Total War

Abstract

The ‘Great War’ imprinted itself so deeply in our culture that it remains perhaps the most distinct collective image that we have. We can all see ‘the trenches’ plainly in the mind’s eye. Muddy slots in the ground — parapets — soldiers with rifles going over the top led by a lieutenant with a revolver — craters — flares exploding in the sky — the bristling coils of wire — duck-boards and mud and corpses lying brokenly... What are the sources of this collective image? The experiences and the memories of thousands of men, passed through to us by pictures in old magazines, a sentence or two spoken by a schoolfriend’s father, some poems by Siegfried Sassoon in a thirties anthology, and now — for most people — the Great War series on BBC-TV and the film of the Theatre Workshop play, Oh What a Lovely War.