Histories, Memories and Representations of being Young in the First World War

Maggie Andrews, N. C. Fleming, Marcus Morris, Maggie Andrews, N. C. Fleming, Marcus Morris

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030499389
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030499396
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book seeks to place children and young people centrally within the study of the contemporary British home front, its cultural representations and its place in the historical memory of the First World War. This edited collection interrogates not only war and its effects on children and young people, but how understandings of this conflict have shaped or been shaped by historical memories of the Great War, which have only allowed for several tropes of childhood during the conflict to emerge. It brings together new research by emerging and established scholars who, through a series of tightly focussed case studies, introduce a range of new histories to both explore the experience of being young during the First World War, and interrogate the memories and representations of the conflict produced for children. Taken together the chapters in this volume shed light on the multiple ways in which the Great War shaped, disrupted and interrupted childhood in Britain, and illuminatesimultaneously the selectivity of the portrayal of the conflict within the more typical national narratives. 

© The Author(s) 2020

M. Andrews et al. (eds.)Histories, Memories and Representations of being Young in the First World Warhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49939-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Maggie Andrews¹ , N. C. Fleming¹ and Marcus Morris²

(1)

School of Humanities, University of Worcester, Worcester, UK

(2)

Department of History, Politics and Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

Maggie Andrews (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

N. C. Fleming

Email: [email protected]

Marcus Morris

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

A British army recruitment poster, produced in 1915, portrayed a respectable father, kitted out in a brown suit, comfortably seated in an armchair. His daughter sits on his lap and looks at him appearing to ask a question; his son plays with toy soldiers at his feet. The tagline across the bottom of the page asks, ‘Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?’¹ It is more than one hundred years since that poster was produced and despite the plethora of histories written on the First World War and the various projects undertaken to mark its centenary, few have focused on children’s experiences in the war. Though a child’s eye view of the war is starting to receive more attention, the lives of children in the United Kingdom during the conflict have all too often been presented, as in this recruitment poster, as merely bit parts in the narratives of others or through an adult’s lens. In the main, this reflects the broader cultural memory of the war, which privileges male military experience and a service-sacrifice discourse.² Youth here is a recurring theme in relation to service, in age and outlook, as is the ‘lost generation’ trope.³ The focus on boy soldiers best epitomises this story of tragic sacrifice.⁴

Children and young people, then, are primarily discussed in relation to other histories. They are, for example, referenced in discussions about the growth of the infant welfare movement; concern for their health is seen as an indication of the growing involvement of government in civic life and welfare.⁵ Moreover, histories of childhood tend to focus on the nineteenth century, ending with the outbreak of war.⁶ What children did in the war has received very little attention, while children’s experiences of war are equally limited. Too often, such experiences are understood in relation to the death—with around 350,000 children losing their fathers during the war—or injury of someone in their family or in the armed forces, even though many children’s fathers were not in the forces.⁷ Clearly, there is much about children’s lives in the First World War that is still to be examined.

Children’s lives and experiences during the First World War have started to see more attention, though often not in the British context.⁸ That attention, moreover, tends to be focused on cultural experiences. Thus, in literary and cultural studies there has been some attention paid to children’s literature of the First World War.⁹ There has also been a number of studies that examine the literature and film aimed at young people and set in the First World War that has proliferated in recent years, especially with the popularity of the stage and film adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 novel War Horse.¹⁰ Young people’s lived experiences, therefore, have not seen much scholarly attention, neither has how those experiences have been represented nor how they have been remembered except in more general studies.¹¹ A rare exploration of how children were mobilised in support of the war in Britain can be found in the recent research undertaken by Rosie Kennedy. She has argued that the conflict dominated their schooling and suggested that through their participation in wartime activities they sought to maintain a connection to their siblings and fathers.¹²

Building on some of this recent work, Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War seeks to place children, young people and their experiences centrally within the study of the contemporary British home front and in the study of the cultural memories of the First World War. The chapters contain new research by emerging and established scholars in a series of tightly focussed case studies. These interrogate the multiple effects of war on children and young people, in education, in the workplace, during leisure time and also in the organisations and opportunities that they embraced. The chapters also examine the way in which children were represented by adult organisations, the ways in which they were scrutinised and how these tallied with and impacted on children’s experiences, and the tropes and memories of the conflict which contemporary children and young people encounter and understand the war through. Taken together the chapters in this volume seek to shed light on the multiple ways in which the First World War shaped, disrupted and interrupted childhood in the United Kingdom and illuminate simultaneously the selectivity of the portrayal of the conflict within the more typical national narratives and cultural memories.

Just as childhood has received limited attention in histories of the First World War, so too the coverage of the conflict in histories of childhood has been partial.¹³ In part, this reflects how childhood is a relatively recent, but growing, area for historical study. It also reflects the methodological issues of studying childhood.¹⁴ Questions exist over how as historians we understand the perspectives of children in the past, and how or even whether, we can separate them from the influence of adults. Issues of agency abound then, when studying children and young people both in the past and in the present, while we also need to be conscious of the complex relationships between younger and older children as well as adults.¹⁵ There are further complexities to understanding children’s and young people’s experiences, for instance the emotional experiences of war.¹⁶ Mindful of such debates and challenges, and hoping to add to the discussion, this collection has taken a broad approach to understanding both childhood and youth, their experiences and what influenced them and how they have subsequently been represented and remembered. It also takes a broad approach when it comes to the question of age with conceptions changing over the chronology covered in the chapters, and thus considers young people to include those in their late teens and even early twenties.

The stimulus for this collection lies in the 2015 conference entitled ‘Being Young in World War One’ held at Manchester Metropolitan University. This international conference, with contributions from community groups and schools as well as academics from across the world—including Canada, France and New Zealand—sought to examine the effects of the First World War on children and young people, and its social and psychological legacies. The conference demonstrated that growing up in a period of conflict had an immense impact on the young. There were deep fears, anxieties and disruption, but also freedoms, opportunities and excitement. Papers also demonstrated how the image of the child became a potent figure during the war, and a contested one after its end. Moreover, other contributors reflected on the multiple ways and mediums—for example, education, film, television, literature and computer games—in and through which the cultural memory of the war has presented young people’s wartime experiences. The international background of contributors to the conference was indicative of the very different approach taken to children and the First World War in some countries. Moreover, the sheer variety of papers emphasised the varied wartime experiences of young people, which went beyond the traditional tropes, narratives and memories. This diverse collection thus brings together some of those contributors in order to shed new light on the histories, memories and representations of young people in the First World War.

This collection has two distinct, but inter-related, aims. First, it explores the experiences of children and young people in the United Kingdom during the conflict. Second, it is a consideration of how the conflict is portrayed or communicated to children in contemporary Britain. As noted above, the voices of children, their experiences and emotions are often hidden and were so during the First World War. Research can be challenging, it is not always found in national archives, relying instead on traces and snippets of evidence gleaned from a range of sources. The three chapters in Part I, “Childhood in War”, thus rely upon local studies. Rebecca Ball’s chapter uses accounts of working-class childhood in Birmingham, London and Greater Manchester, contained within unpublished autobiographies from the John Burnett collection, to illuminate how varied childhood experiences were during the war. Alternatively, in Alison Ronan’s chapter, the activities of Manchester’s suffrage, socialist and pacifist women illustrate how their attempts to address ‘the special problems of child life accentuated by war’ provide a window into children’s wartime experiences. In the final chapter in this section, Maggie Andrews, Hayley Carter, Lisa Cox-Davies and Anna Muggeridge draw upon local newspapers, school logbooks and local archives to demonstrate that the demands of work in the home and fields disrupted the education of children in rural Worcestershire.

Part II of this volume, in examining Youth in War, explores the experiences of young people in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Childhood in War
• Part II. Youth in War
• Part III. Memories and Representations
• Back Matter