A. J. Dawson (1872–1951)

In Somme Battle Stories (1916), A. J. Dawson (Finn the Wolfhound etc) was stationed in England where he waited for hospital ships to arrive from France with their gruesome cargo. He interviewed injured soldiers returning from the front and retold their stories. The purpose was to inform the English public about the true nature of the war, something people were naturally curious about.

The book is actually propaganda, one of four such books Dawson wrote while working for Military Intelligence during the war. He would later establish the propaganda department of the RAF in 1918. Everyone interviewed is cheerio, doesn't complain, can't wait to get back into "the push" and laugh away the "typewriters" (sound of machine gun fire). Good humor and an easy willingness to sacrifice life and limb are attitudes even among even the common soldiers. On the other hand it's realistic with depictions of soldiers dieing, killing, being sick, mud, rats, lice, etc.. the book exhibits a cognitive dissonance between the slaughter-filled stories coming home from Belgium, and the soldiers good humor and carelessness. Dawson himself fought in the trenches in 1914-15 and knew the reality. It was designed as propaganda, but it's also unintentionally subversive depending in your view.

What we see here is the relentless reality of a new modern war shipping home a message of industrial scale death, making a mockery of the old fashioned perceptions of short but decisive engagements. The type of romantic attitude required to make a cavalry charge and prevail in a moment of triumph is exactly the opposite of what is needed to endure modern war which continues 24x7 and the enemy is rarely seen face to face. Although the book ends with the belief that a breakthrough had been made at the Somme and the dirty business of trench warfare was at last behind, this was fiction as nothing would change until the war ended in 1918.… (mehr)