It is easy to collect and collate a random collection of objects from a period in history as diverse in material as the Great War. At one scale, the war can be considered as an industrial conflict, with mass death from such weapons as the artillery shell and the machine gun. At another, it was to define the personal: the letter home, the souvenir of service. But what is the worth of objects (beyond mundane views of monetary value)? And how can we glean something of the history of the war from an assembled collection of things?
Even before the Great War was finished, Governments woke up to the fact that they needed to gather objects that would form the basis of national collections, of new war museums. The Imperial War Museum was born in this way in 1917, as was the collection that would become known as the Australian War Memorial. This was the vision of the war correspondent Charles Bean, who ‘believed that objects collected from the battlefield would be one of the most important tools for telling the Australian’s story’. But why?
To anthropologists, objects can be considered as ‘material culture’ – evidence of the ‘myriad relationships between people and things’. One of those relationships is the act of creation, with objects ‘holding within themselves the worlds of their creators’. But there are very many others. Objects may be considered to be mute witnesses to events, recording devices that might allow a clearer understanding of a time or event – if only we can read them.
Seeking to understand the lives of our families, to connect with their experiences, is how many people now connect with the past that is the First World War. In many cases, their starting points are the creased photographs, the fading postcards and the tarnished medals. In the United Kingdom, soldiers, sailors and airmen were awarded campaign medals that, fortunately, were named. This act of naming allows the narrative of both the medal group and the person who was awarded them to be interpreted and read. Each campaign medal is essentially the same, yet ultimately different. Coupled with the availability of records through archives and the internet, family historians are able to unlock the story of their objects and the actions of their forebears.
The First World War in 100 Objects examines the conflict from artefacts that ultimately mean something to people, and which, with correct interpretation, can be shown to mean something to very many more. The basis for the book is an examination of surviving objects and the interpretation of their individual narratives – covering most fronts, nations and phases of the war; the war on land and in the air, and the war on the home front. What is achieved is an examination of the high points, of way markers that allow us to connect directly with the events and times of this war. Each object has a story, a unique narrative that is there to be interpreted and read. And at the heart of this story are people.
Peter Doyle is a military historian and geologist, specialising in military terrain. He is a familiar face as television expert on documentaries, including WW1 Tunnels of Death: The Big Dig, Battlefield Detectives and The Great Escape: Revealed on Channel 5. He is Visiting Professor at University College London and is co-secretary of the All Party Parliamentary War Heritage Group, which is actively supporting the British government’s commemorations for the centenary of the First World War.
He has co-written Beneath Flanders Fields: The Underground War 1914-18 and Grasping Gallipoli , as well as Battle Story: Gallipoli 1915 , Battle Story: Loos 1915, Trench Talk: Words of the First World War and Remembering Tommy: The British Soldier in the First World War.