield of World War I. </p>
<p>It was the British, for instance, who set out to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare by devising an armored vehicle that was powered by the internal combustion engine. Under its code name “<a href="http://www.iwm.org.uk/history/how-britain-invented-the-tank-in-the-first-world-war">tank</a>,” the vehicle was first used in 1916 at the Battle of the Somme. In addition, the British Expeditionary Force that went to France in 1914 was supported by a fleet of 827 motor cars and 15 motorcycles; by war’s end, the British army included <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=KM4ODAAAQBAJ&pg=PA15&lpg=PA15&dq=British+army+included+56,000+trucks,+23,000+motorcars,+and+34,000+motorcycles+world+war+i&source=bl&ots=lFl0FgrUPx&sig=tJFI3gkKU7Nq1mOYfpj5dshoXdY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiul9y5mIbTAhVJ2IMKHWfvBY4Q6AEIHTAB#v=onepage&q=British%20army%20included%2056%2C000%20trucks%2C%2023%2C000%20motorcars%2C%20and%2034%2C000%20motorcycles%20world%20war%20i&f=false">56,000 trucks, 23,000 motorcars and 34,000 motorcycles</a>. These gas-powered vehicles offered superior flexibility on the battlefield.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163734/original/image-20170403-21950-iwpinx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163734/original/image-20170403-21950-iwpinx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163734/original/image-20170403-21950-iwpinx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163734/original/image-20170403-21950-iwpinx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163734/original/image-20170403-21950-iwpinx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163734/original/image-20170403-21950-iwpinx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163734/original/image-20170403-21950-iwpinx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Government airplane manufactured by Dayton-Wright Airplane Company in 1918.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/5506534874/in/photolist-8UCf3R-6WV5jD-9oAqYs-9kYtjo-9oAp9w-6zurAN-8UCf48">U.S. National Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the air and sea, the strategic change was more obvious. By 1915, Britain had built 250 planes. In this era of the Red Baron and others, primitive airplanes often required that the pilot pack his own sidearm and use it for firing at his opponent. More often, though, the flying devices could be used for delivering explosives in episodes of tactical bombing. German pilots applied this new strategy to severe bombing of England with zeppelins and later with aircraft. Over the course of the war, the use of aircraft <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Prize.html?id=WiUTwBTux2oC">expanded remarkably</a>: Britain, 55,000 planes; France, 68,0000 planes; Italy, 20,000; U.S., 15,000; and Germany, 48,000. </p>
<p>With these new uses, wartime petroleum supplies became a critical strategic military issue. Royal Dutch/Shell provided the war effort with much of its supply of crude. In addition, Britain expanded even more deeply in the Middle East. In particular, Britain had quickly come to depend on the Abadan refinery site in Persia, and when Turkey came into the war in 1915 as a partner with Germany, British soldiers defended it from Turkish invasion. </p>
<p>When the Allies expanded to include the U.S. in 1917, petroleum was a weapon on everyone’s mind. The <a href="http://americanarchivist.org/doi/pdf/10.17723/aarc.7.4.n075h48gx5005q72?code=same-site">Inter-Allied Petroleum Conference</a> was created to pool, coordinate and control all oil supplies and tanker travel. The U.S. entry into the war made this organization necessary because it had been supplying such a large portion of the Allied effort thus far. Indeed, as the producer of nearly <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9BfqsLQDXnMC&pg=PA131&lpg=PA131&dq=President+Woodrow+Wilson+appointed+the+nation%E2%80%99s+first+energy+czar&source=bl&ots=pJvqoe1CXM&sig=IifxDWNZu-ITZJqBDYSSs_OWlpI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiByq2bmobTAhWc14MKHeQrDtQQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=nation%E2%80%99s%20first%20energy%20czar&f=false">70 percent of the world’s oil supply</a>, the U.S.’ greatest weapon in the fighting of World War I may have been crude. President Woodrow Wilson appointed the nation’s first energy czar, whose responsibility was to work in close quarters with leaders of the American companies. </p>
<h2>Infrastructure as a path to national power</h2>
<p>When the young Eisenhower set out on his trek after the war, he deemed the party’s progress over the first two days “not too good” and as slow “as even the slowest troop train.” The roads they traveled across the U.S., Ike described as “average to nonexistent.” He <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=WiUTwBTux2oC&pg=PA190&lpg=PA190&dq=we+could+do+three+or+four&source=bl&ots=_2EWq69--U&sig=VpYppLpNANQ1PYU98KBYD9BVES8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz7a_hmobTAhVO1WMKHXSsDJIQ6AEIGjAA#v=snippet&q=the%20heavy%20trucks%20broke%20through%20the%20surface&f=false">continued</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“In some places, the heavy trucks broke through the surface of the road and we had to tow them out one by one, with the caterpillar tractor. Some days when we had counted on sixty or seventy or a hundred miles, we could do three or four.” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Eisenhower’s party completed its frontier trek and arrived in San Francisco, California on Sept. 6, 1919. Of course, the clearest implication that grew from Eisenhower’s trek was the need for roads. Unstated, however, was the symbolic suggestion that matters of transportation and of petroleum now demanded the involvement of the U.S. military, as it did in many industrialized nations. </p>
<p>The emphasis on roads and, later, particularly on Ike’s interstate system was transformative for the U.S.; however, Eisenhower was overlooking the fundamental shift in which he participated. The imperative was clear: Whether through road-building initiatives or through international diplomacy, the use of petroleum by his nation and others was now a reliance that carried with it implications for national stability and security. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163713/original/image-20170403-21972-os4ean.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163713/original/image-20170403-21972-os4ean.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163713/original/image-20170403-21972-os4ean.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163713/original/image-20170403-21972-os4ean.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163713/original/image-20170403-21972-os4ean.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163713/original/image-20170403-21972-os4ean.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163713/original/image-20170403-21972-os4ean.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163713/original/image-20170403-21972-os4ean.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eisenhower served in the Tank Corps until 1922.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2013/02/25/eisenhower-and-tank-drivers-ed/">Eisenhower Presidential Library, ARC 876971</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Seen through this lens of history, petroleum’s road to essentialness in human life begins neither in its ability to propel the Model T nor to give form to the burping plastic Tupperware bowl. The imperative to maintain petroleum supplies begins with its necessity for each nation’s defense. Although petroleum use eventually made consumers’ lives simpler in numerous ways, its use by the military fell into a different category entirely. If the supply was insufficient, the nation’s most basic protections would be compromised. </p>
<p>After World War I in 1919, Eisenhower and his team thought they were determining only the need for roadways – “The old convoy,” he explained, “had started me thinking about good, two lane highways.” </p>
<p>At the same time, though, they were declaring a political commitment by the U.S. And thanks to its immense domestic reserves, the U.S. was late coming to this realization. Yet after the “war to end all wars,” it was a commitment already being acted upon by other nations, notably Germany and Britain, each of whom lacked essential supplies of crude.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74585/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brian C. Black does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Before World War I, petroleum had few practical uses, but it emerged from the war as a strategic global asset necessary for national stability and security.Brian C. Black, Distinguished Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/749112017-04-04T00:44:28Z2017-04-04T00:44:28ZFrom shell-shock to PTSD, a century of invisible war trauma<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163561/original/image-20170403-27251-14zcqdy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C311%2C2389%2C1544&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Some soldiers' wounds in WWI were more mental than physical.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/taybot/14565207240">George Metcalf Archival Collection</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the wake of World War I, some veterans returned wounded, but not with obvious physical injuries. Instead, their symptoms were similar to those that had previously been <a href="https://www.valas.fr/IMG/pdf/Freud-Oeuvre-traduction-anglaise.pdf">associated with hysterical women</a> – most commonly amnesia, or some kind of paralysis or inability to communicate with no clear physical cause.</p>
<p>English physician Charles Myers, who wrote the first paper on “shell-shock” in 1915, theorized that these symptoms actually did stem from a physical injury. He posited that repetitive exposure to concussive blasts caused brain trauma that resulted in this strange grouping of symptoms. But once put to the test, his hypothesis didn’t hold up. There were plenty of veterans who had not been exposed to the concussive blasts of trench warfare, for example, who were still experiencing the symptoms of shell-shock. (And certainly not all veterans who had seen this kind of battle returned with symptoms.)</p>
<p>We now know that what these combat veterans were facing was likely what today we call <a href="https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/index.shtml">post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD</a>. We are now better able to recognize it, and treatments have certainly advanced, but we still don’t have a full understanding of just what PTSD is.</p>
<p>The medical community and society at large are accustomed to looking for the most simple cause and cure for any given ailment. This results in a system where symptoms are discovered and cataloged and then matched with therapies that will alleviate them. Though this method works in many cases, for the past 100 years, PTSD has been resisting.</p>
<p>We are three scholars in the humanities who have individually studied PTSD – the framework through which people conceptualize it, the ways researchers investigate it, the therapies the medical community devises for it. Through our research, each of us has seen how the medical model alone fails to adequately account for the ever-changing nature of PTSD. </p>
<p>What’s been missing is a cohesive explanation of trauma that allows us to explain the various ways its symptoms have manifested over time and can differ in different people.</p>
<h2>Nonphysical repercussions of the Great War</h2>
<p>Once it became clear that not everyone who suffered from shell-shock in the wake of WWI had experienced brain injuries, the British Medical Journal provided alternate nonphysical explanations for its prevalence. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A poor morale and a defective training are one of the most important, if not the most important etiological factors: also that shell-shock was a “catching” complaint. – (<a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/20420866">The British Medical Journal, 1922</a>)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Shell-shock went from being considered a legitimate physical injury to being a sign of weakness, of both the battalion and the soldiers within it. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9780511675669">One historian estimates</a> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/10577200/WW1-dead-and-shell-shock-figures-significantly-underestimated.html">at least 20 percent</a> of men developed shell-shock, though the figures are murky due to physician reluctance at the time to brand veterans with a psychological diagnosis that could affect disability compensation.</p>
<p>Soldiers were archetypically heroic and strong. When they came home unable to speak, walk or remember, with no physical reason for those shortcomings, the only possible explanation was personal weakness. Treatment methods were based on the idea that the soldier who had entered into war as a hero was now behaving as a coward and needed to be snapped out of it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163558/original/image-20170402-27259-1c361ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163558/original/image-20170402-27259-1c361ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163558/original/image-20170402-27259-1c361ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163558/original/image-20170402-27259-1c361ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163558/original/image-20170402-27259-1c361ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163558/original/image-20170402-27259-1c361ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163558/original/image-20170402-27259-1c361ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163558/original/image-20170402-27259-1c361ss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Electric treatments were prescribed in psychoneurotic cases post-WWI.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/27337026@N03/2653489628">Otis Historical Archives National Museum of Health and Medicine</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Lewis Yealland, a British clinician, described in his 1918 “<a href="https://archive.org/details/hystericaldisord00yealuoft">Hysterical Disorders of Warfare</a>” the kind of brutal treatment that follows from thinking about shell-shock as a personal failure. After nine months of unsuccessfully treating patient A1, including electric shocks to the neck, cigarettes put out on his tongue and hot plates placed at the back of his throat, Yealland boasted of telling the patient, “You will not leave this room until you are talking as well as you ever did; no, not before… you must behave as the hero I expect you to be.”</p>
<p>Yealland then applied an electric shock to the throat so strong that it sent the patient reeling backwards, unhooking the battery from the machine. Undeterred, Yealland strapped the patient down to avoid the battery problem and continued to apply shock for an hour, at which point patient A1 finally whispered “Ah.” After another hour, the patient began to cry and whispered, “I want a drink of water.”</p>
<p>Yealland reported this encounter triumphantly – the breakthrough meant his theory was correct and his method worked. Shell-shock was a disease of manhood rather than an illness that came from witnessing, being subjected to and partaking in incredible violence.</p>
<h2>Evolution away from shell-shock</h2>
<p>The next wave of the study of trauma came when the Second World War saw another influx of soldiers dealing with similar symptoms.</p>
<p>It was Abram Kardiner, a clinician working in the psychiatric clinic of the United States Veterans’ Bureau, who rethought combat trauma in a much more empathetic light. In his influential book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Traumatic_Neuroses_of_War.html?id=B2tmMQEACAAJ">The Traumatic Neuroses of War</a>,” Kardiner speculated that these symptoms stemmed from psychological injury, rather than a soldier’s flawed character.</p>
<p>Work from other clinicians after WWII and the Korean War suggested that post-war symptoms could be lasting. Longitudinal studies showed that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.1965.01720350043006">symptoms could persist anywhere from six to 20 years</a>, if they disappeared at all. These studies returned some legitimacy to the concept of combat trauma that had been stripped away after the First World War. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163582/original/image-20170403-19462-27tbqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163582/original/image-20170403-19462-27tbqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163582/original/image-20170403-19462-27tbqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163582/original/image-20170403-19462-27tbqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163582/original/image-20170403-19462-27tbqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163582/original/image-20170403-19462-27tbqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163582/original/image-20170403-19462-27tbqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163582/original/image-20170403-19462-27tbqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As veterans returned home from the war in Vietnam, combat trauma became less stigmatized.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/13476480@N07/24594442566">manhhai</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Vietnam was another watershed moment for combat-related PTSD because veterans began to advocate for themselves in an unprecedented way. Beginning with a small march in New York in the summer of 1967, veterans themselves began to become <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/800744">activists for their own mental health care</a>. They worked to redefine “post-Vietnam syndrome” not as a sign of weakness, but rather a normal response to the experience of atrocity. Public understanding of war itself had begun to shift, too, as the widely televised accounts of the My Lai massacre brought the <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520065437">horror of war into American living rooms</a> for the first time. The veterans’ campaign helped get PTSD included in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-III), <a href="https://www.psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm/history-of-the-dsm">the major American diagnostic resource</a> for psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians.</p>
<p>The authors of the DSM-III deliberately avoided talking about the causes of mental disorders. Their aim was to develop a manual that could simultaneously be used by psychiatrists adhering to radically different theories, including Freudian approaches and what is now known as “biological psychiatry.” These groups of psychiatrists would not agree on how to explain disorders, but they could – and did – come to agree on which patients had similar symptoms. So the DSM-III defined disorders, including PTSD, solely on the basis of clusters of symptoms, an approach that has been retained ever since.</p>
<p>This tendency to agnosticism about the physiology of PTSD is also reflected in contemporary evidence-based approaches to medicine. Modern medicine focuses on using clinical trials to demonstrate that a therapy works, but is skeptical about attempts to link treatment effectiveness to the biology underlying a disease.</p>
<h2>Today’s medicalized PTSD</h2>
<p>People can develop PTSD for a number of different reasons, not just in combat. Sexual assault, a traumatic loss, a terrible accident – each might lead to PTSD. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates about <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/PTSD-overview/epidemiological-facts-ptsd.asp">13.8 percent of the veterans</a> returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan currently have PTSD. For comparison, a male veteran of those wars is four times more likely to develop PTSD than a man in the civilian population is. PTSD is probably at least partially at the root of an <a href="https://www.mentalhealth.va.gov/docs/Suicide_Data_Report_Update_January_2014.pdf">even more alarming statistic</a>: Upwards of <a href="https://www.va.gov/opa/docs/Suicide-Data-Report-2012-final.pdf">22 veterans commit suicide</a> every day.</p>
<p>Therapies for PTSD today tend to be a mixed bag. Practically speaking, when veterans seek PTSD treatment in the VA system, policy requires they be <a href="https://www.healthquality.va.gov/guidelines/MH/ptsd/cpg_PTSD-full-201011612.PDF">offered either exposure or cognitive therapy</a>. Exposure therapies are based on the idea that the fear response that gives rise to many of the traumatic symptoms can be dampened through <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/treatment/therapy-med/prolonged-exposure-therapy.asp">repeated exposures to the traumatic event</a>. Cognitive therapies work on developing personal coping methods and <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/treatment/therapy-med/cognitive_processing_therapy.asp">slowly changing unhelpful or destructive thought patterns</a> that are contributing to symptoms (for example, the shame one might feel at not successfully completing a mission or saving a comrade). The most common treatment a veteran will likely receive will include psychopharmaceuticals – especially the class of drugs called SSRIs. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163578/original/image-20170403-19423-b8aw4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163578/original/image-20170403-19423-b8aw4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163578/original/image-20170403-19423-b8aw4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163578/original/image-20170403-19423-b8aw4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163578/original/image-20170403-19423-b8aw4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163578/original/image-20170403-19423-b8aw4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163578/original/image-20170403-19423-b8aw4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163578/original/image-20170403-19423-b8aw4p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The military is working on incorporating virtual reality with exposure therapy for PTSD sufferers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/lancecheungmedia/3553753011">Lance Cheung</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mindfulness therapies, based on becoming aware of mental states, thoughts and feelings and accepting them rather than trying to fight them or push them away, are <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treatment/overview/mindful-ptsd.asp">another option</a>. There are also more <a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=MFyEg007YEIC&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=hypnosis+and+creative+therapy+for+PTSD&ots=ctUJrwZsSw&sig=NeEiWA7JXZROLxCClei_FB8U-f0#v=onepage&q=hypnosis%20and%20creative%20therapy%20for%20PTSD&f=false">alternative methods being studied</a> such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR therapy, therapies using controlled doses of MDMA (Ecstasy), <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000134">virtual reality-graded exposure therapy</a>, hypnosis and creative therapies. The military funds a wealth of research on new technologies to address PTSD; these include <a href="http://www.darpa.mil/program/our-research/darpa-and-the-brain-initiative">neurotechnological innovations like transcranial stimulation and neural chips</a> as well as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2013.317">novel drugs</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Zoellner%20LA%5BAuthor%5D&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=19577224">Several studies</a> have shown that patients improve most when they’ve chosen their own therapy. But even if they narrow their choices to the ones backed by the weight of the National Center for PTSD by using the center’s online <a href="https://www.ptsd.va.gov/apps/decisionaid/">Treatment Decision Aid</a>, patients would still find themselves weighing five options, each of which is evidence-based but entails a different psychomedical model of trauma and healing.</p>
<p>This buffet of treatment options lets us set aside our lack of understanding of why people experience trauma and respond to interventions so differently. It also relieves the pressure for psychomedicine to develop a complete model of PTSD. We reframe the problem as a consumer issue instead of a scientific one.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163580/original/image-20170403-19459-2ufn6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163580/original/image-20170403-19459-2ufn6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163580/original/image-20170403-19459-2ufn6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163580/original/image-20170403-19459-2ufn6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163580/original/image-20170403-19459-2ufn6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=873&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163580/original/image-20170403-19459-2ufn6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163580/original/image-20170403-19459-2ufn6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163580/original/image-20170403-19459-2ufn6w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1097&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Whereas shell-shock was a weakness, PTSD is understood more sympathetically.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017674898/">Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, American National Red Cross Collection, LC-A6196- 6839-Bx</a></span>
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<p>Thus, while WWI was about soldiers and punishing them for their weakness, in the contemporary era, the ideal veteran PTSD patient is a health care consumer who has an obligation to play an active role in figuring out and optimizing his own therapy. </p>
<p>As we stand here with the strange benefit of the hindsight that comes with over 100 years of studying combat-related trauma, we must be careful in celebrating our progress. What is still missing is an explanation of why people have different responses to trauma, and why different responses occur in different historical periods. For instance, the paraylsis and amnesia that epitomized WWI shell-shock cases are now so rare that they don’t even appear as symptoms in the DSM entry for PTSD. We still don’t know enough about how soldiers’ own experiences and understandings of PTSD are shaped by the broader social and cultural views of trauma, war and gender. Though we have made incredible strides in the century since World War I, PTSD remains a chameleon, and demands our continued study.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74911/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mental health trauma has always been a part of war. Treatments have come a long way over the last century, but we still don’t understand why the responses change for different people and times.MaryCatherine McDonald, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion UniversityMarisa Brandt, Assistant Professor of Practice, Michigan State UniversityRobyn Bluhm, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/749722017-03-31T20:29:08Z2017-03-31T20:29:08ZHow should World War I be taught in American schools?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163500/original/image-20170331-27263-1ug7790.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Modern high school students are learning two very different approaches to World War I.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/classmate-friends-classroom-597114503?src=lSrbukCX8E_Tq0AlybtDZA-2-25">Africa Studio / Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The centennial of the end of World War I is reminding Americans of a conflict that is rarely mentioned these days.</p>
<p>In Hungary, for example, World War I is often remembered for the Treaty of Trianon, a peace treaty that ended Hungarian involvement in the war and cost Hungary two-thirds of its territory. The treaty continues to be a <a href="http://www.americanhungarianfederation.org/news_trianon.htm">source of outrage</a> for Hungarian nationalists.</p>
<p>In the United States, by contrast, the war is primarily remembered <a href="https://academic.oup.com/dh/article/38/4/727/2754606/The-World-War-and-American-Memory">in a positive light</a>. President Woodrow Wilson intervened on the side of the victors, using idealistic language about making the world “<a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65366">safe for democracy</a>.” The United States <a href="http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-one/world-war-one-and-casualties/first-world-war-casualties/">lost relatively few soldiers</a> in comparison to other nations.</p>
<p>As a professor of social studies education, I’ve noticed that the way in which “<a href="https://archive.org/details/warthatwillendwa00welluoft">the war to end war</a>” is taught in American classrooms has a lot to do with what we think it means to be an American today.</p>
<p>As one of the first wars fought on a truly global scale, World War I is taught in two different courses, with two different missions: U.S. history courses and world history courses. Two versions of World War I emerge in these two courses – and they tell us as much about the present as they do about the past.</p>
<h2>WWI: National history</h2>
<p>In an academic sense, history is not simply the past, but the tools we use to study it – it is the process of historical inquiry. Over the course of the discipline’s development, the study of history became deeply entangled with <a href="http://www.h-france.net/vol2reviews/vol2no91kramer.pdf">the study of nations</a>. It became “partitioned”: American history, French history, Chinese history. </p>
<p>This way of dividing the past reinforces ideas of who a people are and what they stand for. In the U.S., our national historical narrative has often been taught to schoolchildren as one where more and more Americans gain more and more <a href="http://teachinghistory.org/issues-and-research/research-brief/23488">rights and opportunities</a>. The goal of teaching American history has long been <a href="http://www.socialstudies.org/publications/socialeducation/september2006/social-studies-wars-now-and-then">the creation of citizens</a> who are loyal to this narrative and are willing to take action to support it.</p>
<p>When history is taught in this way, teachers and students can easily draw boundaries between “us” and “them.” There is a clear line between domestic and foreign policy. Some <a href="http://www.oah.org/about/reports/reports-statements/the-lapietra-report-a-report-to-the-profession/">historians have criticized</a> this view of the nation as a natural container for the events of the past.</p>
<p>When students are taught this nationalist view of the past, it’s possible to see the United States and its relationship to World War I <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/inside-first-world-war/part-nine/10801898/why-america-joined-first-world-war.html">in a particular light</a>. Initially an outsider to World War I, the United States would join only when provoked by Germany. U.S. intervention was justified in terms of making the world safe for democracy. American demands for peace were largely based on altruistic motives.</p>
<p>When taught in this manner, World War I signals the arrival of the United States on the global stage – as defenders of democracy and agents for global peace.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163478/original/image-20170331-27277-y5xopk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163478/original/image-20170331-27277-y5xopk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163478/original/image-20170331-27277-y5xopk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163478/original/image-20170331-27277-y5xopk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163478/original/image-20170331-27277-y5xopk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=428&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163478/original/image-20170331-27277-y5xopk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163478/original/image-20170331-27277-y5xopk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163478/original/image-20170331-27277-y5xopk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=538&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Woodrow Wilson addressing Congress, April 8, 1913.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/ggb2005011653/">Bain News Service / Library of Congress [LC-B2- 2579-2]</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>WWI: World history</h2>
<p>World history is a relatively new area of study in the field of historical inquiry, gaining particular ground in the 1980s. Its addition to the curriculum of American schools is <a href="http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/1.1/lintvedt.html">even more recent</a>.</p>
<p>The world history curriculum has tended to focus on the ways in which economic, cultural and technological processes have led to <a href="https://www.learner.org/courses/worldhistory/whatis.html">increasingly close global interconnections</a>. As a classic example, a <a href="http://en.unesco.org/silkroad/about-silk-road">study of the Silk Road</a> reveals the ways in which goods (like horses), ideas (like Buddhism), plants (like bread wheat) and diseases (like plague) were spread across larger and larger areas of the globe.</p>
<p>World history curricula do not deny the importance of nations, but neither do they assume that nation-states are the primary actors on the historical stage. Rather, it is the processes themselves – trade, war, cultural diffusion – that often take center stage in the story. The line between “domestic” and “foreign” – “us” and “them” – is blurred in such examples.</p>
<p>When the work of world historians is incorporated into the school curriculum, the stated goal is most often <a href="http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/oct02/vol60/num02/Growing_Good_Citizens_with_a_World-Centered_Curriculum.aspx">global understanding</a>. In the case of World War I, it’s possible to tell a story about increasing <a href="http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/the_way_to_war">industrialism, imperialism and competition for global markets</a>, as well as the deadly integration of <a href="http://theconversation.com/as-the-u-s-entered-world-war-i-american-soldiers-depended-on-foreign-weapons-technology-75034">new technologies</a> into battle, such as tanks, airplanes, poison gas, submarines and machine guns.</p>
<p>In all of this, U.S. citizens are historical actors caught up in the same pressures and trends as everyone else across the globe.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163486/original/image-20170331-27277-wmi5oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163486/original/image-20170331-27277-wmi5oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163486/original/image-20170331-27277-wmi5oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163486/original/image-20170331-27277-wmi5oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163486/original/image-20170331-27277-wmi5oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163486/original/image-20170331-27277-wmi5oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163486/original/image-20170331-27277-wmi5oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163486/original/image-20170331-27277-wmi5oz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The British Mark IV Tank ‘Britannia’ was brought to New York City and put on exhibit to help sell war bonds. Oct. 25, 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/ggbain.25571/">Bain News Service / Library of Congress [LC-B2- 4379-7]</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The US school curriculum and World War I</h2>
<p>These two trends within the field of historical inquiry are each reflected in the American school curriculum. In most states, both U.S. history and world history are <a href="http://ecs.force.com/mbdata/mbprofall?Rep=HS01">required subjects</a>. In this way, World War I becomes a fascinating case study of how the same event can be taught in different ways, for two different purposes.</p>
<p>To demonstrate this, I’ve pulled content standards from three large states, each from a different region of the United States – <a href="http://www.michigan.gov/documents/mde/SS_COMBINED_August_2015_496557_7.pdf">Michigan</a>, <a href="http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/histsocscistnd.pdf">California</a> and <a href="http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter113/ch113c.html#113.41">Texas</a> – to illustrate their treatment of World War I.</p>
<p>In U.S. history, the content standards of all three states place World War I within the rise of the United States as a world power. In all three sets of state standards, students are expected to learn about World War I in relationship to <a href="http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-newsouth/5488">American expansion</a> into such places as Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Hawaii. The ways in which the war challenged a tradition of <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp">avoiding foreign entanglements</a> is given attention in each set of standards.</p>
<p>By contrast, the world history standards of all three states place World War I under its own heading, asking students to examine the war’s causes and consequences. All three sets of state standards reference large-scale historical processes as the causes of the war, including <a href="http://hti.osu.edu/world-war-one/main/lessonplans/why_did_they_fight">nationalism, imperialism and militarism</a>. Sometimes the U.S. is mentioned, and sometimes it’s not.</p>
<p>And so, students are learning about World War I in two very different ways. In the more nationalistic U.S. history curriculum, the United States is the defender of global order and democracy. In the world history context, the United States is mentioned hardly at all, and impersonal global forces take center stage.</p>
<h2>Whose history? Which America?</h2>
<p>Scholars today continue to debate the wisdom of President Wilson’s <a href="http://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/remaking-the-world-progressivism-and-american-foreign-policy">moral diplomacy</a> – that is, the moral and altruistic language (like making the world “safe for democracy”) that justified U.S. involvement in World War I. At the same time, a recent poll by the Pew Research Center has shown that the American public has <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/12/04/americans-put-low-priority-on-promoting-democracy-abroad/">deep concerns</a> about the policy of promoting democracy abroad.</p>
<p>In an age when protectionism, isolationism and nationalism are seemingly <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/berenberg-similarities-trump-brexit-1930s-protectionism-populism-nationalism-2016-11">on the rise</a>, our country as a whole is questioning the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world.</p>
<p>This is the present-day context in which students are left to learn about the past – and, in particular, World War I. How might their study of this past shape their attitudes toward the present?</p>
<p>History teachers are therefore left with a dilemma: teach toward national or global citizenship? Is world history something that happened “<a href="http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/overthere.htm">over there</a>,” or is it something that happens “right here,” too?</p>
<p>In my own view, it seems incomplete to teach just one of these conflicting views of World War I. Instead, I would recommend to history teachers that they explore competing perspectives of the past with their students.</p>
<p>How do Hungarians, for example, generally remember World War I? Or how about Germans? How about the Irish? <a href="http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocide.html">Armenians</a>? How do these perspectives compare to American memories? Where is fact and where is fiction?</p>
<p>Such a history class would encourage students to examine how the present and the past are connected – and might satisfy both nationalists and globalists alike.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kyle Greenwalt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>High school students in America learn two very different perspectives on World War I in their U.S. and world history classes. But which of these competing viewpoints should take center stage?Kyle Greenwalt, Associate Professor, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/576292016-04-19T20:21:37Z2016-04-19T20:21:37ZIn remembering Anzac Day, what do we forget?<p>In the weeks before Anzac Day, a flurry of news stories emerge mobilising Australians to remember the Anzacs. We see in them familiar references to “The Diggers”, with their virtues of mateship, sacrifice and courage, and the “birth” of the nation at Gallipoli. As Kevin Rudd <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/talks-speeches/national-ceremony-commemorative-address-2010/">said in 2010</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All nations are shaped by their histories, their memories and their stories.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When we retell a story, we actively choose which parts to retell. Our present day positions, our politics, our families and our environments all have considerable bearing on these choices.</p>
<p>Such choices of representation also apply to nation-building narratives, which are then used for the political purposes of the day – such as John Howard’s use of the “Anzac myth” to support <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-5687.2010.00106.x/abstract">military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq</a>. </p>
<p>We call this process of choice the “politics of memory”. Generally, it supports a resoundingly masculine dominant Australian folklore – encompassing bush mythology, a pioneering spirit, sportsmanship, larrikinism, and mateship. It’s populated by characters such as Ned Kelly, the “jolly swagman” of Waltzing Matilda or Crocodile Dundee. </p>
<p>When “we” as a nation remember Anzac, we simultaneously forget significant parts of the story not commonly represented. Influencing this (selective) forgetting is an implicit whiteness. </p>
<p>As anthropologist Ghassan Hage argued in his book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/178901.White_Nation">White Nation</a>, despite the emphasis placed on multiculturalism in Australia, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the visible and public side of power remains essentially Anglo-White.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our recent <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00049182.2015.1113611">ethnographic and archival research</a> shows that little investment has gone into thinking through what might happen to the <a href="http://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/08/the-anzac-myth-and-australian-national-identity/">Anzac identity</a> in a more culturally diverse Australia. </p>
<p>Our critical analysis of Anzac-related literature, news media and popular symbols revealed that cultural diversity and multiculturalism receive only tangential attention. </p>
<p>This is not merely chance. Reports commissioned for the Department of Veteran Affairs preceding the centenary of Anzac identify “multiculturalism” as a <a href="http://www.anzaccentenary.gov.au/about-anzac-centenary/publications">risk and issue to consider in planning for the centenary</a>, and as a “potential area of divisiveness”.</p>
<h2>Disparaging non-conformance</h2>
<p>Significant events, like Anzac Day, are opportunities to reiterate an approved narrative of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-past-is-not-sacred-the-history-wars-over-anzac-38596">war-centred nationalism</a> – and vigorously disparage any form of critique that might arise.</p>
<p>Examples of non-conformance to collective Anzac narratives are rare, but they do occur. A particularly visible debate arose out of the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3007512/">The Water Diviner</a> (2014), directed by and starring Russell Crowe. While focusing on Gallipoli, the film offers an account that foregrounds a Turkish perspective on the campaign. </p>
<p>The film triggered the ABC’s <a href="http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2015/02/bay_20150210_1005.mp3">Radio National History Podcast</a>, released in 2015, to ask the question: “Is The Water Diviner … redefining our ANZAC legend?”</p>
<p>Another prominent example is former SBS reporter Scott McIntyre, who was stood down for tweeting controversial views about Anzac Day: </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79687/original/image-20150429-7069-17x1cj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79687/original/image-20150429-7069-17x1cj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79687/original/image-20150429-7069-17x1cj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79687/original/image-20150429-7069-17x1cj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=359&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79687/original/image-20150429-7069-17x1cj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79687/original/image-20150429-7069-17x1cj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/79687/original/image-20150429-7069-17x1cj3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>McIntyre’s dismissal shows that, in the midst of the well-supported and popular Anzac narrative, <a href="https://theconversation.com/anzacs-behaving-badly-scott-mcintyre-and-contested-history-40955">contested and not-so-salubrious parts of the story</a> aren’t tolerated and get little public airtime. Indeed those who deviate from the narrative line are vilified. </p>
<p>The Australian government ensures that the nation remembers Anzac each year by marking the event with a collective commemoration. As a settler society, collective remembrance is an important government function. But how, what, where and why we remember should be relevant to our geographically disparate and culturally diverse populace.</p>
<h2>Slowly creeping change</h2>
<p>For many years the hard lines drawn around Anzac memory excluded recognition of Indigenous involvement in WWI, even in official commemorations. </p>
<p>Returned Indigenous soldiers encountered considerable discrimination. They were excluded from early attempts to commemorate military service and the war dead; forgotten in the war memorials; denied the right to participate in Anzac Day marches, and refused access to veterans’ benefits and entry into RSLs.</p>
<p>Since the 1990s, a number of attempts to commemorate Indigenous war service have occurred, contributing to what historian Peter Cochrane calls a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-past-is-not-sacred-the-history-wars-over-anzac-38596">new inclusiveness</a>”. </p>
<p>These early efforts tended to materialise on the margins: a plaque to Indigenous war service erected on public land behind the Australian War Memorial by a private citizen in 1993; a commemoration in Burleigh Head National Park inscribed in 1991; and an Australian War Memorial travelling exhibition, <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/sites/default/files/education/box/03_res_book.pdf">Too Dark for the Light Horse</a>, that toured Australia in 1999 and 2000/1.</p>
<p>More recent demands have more successfully permeated the politics of Anzac memory, resulting in Indigenous memorials in shared spaces. These include the Torrens Parade Ground memorial in Adelaide, completed in 2013 and commonly referred to as Australia’s first memorial to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander servicemen and servicewomen. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119223/original/image-20160419-13916-1x9g3yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119223/original/image-20160419-13916-1x9g3yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119223/original/image-20160419-13916-1x9g3yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119223/original/image-20160419-13916-1x9g3yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119223/original/image-20160419-13916-1x9g3yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119223/original/image-20160419-13916-1x9g3yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119223/original/image-20160419-13916-1x9g3yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119223/original/image-20160419-13916-1x9g3yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial honouring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service men and women at Torrens Parade Ground in Adelaide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Margaret Scheikowski</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another is the sculpture <a href="http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/yininmadyemi-thou-didst-let-fall/">Yininmadyemi – Thou didst let fall</a>, created by Indigenous artist Tony Albert for the City of Sydney and installed in Hyde Park in 2015. </p>
<p>Shifting political agendas have also facilitated <a href="http://mia.sagepub.com/content/137/1/58">greater inclusion of Turkey into dominant Anzac memories</a>.</p>
<p>Historical media research by Catherine Simpson details this movement from “foe” to “noble Turk”, culminating in a nationally celebrated, government-constructed, friendship. </p>
<p>Similar questions can be raised about the inclusion of other national groups. We’ve seen a rising interest in researching, for example, German, Irish, Russian or Chinese “Anzacs” who were fighting on the Gallipoli peninsula. Soldiers of many nationalities have been present with Australian troops in numerous conflicts, including Gallipoli, Kokoda and Vietnam. </p>
<h2>What is Anzac’s future in multicultural Australia?</h2>
<p>Research has shown that Australians born here are more likely to prioritise Anzac as a <a href="http://jos.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/01/17/1440783312473669">key marker of national identity</a> than other Australians.</p>
<p>This finding is not surprising. Indeed, much cultural and political work is invested in <a href="http://www.uniken.unsw.edu.au/features/cover-story-%E2%80%93-busting-anzac-myth">positioning Anzac as tantamount to Australian identity</a>.</p>
<p>While the Anzac story was produced in colonial White Australia, Australia today is vastly different in demographic terms and is made up of people whose histories increasingly lie elsewhere. Australia has <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/12_2013/people-of-australia-multicultural-policy-booklet.pdf">invested significantly in multicultural policy</a> and <a href="http://www.soutphommasane.com.au/home/book-don-t-go-back-to-where-you-came-from">committed to creating an inclusive nation</a>.</p>
<p>What happens when Australians do not, or cannot, <a href="http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=43834#.Vvnam1V94uU">identify with the Anzac narrative genealogically or nationally</a>? What happens if we simply do not want to participate? </p>
<p>Should Australians not born here be expected to “inherit” the Anzac narrative unequivocally, and exactly how would that happen? And does not identifying with Anzac really equate to being <a href="http://jos.sagepub.com/content/37/4/323.short">un-Australian</a>?</p>
<p>Like others who have also <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/letting-go-of-anzac-20100401-rif5.html">questioned Anzac’s centrality</a>, we think that there is much to celebrate in Australia’s diversity. </p>
<p>Despite discordance, we live in a nation that has a mandated political commitment to diversity. </p>
<p>In the current global climate of fear of difference, isn’t that commitment – to being a country of people from diverse countries – worth commemorating?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57629/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anzac Day is a big part of our national story. But the politics of memory mean the parts of this story that don’t fit neatly into the Anzac narrative are too often forgotten.Danielle Drozdzewski, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, UNSW SydneyEmma Waterton, Associate Professor in the Geographies of Heritage, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/303622014-08-26T20:47:22Z2014-08-26T20:47:22ZTen kilos of first world war grief at the Melbourne Museum<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56232/original/y2jmmvjh-1407813217.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scrapbook, G. Roberts (John Garibaldi), Book 7 Vol. 7a.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museum Victoria, courtesy of State Library of Victoria </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Melbourne Museum’s <a href="http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/whatson/wwi-love-and-sorrow/">World War I: Love & Sorrow</a> exhibition, which opens this weekend, explores the various experiences of Victorians in the Great War, and the war’s effects on them.</p>
<p>Museums have a hard job conveying often fleeting human interactions and experiences using their stock-in-trade – the artefact. How can you convey friendship or hatred through objects? What can you use to show fear, hatred, comradeship or idealism? How can a museum convey in an artefact what grief felt like?</p>
<p>WWI: Love & Sorrow tells the story of, among many others, the Roberts family, of Hawthorn and South Sassafras (now Kallista, in the Dandenongs). Their story embodies what this exhibition is about, and how museums can best tell human stories.</p>
<h2>The Roberts family scrapbooks</h2>
<p>The experience of the Roberts family was both unique and representative – and seemingly made for a museum. Indeed, in planning how the Melbourne Museum would reveal and explore how Victorians lived through the Great War – or not – their story became one of the “must haves”.</p>
<p>In 2009 I published <a href="http://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/title/men-of-mont-st-quentin/">Men of Mont St Quentin</a>, a book that tried to show how one 12-man platoon (number 9, of the Victorian 21st Battalion) experienced the final attack on the German-held Mont St Quentin, the way it affected those who survived as well as the families of those who died in the attack.</p>
<p>In telling this story the papers of Garry and Roberta Roberts, preserved in the State Library of Victoria, were crucial. In fact, without them the experience of that platoon would have been indistinguishable from the other 60-odd platoons involved in it. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56234/original/73djmg3q-1407813959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56234/original/73djmg3q-1407813959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56234/original/73djmg3q-1407813959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56234/original/73djmg3q-1407813959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56234/original/73djmg3q-1407813959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56234/original/73djmg3q-1407813959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56234/original/73djmg3q-1407813959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56234/original/73djmg3q-1407813959.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1128&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John G. Roberts Scrapbook 7, vol. 7, p. 3.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria, J.G. Roberts Scrapbooks </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But among 9 Platoon that afternoon was a bank-clerk-turned-orchardist, Frank Roberts, Garry and Roberta’s eldest son. He died in the assault. The grief his father, especially, endured, and his manner of commemorating his son’s life has made him one of the best known bereaved fathers in Australia’s experience of the Great War.</p>
<p>The Roberts family was an unusual one. Solidly middle-class (they had a house in Hawthorn and a “weekender” in the hills), Garry was an accountant for the Melbourne Tramways Trust. They used their modest wealth to support the arts – C.J. Dennis wrote Songs of a Sentimental Bloke in the backyard at South Sassafras. Frank volunteered to go to war in 1916, soon after marrying his fiancée Ruby. By the time he left Melbourne Ruby was pregnant, and their daughter, Nancy, was born just as Frank reached the front, late in 1917.</p>
<p>The Roberts family never doubted that Frank had done the right thing, but their commitment to the war was tested by the news that arrived on 13 September 1918 that Frank had been killed. </p>
<p>Garry described this in his diary as “the most awful day of my life”. He had obsessively documented his children’s lives (and much besides) by creating massive scrapbooks. He dedicated two of these huge volumes to Frank’s military service and his death. </p>
<p>He collected newspaper clippings and photographs, and persuaded most of the survivors of Frank’s platoon to write an account of the day of his death. That’s what helped me write my book: the survivors’ accounts are the single most detailed description of one day in Australian military history.</p>
<h2>A record of grief</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56237/original/g3ykgqj2-1407814305.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56237/original/g3ykgqj2-1407814305.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/56237/original/g3ykgqj2-1407814305.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56237/original/g3ykgqj2-1407814305.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56237/original/g3ykgqj2-1407814305.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=864&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56237/original/g3ykgqj2-1407814305.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56237/original/g3ykgqj2-1407814305.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/56237/original/g3ykgqj2-1407814305.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1086&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John G. Roberts Scrapbook 7, vol 7, p.4.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria, J.G. Roberts Scrapbooks </span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The grief of the Roberts family is indescribable. We can imagine Garry sitting into the night, reading and annotating the scrapbook he had made. But we cannot literally share his grief.</p>
<p>What we can do is visualise it by seeing the sheer size of one volume of Garry’s scrapbooks. They are nearly a metre tall; up to ten kilograms in weight; with every one of up to 500 pages bearing letters and illustrations, pages cut from books and – over-and-over again – copies of the “In memoriam” card Garry had printed bearing Frank’s likeness. PIC?</p>
<p>Ruby, Frank’s widow, was of course distraught. Her grief can be seen in a pair of baby shoes – Nancy’s. She sent one tiny shoe to Frank, writing that they would be reunited when he came home. The bootees were reunited; but Frank and Ruby and Nancy were not. A pair of pink baby shoes represents, more powerfully than all the medals and medallions and sympathy cards, what the victory of Mont St Quentin cost this one Melbourne family.</p>
<p>And here’s the point: 19,000 Victorians died in the Great War, most, like Frank, in the great battles on the Western Front. The Roberts family was unusual in the lengths Garry went to record and express his grief; but he was hardly alone in feeling it.</p>
<p>Looking at the bulky scrapbook that Garry created as a paper memorial to his son, we can get a sense of the weight of grief that he and all bereaved parents carried. And looking at Nancy’s tiny bootees we can glimpse the war’s effects on that little girl and her mother.</p>
<p>This is what museums can do with a caption and a few well-chosen artefacts. </p>
<p><br></p>
<p><em><a href="http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/whatson/wwi-love-and-sorrow/">World War I: Love & Sorrow</a> opens at the Melbourne Museum on August 30.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30362/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Stanley wrote Men of Mont St Quentin (Scribe, Melbourne, 2009) and was an academic advisor to the team that created WWI: Love & Sorrow at the Melbourne Museum.</span></em></p>The Melbourne Museum’s World War I: Love & Sorrow exhibition, which opens this weekend, explores the various experiences of Victorians in the Great War, and the war’s effects on them. Museums have…Peter Stanley, Research Professor in the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/301492014-08-11T02:33:41Z2014-08-11T02:33:41ZOne million pairs of socks: knitting for victory in the first world war<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55907/original/skq4x4yf-1407374647.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bundling socks, 'War Chest' Sock Appeal, Sydney, May 1917, photographer G. A. Hills.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/">State Library of NSW</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During the first world war in Australia there was a restriction of styles of clothing available to both men and women because of shortages in fabrics. Everyday dress became more sombre due to a lack of good quality dyes – and in any case bright colours were seen to be too gay and frivolous. </p>
<p>In the country that rode on the sheep’s back, however, wool was the solution for those serving on the front line. The manufacture of ready-made clothing might have decreased during wartime, but there was an explosion in hand knitting for soldiers.</p>
<h2>Socks for the boys</h2>
<p>Coordinated though organisations such as the <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/people/563480?c=people">Australian Comforts Fund</a>, groups formed at community centres such as the Melbourne Town Hall where every day up to 40 women would knit socks, vests, balaclavas and kneepads to parcel up and send to the home front.</p>
<p>Thousands of women and schoolchildren knitted throughout the war. Over 1.3 million pairs of socks were sent overseas – often with a small personal note inside the sock informing the digger who had knitted the garment along with a brief message. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55903/original/g7yczr5y-1407374207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55903/original/g7yczr5y-1407374207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55903/original/g7yczr5y-1407374207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55903/original/g7yczr5y-1407374207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55903/original/g7yczr5y-1407374207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55903/original/g7yczr5y-1407374207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55903/original/g7yczr5y-1407374207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55903/original/g7yczr5y-1407374207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cudgewa, Victoria, October 25 1916, photographer unknown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/">State Library of NSW</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Victoria, when demand exceeded supply, bicycle spokes were turned into knitting needles and sold to other states. Knitting provided comfort not only to the men who received the garments but also for the women who knitted. It was a meditative way to pass the time and feel they were contributing to the war effort.</p>
<p>So ingrained was the daily activity of knitting while sitting by the radio waiting to hear news from overseas, that some women, in the years after the war had ended, found themselves reaching instinctively for their needles as soon as the radio was turned on.</p>
<h2>The perfect sock</h2>
<p>To stop the “rogue knitting” of socks that might be ill-fitting or not well-made the <a href="http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/themes/1848/australian-comforts-fund-world-war-i">Soldiers’ Sock Fund</a> in Sydney provided instructional talks to help knitters produce the perfect sock. They also published <a href="http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/mob/collection/database/?irn=10108&search=patriotism&images=&wloc=&c=1&s=0">The Grey Sock</a> book in 1915. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55906/original/p5vv4sx4-1407374465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55906/original/p5vv4sx4-1407374465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/55906/original/p5vv4sx4-1407374465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55906/original/p5vv4sx4-1407374465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55906/original/p5vv4sx4-1407374465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55906/original/p5vv4sx4-1407374465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55906/original/p5vv4sx4-1407374465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/55906/original/p5vv4sx4-1407374465.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=577&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Women volunteer workers doing up clothing parcels at the Australian Comforts Fund rooms, Sydney, 1944, photographer Sam Hood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/">State Library of NSW</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After Australia joined the second world war, government departments introduced knitting patterns and clear guidelines about what garments could be knitted, and what styles were suited for the harsh conditions in the field. Knitting book companies such as Patons and Baldwins of Melbourne followed government guidelines and produced booklets such as the <a href="http://www.awm.gov.au/firstopac/bin/cgi-jsp.exe/shelf1.jsp?recno=100000021&userId=cat&catTable=">Patons Service Woolies: On Duty with the Services, Specialty Knitting Book No 153</a>, which advised knitters to “buy wisely” when purchasing the amount of wool, and to always use the recommended tension so the correct amount of wool would be used. </p>
<p>Along with standard patterns for socks, vest, jumpers and headwear, the pattern book included “Hospital Comforts”: a convalescent jacket with a cutaway back to make lying in bed more comfortable.</p>
<h2>A warming commodity</h2>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A wintry scene on the Western Front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlscotland/">National Library of Scotland</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The demand for wool during wartime made it a strategic commodity, and during the world wars Britain purchased the entire Australian wool clip. Despite the export of the wool clip during the first world war, plans were put in place for the sheepskin hides to provide <a href="http://www.mortels.com.au/shop/home.php?cat=37">a vest for every Australian soldier</a> abroad. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/15541415">Tanned Sheepskin Clothing Committee</a> was set up in 1914 with a plan to produce a million units for the diggers by the end of the war. By 1916 150,000 vests had been made.</p>
<p>Once again the vests were part of a community effort across the country. The Red Cross delivering the tanned sheepskins for volunteers to stitch together, using three sheepskins per vest. </p>
<p>The Korean War in the 1950s was the last war where Australian wool was seen as a strategic commodity. </p>
<p>Wool was still being used to make socks but this time instead of “trench foot” caused by fungal diseases in the trenches soldiers suffered “rice paddy feet”. This was caused by feet being immersed in snow or water for long periods. During this war soldiers would wear two pairs of socks, and sometimes two pairs of trousers, to help combat the freezing cold conditions. </p>
<p>The wool that was sent to Korea was often of poor quality. When made into uniforms the rough and scratchy “prickle effect” left a lasting impression. The reputation of wool suffered – and the industry took years to recover. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/30149/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Prudence Black receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>During the first world war in Australia there was a restriction of styles of clothing available to both men and women because of shortages in fabrics. Everyday dress became more sombre due to a lack of…Prudence Black, ARC DECRA Fellow in Gender and Cultural Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.