Towards a regular army
This factor has helped determine its character, and has been responsible for much of the tension between it and society, for it is only during those periods of conscription that it has been a genuinely national army, recruiting across the whole of society.
'There are diametrically opposed views on the impact of military service on the individual.'
Sometimes the soldier appears in literature as a hero, fighting for monarch and country on foreign fields, and sometimes as villain, drunken and brutalised. There are diametrically opposed views on the impact of military service on the individual.
Some commentators have seen it as imparting the virtues of self-discipline and self-reliance, and supporters of National Service, the conscription that lingered on after World War Two, often sought to justify it on social rather than military grounds. Others, however, have argued that it diminishes the individual, turning him from a useful member of society into a potentially violent braggart.
Writers and poets have often turned their attention to the army, and often our first contact with the subject comes from literature rather than history. For instance, a reader who may have little idea of what really happened during the Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) might recall the phrase ‘their’s not to reason why’ from Lord Tennyson’s poem on the battle.
Our view of the generals of World War One is influenced not only by the television series 'Blackadder Goes Forth' but also by Siegfried Sassoon’s poem about two soldiers describing a general as a ‘cheery old card’ before he ‘did for them both with his plan of attack’.
Published: 2005-02-28
