Soldiers of the "Great War" (WW1) give heartbreaking accounts. They were not supposed to come home..

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]I was horrified by what I saw when I came back here.

[00:00:03]>> [music] >> And when one tried to get a job There was mass unemployment and I thought this isn't much of a life. It was the most difficult thing to realize you have no commercial value. It was a shame the way ex-servicemen [music] were treated. You weren't wanted. Some places said no ex-servicemen need apply and that was the sort of attitude you were up against.

[00:00:23]One of my pals was killed and when I went home the very first thing that I did was go to his mother who was never that friend when she did visit me. Her son had been killed and I'd come back alive.

[00:00:35]She was very bitter. The first night I came home, I got into my old bed. It was the first bed I'd laid in since I joined the army. When mother brought my cup of tea up in the morning, she found me fast asleep on the floor.

[00:00:48]People never talked about the war. It was a thing that had no conversational value at all. Those people were absolutely disinterested.

[00:00:55]When I got home, my father and my mother didn't seem the least interested in what had happened. They hadn't any conception of what it was like.

[00:01:03]And there was no reason why any one of us millions should have been plagued with a thank you very much for having got a little bit muddier and more out of touch with good manners.

[00:01:12]And on occasions when I did talk about it, my father would argue points of fact that he couldn't possibly have known about because he wasn't there.

[00:01:20]Every soldier I've spoken to has experienced the same thing. We were a race apart from the civilians and you could speak to your comrades and they understood but the civilians, it was just a waste of time.

[00:01:33]However nice and sympathetic they were, attempts of well-meaning people to sympathize reflected the fact that they didn't really understand at all.

[00:01:43]I think the magnitude was just beyond their comprehension. They didn't understand that people that you'd known and played football with were just killed beside you. My friend who enlisted with me, he just laid there like a sack of rags until he went black before anybody troubled to bury him.

[00:02:02]They knew that people came back covered with mud and lice, but they had no idea of the strain of sitting in a trench awaiting for something to drop on one's head.

[00:02:12]You couldn't convey the awful state of things where you live like animals and behave like animals. People didn't seem to realize what a terrible thing war was. I think they felt that the war was one continual cavalry charge. They hadn't any conception, and how could they?

[00:02:31]Well, it started off in a reasonable manner. It was people fighting on horseback with swords, but it developed into something ghastly. People don't realize the potential of military equipment. A man's life wasn't worth anything at the end of the war.

[00:02:45]We were none of us heroes, you know. We didn't like this business of being killed at all.

[00:02:50]When we were talking among ourselves, we used to say, "Christ, they won't have any more wars like this." How did we endure it? The answer must be partly the fear of fear, the fear of being found afraid. Another is belief in human beings, your colleague, and it's no letting him down.

[00:03:07]There may be right on both sides, but I think war is horrible. Everything should be done to avoid war.

[00:03:14]I still can't see the justification for it. It was all really rather horrible.

[00:03:19]I think history will decide in the end that it was not worthwhile.

[00:03:27]The only thing that really did annoy me was when I went back to work after I'd got demobilized. I went down the stores, and the bloke behind the counter was a bloke who I knew.

[00:03:37]He said, "Where have you been?"

[00:03:39]"On nights."