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A War in Words
This is a portrait of World War I through the letters and diaries of its participants, recently uncovered during extensive research across 28 countries for the 10-part Channel 4 series, "The First World War", showing during autumn 2003. Combatants, eyewitnesses and victims talk directly to us from within the war itself and from all sides of the conflict. Their testimony - from that of one of Franz Ferdinand's assassins, to the final entry from a French soldier as he revisits the battlefield in 1919 - recounts the complex history of a war whose repercussions changed the world irrevocably.
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First published September 11, 2003
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November 17, 2018
Having read quite widely on the First World War, I found much to reflect on in Svetlana Palmer and Sarah Wallis's collection of extracts from diaries and letters, written by those on opposing sides of the conflict, and accompanied by a useful connecting narrative from its authors. It makes for deeply moving reading, and shows, if anyone ever doubted it, what an appalling waste of life and resources war is, and that regardless of who is blamed for the initiation of war, opposing military combatants, civilians, creatures and the earth itself suffer equally.
One of the many insights offered by these personal writings are the preconceptions of The Other - and how they affect the writer's thinking and actions.
Vasily Mishnin, on the Russian front line sector of the Eastern Front north of Warsaw, writes in January 1915:
The Germans are putting their trench in order, and we can see them taking their mess tins to fetch water... This is our enemy? They look like good, normal people, they all want to live and yet here we are, gathered together to take each other's lives away.
German officer Ernst Nopper, stationed in Poland in 1915, writes of a Polish fortress town that has fallen to the German advance against Russian troops:
Inside the fort I was particularly surprised by how clean the barracks are, everything is scrubbed and bleached ... we are wrong to accuse the Russians of being sloppy and untidy all the time. In one of the areas abandoned we found several paintings wrapped in newspaper. I was very surprised to find they were of a rather high quality. We should really ask ourselves why we think so little of the Russians. But it is true that culture hasn't really got through to the ordinary people here, unlike in Germany.
His next entries go on to illustrate, in addition to seeing the Slavic peoples as somehow lower in worth than Germans, the deeply anti-Semitic views which were widely held in Germany and which were to contribute to the rise of Nazism just a few short years later.
French officer Paul Tuffrau fights in the Battle of Verdun, which I recall learning at school in the 1960s, 'bled France white' - the campaign, which, like the Somme, was designed to draw German forces into two large divided fronts. On 25 December 1916, by which time the battle has been going on for 300 days, with 352,800 German casualties, and 348,300 French, he writes:
At 6pm I leave in the dark and the rain to visit the A-33 trench area, which cannot be reached in daytime. Beaudoin, the officer commanding, tells me that around three o'clock the Fritz, 250 or 300 metres away, sang them Christmas carols in French, beautifully.
And in February, after two weeks on leave:
... the men's faces are contorted by the cold and exhaustion. Red-rimmed eyes, red noses, pale skin, blue ears, beards hung with icicles. Sweat freezes right away and looks like snow on the horses' backs and on the men's overcoats. Our shoes cannot grip on the frozen earth as we march.
Many confided their innermost thoughts to their diaries, which they took care to keep hidden, for obvious reasons.
Paul Tuffrau records a conversation with General Mangin, second in command at Verdun, when the former attempts, unsuccessfully, to secure leave for his men, who unlike the British, are only allowed one day of rest after each 24 days on the front line:
Then, with a brief salute, he went back into his well-heated private office where it's easy to avoid the reality and talk of the greater good. As for me, I was stunned by his extraordinary refusal to acknowledge the courage of the men ... That night, after hearing this 'heroic' pep-talk, I led my men along the tracks that were horribly muddy and slippery. Some of them were crying with exhaustion and rage.
Turkish officer Mehmed Fasih is stationed at Gallipoli, and writes, in November 1915:
A great chasm exists between the fellows who do all the fighting and those who merely talk about heroism and victory ... what a tragedy it will be if all men who are still fighting here have to die like their predecessors. Just so that a handful of cowards can enjoy a taste of fame.
At 21 years of age, he writes that his hair and beard have grown grey already, and that his moustache is white.
The chapter In The Bush shows how the war extended, among other places, to Africa, where there was a renewed scramble by the European powers with already established colonies for territorial gains, and subsequent huge damage to the people of the African nations caught up in the conflict. African porters and labourers were used by both sides, and an estimated 100,000 to 120,000 employed by the Germans and as many as 250,000 recruits on the British side perished from malnutrition, disease and accidents. A further 300,000 native East Africans died as a result of famine caused by war recruitment and requisitioning. German settler Dr Ludwig Deppe, who provided medical support to the German forces, wrote, a year after the end of the war:
Behind us we have left destroyed fields, ransacked magazines, and, for the immediate future, starvation. We were no longer the agents of culture; our track was marked by death, plundering and evacuated villages.
The chapter on The War at Sea contains an account by Johannes Spiess, Watch Officer on U-boat U-9, of his, and the submarine's, first patrol mission in the North Sea, six weeks into the war, and the jubilation of the crew when they sunk three British light cruisers, two of which, HMS Cressy and Hogue, had gone to the rescue of the first, HMS Aboukir. Although I'm sure a British crew would have done more or less the same, (though earlier Royal Navy officers, and I'm referencing Patrick O'Brian's fictional Captain Jack Aubrey, would surely have regarded it as deeply unethical to attack a ship without any warning, from a hidden position) I found it quite shocking to read this, as the Chief Yeoman of Signals on the Aboukir, Alfred Assiter, is named on our local War Memorial, and less than a month later, the U-9 would sink HMS Hawke, on which two more men from my town perished. As a non-combatant, and one who, unlike my older relatives, has been fortunate enough not to have lived through a war, it is naturally in those moments when I make a personal connection that I feel the horror of war most keenly. I understand that there has been a big reaction to Peter Jackson's We Will Remember Them among young people, who have suddenly seen the soldiers as resembling those living now rather than flickering distant black and white history.
Particularly moving are the diaries featured of two children - Yves Congar from Sedan, a town in north-eastern France, and Piete Kuhr from the East Prussian town of Schneidemuhl.
Yves' father is one of a number of men taken hostage to ensure the compliance of the town's population, and sent to Germany to work. Yves himself narrowly escapes detention, at 14, after having being reported calling the occupying Germans the 'Boche'.
Piete, initially patriotic, becomes disillusioned as time goes by, and writes, in February 1918:
I don't want any more soldiers to die. Millions are dead - and for what? For whose benefit? We must just make sure that there is never another war in the future. We must never again fall for the nonsense peddled by the older generation.
So, just a few extracts picked out from a superb anthology which I can highly recommend to those readers who, like myself, are not so much students of military history, but of humanity in times of war.
One of the many insights offered by these personal writings are the preconceptions of The Other - and how they affect the writer's thinking and actions.
Vasily Mishnin, on the Russian front line sector of the Eastern Front north of Warsaw, writes in January 1915:
The Germans are putting their trench in order, and we can see them taking their mess tins to fetch water... This is our enemy? They look like good, normal people, they all want to live and yet here we are, gathered together to take each other's lives away.
German officer Ernst Nopper, stationed in Poland in 1915, writes of a Polish fortress town that has fallen to the German advance against Russian troops:
Inside the fort I was particularly surprised by how clean the barracks are, everything is scrubbed and bleached ... we are wrong to accuse the Russians of being sloppy and untidy all the time. In one of the areas abandoned we found several paintings wrapped in newspaper. I was very surprised to find they were of a rather high quality. We should really ask ourselves why we think so little of the Russians. But it is true that culture hasn't really got through to the ordinary people here, unlike in Germany.
His next entries go on to illustrate, in addition to seeing the Slavic peoples as somehow lower in worth than Germans, the deeply anti-Semitic views which were widely held in Germany and which were to contribute to the rise of Nazism just a few short years later.
French officer Paul Tuffrau fights in the Battle of Verdun, which I recall learning at school in the 1960s, 'bled France white' - the campaign, which, like the Somme, was designed to draw German forces into two large divided fronts. On 25 December 1916, by which time the battle has been going on for 300 days, with 352,800 German casualties, and 348,300 French, he writes:
At 6pm I leave in the dark and the rain to visit the A-33 trench area, which cannot be reached in daytime. Beaudoin, the officer commanding, tells me that around three o'clock the Fritz, 250 or 300 metres away, sang them Christmas carols in French, beautifully.
And in February, after two weeks on leave:
... the men's faces are contorted by the cold and exhaustion. Red-rimmed eyes, red noses, pale skin, blue ears, beards hung with icicles. Sweat freezes right away and looks like snow on the horses' backs and on the men's overcoats. Our shoes cannot grip on the frozen earth as we march.
Many confided their innermost thoughts to their diaries, which they took care to keep hidden, for obvious reasons.
Paul Tuffrau records a conversation with General Mangin, second in command at Verdun, when the former attempts, unsuccessfully, to secure leave for his men, who unlike the British, are only allowed one day of rest after each 24 days on the front line:
Then, with a brief salute, he went back into his well-heated private office where it's easy to avoid the reality and talk of the greater good. As for me, I was stunned by his extraordinary refusal to acknowledge the courage of the men ... That night, after hearing this 'heroic' pep-talk, I led my men along the tracks that were horribly muddy and slippery. Some of them were crying with exhaustion and rage.
Turkish officer Mehmed Fasih is stationed at Gallipoli, and writes, in November 1915:
A great chasm exists between the fellows who do all the fighting and those who merely talk about heroism and victory ... what a tragedy it will be if all men who are still fighting here have to die like their predecessors. Just so that a handful of cowards can enjoy a taste of fame.
At 21 years of age, he writes that his hair and beard have grown grey already, and that his moustache is white.
The chapter In The Bush shows how the war extended, among other places, to Africa, where there was a renewed scramble by the European powers with already established colonies for territorial gains, and subsequent huge damage to the people of the African nations caught up in the conflict. African porters and labourers were used by both sides, and an estimated 100,000 to 120,000 employed by the Germans and as many as 250,000 recruits on the British side perished from malnutrition, disease and accidents. A further 300,000 native East Africans died as a result of famine caused by war recruitment and requisitioning. German settler Dr Ludwig Deppe, who provided medical support to the German forces, wrote, a year after the end of the war:
Behind us we have left destroyed fields, ransacked magazines, and, for the immediate future, starvation. We were no longer the agents of culture; our track was marked by death, plundering and evacuated villages.
The chapter on The War at Sea contains an account by Johannes Spiess, Watch Officer on U-boat U-9, of his, and the submarine's, first patrol mission in the North Sea, six weeks into the war, and the jubilation of the crew when they sunk three British light cruisers, two of which, HMS Cressy and Hogue, had gone to the rescue of the first, HMS Aboukir. Although I'm sure a British crew would have done more or less the same, (though earlier Royal Navy officers, and I'm referencing Patrick O'Brian's fictional Captain Jack Aubrey, would surely have regarded it as deeply unethical to attack a ship without any warning, from a hidden position) I found it quite shocking to read this, as the Chief Yeoman of Signals on the Aboukir, Alfred Assiter, is named on our local War Memorial, and less than a month later, the U-9 would sink HMS Hawke, on which two more men from my town perished. As a non-combatant, and one who, unlike my older relatives, has been fortunate enough not to have lived through a war, it is naturally in those moments when I make a personal connection that I feel the horror of war most keenly. I understand that there has been a big reaction to Peter Jackson's We Will Remember Them among young people, who have suddenly seen the soldiers as resembling those living now rather than flickering distant black and white history.
Particularly moving are the diaries featured of two children - Yves Congar from Sedan, a town in north-eastern France, and Piete Kuhr from the East Prussian town of Schneidemuhl.
Yves' father is one of a number of men taken hostage to ensure the compliance of the town's population, and sent to Germany to work. Yves himself narrowly escapes detention, at 14, after having being reported calling the occupying Germans the 'Boche'.
Piete, initially patriotic, becomes disillusioned as time goes by, and writes, in February 1918:
I don't want any more soldiers to die. Millions are dead - and for what? For whose benefit? We must just make sure that there is never another war in the future. We must never again fall for the nonsense peddled by the older generation.
So, just a few extracts picked out from a superb anthology which I can highly recommend to those readers who, like myself, are not so much students of military history, but of humanity in times of war.
May 3, 2022
4.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads. Strongly recommend it if you have any interest in WWI or personal experiences of wartime.
Collection of extracts from diaries and letters (and one oral account from the 1970s for a Guinean soldier who fought for France) that cover a wide range of topics on WWI from beginning to end. The general format is that each chapter contains two or three diaries or selection of letters by different people and jumps between them to tell the story of that particular topic. The Isonzo chapter goes between the diary of an Italian soldier and a diary of a nameless Austrian officer (the diary was found on his corpse) for example. Some of the sources are from people were involved in big events (like the youngest of the Franz Ferdinand assassins or Rudolf Hess's letters) while others are from more ordinary people. Personally my favourite bits were the Isonzo chapter, the Prezemysl chapter, anything to do with the Eastern Front, an account of the Serbian retreat through Albania, and one particular diary by a teenage German girl living in East Prussia as it describes ordinary life in Germany at the time. You don't need any prior knowledge as there are paragraphs between the extracts to describe the context of what is going on and the book was written alongside some TV documentary so it is aimed at a broad audience.
Collection of extracts from diaries and letters (and one oral account from the 1970s for a Guinean soldier who fought for France) that cover a wide range of topics on WWI from beginning to end. The general format is that each chapter contains two or three diaries or selection of letters by different people and jumps between them to tell the story of that particular topic. The Isonzo chapter goes between the diary of an Italian soldier and a diary of a nameless Austrian officer (the diary was found on his corpse) for example. Some of the sources are from people were involved in big events (like the youngest of the Franz Ferdinand assassins or Rudolf Hess's letters) while others are from more ordinary people. Personally my favourite bits were the Isonzo chapter, the Prezemysl chapter, anything to do with the Eastern Front, an account of the Serbian retreat through Albania, and one particular diary by a teenage German girl living in East Prussia as it describes ordinary life in Germany at the time. You don't need any prior knowledge as there are paragraphs between the extracts to describe the context of what is going on and the book was written alongside some TV documentary so it is aimed at a broad audience.
April 16, 2019
Wow I’ve never read a book that apparently no one on Goodreads has read before, I wouldn’t even have thought that was possible!! But I’m excited to be the first to review it.
I’ve never read a history book like this before - A War in Words tells the story of the First World War through the letters and diaries of the people who lived it, and not just the stories you might already know.
It shows a truly impressive range of real life experiences and characters, from the two children on opposite sides who were forced to grow up too soon by the privations of war; to the English officer who seems to have viewed his prisoner of war camp as a sort of German do-it-yourself Butlins. The authors must have worked so hard to find some of the stories which are true rarities - the diary of the female surgeon working in Belgrade who went on to fight for women’s suffrage, or the tale of the East African volunteer who was shamelessly exploited and never really told what he was fighting for. There are even brushes with more infamous names with the letters of Rudolf Hess (who seems to have spent most of his time not fighting) and his adoring mother, or those of one of the conspirators in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
The letters and diaries come from so many different parts of the conflict that the book has a breadth and depth that few others manage to achieve. There are even ‘the truth is stranger than fiction moments’; where diarists from opposite sides of the conflict meet, miles from home, and enjoy each other’s company; where a soldier is killed in the act of writing and the next entry is recorded by the person who found the diary nearly twenty years later when the world had erupted into war yet again; and the section where we follow the intense fighting in the Italian Alps from the points of view of soldiers on both sides of the same battle which reads like an action sequence in a film. The losses are much more poignant when you have read their thoughts, and their worries for their families at home despite the danger that surrounds them.
It all combines to humanise the war and the people who lived through it in a way that traditional retellings of troop movements or political manoeuvrings cannot come close to by showing that no matter what side they were on, or how different they may have appeared from the outside; they all needed that uniquely human method of making sense of the horrors of war through writing, they all had someone who loved them.
I’ve never read a history book like this before - A War in Words tells the story of the First World War through the letters and diaries of the people who lived it, and not just the stories you might already know.
It shows a truly impressive range of real life experiences and characters, from the two children on opposite sides who were forced to grow up too soon by the privations of war; to the English officer who seems to have viewed his prisoner of war camp as a sort of German do-it-yourself Butlins. The authors must have worked so hard to find some of the stories which are true rarities - the diary of the female surgeon working in Belgrade who went on to fight for women’s suffrage, or the tale of the East African volunteer who was shamelessly exploited and never really told what he was fighting for. There are even brushes with more infamous names with the letters of Rudolf Hess (who seems to have spent most of his time not fighting) and his adoring mother, or those of one of the conspirators in the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
The letters and diaries come from so many different parts of the conflict that the book has a breadth and depth that few others manage to achieve. There are even ‘the truth is stranger than fiction moments’; where diarists from opposite sides of the conflict meet, miles from home, and enjoy each other’s company; where a soldier is killed in the act of writing and the next entry is recorded by the person who found the diary nearly twenty years later when the world had erupted into war yet again; and the section where we follow the intense fighting in the Italian Alps from the points of view of soldiers on both sides of the same battle which reads like an action sequence in a film. The losses are much more poignant when you have read their thoughts, and their worries for their families at home despite the danger that surrounds them.
It all combines to humanise the war and the people who lived through it in a way that traditional retellings of troop movements or political manoeuvrings cannot come close to by showing that no matter what side they were on, or how different they may have appeared from the outside; they all needed that uniquely human method of making sense of the horrors of war through writing, they all had someone who loved them.
May 11, 2012
This is a good format of historical writing; the war told through the diaries and letters of the men on the ground (or women and children). There is material in this anthology that you don't often find, remarkable stories, as always, but from an enlightened global perspective, where so many other war histories of this kind (The Forgotten Voices Series for example) perpetuate the Good v Evil myths and show a western or worst still an Anglocentric bias.
The main editorial device is juxtaposition; servicemen on opposing sides in varying arenas/fronts and at times it works very well particularly with the German/French school children whose diaries appear in several chapters, or the ANZAC/Ottoman soldiers in Gallipoli. Other noteworthy examples include the Canadian and African volunteers (wherein it's the African that shows the greater degree of nobility and sophistication), the comparative experiences of British and Russian POW's in which one English officer writes a review recommending which camp is the better for food and sporting facilities, The promiscuous British Naval Officer and his nemesis, a German U-boat Captain and finally the two soldiers who would become prominent ranked officers in the next war; Rudolf Hess and Dmitri Oskin.
However I found only some of the writing here interesting and then it was abridged far too much and the editing became intrusive, too visible, maybe as a consequence limited space or publishers demands. I would rather of read the originals or at least more of them. Overall then, this is well worth reading if you are interested in this sort of thing.
July 3, 2007
What a great book! This book is a selection from letters and diaries from the First World War. The authors have striven to go beyond the usual British or French epistles and represent all sorts of people involved in the conflict, including not only soldiers, but also seamen, civilians, children, prisoners. To show the global nature of the war, they've included material from French, British, Russian, German, Austrian, Italian, Turkish, Australian, Canadian, American, Serbian, West African, and Polish perspectives.
The letters and diaries that make up this book are well-chosen and interestingly organized. The chapters divide up the war by region or by great battle and the authors present a contrasting pair of material. For example, in the chapter on Gallipoli, they’ve juxtaposed diary entries from an Australian corporal, part of the invading Anzac force, and a Turkish officer defending the territory. Not only is it interesting to get perspectives from little-heard from groups of people (Turkish, African, Italian, French civilian, etc.), but it is even more interesting to see these contrasted in such a way so as to give both sides of any given conflict. It helps to understand why both sides could think that they were “right”.
April 10, 2018
A really interesting read, based on twenty eight diaries and collections of letters from World War One. The diaries and accounts start with the diary of the youngest member of the assassins of Archduke Ferdinand which was the catalyst for the first world war. There are accounts from many of the belligerent nations soldier's giving a balanced and truly interesting book. Also among the sources are school children in France and Germany living under occupation and also living with the shortages caused by war. Several notable names spring from the pages such as Mustafa Kemal known as Mustafa Ataturk the first Turkish President, along with Rudolph Hess.
March 3, 2023
Interesting and engaging book told through letters and diary extracts from men who served different armies and had different experiences. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
February 27, 2014
There's a surge of interest in WW1 at the moment. This book is in the form of letters written by those caught up in those awful times. It may not be the easiest read, but it is worthwhile. Normally only one side, one country's perspective is presented. These are letters from individuals from all countries involved in the fight. Some letters are heroic, some resigned, some terrified. Historians should be thrilled at an evidenced first-hand source. Other readers will end the book with a wider understading of the effects of that war insofar as it affected if not ruined the lives of the ordinary person.
May 26, 2019
Diaries from participants in WW One, with commentary to describe the context and the action at hand. In addition to soldiers, the entries include nurses, sweethearts, and a young boy in Sedan (a French town behind the German lines, where "taxes" were imposed on pet ownership, and citizens were taken as prisoners to ensure good behavior of the townspeople left behind). Action included Eastern Front, Western Front, Africa, Gallipoli, and even an accounting from an African conscript to the conflict.
August 4, 2011
"History is written by those who lived it" someone once said. Never a truer statement were made. The First World War through the eyes of those who lived it. From the civilians to the front line troops. This book tells its story through the diary entries and letters of those that were there. Thoroughly engaging and gripping to the last.
January 16, 2012
An excellent insight into the lives of many people affected by the First world War through their diaries. So much is written and talked about the Western Front and we tend to forget or indeed do not know anything about the war and how it was fought in other countries. It was after all a 'World War'.
April 5, 2007
About the lives of soldiers in world war 1
March 20, 2012
Harrowing (one diary ends as the diarist is killed while writing it) but gives some perspectives not often seen - non-Allies, children
March 6, 2013
So long ago since I read this. Interesting, but I prefer a mix of personal diaries and history.
May 26, 2013
If this doesn't succeed in getting you interested in history, there is no hope for you.
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