Remembrance, continued.

 

Nobbled.

"'Ow long are you up for, Bill?"

"Seven years."

"Yer lucky ——, I'm duration."

Those of us who do remember the First World War now know that it lasted four years, 1914-1918. But to those who lived and fought in it had no idea that it would take four years. At first, they naively thought the war would be done by Christmas, 1914. Then the reality of trench warfare set in, and during the middle years of the war-'15, '16, and '17, when battle after battle was fought with virtually no change in the lines at all, it seemed to the troops, such as the two pictured here, as though this war would last forever. This grim humour was something Bairnsfather would return to again and again in later comics. One has these two troops reading an almanac, and one of them announces "It says here that the fourteenth year will be the worst, and after that every seventh." Another one, entitled "AD 1950" has two old veterans with long beards huddled down in their trench, reading a newspaper, and one says: "It sez here the war babies battalion will be coming out." It wasn't merely something to be laughed at, though. Faced with the prospect of death and destruction and no end in sight, several units of the armies, including a large portion of the French army, mutinied in 1917.