What They Are Saying About: Laugh or Cry: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914–1918

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By Peter Hart and Gary Bain 

Pen and Sword Military, 2022

Publisher's Synopsis:

Humour helped the British soldier survive the terrible experiences they faced in the trenches of the Western Front during the Great War. Human beings are complicated, and there is no set pattern as to how they react to the outrageous stresses of war. But humour, often dark and representative of the horrors around them could and often did help. They may have been up to their knees in mud and blood, soaking wet and shot at from all sides, but many were still determined to see the ‘funny side’, rather than surrender to utter misery. . . You have to laugh or cry.

From Readers and Reviewers:

If you’ve ever read a “Forgotten Voices of…” book, the format will be familiar; short passages of explanatory prose make points or assertions which are interspersed by illustrative quotes from a veteran or other contemporaneous source. The difference is that the subject matter here revolves around the morale and the antics of soldiers and officers in the British and Commonwealth Armies. Hart’s previous job plays strongly into this, for many years he gathered oral testimony from veterans of the First World War for the IWM archives. There are also copious excerpts from personal memoirs, letters home, Regimental diaries and the like. Themes are varied in chapters, covering the human farces, tragedies and pranks experienced in training, trench life, fighting, officers and NCOs, interactions with the enemy, life behind the line and so on. Two chapters stand out for me: the first, “Gunners”, highlights the life, horrors, frustrations and small joys of those manning the guns (often overlooked in favour of the infantry’s lot in the trenches). The second, “Advance to Victory, 1918” relates the change in warfare in the last hundred days, relating the strains and freedoms this placed on the advancing troops. 

ARMY RUMOUR SERVICE

Humor helped the British soldier survive the terrible experiences they faced in the trenches of the Western Front during the Great War. Human beings are complicated, and there is no set pattern as to how they react to the outrageous stresses of war.

"Awakened by great shouted oaths below. Peeped over the side of the manger and saw a Belgian lass milking and addressing a cow with a comprehensive luridness that left no doubt in my mind that British soldiers had been billeted here before." — Private Norman Ellison, 1/6th King’s Liverpool Regiment 

GOODREADS

Lively and supremely well informed, Peter Hart is a military historian specialising in the Great War. He was the Oral Historian at the Imperial War Museum from 1981 until his retirement and is the author of many Great War books. Here he is teamed up with his irrepressible collaborator, Gary Bain.

 WESTERN FRONT ASSOCIATION