Abstract
In 1968, R.C. Sherriff, who served as an officer in 9/East Surreys from 1916 to 1918, wrote that his highly successful war play Journey’s End had been criticised because ‘there was too much of the English public schools about it’. Sherriff retorted that ‘Almost every young officer was a public school boy’ and if he had omitted them from Journey’s End, ‘there wouldn’t have been a play at all’. Furthermore,
Without raising the public school boy officers onto a pedestal it can be said with certainty that it was they who played the vital part in keeping the men good-humored (sic) and obedient in the face of their interminable ill treatment and well-nigh insufferable ordeals.1
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Notes
R.M. Bracco, Merchants of Hope (Oxford: Berg, 1993) pp. 158–9, 169–70.
T.A.M. Nash (ed.), The Diary of an Unprofessional Soldier (Chippenham: Picton, 1991) pp. ix, 27.
F. Hawkings (A. Taylor, ed.), From Ypres to Cambrai (Morley: Elmfield, 1974) pp. 6, 133.
G.S. Hutchison, Warrior ( London: Hodder, 1932 ) p. 13.
F. Majdaleny, The Monastery ( London: Corgi, 1957 ) p. 103.
C. Dudley Ward, The Welsh Regiment of Foot Guards, 1915–1918 (London: Murray, 1936) p. 52.
E.T. Dean, “We Will All Be Lost and Destroyed” Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Civil War’, Civil War History XXXVII (1991) 146.
R.H. Arhrenfeldt, Psychiatry in the British Army in the Second World War (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958) p. 10; Kellett, Combat Motivation p. 274.
F. Fernadez-Armesto, Millennium ( New York: Scribner, 1995 ) p. 492.
A.M. McGilchrist, The Liverpool Scottish, 1900–19 (Liverpool: Young, 1930) p. 103.
C. Headlam, History of the Guards Division in the Great War 1915–1918, I ( London: Murray, 1924 ) p. 193.
R. Whipp, interview. See also J. Ellis, Eye Deep in Hell (London: Fontana, 1976) passim.
C.N. Smith, The Very Plain Song of It: Frederic Manning, Her Privates We, in H. Klein (ed.), The First World War in Fiction (London: Macmillan, 1978) pp. 176–8.
B. Gammage, The Broken Years ( Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1975 ) p. 240.
C.E. Jacomb, Torment (London: Melrose, 1920) p. 320. This statement conflicts with some of Jacomb’s earlier comments about paternal NCOs and officers: ibid. pp. 73, 171.
C. Haworth, March to Armistice, 1918 (London: Kimber, 1968) p. 28.
H.R. Williams, The Gallant Company ( Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1933 ) pp. 62–3.
T.S. Hope, The Winding Road Unfolds ( London: Tandem, 1965 ) pp. 48–9.
J. Putkowski and J. Sykes, Shot at Dawn (Barnsley: Wharncliffe, 1989 ) pp. 84–5, 130.
See J. Stevenson, Popular Disturbances in England 1700–1870 (London: Longman, 1979).
C.A.C. Keeson, The History and Records of Queen Victoria’s Rifles ( London: Constable, 1923 ) p. 219.
F. Maurice, The Life of General Lord Rawlinson of Trent ( London: Cassell, 1928 ) p. 252.
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© 2000 G. D. Sheffield
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Sheffield, G.D. (2000). Officer-Man Relations: Morale and Discipline. In: Leadership in the Trenches. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230596986_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230596986_8
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