How Useful are Sources A, B and M to a Historian Studying the Attitudes of British Soldiers to their Commanders During the First World War?

Probably the biggest thing that would affect the relationships between soldiers and commanders would be pals battalions.  They would have a completely different view to a regular battalion who would have had some military experience as a pals battalion had none whatsoever, only maybe one or two of them having been in the army before.  Pals battalions also knew each other before the war.  The officers directly above them would also have been known to the men.  They would have been their bosses at their place of work or another position of authority.  They would, therefore, have had a better relationship with them than they would have had with a stranger.

Source M may have been written by an officer from a Pals battalion as it says that the Sergeant had been with the dead soldier since he had gone out to the front.  This source is not so good for studying the relationship of soldiers to the commanders by commanders to soldiers.  However, some of the information in the source may have been made up or exaggerated in order to soften the blow on the parents receiving the letter.

The stereotypical view of the relationship of soldiers to their commanders is that they all despised them and thought that they were incompetent donkeys that stayed miles behind the lines.  Both Sources A and B back up this stereotype.  Source A is a piece of propaganda from the magazine ‘Punch’.  Propaganda, especially after the war, promotes and in many cases exaggerates the incompetence of the generals during the war.  The truth is that every soldier’s war was different, and every soldier, therefore had a different experience at the front. They would also have come into contact with many different types of people. Their own opinion of the leaders and commanders would have been based on what they saw for themselves and not so much what they were told about the war, unlike today when we are told what happened. They were there at the front and they had the leaders, soldiers and indeed the war right in front of them for them to make their own mind up. This is how source B came into existence. Sassoon obviously had a very bad experience at the front and he was expressing it in the way that he knew best and the way that he thought people would see it most. He, later of course, made hid opinion known to the country when he made “an act of wilful defiance of military authority” Sources A and B are not very useful, therefore, to a historian studying the attitudes of soldiers to their commanders in World War I.

Sources A and B cannot be useful to a historian, as they do not present a balanced argument.  Source M could be useful but then there are some good arguments to suggest that the letters that were sent home to families were not reliable accounts of the war on the western front. Therefore, due to the fact that they are very one sided and the information within them is not reliable, Sources A, B and M are not very reliable to a historian studying the relationship of soldiers to their commanders.