The Response of the Trench Fighter: The Ritualisation of Aggression

Abstract

A sequence is now emerging in the narrative. At the start of trench war, live and let live often occurred as overt fraternisation and orally arranged truces. But these were highly visible and thus vulnerable to high command, who countered with legal action against identifiable persons involved in identifiable truces. Live and let live, however, adapted to these counter-measures, by evolving from an overt to a covert form, namely, inertia. The meaning of inertia among antagonists, that is the choice of non-aggression where aggression was possible, was something like: we’ll forgo firing if you’ll do likewise. Such a choice was simultaneously an act of peace and communication and, further, a background assumption of quiet fronts, shared and understood by all seasoned soldiers. It evolved spontaneously, not conspiratorially, as adversaries with like interests in like situations interacted in trenches. Inertia was a simple yet subtle truce but difficult to counter; nevertheless during 1916, and after, high command managed, in the words of Charles Sorley, to ‘bang together’ the heads of reluctant fighters. The specialisation of the means of violence, the theme of Chapter 3, and the centralisation of control over violence, the theme of the last chapter, were counter-measures which hemmed in trench fighters with constraints making aggression ever more difficult to avoid.