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Going Over The Top: War Correspondents

Wonderful article David. Something I didn't know much about and you've made me very much want to know more.
 
I can't help but be amused by the Flammenwerfer advert considering how many memes on the internet reference them.
 
This is really excellent stuff. I have to admit, I saw the headline and thought this was going to be a discussion of more traditional war journalism- Keith Murdoch, for example, whose coverage of the Gallipoli debacle was arguably the most consequential reporting of the war- but the piece I got was far more interesting.

One thing I really want to salute you for is your commitment in this series to keeping things grounded in the human reality. It's all too easy for alternate history of wars to get caught up in geopolitics, engineering and high-level maneuvering, but you always bring it down to the poor men dying in the mud. Well done.
 
Fun fact: even the Czech Legion, as it trudged across Siberia in armored trains, managed to print its own newspaper.

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8 to 1: Chlorine and Phosgene.
Click to expand...

That's wonderfully dark.



I'm currently reading Ceux de 14, by Maurice Genevoix, on the recommendation from Messer Norton Cru (which I have mentioned before) and the sheer disparity between the official history and what the soldiers on the ground feel is staggering. On September 10, Genevoix leads his section into combat. Naturally seeing the date is AFTER the Battle of the Marne, I made a few assumptions. They were wrong. For the first part of the day, it is the Germans attacking and pushing the French back. Just because the overall strategic situation is somewhat good doesn't mean everyone has a good day. It is only two days after that Genevoix and his men are seeing an official proclamation about the battle being won and the Germans retreating in a hurry that he starts to feel good about his prospects. And then, in less than two days, he is incredibly depressed because there is non-stop rain, making everything wet, including in the bags (and ink running and ruining the clothes he has in there), they are seeing uncountable French corpses on their way along the roads. Or that's he's very cross that somebody nicked his water container and he sometimes is desperately thirsty. And probably because he's pondering his killing of a number of Germans at quite close range although he doesn't seem to elaborate much on it, but it seems more because he fears going introspective into it. Then he has some accents of over the top nationalism but it feels hollow, as if he's trying to compensate for the misery he's living through.

He officially published it as a novel, but it's really a day-to-day diary and quite impressive how he pens down the mood swings of an ordinary man swept into the war.

Oh, and the first prisoner they make is a Swabian and makes very sure everyone knows it and that he hates the Prussians as much as they do. Chimes well with what you told us.
 
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