“My friends looked at me in horror”: idealisations of wounded men in the First World War

Violence is central to the experience of total war and the extreme violence of the highly-industrialised and mechanised warfare of 1914-1918 is well-documented. For most combatants the highly specific violence of their own injuries (or the injuries of close friends) was central to their war experience and remained so for their entire lives. Many of these men received initial medical attention from their friends rather than from trained medics and in talking about their wounds soldiers both articulated their fears and demonstrated codes of conduct. Yet although the wounded feature prominently in the art and the history of the First World War, soldiers’ stories about their own injuries and their own wounds have been relatively neglected.