World War Myths

One of the great urban myths about the first world war was of soldiers, who were stood up to their knees in mud in the trenches of Flanders etc. With dead bodies rotting between the trenches, rats running over both them and the living, and foot rot their constant companion.

Tommy Atkins Spent More Time Out Of The Trenches Than In Them.

 

This version has been known to be a fallacy for many years, but as it doesn't fit in with the way its considered that events should taught be in certain left leaning educational quarters, where its 'Lions led by Donkeys', and uncaring upper class officers, beating their men to the front .... it gets largely ignored. After all why tell the truth, when a good lie is available? 

 

This fact was reinforced recently when a report from Goldsmiths University of London found that on average most British Tommies, spent less than half their service time at the front, never mind the actual trenches (they only deployed there, either before or during a battle, or in a rotation system that kept them in the rear deployment camps most of the time).

Even more strikingly, the soldiers only spent one in five days of their service time actually actually engaged with the Germans .... less, if you ignored random bouts of sniper fire or shelling overhead.

Professor Richard Grayson who led the study said that "People think the soldiers spent most of their time at the front. That is just not the case" ..... a fact well known by the sculptor Norman Stilwell, who said that war was 'Long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of terror'.