• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

Writing AH. Anachronisms Part 6. War. Huh. What is it named for?

shearsforest said:
IIRC somebody called it World War I before WW2 started; his reasoning was that he thought this would be the first in a series of world wars, and not the "war to end all wars" it was chalked up to be.
Click to expand...

Seems a logical extension of the 'not a peace but a 20 year armistice' thought.
 
Suddenly, Mainwaring's claim he fought in the Great War "in 1919" seems less ignorant.

More reality based, the vitriol leveled at the peace parades in the UK during 1919 gain an extra level of colour when you realise plenty didn't think the War, or at least the crises, were over.
 
shearsforest said:
IIRC somebody called it World War I before WW2 started; his reasoning was that he thought this would be the first in a series of world wars, and not the "war to end all wars" it was chalked up to be.
Click to expand...

An British war correspondent (Charles à Court Repington) used "The First World War" as the title of his two-part memoirs of the 1914-19181919 wars. These were also published in 1920.
 
RyanF said:
Suddenly, Mainwaring's claim he fought in the Great War "in 1919" seems less ignorant.
Click to expand...
Yes. I always wondered if there was actually an intended subtle second layer to the joke about that. It wouldn't be out of place given how Mainwaring is a deeper character than a casual glance suggests.
 
Thande said:
Yes. I always wondered if there was actually an intended subtle second layer to the joke about that. It wouldn't be out of place given how Mainwaring is a deeper character than a casual glance suggests.
Click to expand...
I have seen more than one war memorial which dates the war 1914-19 due to deaths from wounds in 1919. In addition, which might be an interesting twist, Mainwaring may have been sent as part of the British Intervention in the Russian Civil War or as one of the occupying troops in the Rhineland. However, given in the final episode of the series it is revealed that Sergeant Wilson was actually a captain in the First World War, and fitting very much with his public school boy image, but Mainwaring dismisses that as not being relevant in this war, I think the reference to 1919 is a subtle joke, which would have been recognised quickly by viewers when the series was first aired. Despite being made captain in the Home Guard, Mainwaring has some of the least experience of combat of the older men in the platoon.
 
There was the eerily premonition cartoon well known at the time of the Peace Talks.
Arthur_Phuxache said:
The "Second World War" was the subject of a speculative fiction/future history book (The City of Endless Night by Milo Hastings) published in 1920.
Click to expand...
There was the eerily premonition cartoon well known at the time of the Peace Talks which sees the Class of 1940 mourning becoming cannon fodder.
capture.jpg
 
With the Second World War, of course, in Russia and its satellites especially it is known as the Great Patriotic War (Ukraine used to as well, before changing all references to "The Second World War" on the premise that it wouldn't do for Ukrainians to be patriotic about the Soviet Union).

The term, however, is older than the Second World War, as before then, the Patriotic War in Russian historiography referred to the resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Russia...
 
Alexander Rooksmoor said:
I have seen more than one war memorial which dates the war 1914-19 due to deaths from wounds in 1919. In addition, which might be an interesting twist, Mainwaring may have been sent as part of the British Intervention in the Russian Civil War or as one of the occupying troops in the Rhineland. However, given in the final episode of the series it is revealed that Sergeant Wilson was actually a captain in the First World War, and fitting very much with his public school boy image, but Mainwaring dismisses that as not being relevant in this war, I think the reference to 1919 is a subtle joke, which would have been recognised quickly by viewers when the series was first aired. Despite being made captain in the Home Guard, Mainwaring has some of the least experience of combat of the older men in the platoon.
Click to expand...
He follows up the 1919 comment at the time with “somebody had to clean up the mess!”, which I took as a reference to the dangers of demobilising the - at the time - most dangerous and explosive/trap-riddled battlefields in history. See also the 1919 on war memorials, dangerous work was being done.
 
Meadow said:
He follows up the 1919 comment at the time with “somebody had to clean up the mess!”, which I took as a reference to the dangers of demobilising the - at the time - most dangerous and explosive/trap-riddled battlefields in history. See also the 1919 on war memorials, dangerous work was being done.
Click to expand...
Indeed. I'm pretty sure it's explicitly stated somewhere that he was in France/Belgium, rather than somewhere still seeing fighting, like Russia or the OE. I would have said the western front, but that might be anachronistic, given the armistice.

I do wonder how many of those watching at home had similar experiences to Mainwaring, and made similar protests about the ongoing work to their own friends and loved ones? There'll have been thousands of them, if not tens of thousands.
 
Last edited:
Famously the American Civil War features a ton of battles that have two different names depending on which side was discussing them, because the Union tended to name battles after local geographic features (such as the Bull Run and Antietam creeks) while the Confederates tended to name battles after local towns (such as Manassas or Sharpsburg). There are some cases where one side's name for the battle has become universal, for example basically no one uses the term Battle of Pittsburgh Landing (the Union name for the Battle of Shiloh).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top