An Extract From Fallen Soldiers : Reshaping The Memory Of The Wars

The First World War is sometimes described as the gentleman's war. All those giving orders and directing combat were high ranking officers who often did not set foot on the battlefield. Soldiers were encouraged to fight with honour and behave as gentlemen. These often resulted in more psychological torment. Men back home e.g. Yealland, the unsympathetic, practically abusive doctor clearly had no understanding at all of the soldiers' experiences, tormenting those who did not want to go back, who had mental breakdown and suffered with extreme guilt complexes because of the enormous pressure they were under.

During the early war period, there was a rush of Australian men enlisting to defend their mother country. The inherent sense of pride and patriotism that pervades Australian culture today was part of the driving force behind these men’s intentions. The First World War was propagated as an opportunity to seek adventure and see new exotic places, all the while defending their country. Peer pressure played a major role in inspiring these young men to enlist as they were told to “do their nation proud”. Conclusively, there were a variety of factors contributing to a young man’s urge to enlist but the hastened timeframe and imminent “call to adventure” caused the rush of people to enlist between 1914 to 1915.

By the term ‘cross-cultural male supremacist complex’ Divale and Harris refers to the societal asymmetrical practices and beliefs that favor males over females due to their active contribution in fighting war. Speaking generally

World War I pressured men into viewing enlistment as a patriotic/nationalistic and masculine right of passage. In the late 19th century, men dominated public, political, and economic occupations. They were the breadwinners. However, due to the massive recruitment during World War I, social and patriotic/nationalistic pressures to enlist were created. These pressures were so strong that men enlisted, even if it hurt their household finances. Men were no longer expected to be the breadwinners, they were expected to fight for their nation. For instance, “Promise not to bear my grudge to France if she takes me.” Even if this soldier perished, he still felt that it was to insure the best for France. His nation was more important than his life. If men did not fight for their country, they were not only unpatriotic, they were not masculine; “Men, not boys, exhibited the masculine virtues of courage, decisiveness, and vigor. War was both a rite of passage to manhood and a guarantor of that passage.” Young “boys” did not resist this pressure. For example, “By an extraordinary piece of luck I was

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

Not every man who 's fought in a war planned on doing so. In fact, not all of them even want to. It 's rare to find enough people voluntarily willing to lay down their lives for their country, so more often than not militaries used what we would call “citizen soldiers.” Citizen soldiers are exactly what they sound like, regular citizens taken from society and turned into people capable of serving in the military. Although it may seem obvious when plainly written out, citizen soldiers had vastly different experiences compared to career soldiers, and Stephen Ambrose attempted to pin down that specific experience in his book Citizen Soldier. Ambrose uses oral interviews from World War II veterans and other materials to explain the experiences of the common American soldier who served in WWII between D-Day and the eventual surrender of the German forces. However, when examining his book, it 's important to ask how successful Ambrose was in painting an accurate picture of this kind of soldier 's life during his service. Is the information he uses specific to the men who served in Europe, or can it also be linked back to the soldiers in the Pacific? This paper will evaluate his work by comparing it to oral interviews from WWII veterans both from the same areas that Ambrose 's veterans serve in and in locations not included in his work.

Foremost, it is imperative to note that many soldiers fighting in WWI were around the age of 20 if not younger. This is crucial when the fact that many studies have shown the human brain does not fully develop until the age of 25 is considered. This means that many of the soldiers were still immature and gravely unprepared for the horrors of war. Being thrown into the war requires them to mature quickly and leave their youth behind. Remarque depicts this in his piece where he states, “We are youth not youth any longer…The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in war” (Remarque 46). Nonetheless, the only thing they believed in betrayed them in the end. With the innovation of new forms of weaponry in warfare such as mustard gas, tanks, planes, machine guns, etc. and

The Vietnam War was immensely controversial, and had a great deal of effects in the United States, Vietnam and throughout the entire world. The war had lasting impacts that helped to shape the United States and create what the country is today. Michael H. Hunt’s The Wages of War, published in 1996 and Arnold R. Isaacs’ Competing Memories, published in 1997, both primary sources discussed the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Competing Memories is the more valuable primary source because it does a better job of providing multiperspectivity, provided information on why the Vietnam War made such a large impact, and discussed why the war started. On the other hand, The Wages of War only talked about the effects on Vietnam and Asia.

Britain’s declaration of war against Germany in 1914, on behalf of all the nations in the Commonwealth, created a desire amongst thousands of Australian men to defend the ‘mother country’. In association with this, there was a range of other motivations behind the enlistment of Australian men in 1914, for a variety of reasons such as high unemployment, social pressure, posters, and propaganda, whilst some also felt the desire of adventure. This essay will argue the idea that defending the ‘mother country’ was of critical significance in the enlistment of Australians in 1914, but that there were other aspects contributing which played their part.

In the opening remarks of the first chapter, Ernst Junger describes the idealistic origins of many of the soldiers called to action. Most of the soldiers drafted into the war were students and factory workers, all of whom lived a fairly sheltered life beforehand. Being drafted was seen as the adventure of a lifetime. They “shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary.” Much like his comrades, Junger had the same sense of adventure, seeing the war as merely a new challenge to conquer. After his first real experience with war however, his enthusiasm is quickly dashed. The harsh reality set in that this war was not, in fact, an adventure. Junger and the former schoolboys and craftsmen quickly learned that life in the trenches was a challenge of endurance. As the war persists, reality slowly sets in and Junger learns the true violent nature of the war and the constant threat of imminent danger through which he must persevere. Ernst Junger’s accounts in the memoir Storm of Steel show the reality of a soldier in World War I and the taxation of enduring such great trauma.

“At first, citizens across the world enthusiastically supported their countries. Men raced to sign up for military service, eager to get involved before the action would be over. New recruits marched off to war cheered by crowds of well-wishers. Anywhere a crowd would gather, be it a soccer match or a church service, military recruiters could be found. Signing up young men – and later, women – to serve their countries” (T. Pendergast and S. Pendergast 2).

The common thought of all men during the World Wars were that women and war were not compatible, for the two of them did not mix in any way. Regarding the men away at war, these men when injured needed

During1941 -1945, the changes in the military units and operators’ emotions and mental health, and understanding the purpose of Nationalism Socialism were damaged. Two of the most critical areas where the soldiers and operators developed a feeling of disconnect was on the eastern front and the Final Solution plan. These areas began to show what National Socialism certainly meant and not the propaganda from which fighting units were told. (My Private War) The Eastern Front proved to be a turning point in the minds of the Germans that were fighting there. The conditions were poor for the enlisted men while the high ranking officers had the opposite experience. Some of the conditions that enlisted soldiers experienced were going without

The key to creating these troops? Atrocity propaganda. Great Britain’s World War I propaganda campaign had many components, but its demonization of Germany through graphic images was key in motivating people

This book collects fifteen articles to integrate gender into the politics, military, economy, culture, and social values in the first half of the 20th century in Germany, where home and front were separated by a porous line. The articles focus on the creation of gender notion in three phases of wars. Firstly, they study the building of gender images and relations in the military and the civilian society in the context of WWI and WWII. Secondly, they investigate the approaches to restore or to reconstruct the concept of gender after both world wars by reflecting upon men’s and women’s respective roles during the war. Moreover, the book probes the multivalent ways of remembering the two violent conflicts after decades from gender-specific perspectives