Part Four:
    Home fronts and war culture

    © Lithograph and watercolour. N° inv. : 4 FI 338 et 11 FI 185. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – Auguste Lepère, ‘Women of France’ – Unknown artist ‘Mobilised’. Encouraged to contribute to the war effort by the Ministry for Information, artists depicted subjects such as those shown here: the harvest and the manufacturing of shells. Both were jobs done by women during the Great War. These images offer a glimpse of the new position women now occupied in French society.
    © N° inv. : 5 DEC 17.1.Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – French nurse’s medal. A velvet-lined frame featuring the portrait of a young woman, a commemorative medal from the Association of French Ladies and the dates 1914-1918. This piece commemorates the contribution of a woman to the war effort, and the female experience of war. Women were not permitted to fight on the front line, something about which some of them, some nurses indeed, expressed regret. Such distinctions between the sexes were rigorously enforced, but the young woman shown here has immortalised her contribution in a board of honour which resembles those created by so many of the soldiers who survived the conflict.
    © N° inv. : 13 ART 1.3. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – British letter box. This British letter box, although rudimentary in appearance, represents something much bigger: it symbolises the vital, sometimes daily, connections between millions of men in uniform and those they were there to defend, the people waiting for them at home. In calmer periods, soldiers might write a letter to each of their correspondents every day, and sometimes more: in France alone, several billion letters were posted during the war years. By the time the war broke out, universal literacy had more or less been achieved in Western Europe, making WWI the first conflict in history in which almost all of the combatants were able to write. They thus maintained ongoing conversations with those they had left behind. Any interruption to the postal service was met with uproar. Letters often contained news about fellow soldiers hailing from the same region, and were thus intended for a wider audience than the author’s immediate family. They also served as a means of maintaining male dominance: men would continue to run businesses remotely, giving advice and instructions to their wives, encouraging or admonishing their children. They acted as a sort of low-level “counter-propaganda,” providing an insight into the immediate, day-to-day experiences of soldiers (although they could not, or would not dare, discuss certain subjects). As for the war in general, and the reasons for pursuing it, such matters were rarely mentioned. Such considerations are present though, albeit discreetly, and letters from the front provide a fascinating glimpse into the thoughts of millions of men, massed together in this extraordinary time and place.
    © N° inv. : 30 JOJ 60.1 et 61.1. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – Child’s uniform. In France, the myth of the child soldier, or even the child-hero, occupied an important position within the adult discourse around childhood. A more intimate illustration of this phenomenon is provided by this sky blue uniform designed for a very young child. A present from a father to his son?
    © N° inv. : 14 JOJ 0.3 et 37 JOJ 4.3. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). “Get rid of Huns. The great European war game” – “Trench Football. The culture of war had a profound influence on the toy sector. These two examples are British skill games. In Trench Football, players must guide the ball from the kick-off into the opponent’s goal, represented by the gaping mouth of Wilhelm II, avoiding a number of German defenders along the way. This game illustrates the position that football occupied within British wartime culture, and the parallels drawn between the beautiful game and the war itself. In the other game shown here, players must try to position the balls representing the Allies and the coloured spots representing the Central Powers, in order to occupy enemy territory. The fact that the enemy territory is simply marked “Hunland” captures the civilisational stakes attached to this great European conflict.
    © Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne (Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – Trench handicrafts: Crucifix (1915) / Tricolore rosary beads, inscription reading ‘God and the homeland’ /Italian ex-voto fig-ures / German communion candle. This finely-rendered French crucifix has been ‘cobbled together’ from rifle cartridges, used to represent the cross, and polished aluminium (usually recovered from shells) to sculpt the body of Christ. This artefact illustrates the belief prevalent among devout soldiers that they were participating in the war in imitation of Christ; the trenches were their Golgotha, the site of the Pas-sion. Prayers, medallions and other devotional items circulated between the front line and the home front. People believed in the war, prayed for it, and for those they loved. This fervour found physical form in items such as those presented here. The fact that the rosary beads are in the colours of the French flag, and the engraved motto they bear, clearly indicate that the believer – in the fullest sense of the term – was truly “Catholic and French, forever.” Ex voto offerings were placed in Catholic sanctuaries with a par-ticular sense of devotional ardour: they might take the form of a simple engraved message of thanks, a painted or embroidered rendering of a miracle of war, or perhaps a dramatization of a prayer. The items shown here represent soldiers and horses, mass manufactured in metal, often with silver plating. In the age of general mobilisation, soldiers would take whatever help they could get. The German communion candle raises certain questions. Was it brought back from the frontline by a soldier, proud to be able to offer up this symbolic trophy of his war exploits when his own child took communion for the first time? Or was it simply a candle used by a regimental chaplain? Impossible to know. But it does at least offer compelling evidence of the total amalgamation of faith in God and faith in the fatherland; Germany, in this example: Gott mit uns.
    © N° inv. : 16 VAD 1.1 et 13 VAD 1.1. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – French tea service with drawings by Job. Two examples of what historian George Mosse called the “trivialisation” of the war. Soap boxes similar to this were marketed to the families of soldiers, to be sent to their loved ones at the front. The emblematic image of the soldier fighting on the front line thus became a sales gimmick. The same commercial use of images of soldiers at war (both French and English) can be observed in this Limoges porcelain tea service, with illustrations by Job. The difference is that these were clearly not items intended for use at the front: they were designed instead for the “home front.” There is a bitter irony in play in the image of British soldiers (on the sugar pot) shown drinking tea amid the discomfort of the trenches. Items such as these illustrate the extent to which martial imagery contaminated the broader material culture.
    © N° inv. : 15 DEC 5.2 et Recol-000037. Coll. Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne(Somme). Photo Yazid Medmoun – Christmas baubles. By the 1870s, the Christmas tree had become firmly established as a central element in the family traditions which henceforth defined the celebration of Christmas in Germany. Thus began the boom in Christmas decorations, both artisanal and industrially-manufactured, which were not immune to the infiltration of the war into every aspect of modern life. These baubles take up some of the great patriotic themes of the German war effort: the lionisation of military leaders (especially Hindenburg, the hero of Tannenberg who was made Chief of the Great General Staff in August 1916) and submarine warfare, which won great favour with the German public. According to historian George Mosse, the proliferation of patriotic objects such as these is symptomatic of the “trivialisation” of the war experience, a banalisation which served to smooth over uncomfortable realities and maintain useful myths. These mass-produced baubles are also testament to the massive investment of the warring societies in the conflict – including, as here, those far away from the front line.
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