‘Sommewhere in France’
In welcoming a new publication of the collected numbers of The Wipers Times, Malcolm Brown wonders why we find the idea of humour in the trenches so shocking.
The very name of the Battle of the Somme sounds like the doleful tolling of a bell. More than any other conflict of the 1914-18 war, it has burned itself into the British psyche. A generation ago, the old battlefield was curiously quiet. Relatively few people walked the lawns of the military cemeteries or paused to study the region’s innumerable memorials. Now the scatter of visitor centres and museums and the crowded car and coach parks give the area the look and feel of a theme park – but one that is dedicated almost entirely to grief.
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