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1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2009

Helen B. McCartney
Affiliation:
King's College London
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Summary

The First World War drew ordinary British men into an army that by 1918 numbered over 5 million soldiers. Some had volunteered to serve; others had been less willing and were conscripted later in the war. Most had little contact with the military in pre-war days, and before 1914 few would have contemplated participating in war. These men were first and foremost civilians, and this book examines their experience from their initial decision to enlist, through trench warfare on the Western Front, to death, discharge or demobilization at the end of the war. It is concerned with the soldier's relationship both with the army and with home, and examines the extent to which these citizen soldiers maintained their civilian values, attitudes, skills and traditions and applied them to the task of soldiering in the period of the First World War.

The popular image of the British soldier in the First World War is that of a passive victim of the war in general and the military system in particular. On joining the army a soldier supposedly ceased to act as an individual and lost his ability to shape his world. It is an image that has been reinforced by two historiographical traditions and is largely derived from a narrow view of the British soldier presented by the self-selecting literary veterans who wrote the disillusionment literature of the late 1920s and 1930s.

Type
Chapter
Information
Citizen Soldiers
The Liverpool Territorials in the First World War
, pp. 1 - 8
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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  • Introduction
  • Helen B. McCartney, King's College London
  • Book: Citizen Soldiers
  • Online publication: 25 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497117.001
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  • Introduction
  • Helen B. McCartney, King's College London
  • Book: Citizen Soldiers
  • Online publication: 25 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497117.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Helen B. McCartney, King's College London
  • Book: Citizen Soldiers
  • Online publication: 25 July 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497117.001
Available formats
×