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Abstract
Perceptions of the Great War are still dominated by the accounts of a few canonical writers, such as Owen and Sassoon. Alternative soldier narratives have been marginalised. The wartime writings of the ex-navvy from Donegal, Patrick MacGill, published in 1915 and 1916, reveal an alternative perspective that throws a different light on the meaning attached to the war. Further, MacGill's post-war novel Fear!, published in 1921 is a strikingly early example of disillusionment with the war and shows how, even at an individual level, perceptions of the Great War changed dramatically as the writer moved from near-contemporaneous to reflective writing on the conflict.
Notes
[1] CitationBruley, ‘The Love of an Unknown Soldier’, 459–79.
[2] They are also more central to an understanding of MacGill than others have suggested. O'Sullivan's reference to the books MacGill wrote during the war as an ‘expensive detour for Patrick MacGill the writer’ singularly fails to do justice both to the books and the development of the man. CitationO'Sullivan, ‘Patrick MacGill’, 217–8.
[3] Hynes, A War Imagined; CitationFussell, The Great War and Popular Memory; Watson, Fighting Different Wars; CitationHolmes, Tommy; There are no references to MacGill in CitationSherry, The Cambridge Companion; Bond, Unquiet Front; CitationBond, ed., The First World War and British Military History; CitationSimpson, Hot Blood & Cold Steel; CitationAshworth, Trench Warfare, 1914–1918; CitationSheffield, Forgotten Victory; CitationNeillands, The Death of Glory; Corrigan, Mud, Blood and Poppycock and CitationBourke, An Intimate History of Killing. There is a single passing reference to MacGill in CitationFerguson, The Pity of War; and CitationTodman, The Great War. More specialist accounts of the battle of Loos are also silent, e.g. CitationWarner, The Battle of Loos; CitationCherry, Most Unfavourable Ground; CitationCorrigan, Loos 1915 and CitationLloyd, Loos 1915. The occasional MacGill poem appears in some but not all First World War anthologies.
[4] CitationCecil, The Flower of Battle, 231. Cecil recognises MacGill's ‘harrowing experiences as a stretcher bearer at Loos’ but accuses him of ‘hiding the facts’ and producing ‘accounts of the war … to tug the heartstrings of his audiences’.
[5] O'Sullivan, ‘Patrick MacGill’, 217. O'Sullivan is correct in characterising MacGill's later war novels as pot-boilers but surprisingly he does not mention Fear!.
[6] CitationJeffery, Ireland and the Great War, 96.
[7] CitationJeffery, Ireland and the Great War, 97.
[8] CitationJeffery, Ireland and the Great War, 98. The quotation is from CitationOnion, English Fiction and Drama of the Great War, 54.
[9] CitationDungan, They Shall Grow Not Old, 129 and 132.
[10] CitationHynes, A War Imagined, x.
[11] CitationHynes, A War Imagined, 158. There is much to be disputed here but which goes beyond the confines of this article. The pre-occupation with the western front obscures the geographical scope of the conflict and the significance of other theatres of war; the emphasis on battles oversimplifies a more complex set of experiences in which fighting played a relatively small part; and the focus on ‘stupid generals’ provides easy scapegoats without furthering the understanding of the nature and significance of the various battles in which, allegedly, lions were led by donkeys. See Sheffield, Forgotten Victory; Ashworth, Trench Warfare; and CitationCorrigan, Mud, Blood and Poppycock. See also Neillands, Death of Glory, who rejects the allegation that British generals were to a man ‘donkeys’ but does argue that ‘the dream of glory’ died after the battle of Loos.
[12] CitationLinder, Princes of the Trenches, 48–9. The question of authenticity is an interesting one. Robert Graves, for example, openly admittedly to embellishing aspects of his trench experience as he sought to cash in on the boom for wartime memoirs at a time when he desperately needed money. See also the doubts about Remarque's experience of conflict and purpose in writing All Quiet on the Western Front, a book often acclaimed for the authenticity and universality with which it depicted the Great War. CitationBond, Unquiet Front and CitationEkstein, Rites of Spring.
[13] CitationWatson, Fighting Different Wars, 186 and 217.
[14] CitationWatson Fighting Different Wars, 186.
[15] CitationWinter, The Great War and the British People, 284. Having made this valuable point and having made a useful distinction between different types of war literature—literature of warning, of separation and bereavement and of guilt—Winter relies heavily on the narrow range of canonical soldier-writers. Winter also notes that others, while experiencing similar reactions to those of the soldier-writers ‘managed to repress or consign [them] to oblivion…’ For a discussion of these issues see Taylor, ‘Blood, Mud and Futility?’, 229–50.
[16] MacGill, The Great Push, Introduction.
[17] MacGill's war memoirs were popular among soldiers. CitationBrearton, The Great War in Irish Poetry, 40. CitationHindle writing in 1931 identified MacGill as one of the few writers who had captured the spirit ‘of the Englishman [sic] in war time’. ‘War Books and Peace Propaganda’.
[18] Great Push, Introduction. The significance of MacGill's intention to write honestly about the battle of Loos in particular should not be overlooked. As the distinguished war correspondent, Philip Gibbs commented ‘Again it seemed to us [war correspondents] that the guiding idea behind the censorship [about the battle of Loos] was, not to conceal the truth from the enemy, but from the nation, in defence of the British high command and its tragic blundering’. CitationGibbs, Adventures in Journalism, 52.
[19] The book sold 10,000 copies in little over a week of publication and was heralded as ‘an outstanding piece of work’ by the Illustrated London News and ‘of unusual interest, which we cannot but praise’ by the Spectator. It was also turned into a musical!
[20] Great Push, 69 and 77. See also his description of the ‘abject helplessness’ of a wounded man, ‘a pathetic sight, clinging weakly to life’. MacGill, The Red Horizon, 154.
[21] Great Push, 80; Red Horizon, 305.
[22] Great Push, 148.
[23] CitationMacGill, The Amateur Army, Preface.
[24] CitationMacGill, The Amateur Army, 72.
[25] Amateur Army, 15.
[26] Amateur Army, 63–4.
[27] Red Horizon, 61.
[28] Red Horizon, 91.
[29] ‘Out There’, Pearson's Magazine, September 1915, 293–4.
[30] Red Horizon, 25 and chap. IX. See also 17 and 26.
[31] The question of Irishness falls outside this article but it is worth noting two important points. First, being part of the British army did not necessarily mean an identification with the English; second, for many Irish army recruits, with limited sympathy for ‘middle-class’ patriots, nationalism was ‘too expensive a passion’. See CitationMacDonagh, ‘Irish Soldiers in the British Army, 1792–1922’; CitationDooley, Irishmen or English Soldiers?, MacGill repeatedly spoke with affection of the Irishman he met in France. For example: ‘The brogue that could be cut with a knife … and the kindliness that sprang from the cabins of Corrymeela and the moors of Derrynane’. Red Horizon, 83. He also drew strength at times of crisis, notably before major battles, from his memories of his childhood Ireland. Red Horizon, 197–9. See also CitationTaylor, ‘A Little Man in a Great War’, 235–49.
[32] Helping a newly arrived and somewhat bemused young soldier (‘a mere boy’), who had been wounded, MacGill describes himself simply as ‘a navvy [who] digs drains and things like that’. Great Push, 191.
[33] Amateur Army, Preface.
[34] Amateur Army, 55.
[35] Amateur Army, 106; Red Horizon, 14.
[36] Amateur Army, 25.
[37] Amateur Army, 61.
[38] Amateur Army, 306.
[39] Amateur Army, 17.
[40] Amateur Army, 172.
[41] Amateur Army, 14.
[42] Amateur Army
[43] Great Push, 155.
[44] Great Push, 224.
[45] Great Push, 73.
[46] Great Push, 225 Similar attitudes were expressed by other participants in the battle of Loos. For example, Harry Fellows of the Northumberland Fusiliers later commented on the way in which ‘war historians … lay much stress on the hardship experienced by the men … [but personally I have no bad memories of them. I think that the general attitude was that we were on Active Service now and that these conditions had to be accepted as the norm’. www.westernfront.co.uk/ the greatwar/articles/research/loosbattle.htm See also Taylor, ‘Blood, Mud and Futility?’ for a discussion of other examples.
[47] Great Push, 72–3.
[48] Red Horizon, 130.
[49] Great Push, 124.
[50] Red Horizon, 75.
[51] Red Horizon, 192 and especially ‘The Everyday of War’ in Soldier Songs (London, 1917), which was written in hospital ay Versailles in November 1915 after MacGill had been wounded at the front and which concludes with the lines ‘But an arm is crippled, a leg is gone/And the game's no more for me’.
[52] When relieving the Scots Guards in the front line, MacGill is informed that ‘they're quiet fellows the Saxons, they don't want to fight any more than we do’. Red Horizon, 84.
[53] Barely five pages into The Great Push, which takes up CitationMacGill's story from The Red Horizon there is a matter-of-fact reference to ‘being a stretcher-bearer’ (15) and as such ‘a non-combatant [with] no rifle, no weapon to defend myself with if attacked’. (16)
[54] Red Horizon, 91–2 CitationMacGill contrasts civilian hostility to Germans with the troops respect and sympathy for their foes. The Great Push, 229 and 249–50.
[55] Red Horizon, 103.
[56] Red Horizon, 197 and Great Push, 249.
[57] Contrast this with the bitter picture of progressive brutalisation in CitationO'Flaherty, Return of the Brute.
[58] The attack described in The Great Push is described as being ‘carefully planned … with intelligent foresight’. Great Push, 48. He also makes positive comments about senior regimental figures.
[59] Red Horizon, 301.
[60] Great Push, 161.
[61] Great Push, 162.
[62] CitationTaylor, ‘The Minstrel Boy to the War has Gone’, 190–202 and CitationTaylor, ‘Blood, Mud and Futility’.
[63] See particularly CitationFrantzen, Bloody Good; and also CitationParis, Warrior Nation Images of War, Chapter 4.
[64] Great Push, 251.
[65] Great Push, 253.
[66] ‘Bravery in the face of danger did not belong to me’. CitationMacGill, Fear!, 31.
[67] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 11. Interestingly, he also adds that ‘these thoughts … come to my head as I write. What I thought of at the moment I do not know. This only can I recall’, 171.
[68] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 28.
[69] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 156–7, 169ff, and 175–6.
[70] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 63.
[71] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 232.
[72] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 218 and 219.
[73] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 175–6 for an anonymous individual, driven mad and blundering to his death in no-man's land. Chapter XIV Shot At Dawn deals at length with the execution of a young man found guilty of cowardice, with whom Ryder identifies.
[74] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 280.
[75] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 281–2.
[76] CitationMacGill, Fear!, 297.
[77] There is a similarity with CitationMacGill's bitter pre-war comment on society's attitude towards navvies. ‘We are men despised when we were most useful, rejected when we were not needed and forgotten when our troubles weighed upon us heavily’. Children of the Dead End, 227.
[78] Cecil, The Flower of Battle, 231. Such a view is difficult to square with the fact that MacGill's accounts brought him into conflict with the official censor and almost resulted in a court martial. An alternative explanation is that MacGill's essential positive view of the war (or at least of its heroic soldiers) fell victim of the ‘culture of disillusionment’ of the late 1920s.
[79] The Times, 11 February, 1916, 3. MacGill remained in the London Irish Rifles until 1917 when he was transferred to the Middlesex regiment.
[80] Punch, 3 October, 1917.
[81] CitationMacGill, The Brown Brethren, 166. See also 168.
[82] CitationMacGill, The Brown Brethren, 262.
[83] Fear!, 9–11 and 281.
[84] Fear!, 181.
[85] Fear!, 195–6. See also the reference to ‘a tempest seething within my brain … my mind ready to receive every new impression [of the war] and record it as the raw sore records the pressure of a careless thumb’. Ibid., 281.
[86] Great Push, 96.
[87] Fear!, 297.
[88] This discussion focuses on more formally written accounts but would need to be extended to include other forms of testimony, not least oral reminiscences.
[89] Sassoon, Sherston's Progress, 37 quoted in Watson, Fighting Different Wars, 231. Italics added. The same also appears to apply to Henry Williamson's A Dream of Fair Women, which was first published in 1924 but was significantly modified when reprinted a decade later.
[90] The works of Owen and Sassoon are well known. See recent biographies: CitationWilson, Siegfried Sassoon. Citation The Journey from the Trenches , and CitationHibberd, Wilfred Owen. The exceptional nature of Owen's war experience—of a particularly active part of the front during some very bad winter conditions—is often overlooked. CitationTawney, ‘Some Reflections of a Soldier’, 20, 104–6; CitationCarrington, A Subaltern's War; CitationEwart, Way of Revelation, CitationMontague, Disenchantment; CitationGurner, Pass Guard; O'Flaherty, The Return of the Brute; CitationGraves, Goodbye to All That; CitationRemarque, All Quiet on the Western Front and Citation The Road Back . CitationAldington, Death of a Hero and CitationSherriff, Journey's End.
[91] Carrington, Subaltern's War, 12.
[92] Carrington, Subaltern's War, 262.
[93] Cited in CitationEllis, Eye-deep in Hell, 100. Similarly, the ex-soldier Gurner wrote Pass Guard as a rebuttal of Remarque's interpretation of the war. See also D. Jerrold, The Lies About the War. Cyril Falls was also highly critical of the distortions that came about as the result of compressing events, what the Times Literary Supplement, in June 1930, described as the ‘closing-up of scenes, not in themselves unfaithful’ which created a misleading impression as a whole.
[94] For a discussion of Aldington see CitationCecil Flower of Battle, Chapter 2 and of Sheriff see Bond, Unquiet Front, Chapter 2 and CitationBracco, Merchants of Hope.