KILL OR BE KILLED?
'Live and let live' wasn't universally observed. It tended to break down where Tommies faced Prussians, where Germans faced Highlanders, or where élite regiments faced each other. It also became more difficult to sustain in the latter stages of the war as soldiers on both sides lost increasing numbers of friends:
'Speaking for my companions and myself, I can categorically state that we were in no mood for any joviality with Jerry. We hated his guts. We were bent on his destruction at each and every opportunity. Our greatest wish was to be granted an enemy target worthy of our Vickers machine-gun.'
Corporal George Coppard - With a Machine-Gun to Cambrai
('With a Machine Gun to Cambrai', IWM)
However, 'live and let live' was sufficiently widespread for officers to feel uneasy and threatened by its existence. In 1916, the British High Command issued a directive that was designed to counter complacency and promote a more belligerent spirit:
'With trench warfare, there is an insidious tendency to lapse into a passive and lethargic attitude against which officers of all ranks have to be on their guard, and the fostering of the offensive spirit ... calls for incessant attention,'
'The Offensive Spirit in Trench Warfare' - British Training Manual, March 1916
('The Offensive Spirit in Trench Warfare', IWM)
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Death could come at any moment in the trenches, and all sides feared snipers
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British troops with German soldiers captured on a raid
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| Brigadier General Frank Crozier |
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Raiding parties and snipers were seen as the best way to promote mutual hatred.
Senior officers started appearing in the lines to demand greater activity:
'Higher ranks began to appear in our midst, chief of all... the brigadier general... followed by an almost equally menacing staff captain. What was my name? Why had I not organised raids? Visited the enemy's wire? I was to go!'
Lieutenant Edmund Blunden
Ordinary soldiers would often go to great lengths to protect themselves. They ventured out into no-man's-land and their officers wrote glowing reports describing their heroism. However, back at headquarters, some officers smelled a rat:
'It became increasingly difficult, as time went on, to obtain correct reports from officers' patrols... it was my habit to order samples of German wire to be cut and brought back... Thus one would know that the German line had been visited.'
Brigadier General Frank Crozier
Faced with such demands, some soldiers were still clever enough to outwit their superiors. One group of British soldiers found a coil of German wire in no-man's-land, lugged it back to their trench, and snipped off samples to present to their superiors:
'That went on every night and the old man never knew we had a coil of Jerry wire on our side'
A British sergeant
CONCLUSION
'Live and let live' contradicts the usual view of trench warfare as an unceasing torment of mud and bullets. Soldiers occasionally worked across the lines to thwart their officers' intentions and minimise the dangers they faced. If it wasn't the international brotherhood that socialists had hoped for in 1914, it certainly demonstrated that the enlisted men were more than simple automata who blindly followed their superiors' orders.
In 1917, this desire for freedom of action would find expression in two revolutions in Russia, in French army mutinies, and in the desertions and mass surrenders of Italian troops. It was the ordinary soldier's way of turning his back on the war.
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