I have not talked of the subject of World War One for some time in my blog but I have found an article that, I feel, merits a return to the subject. Recently, the diary of John T. French, an English soldier fighting in the Great War, has been revealed to the public. His diary provides primary, first hand accounts of what was going in the trenches during the First World War.
French’s diary is quite an amazing piece of history and can serve the general understanding of what happened. After reading many of the World War One British poets and Vera Brittain’s book, as well as Lee’s The Ghosts May Laugh, this diary brings my understanding full circle.
Many of the British poets were soldiers but their works were a type of art, not to be dismissed, but they were not presented in the way French’s diary is. This diary shows that poets such as Sassoon and Owen were not embellishing anything to make their poems more vivid or more profound. The article describes some of the content from French’s journal that shows this:
They [French's words] describe the horror of the trenches, such as removing ‘piles of men’ killed in action and ‘shifting and ducking’ bullets which scream ‘like ten thousand devils on the loose’… Enemy snipers, including one particular ‘smart and hot’ shooter, regularly kill his comrades. Mr French describes the ‘awful mess’ of limbs sticking out of the ground and times when he is called to dig out men who have been trapped in mud and collapsed trenches.
The realities of World War One are brought to the forefront through French’s diary. It makes one realize that this was real… here is an actual document from the place and time of this Great War. You can’t ignore it and all of those artful descriptions of destruction and death found in the poetry of the British poets were real.
It just makes me wonder, what kinds of footprints will we find from other wars. Will they bring some terrible truths that have been hidden? Will they affirm a cause or justify actions? It would be nice if tales of war were fiction but John T. French’s journal is an affirmation that they are not.
Come on over, Fritz!
by Cher Thornhill
Mail Online
October 29, 2009
You might also enjoy Soldier’s Mail, which features the collected writings home of US Sgt Sam Avery while on the front lines of American involvement in the Great War from the hot sands along the Rio Grande to the cold mud along the Meuse. Letters are posted on the same date they were written more than 90 years ago. Stop by and march along with the Most Gallant Generation.