When did the enormity of it all sink in? Obviously as the war progressed, the public were aware of the casualty lists. I just wondered how long it took to realise the scale of it all. A soldier who survived, might have had a rough idea.When did the public at large really find out the scale of suffering?

Mike

The people of Dundee knew in the weeks following September 25th 1915.

Following Tom, as did the people of Canterbury via the casualty lists within 'The Kentish Gazette and Canterbury Press' and the lives and families each casualty represented.

Regards,

Steve Garnett

Indeed Tom. The people of Aberfeldy knew after Loos too. I was wondering as more became known over the decades, did the scale of the whole effort, become clearer , or do you think it was obvious to all as it happened?

Mike

The people of Britain were politically active and organised, decades before the war. There was great agitation for universal suffrage and the Labour Party was taking the place of the Liberal as the representatives of the majority in parliament. Why would they not have a clear understanding of what the war meant from day one? Red Clyde and miners strikes were not the product of a nation of slow witted untermensch. The war was fought with the co-operation and full participation of the majority of the population. It would not have succeeded otherwise. The same goes for France. When the support of the German people started to give way to revolution, then even the Kaser and his generals knew they were beaten. The war was fought between the nations of Europe and ended the day one of them tired of fighting.

Perhaps because they weren't told, or didn't know all the facts? I agree with what you are saying, and in no way do I think people then were stupid. We have more knowledge now because so much has been written, and so many secret documents are now available online.
We know many soldiers never talked about the war, so perhaps it just wasn't talked about.

Mike

Yes.

Folk would know of the official letters arriving at neighbours houses. They would also know of men returning home on leave or sick or wounded.

And, of course, the newspapers seem to have reported fairly accurately, allowing for the natural propaganda "spin" of course.

John

Yes, at the start there was popular enthusiam for the war and no inkling of the industrialised mass killing to come. I think popular realisation of the true nature of the war can probably be dated to 1916 as exemplified by the street shrine movement and the first planning for memorials.

Thanks for replies.
Good point Clive. I suppose after Loos, as Tom said, particularly in Scotland, it was pretty obvious the scale of casualties.

Mike

In this part of the world my feeling is it was Gallipoli that brought things into focus.

"Snapshots follow in my recollection. Margaret and Gerald Hurst came over to see us. She was soon expecting a baby and rested on the sofa while Gerald sat in an armchair stiff in his uncustomary khaki, for he was a Territorial officer, his candid, clean-shaven, intellectual face looking strange and out of place above the high ocre-yellow collar; To date the solidiers I had known wore clipped moustaches... Even if I could have forseen the future it would have been hard to associate Gerald with the beaches in Gallipoli, those beaches whose sudden toll from homes they knew would make my mother and father wince with pain when they opened their [Manchester] Guardian on a May morning of 1915 and read the casualty list of the Machester Territorials."
Katherine Chorley, "Machester Made Them"

The scale of suffering surely hit certain areas earlier than others, depending upon the mobilisation of their units. Also, proximity to lines of communication within Britain would have determined public awareness of what the BEF was encountering.

Not just Scotland, certainly Kent knew after Loos. For example, the 8/Buffs War Diary lists 530 Other Ranks as casualties on 29.09.15 and 24 Officer casualties (dated 27.09.15). By this point this New Army Battalion, raised in September 1914, hadn't been in France a month.

Personally, I think we are trying to come to terms with the scale of the suffering, the trauma and dislocation, still now.

Regards,

Steve Garnett

I think that originally there was great enthusiasm for the war judged by the number of young men milling around the recruiting stations wanting to join and
give the Huns a biff. IUt would appear that by the time the casualty lists started growing so did the numbers of men willing to be cannon fodder waned remarkably,
with the result that universal conscription had to be bought in to maintain the supply of troops.
David

The casualty lists were high and continued to grow post-August 1914, but I am not sure that the full enormity of war actually began to sink in until much later. I think the sheer scale of death began to hit hard when many of those who had joined the New Armies were all but wiped out on 1 July. This is where the "Pal's Battalion" phenomenom began to take hold in popular imagination. It was the death of a volunteer and citizen army in my opinion - including the many who had volunteered and were drafted to Regular units to make up the numbers of those who had been killed in previous actions. Which isn't to say that the overall losses are any less meaningful in terms of the way I choose to remember the war dead.

Al

On no account must we fall into the trap of imagining that the British people were ignorant or easily duped. On my bookshelves is a series of volumes that were actually being written as the war was raging, and while there is a great deal of patriotic hype, there is a candid and comprehensive survey of the casualties in the back of each volume, with the full extent of the losses being published and discussed. No attempt at concealement - quite the contrary.

Phil

Hi Phil. That's interesting. What volumes are these you mention?

Cheers Mike

Hello, Mike

The Great War

The Standard History Of The All-Europe Conflict

Edited by H.W.Wilson and J.A.Hammerton

This is a multi volume set. The one on my lap, which I'm looking at as I write this, is volume 8, and begins with the Battle of the Somme, and continues throughout to review the year 1916 on all fronts. It was printed in 1917. The final chapter is " The Roll of Honour" and contains within a multitude of statistical comment and analysis. Here is a sample, discussing the British and Empire losses for the year

" In 1916 then, 190,000 men were killed in battle.....One hundred and ninety thousand brave men dead; this is the cardinal fact of our chapter. It would be sad enough if they were the weak and aged, those who, in a few years at most, would pay Nature's debt. It would be still more bearable if they were the thousands who crowd our lunatic asylums and fill our prisons. It is because they were all that these are not - young, healthy, sane, and intelligent - that their loss was so terrible to contemplate. They were in every sense the flower of the race."

This is an extraordinary testament to the way people were thinking, isn't it ? Very "un PC" by our standards....but a sure indication that the "enormity of it all" was sinking in at that very time.

These volumes can be picked up for next to nothing in second hand book stalls all over the place.

Phil

Thanks Phil. I will keep an eye out for them.

Mike

I think there must have been a second wave of horror in the 20s and 30s as the ghastly realisation came that war was coming again and that the sacrifices had not ended war. It also coincided with the completion of the great memorials and the cemeteries.

With as free a Press as any democracy can allow in time of national emergency; with few restrictions on movement; and with huge numbers of men (and women) in uniform, it cannot have been possible NOT to know the enormity of it, surely?

Add to that the showing of the film of the Battle of the Somme shortly after the huge Rolls of Honour had started to appear in the papers ... it wasn't a mystery.


Awfully sweeping statement there, Mr R. Lot of working class Tories (like my old gran) would take issue with that one

Stepping very carefully here. In the decades before the Great War, the Liberal Party was seen to be the opposition to the Conservative Party. It was the party of choice for those who wished to differentiate themselves from the conservatives. Lloyd George for instance and his affinity for the Welsh miners, his inclusion of Henderson in his government and his trips to the Clyde and other centres of industrial power to keep the workers ' onside'. In the years before the Great War, the unions started to field candidates from the Labour party. They felt that the Liberal party did not provide the representation they required. This was a battle that the Liberal and Labour parties fought out over the next twenty or thirty so years with the Labour party finally supplanting the Liberals as the main opposition to the Conservatives in the post WW2 election. My reference was not to how individuals voted but what the alternatives were seen to be.

I think the scale of losses AND the lack of victory provided the public "realisation" of the enormity. And that I suspect followed the impact of the Somme. So later in 1916 (not just after 1 July). Needless to say, on an individual basis, just the loss of one loved one would be enough 'enormity'. But for the nation as a whole I think it would have been post Somme. Massive losses, lack of victory, war weariness - and of course the visual evidence brought back to the home front in film. Certainly well before the war's end.

I would say 1915. When the war started a book (bond of sacrifice) was compilled with officers who died, with pictures etc. Just as they had done for the whole of the Boer War. They stopped in May 1915. I think because it became clear it was nothing like the Boer War.

Regards,

Marco

Why not 1914 ?

Yes, I realise that all the British lives lost in France and Belgium that year hardly exceeded what was to be lost in a single day on the Somme, but the shock must have been bad enough : nearly twice as many British killed in action at 1st Ypres than in the whole of the Boer War; hundreds of civilian casualties from the naval bombardments on the east coast; a horrible realisation that the Entente armies nearly collapsed, and the mass recruitment of hundreds of thousands of volunteers....this was enormous and frightening.

Phil

I'd say that 1914 was a jingoistic year of volunteers and triumphalism and 'all over by Christmas' attitudes. First Ypres, and the heavy casualties of the Territorials in Aubers Ridge etc in early '15 killed off that attitude and the grimness of the situation began to grow on the home front. Continual publication of casualties, and letters published by survivors continued to emphasise 'the enormity'. The decimation of the volunteer Kitchener men on the Somme - specifically Mametz Wood for Wales; finalised the sheer enormity of it. Third Ypres merely reinforced the horror - same division (38th Welsh Army Division) again in a reprise of Mametz. Just like Groundhog Day - been here before...deja vue...

I have been thinking about this subject on and off and I suppose that in the end it has a lot to do with factors like:
- what impact had the conflict towards yourself as an individual. (Rationing, casualties among relatives and friends etc)
- "public opinions" created by various significant sourses, e.g. politicians, press varius groups organizations with different agendas towards the conflict etc.
Well, the list goes on and on. A question like this inevitably has multifactual answers.
But I´m always ending up with the same question: how comes that so many people positively embraised the conflict? Why does patriotism and aggression so often walk hand in hand?
Chris

Mike: you have posed a most interesting question, phrased three ways. The difficulty in answering it fully in any way is the use of the term "public". Before exploring that, may I respectfully suggest that "a soldier who survived" would have no more understanding of the enormity of it than would the "public". What the soldier would have was an understanding of the personal obscenity and indignity of it - each a part of the "enormity". I honestly don't believe that the "public" has ever had an understanding of the enormity of it. The numbers? Yes. But they become meaningless to one who doesn't understand the intimacy and vulgarity of death on a battlefield.
Back to the "public". We have to be careful not to assume that the "public" of WW1 was as informed as the "public" of today - or, rather, that the public of then had anywhere near the access to information as does the public of today. That's not to say that they were stupid or gullible; just that the news of horrendous losses arrived more slowly and was "massaged" in the so-called public interest. Yes, the people of each wee town or village or even the cities would be made aware through local papers or conversation of actions that caused great local casualties from time to time. But were they ever fully aware of the millions - or of the horror that was their death? The books suggested are excellent evidence of awareness - but how many could afford them, far less read them? How many Scottish soldiers were illiterate? For each one of them, count several more of sisters, brothers, parents . . . (I will only speak for the Scots but reason suggests that rural English and Welsh were in the same position and, before anyone jerks a knee, please research the matter). With only word of mouth in relatively confined areas, how much enormity is enough? In short, what was "the public"? Can one equate the knowledge then possessed by the average citizen of London's West End with that possessed by the three families of Kyles Flodda? Can one equate the opportunities for those Londoners to voice their concerns with those allowed the crofter in the Uists?
My personal thought is that, generally speaking, there was a peak in United Kingdom (and that's very general) awareness that came, possibly, as early as the mid-twenties. However, it was soon flattened by the realities of post-war living and the dynamic of a changing socio-political scene. Maslow's hierarchy of needs governs ethical practice.
That's all for tonight. Thanks for challenging us to think.
Best regards, Antony

That's a most challenging post, Antony, and, while I disagree, I reckon it's a damned good one !
My reaction is, I must confess, a "knee jerk" one. On reflection, your comments merit more than a pause for thought.
Perhaps the conditions of life for those remote rural communities you allude to were such that people were more attuned to harsh realities than the urban sophisitcates, and were better able to appreciate the nature of an ordeal that put millions in extremis....

Incidentally, what was the illiteracy rate for Scottish soldiers ?

Phil

"Incidentally, what was the illiteracy rate for Scottish soldiers ?"

Very low indeed, Scotland had one of the highest literacy rates in the world, as free public schooling with parish schools had been on the go for a long time. It would have been well over 90% , indeed it is probably lower now.

See this study

John

Thank you John : that is what I had suspected.

Phil

I agree with Phil, excellent post from Piorun. That's more what I had in mind, though I can't express it so eloquently. The wives and children of the returning men, knew they had changed, but we know they ' never talked about it ' did the families/public ever really know what they had been through?

Mike

Mike
I can only talk on a micro level. I've researched my town (5000)inhabitants and its supporting villages for five years. I almost personally know the 101 on its War Memorial, and I have a database on all Ruthin connection men who served, died, became wounded, or presumably returned. I've read the war years local press from page to page at least twice. The press was full of 'heroic' stories regarding the death of local men, and though they may all have died 'an instant death' in the public reading of things, public opinion thought otherwise. Lists of 'missing' local men provoked questions, and though the answers were never published, the general idea of the horror of it was in the public prescience from very early on. The local cinema was showing The Somme' even before the battle was over; and even today, the reels from that film show a very gruseome battlefield.
There is one street here of a 160 houses which suffered a death rate of 1 in 2.5 houses. Now by 1918, the horror of the war would have sunk in pretty damned quick in that street. The local GP and Vet were killed there. The local gentry were killed there. The whole council almost had sons there and the council reports show sympathy to a member almost every meeting.

The main thing however, are the returning soldiers. They were first hand evidence of the horrors. By early 1915 the first were coming back, invalided out of the army with grevious wounds. The amputated and 'not fit to be a serving soldier' which later on became 'shell shock' were out on the town's street as early as January 1915; and the numbers escalated by 1918. Wounded soldiers home on invalid leave before being returned to the front were here in their hundreds.
The town reeked of warfare and suffering. The Workhouse was overflowing with burnt out veterans, the local TB sanitarium was filled with longtime wounded; the local Infirmary Hospital had been taken over by the Red Cross, and the town's castle mansion and at least two other stately homes were temporary Red Cross hospitals. The visual evidence was over powering; and by August 1916 when the reality of the Somme and Mametz Wood really made itself known - "the enormity of it all" had well and truly sunk in.

Thanks Geraint. That too is well put, and very interesting.

Mike

First class! Do you have any plans to write up your findings Geraint? (I'm assuming you haven't)

Regards
Al

Al
I'm working on it. It'll be another five years...

Five years! I should live so long

I am sure it'll be worth the wait
Al

Geraint: the recollections of your town appear, at first, to contradict the comments I posted. However, when I consider the emotional reality of your statements, I know that, really, we are on the same page - reading different lines, perhaps, but bound by a mutual desire to honour our dead. I will not conduct a debate with you on this forum but I would hope that, when Rena and I are back in Scotland next Spring, we might arrange a visit, I would love to visit your town and to sit with you over a pint to explore our common understanding of suffering. Please PM if you wish. With kindest regards and gratitude for a most informative post, Antoni.

Anthony

I think you hit on a very relevant point here in the difference between the town and city and how loss was felt in each (if indeed loss and grief can be measured). I think there is a distinction to be considered between the two insofar that personal loss would have been felt at the level of locality rather than the overall losses of a large city. I also think there is something to be said for the "six degrees of separation," in that there would have been those who knew someone else who had also suffered a loss, or perhaps knew of a soldier who had been killed in the neighbourhood - whether from school, work, or socially. I am sure the enormity for some would have only been realised postwar when questions were asked about so-and-so and whether they had survived the war?

Regards
Al

(I strongly disagree with the assumptions you make on the levels of literacy, but I do think the comments you make on towns/villages/large cities are worth further consideration)

Hello, Al: thanks for the comments. On the matter of illiteracy, I didn't actually make any assumptions. I was posing a rhetorical question that, I hoped, might provoke a second thought about how news and views of the impact of the War might have been spread, and about what really constituted "the general public" in those days before electronic communication. I know of several illiterate men who signed on. Some could write their name where told. Others signed an "x". Many could not read the forms and only answered the questions as they were put - the answer being transcribed by a clerk. Letters exist "from" men who had their pals write for them. There is a great deal of assumption that the "universal Scottish parish-schooling system" somehow banished illiteracy by WW1 but this is based largely on propaganda from those who believed it and many inner-city Roman Catholics never saw it. Many folk in the Highlands and Islands were functionally illiterate (in both languages) well beyond WW1. Survival on a croft trumped attendance at a school. The work of the great Gaelic poet, Domhnall Ruadh Choruna (Cameron Highlanders) was only saved for posterity when Seonny Alex Macpherson and Fred Macaulay transcribed his oral recitations in the late '60s. As a post had suggested that excellent, high-language writings might carry the message to all, I was only asking readers to consider how many young lads from rural areas could have read them - far less how many of their parents who had never been to school at all. None of my comments are pejorative. I was brought up on a farm in Devon, my wife on a croft in the Western isles. Neither of us learned English writing until we went to school. My father spoke no English in 1939 and my in-laws spoke none at home. I'm glad that a couple of posts have shown an interest in the thought that I posited. I do not have the answer to my own question but I am still seeking the knowledge. Best regards, Antony

I think we are trying to put a wee bit of gloss on the subject.
My Father was born 1900,lost two Brothers killed,but used his War for personal advancement,in achieving his dream of becoming a Police Officer,in Scotland.
My Mother was born 1916.She was an extremely early birth when she compared her Parent's Marriage Certificate to her Birth Certificate.Not sure she ever bought my comment that her Father,had been on leave from the Navy,between asking his betrothed to marry and the actual ceremony.
Both lived,were educated in the 20's and 30's.Certainly my Father dealt with the effects of the War and my Mother was conscious when playing in the streets which Houses she was supposed to tip-toe past.
However the point must be made that had the immediate post-WW1 generation became so distressed due to the loss of life and suffering the WW1 caused they would not have been prepared to deal with the realities that faced them,in my Father's case the 1926 Strike, in my Mother's case the fact that her Father,finished her education before she felt ready to leave,as he had got her a job in the "Local Factory",and through her own strength,chucked it in favour of a Nursing Career.
Neither were Earth-movers but had the fortitude and resolve to accept and deal with the realities that were thrown at the Country in the early 1940's,despite their experiences in WW1 or shortly afterwards.
George