Coming Home - Legacies of the First World War

Reg’s father died shortly before he was born, and despite the fact that he was raised in an orphanage, as his mother could not afford to keep him, the two maintained a particularly close relationship and corresponded regularly throughout Reg’s war service and post-wound recovery. Reg's war momentos included a brass tin which Princess Mary sent to troops in 1914 as Christmas gifts. They contained tobacco and other treats.

Reginald “Reg” Evans sent the tin and its contents to his mother, to keep as a memento of his war service.

On the 14 February 1916, Reg received a severe bullet wound to the jaw during a reconnaissance mission, for which he received the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Mrs Evans received this letter on 19 February 1916. This was all the information she was given about her son’s welfare.

Reg dictated the written letter to a nurse as he was too weak to write himself. This was the first of many hospitals which Reg would call home for the next year.

Firstly, Reg was transferred between hospitals in France, before he was sent to the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, to receive specialised treatment at Sir Harold Gillies’ unit for facial injuries, the largest of its kind in Britain at the time.

When Reg finally regained the strength to write to his mother himself, he explained to her: “I cannot eat at all and will not be able to till after the operation. I am afraid you will have to prepare yourself to receive rather an uglier duckling than before”.

Reg's letters demonstrate the difficulties and anxieties faced by wounded soldiers, particularly those with disfiguring wounds, as they attempted to prepare love ones for the reality of injuries caused by modern mechanised warfare, which were unprecedented in their severity.

Humour was a common feature of Reg’s letters, and one which helped him and his family come to terms with his injuries. Humorous stoicism was used to cover negative emotional responses to wounds, demonstrating fortitude and allowing disfigured men to appear “manly”, according to conceptions of masculinity at the time. Reg’s brother, for example, advised him to “keep smiling if your jaw will let you”. Whilst his surgery was considered a medical success, Reg’s facial injury was clearly visible and he had difficulty eating for the rest of his life. After the Armistice he returned home. He married, had children, secured a job running the local newsagents, and was an active part of the local community until his death in the 1940s.

Re-training opportunities were offered to wounded ex-servicemen as an initiative run by the Ministry of Labour, and James sought training from this department after he left Sidcup. The options available to ex-servicemen, as James discovered, could however be limited.

James applied for training in household repairs, joining, French polishing, and upholstery. The Ministry rejected all of these claims, stating that the nature of James’ disability rendered him unfit for training in these fields. They instead suggested hairdressing as an appropriate field. After extensive applications and rejections, James was awarded a grant to start his own business. With this grant he opened an ironmongers shop in Newcastle, which he continued to run into the 1960s.

The types of work deemed suitable for disabled men did not always fit with their own employment preferences or ideas about “honourable” work. A 1923 play entitled The Unknown Warrior encapsulated this internal conflict, with one disabled veteran explaining “I’m fed up with making silly toys. It’s not work for a man - but we’re not men now”.

In the 1918 Gateshead election, the government-endorsed Unionist candidate Herbert Surtees emerged victorious. However, in the next election of 1922, he was unseated by the Labour candidate, John Brotherton, who on this form is described as being an engine fitter from Leeds.

This ballot paper was sent to Douglas McIntyre. Douglas was a soldier from Gateshead who was stationed in France during the Khaki Election. He decided not to vote in the 1918 election and never voted again because he did not feel any parties represented his views. Douglas was not alone in feeling resentment and disillusionment towards Britain’s coalition government in the wake of the First World War. Many soldiers burned their ballot papers as a sign of protest.

The 1918 coalition government, led by Prime Minister David Lloyd George, supported a continuation of conscription, which was widely unpopular amongst war veterans. Nevertheless, they won a landslide victory. This was despite a low turnout of around 57% of those eligible to vote: the worst general election turnout in fifty years.

William Gardner’s letters home show the anger felt by many soldiers during the 1918 Khaki Election. William hopes that Prime Minister Lloyd George “is about to get as big and ultimately as decisive a check as the Boche got”.
When the First World War broke out, William Gardner left his job in the civil service to enlist in the Queen’s Westminster Rifles. After fighting on the Western Front, Greece and the Near East, he shared the resentment felt by many servicemen at being excluded from political debate.

William was concerned about whether he would still have a job when he got home. His letters show his anxiety that ‘stay-at-homes’ would have taken all the best jobs, leaving nothing for those who had volunteered to fight. In fact, ‘healthy’ ex-servicemen were usually prioritised over non-combatants in the post-war jobs market, but men like William were understandably anxious as they waited to be demobilised.

William also records the anger in the camps, commenting that very few soldiers he knew actually voted, and that there would be a “rumpus” if there was not another election following their demobilisation. For soldiers stationed overseas, the Khaki Election did not give the government a legitimate mandate. William felt hopeful that Labour would win in the next election. In fact, the Conservatives won in 1922, but Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Party formed a government in 1924.

This pamphlet bemoans the failure of post-war governments to live up to their social promises. Thousands of survivors of the war faced poverty and unemployment. As a result of the Depression, the 1930s saw increasing desperation and political polarisation.

On 24 November 1918, Prime Minister David Lloyd George promised “to make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in”. Housing was central to this vision, as the government embarked on an effort to build half a million new homes. This ambitious social reform failed in the short run, but helped lay the foundations for the modern system of council housing in Britain. War veterans were identified as one of the main groups who were supposed to benefit from new housing.

This pamphlet was produced by the All London Tenants’ Defence League, a communist grassroots organisation which helped working class families fight against corrupt landlords. In particular, the pamphlet shows how some war veterans were suffering terrible housing conditions which did not always conform to even basic legal requirements. Although an example of political propaganda, this is a damning indictment of the failure of post-war governments to provide for veterans’ welfare.

Ramsay MacDonald was one of the founders of the Labour Party. In this article he describes how, despite his narrow defeat by a Victoria Cross winner, Labour was gaining ground amongst disillusioned veterans. In 1924, MacDonald became Labour’s first Prime Minister.

In this article written for the Labour Party journal, MacDonald examines how public perceptions of the party were changing. Previously they had been associated more with pacifism, but Labour was rapidly gaining support amongst war veterans and women who had participated in the First World War. In a by-election in Woolwich, home of the Royal Artillery, MacDonald stood against a Conservative candidate who had won the Victoria Cross. MacDonald lost, but only by a very narrow margin. A few years earlier this would have seemed unthinkable in a constituency with such a strong army presence. Labour was increasingly attractive to war survivors because of policies such as their support for shell-shocked veterans and campaign to abolish the military death penalty.

Despite this setback, MacDonald sounds very optimistic about the future for his party. This proved to be entirely justified. In December 1923, the general election produced a hung parliament. Although Labour was not the largest party, MacDonald formed a minority government and became Britain’s first socialist Prime Minister. Despite only being in office for less than a year, he returned to Downing Street in 1929. As a result of the campaigning of backbench Labour MPs, in 1930 the military death penalty was finally abolished in Britain.