![]() ![]() Silver’s case illustrates a significant issue for many serving men in that the damage his body suffered was nothing to do with fighting the enemy. ![]() Many soldiers’ injuries were life-changing and affected the course of their lives after the war. This illustrates the extent to which their physical bodies were perceived, controlled, transformed and abused by army leadership to secure victory. It focuses on the immediate and lasting impact of the war upon the bodies of soldiers, building up a mosaic of the physical experience of battle through their testimony. My new book War Bodies focuses directly on this life-changing experience for British men, investigating their personal accounts. As a young Lieutenant Godfrey wrote to his mother in 1914, it was a strikingly “different existence” from which no one escaped unaltered. Changed and often traumatised, the first world war represented a fracture point in soldiers’ personal histories. Most had limited to zero military experience and many men who entered service did not return home the same. Ravenous in its need to field soldiers, the dwindling professional British army was soon augmented by reserve forces, conscripts and civilian volunteers. Between 19 the British Empire amassed a force of nearly nine million men to go to war.
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