Would you have fought for your country in World War One?

[Kevbad the Bad]

I just recently started a thread on WW1. It would be interesting to see how urbanites would have reacted back in 1914, admittedly with the benefit of hindsight. Those too young or too old(!) to have been allowed to join up, or disqualified by sex, sexual inclination, race, religion, language or whatever, are still invited to put themselves in the trenches if they feel so inclined.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Easy for me to say, even with an element of bravado, as my roots are in what was then a strongly republican part of the south of Ireland.

 

[Teaboy]

Knowing what we know no one in their right would have wanted to be involved in that meat grinder. I think its very hard to separate that knowledge from how we would feel if we didn't know.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Knowing what we know no one in their right would have wanted to be involved in that meat grinder. I think its very hard to separate that knowledge from how we would feel if we didn't know.

Very true. Yet millions still joined up, some voluntarily, even after the mass slaughter became the norm.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Pretty difficult to think in the mindset of someone who lived over 100 years ago. It's an impossible question to answer really. I can say what I think I'd do now, with my attitudes firmly in the 21st century. How I would have felt in 1914, I cannot really say can I?

 

[danny la rouge]

Me as I am now, or the me that would have existed according to the material conditions of the times?

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Me as I am now, or the me that would have existed according to the material conditions of the times?

Either one, or perhaps yet another you? (Can we have too many?)

 

[likesfish]

note in diary BUGGER

 

[dessiato]

I would have signed up, but I'd have signed for the RN due to my heritage. My great grandfather was an admiral in the German navy.

 

[mojo pixy]

I as I am would have been a conscientious objector, sure.

Me if I'd been born where I was (Portsmouth) in say 1895, I'd almost certainly have volunteered for the Navy. I would have expected to and it would have been expected of me. Might have earned a commission due to having a head on my shoulders, but that was no guarantee of safety anyway.

 

[discokermit]

the correct line is to do what your workmates are doing then try to start agitating amongst your fellow troops/sailors for mutiny and revolution.

 

[danny la rouge]

(Can we have too many?)

Indeed not.

I’m 56, so I wouldn’t have been called up. Me as I am now would also have seen it as a war of competing imperialist aggressors. I would not have fought.

I don’t actually know what my ancestors at the time did. I’ll need to find out. My paternal great grandad Michael would have been the right age to fight. I don’t know if he did. I know he was a coal miner. His son, Tam, was a Bevan Boy in WWII. Maybe Michael worked in the mines. I suppose I should ask my Dad.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Indeed not.

I’m 56, so I wouldn’t have been called up. Me as I am now would also have seen it as a war of competing imperialist aggressors. I would not have fought.

I don’t actually know what my ancestors at the time did. I’ll need to find out. My paternal great grandad Michael would have been the right age to fight. I don’t know if he did. I know he was a coal miner. His son, Tam, was a Bevan Boy in WWII. Maybe Michael worked in the mines. I suppose I should ask my Dad.

Weren't coal miners protected?

 

[danny la rouge]

Weren't coal miners protected?

I’ve a feeling it would have been a protected occupation. But i suspect many signed up anyway.

 

[kebabking]

Pretty vacuous question really...

Firstly because the 'you' of 100+ years ago wouldn't be you, it would be a person born and brought up in very different social conditions, and secondly because even if 'you' managed to get transported back in time, you'd find yourself in an environment where most of society looked at concientious objectors rather more harshly than our current society looks at child sex offenders. (That's not equating them by the way...)

You might be all big and brave in August 1914 with your 'no, you're all wrong' attitude, but I'd put money on four years of being treated like a leprous nonce softening your cough...

 

[Spymaster]

Probably if I was starving or working for a pittance down a mine and someone promised me a decent wage and 3 square meals a day to join a project that would 'give me a trade' that was going to be all over by Christmas. I reckon it probably sounded pretty good.

 

[MickiQ]

Me as I am now, or the me that would have existed according to the material conditions of the times?

This is pretty much the crux of the answer, the person I am today simply wouldn't have existed in the world of 1914 Britain.
If I had been around at the time of WW1 and young enough to fight then Yes, people were and saw things differently then than they do now. It's easy to look back over a century later and say Yes or No with the benefit of hindsight.
My great-grandad and and most of the men in his village went off to fight thinking they were doing a great and noble thing, half of them including him and his brother didn't come home.

 

[StoneRoad]

I doubt if I would have volunteered to fight, a conscientious objector in that sense.

More likely, I would have endeavoured to be working in a reserved occupation, but probably not directly with making munitions. Maybe driving a fireless loco at The Devil's Porridge works ...

[if I have the timings correct, my father's father was boring locomotive cylinders in Leeds ...]

 

[Mrs Miggins]

It's unlikely I'd even have made it to 18 in 1914 anyway due to childhood illnesses.

 

[discokermit]

a lot would depend on, presuming i was young enough to fight, on if i was getting my end away. the more i would be getting it away, the less inclined i would be to leave that behind. problem is staying behind might mean you dont get any for years to come due to the stigma. so i would probably join the navy because you could get it when you were in port and politically it is easier to organise a mutiny on a ship and when you do, you've got a big fucking ship with big fucking guns.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Pretty vacuous question really...

Firstly because the 'you' of 100+ years ago wouldn't be you, it would be a person born and brought up in very different social conditions, and secondly because even if 'you' managed to get transported back in time, you'd find yourself in an environment where most of society looked at concientious objectors rather more harshly than our current society looks at child sex offenders. (That's not equating them by the way...)

You might be all big and brave in August 1914 with your 'no, you're all wrong' attitude, but I'd put money on four years of being treated like a leprous nonce softening your cough...

Well you might think that, but the idea that most people thought the same way is simply wrong. Many, many did volunteer, but they brought in conscription when they did because of the reluctance of millions of others to join up. If I had grown up in County Cork where my folks hail from and volunteered I would, in fact, have been in a small minority from the very start. After the Easter Rising even more so.

 

[discokermit]

Pretty vacuous question really...

Firstly because the 'you' of 100+ years ago wouldn't be you, it would be a person born and brought up in very different social conditions, and secondly because even if 'you' managed to get transported back in time, you'd find yourself in an environment where most of society looked at concientious objectors rather more harshly than our current society looks at child sex offenders. (That's not equating them by the way...)

You might be all big and brave in August 1914 with your 'no, you're all wrong' attitude, but I'd put money on four years of being treated like a leprous nonce softening your cough...

my mates great grandad got literally tarred and feathered!

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Weren't coal miners protected?

There were no officially protected occupations, as such. It was left to local boards to determine whether you were eligible to be called up, but that was only after conscription started. Even then you could join up if you wanted, whatever your job.

 

[Idris2002]

Yes, I've always loved post offices.

 

[Kaka Tim]

Would have signed up for the concert party - bravely entertaining the troops in a paris night club or somesuch. enduring all the hardships that went with it.


Tbh - like nearly everyone else at the time - after conscription was introduced id would have most likely have fallen into line along with all my workmates, friends and family. My family were agricultural workers at the time so very much cannon fodder.

 

[mojo pixy]

I have a letter in my old scrapbook from the commodore in charge of recruitment at Portsmouth dockyard, in reply to a letter I evidently wrote in around '82 or '83 asking how I should go about joining the navy. So even real late-20th-century-me was expecting that as a life. By the age of 16 when I could have joined, I'd caught a pretty severe case of punk so it wasn't going to happen any more, but I remember how normal - in fact admirable - joining up was seen when and where I was a kid.

I was just lucky to be born when I was, that my horizons had the chance to be considerably wider than they'd have been for someone like me 100 years previously.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

This is pretty much the crux of the answer, the person I am today simply wouldn't have existed in the world of 1914 Britain.
If I had been around at the time of WW1 and young enough to fight then Yes, people were and saw things differently then than they do now. It's easy to look back over a century later and say Yes or No with the benefit of hindsight.
My great-grandad and and most of the men in his village went off to fight thinking they were doing a great and noble thing, half of them including him and his brother didn't come home.

Yet there was lots of opposition in some areas, and after the war a history of opposition to the war, or of having been a 'conchie', didn't stop people being elected as MP's and councillors and suchlike. There could be much more pressure on you if you came from a small community like a village.

 

[Ax^]

hmm hard to tell family's from Dublin but both great grand fathers served in the first world war as cooks for some reasons

 

[Mrs Miggins]

One of my mum's uncles was a conscientious objector who spent most of WW2 in Lincoln prison. He was a bus conductor when I was a child in the 70s and even then, my mother gave him the cold shoulder and told me "keep away from him - he's a conchie". I had no idea what it meant at the time but it strikes me just how long the stigma lasted.

 

[planetgeli]

Pretty impossible to answer. Fighting for 'my country' has always been anathema to me since I remember (which is quite young, let's say 50 years ago) but I'm not entirely sure why. Though I think a lot of it is to do with what I know about the Somme etc from a young age.

People didn't always join up out of patriotism either. My dad tried to sign up twice, underage, for WW2. Desperate to get away from child cruelty and a mother who beat him every day with a belt. Because she was a cunt (my dad was lovely).