How useful are sources A, B and M to an historian studying the attitudes of British soldiers to their commanders during the First World War?

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How useful are sources A, B and M to an historian studying the attitudes of British soldiers to their commanders during the First World War?

The relationship between soldiers and their commanders has often been called into question since World War I, leading to ultimate victory for Britain, but also extremely heavy losses on both sides. This has raised debate as to whether or not commanders such as General Douglas Haig were really in touch with the men under their command. In the following lines I shall examine whether attitudes between the ordinary front line soldiers and their commanders were really as strained as is often portrayed or if the relationship was one of mutual respect for men doing their duty, the defence of their country and her allies.

By 1916 the initial ecstasy after the outbreak of the war was all but obliterated, with the realisation that the war would not be as short as first believed. Scepticism within the British public, who had been told that the war would be won by Christmas 1914, was beginning to become apparent and publications such as Punch magazine were reflecting this. Source A (from Punch magazine) suggests cowardice on the part of the generals, claiming that they did not share the suffering of those under their command and kept their distance from the battlefield. Haig, for example, only visited the front line twice in the entire war. However, when considering the usefulness of this source, we must remember that the magazine claims to ‘hang the devil of current affairs’, often mocking those in command in order to provoke public debate among its readership, the middle and upper classes, equivalent to today’s media but often presenting an unbalanced argument through its controversial stance. Additionally, the creators of the cartoon are unlikely to have had first hand experience of the fighting, meaning that their view is not necessarily that of those that it depicts.

On the other hand, source M portrays a ‘front-line officer’ who appears genuinely upset at the death of a ‘fine unselfish comrade’ under his command. When a soldier was killed in action, it was the duty of their commanding officer to inform the relatives of their death and, whilst this letter bears similarities to other such letters, there are also personal details such as the fact that ‘his death was caused by a rifle grenade’, probably known only by those around him. As such, it is more useful than source A for answering the above question due to its portrayal of an individual occurrence from the point of view of an officer and because it was written on the battlefield.

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Within the armed forces, the official relationship between soldiers and officers was one of deference. This was enforced through the meticulous descriptions of the manner in which a soldier was to behave when in the presence of those of higher rank and therefore did not allow for flexibility, requiring that ‘when a soldier passes an officer he will salute on the third pace before reaching him’. This was in an attempt to ensure obedience on the part of the lower ranking soldiers that comprised the majority of the army.

By the Battle of the Somme, disillusionment had begun to set ...

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