Veteran Identities

Mass conscription made the figure of the veteran more visible, particularly in Western societies, in the years following the Armistice than ever before. Returning combatants became a recognized social group and, in some nations, a powerful political force. Moreover, representations of the veteran haunted the cultural landscape of the belligerent nations, and he appeared in a number of different guises. The nationalist stereotypes—the Tommy, poilu, doughboy and so on—that had peopled pro-war postcards, newspaper articles, and nationalist fiction during the war were still present in the interwar years. War memorials from diverse national contexts contain countless examples of First World War soldiers in heroic poses, and disabled veterans often played key roles in memorial ceremonies, serving as living reminders of veterans’ collective sacrifice. However, these representations were accompanied by representations that presented veterans as outsiders rather than as role-models. Disabled and shell-shocked veterans began to appear in fiction and films, sometimes functioning as a representative of the horrors of war, sometimes as an alternative hero attempting to reintegrate into an unfamiliar post-war world. Veterans themselves, sometimes organized into associations or other social groupings, produced many post-war memoirs. There was no unified ‘war story’ produced by veterans. Yet, while the interpretations of the rights and wrongs of the war and the understanding of what constituted veteran culture in its aftermath varied considerably, these works were united by the stamp of authority and authenticity given to texts produced by veteran-authors. Despite increasingly polarized political and cultural debates and divisions between veterans, having ‘been there’ often brought with it political, social, and cultural capital. The end of the twentieth century saw a renewed critical and artistic interest in cultural representations and memories of the First World War, reflected in a plethora of films and novels, a vast range of academic studies, and the creation of several

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• And then there was one’ Cultural Representations of the Last British Veteran of the Great War

  Philip Long, Nick Webber•Journal of War and Culture Studies•2018

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