Two Different Experiences Of World War I

World War I brought on a completely different type of war. For the first time a total war was fought, affecting many countries, women, and children. The soldiers that fought in this war were put to the test in dealing with mass mobilization, a total war involving all aspects of the home front, and mass death. The military became a citizen military with all the men from the home front mobilized to defend France. Soldiers memories from this war more than any other in the past were significant in part because of the vast majority were able to write home about their accounts. With dealing with total war for the first time, soldiers felt the trauma that came through war as well as coping with the devastation that they went through after victory.

It was like a brotherhood day.” Others treated war as a sacred and prideful occasion to be part of the Union sacree, “he was of the race of men for whom duty is sacred”. The beginning of the war was at first treated as a right of passage for the soldiers and many left with a feeling of nationalism in fighting for their country. Soldiers had the feeling that the war would be quick and that they would return with the lands of Alsace and Lorraine back in French control. However, some had a different experience of the beginning of the war. Peasant women from the country were distraught with their husbands and sons leaving for war. One claimed “No, no. I don’t want you to go, what’ll become of me? They have no right to do that to us. I won’t have it. I won’t!”2 Those that had left with joy to protect their country could also have been misled by propaganda. The news that was being circulated was to support the French soldier or poilu and that they will win the war. Nowhere was the media telling the people that this would be a devastating and traumatic. The home front was not told in detail of the destruction, devastation, trauma, and horrors of the total war being fought in France by the media. The people learned about this through the letters sent from the war front from there loved

For example, when Barbusse talks about simply staying strong and courageous at the battle of Verdun, Paul is talking about the destruction and despair of the battle. Both are not wrong in what they bring up but it is one example of how two people at the same battle can discuss it in two different ways. Leonard Smith brings up a similar way in which to under stand how soldiers wrote about the war. “Any narrative form both includes and excludes. What is excluded if we consider the Great War as a tragedy and the solider as a victim? What do the war and the soldier look like if we put whatever is excluded back in?” He is looking at how the war was portrayed by different people and that each account excludes something that another might include. An example of this could be the accounts of the battle at Verdun by Barbusse and Paul. World War I started as a war for pride and nationalism and turned to devastation, destruction, and traumatization of the soldier. With the great length and the amount of death this war brought it is imposable to think that all the events could be written down and documented by one person. People only write things that were important to them and exclude the rest. In order to understand how the French soldiers wrote about their experiences we must look at all of their writings and not just one