The Trench Experience: First World War Transform Europe’s Civilian Soldiers

Excerpts from the Paper

The Trench Experience: First World War Transform Europe’s Civilian Soldiers
This paper explores in what ways the trench experience during the First World War transformed Europe’s civilian-soldiers. In particular, the paper will look at whether or not the warfare of the time motivated soldiers to go into battle or served, instead, to fashion their worst nightmare. The paper will begin by noting how the trench warfare of the age exposed men to psychological trauma that scarred them even as it spared them; at the same time, these men bore witness to human beings being cut apart by fire – and it exposes how even the seemingly lucky ones, in the end, are destroyed by the ravages of war even if they have nimbly escaped them for the longest time....

.....s that prisoner reprisals illustrate new forms of violence — and thus a process of escalation
or totalization operating during the war. It also emphasizes, through a comparison of the British,
French and German armies’ use of prisoner labour, that such totalization was not inevitable or unlimited.
356 Heather Jones
Finally, it suggests that prisoner reprisals reveal wartime violence in a new light — as highly rational and discriminating,
deliberately directed towards obtaining a particular goal.
Keywords: prisoners of war , First World War , World War One , reprisals , violence , captivity , forced labour ,
forced labor , prisoner-of-war labour company , prisoner-of-war labor company , Verdun
European University Institute
joneshea@gmail.com