To Smash the Mirror: Theatre

In his chapter on the 'Theatre of War' in The Great War and Modern Memory (1975, ch. 6), Paul Fussell notes a consanguinity between the participant's view of warfare and of theatre: 'Seeing warfare as theatre provides a psychic escape for the participant: with a sufficient sense of theatre, he can perform his duties without implicating his "real" self and without impairing his innermost conviction that the world is still a rational place' (p. 192). The participant's position provides the fulcrum of Fussell's discussion of theatre and the First World War from a range of perspectives: wartime audiences escaping the reality of war by immersing themselves in theatre, those with experience of war (the equivalent of soldier-poets) writing theatrically (but not necessarily only plays), representations of war participants in drama, the theatrical language of war participants (particularly class-conscious British soldiers). The catch-phrase 'theatre of war', in this view, is effective because it captures a double bind of location and participation in war. On the one hand, the war zone is like a stage and those in it become self-conscious performers who are displaced from the everyday life of 'real' selves and located in an 'irrational place'. On the other hand, the theatre stage and actors materialize an experience which temporarily draws audiences away from their everyday existence and 'real' selves — and under those conditions the dislocations of war can be effectively represented and conveyed, even if war is distant or past. Of course, the same could be said of cinema or television drama. Theatre and war zone meet in the locations and dislocations of participation in Fussell's view, and indeed that is the dominant sense in which a 'theatre of war' is understood both in literary terms and in the metaphorical plethora of the catch-phrase.

Book Review| January 01 2008 The Theatre of War: The First World War in British and Irish Drama The Theatre of War: The First World War in British and Irish DramaKosok, Heinz Peter Gahan Peter Gahan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Shaw (2008) 28: 243–247. https://doi.org/10.2307/40681789 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Peter Gahan; The Theatre of War: The First World War in British and Irish Drama. Shaw 1 January 2008; 28 243–247. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/40681789 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressShaw Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2008 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.2008The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Whose War Was It Anyway? Some Australian Historians and the Great War

This article briefly reviews the evolution of medical support during wars and conflicts from ancient to modern times and discusses the effect warfare has had on the development of civilian health care and emergency medical services (EMS). Medical breakthroughs and discoveries made of necessity during military conflicts have developed into new paradigms of medical care, including novel programs of triage and health assessment, emergency battlefield treatment and stabilization, anesthesia, and other surgical and emergency procedures. The critical role of organizations that provide proper emergency care to help the sick and injured both on the battlefield and in the civilian world is also highlighted.

Homer's War Experiences Resonate With Today's Troops

A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War

A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War

Skin disease has been always been associated with human conflict, causing considerable morbidity and removing soldiers from the battlefield. Records of skin disease in soldiers improved significantly from the early 20th century. Analysis of these quality data gives us an insight into the changing picture of skin disease across many theatres of war. In World War I, the most common skin conditions reported were bacterial infection (42%), scabies (28.5%), eczema/dermatitis (13%) and acne (5.4%). Interestingly, body lice were so common that cases were not routinely recorded, even though the association with typhus, which led to many deaths, was recognized. Trench foot, again common, was not routinely classified as a skin disease. By World War II, skin disease in combatants had changed considerably. Overall rates of skin disease varied by conflict zone from 25% (in temperate climates) to 75% (tropical climates). For example, the commonest skin conditions afflicting the British Army in India were fungal disease and scabies. The British Liberation Army found that their rates of skin disease doubled from July 1944 to March 1945, with high rates of eczema (42%) and bacterial infections (30.9%) and lower rates of fungal infections (5.1%) and scabies (7.4%). The dramatic difference between rates and types of skin disease reported in different climates is still seen today: 25.2% of medical consultations in the East Timor conflict (1999) were for skin disease, compared with 9.3% during the Gulf War (1990). Scabies became less important after World War II (apart from a small rise in the first Gulf War). In Vietnam (1965–70), dermatitis had become the most common skin problem (16.5%), with significant issues of fungal disease: mainly ‘jungle rot’ (a resurgence of the original trench foot, 13%), viral conditions including warts (11.5%) and acne (4.3%). Recent figures are similar for Afghanistan (2008–15), although cases of dermatitis had fallen (8.5%). The incidence of scabies in soldiers has hugely reduced since the World War I, probably due to effective treatments and improved military hygiene, as well as less prolonged, less intensive conflicts. Climate continues to play a major role in types and rates of skin disease. It is important to point out that skin disease, even in the modern age, continues to cause major morbidity among combatants, and soldiers need to be screened for pre-existing skin disease before being sent into combat zones.

Why do so many writers and audiences turn to theatre to resolve overwhelming topics of pain and suffering? This collection of essays from international scholars reconsiders how theatre has played a crucial part in encompassing and preserving significant human experiences. Plays about global issues, including terrorism and war, are increasing in attention from playwrights, scholars, critics and audiences. In this contemporary collection, a gathering of diverse contributors explain theatre’s special ability to generate dialogue and promote healing when dealing with human tragedy. This collection discusses over 30 international plays and case studies from different time periods, all set in a backdrop of war. The four sections document British and American perspectives on theatres of war, global perspectives on theatres of war, perspectives on Black Watch and, finally, perspectives on The Great Game: Afghanistan. Through this, a range of international scholars from different disciplines imaginatively rethink theatre’s unique ability to mediate the impacts and experiences of war. Featuring contributions from a variety of perspectives, this book provides a wealth of revealing insights into why authors and audiences have always turned to the unique medium of theatre to make sense of war.

Seventy years earlier, the Battle of Stalingrad ended, changing the course of the European theatre of the Second World War. As the researcher of this project, I now stood in southern Russia, inside the siege boundary of this pivotal turning point during the war. My direct, subjective perception of this ruinscape, of geographical and meteorological extremes, juxtaposed with my long-held fascination with the narrative and representation of combat spectacle of the Stalingrad combat film canon. These sources fed the desire to reconstruct the spatiality of encircled defendable spaces and make-shift urban battlements on the threshold of combat, from a merging of two sources: the documentation of the historical event as a decaying landscape of ruin and the recreation of these events as cinema. This exegesis investigates the perception of these liminal spaces through the lens of autoethnography. The research analyses the narrative state and ambiguous potentialities of the non-combat scenes from a tangible craft-based production design point of view. Attention is focused on the morbid scenic design of the geographical panorama, ruined architecture and extreme meteorology of these in-between battlefield microcosms; the visual state of environmental conditions translated into stages suspended on the threshold of combat violence. It examines how these combine to shape the interpretive nuances of the liminal miseen- scene comparative to the macrocosm of combat. The architectural landscape of the urban battlefield becomes perceptually invisible inside the spectacle of modern warfare. This architecture of warfare, originating from the frontline event, is re-discovered inside the architecture of the combat film. Acknowledging that there are inherent political overtones to the study of military warfare, this research is purely concerned with the on-screen architecture of the liminal scene mise-en-scene in the Stalingrad canon and how this can be reconstructed and transformed into stop motion animation. The purpose is to offer a new reading of the staging qualities of this production design as threedimensional craft. This production design explores the spatial through the tangible, translating a personal experience of actual battlefield spaces into a scale-model. The restaging of this architectural landscape of ruin, is re-directed by interpretation into a re-constructed image, through deep mapping, that is then translated into the three-dimensions of a tangible film set design. Reconfigured through the stagecraft of stop motion animation, the ruinscape reappears in the miniature and is transitioned and re-produced as a system of production design.

The extent of the First World War was tremendous because its affects reached out so far so fast that it affected every single civilization on the planet: from the western coasts of Alaska to the eastern coasts of Australia, from Africa to Melanesia and China. «The War to End All War» widened from Atlantic and Pacific to Mediterranean Sea and Dardanelles, from West to East Europe, from Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire to the border of British Raj, from Anatolia to Caucasus. While most of the important battles took place in Europe, as its name suggests the First World War was a truly «global conflict», with fighting in almost every corner of the globe. On various parts of Asia and Africa, Germany’s colonial possessions came under attack. The Japanese quickly overran German outposts in China. They also captured Germany’s Pacific island colonies. English and French troops attacked Germany’s African possessions. They seized control of the Deutsch-Ostafrika (Burundi, Ruanda, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar), Cameroon, Togo, and Namibia. Elsewhere in Asia and Africa, the British and French recruited subjects in their colonies for struggle. Fighting troops as well as labourers came from South Africa, Australia, New Zeeland, British India, Senegal, Egypt, Algeria and Indochina. Many fought and died on the battlefield. Others worked in the war industries, to build fortifications and to keep the front lines provided. Although member of the Triple Alliance, the Kingdom of Italy not join the Central Powers, when the war started in August 1914. Almost a year after the war’s commencement, after secret parallel negotiations with both sides (with the Allies in which Italy negotiated for territory if victorious, and with the Central Powers to gain territory if neutral) Italy entered the war on the side of the France and Great Britain. Italy fought mostly against Austria-Hungary along his northern border, including high up in the now-Italian Alps and along the Isonzo River. Some Italian divisions were also sent to support the Entente on the Western Front. In 1918 Italian troops saw intense combat during the German Spring Offensive (March – July 1918) Their most prominent engagement on this front was their role in the Second Battle of the Marne (15 July - 6 August). Italian troops played a major role in the defence of Albania against AustriaHungary. The Regio Esercito occupied the port of Vlore on December 1914, but had to withdraw after the Austrian-Hungarian invasion in late 1915 - early 1916, and the fall of Durres on 27 February 1916. In May 1916, the Italian XVI Corps, composed of 100.000 men, returned and occupied the region of southern Albania by the autumn 1916, while the French army occupied Korce and its surrounding areas. The Italian (in Gjirokaster) and French forces (in Korce), according mainly to the development of the Balkan Front, entered the area of Northern Epirus (controlled by the Greek minority) in autumn 1916, after approval of the Triple Entente. Italian Armed Forces were also involved in the Western Front and in the Middle-Eastern theatre of Great War. From 1916, the Italian 35th Division fought on the Salonika Front as part of the Allied Army of the Orient. The Italian XVI Corps (a separate entity independent from the Army of the Orient) took part in actions against Austro-Hungarian forces in Albania and, in June 23, 1917, Italy established the protectorate over this region. Italy played a token role in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, sending a detachment of five hundred soldiers to assist the British there in 1917. The Senussi objective of expelling the Italians coincided with Ottoman war aims. In 1914, the British chose to appease the Senussi but the accession of Italy to the entente in May 1915 led to the British applying pressure to the Senussi to recognise the Italian occupation and stopping cross-border trade. The Senussi became more dependent on German and Ottoman imports and had to move to find food. Therefore, the British embargo pushed the Senussi towards war. The Ottoman Sultan supported the guerrilla warfare by the chief of the Senussi Order, Aḥmad al-Sarīf, and published the Caliphal decree of Gihād against the infidel British and their allies. The Italian war effort was stronger in its colonial domains threatened by Islamist insurgency organized and backed by Istanbul and Berlin with the sending of officers and Special Corps, weapons, ammunitions, equipment, food supplies, and money. As Italy entered the war on 23 May 1915, the situation of her forces in the African colonies was critical. Italian Somaliland, in the east was far from being pacified, and in Cyrenaica, the Italian forces were confined to some separated points on the coast. In neighbouring Tripolitania and Fezzan, during the August 1914, the Italian forces reached Ghat, that is, conquered most of western Libya. But in November 1914, this advance turned into a general retreat, and on 7 April and 28 April, they suffered two reverses at Wadi Marsit (near Mizda) and al-Qurdabiya (near Sirte) respectively. By August 1915, the situation in Tripolitania was similar to that of Cyrenaica. The Chief of General Staff, Luigi Cadorna, chose to sacrifice the African front to concentrate the forces of the Regio Esercito on the Italian front. The recovery of Libya was not resumed until January 1922 and the pacification of the region ended only in 1932. Lastly, Italian Expeditionary Forces were sent between 1918 and 1923 to Istanbul, in Anatolia, in Northern Russia. Furthermore, immediately after the war, Italian military missions reached Transcaucasia and Hungary to stabilize the difficult political situation that had been created in those regions. The Italian military effort, which cost to our country 680,000 deaths, one million wounded, tens of thousands of missing persons, expenses amounted to 20.6 billion between 1917 and 1918, and a consequent, heavy depletion of national wealth, was not rewarded by the Allies. Italy won the war on the battlefields but lost it to the Versailles Peace Conference. The Vittoria mutilata («Mutilated Victory») was a term coined by Gabriele D’Annunzio to describe dissatisfaction with the aftermath of the Great War for Italy. The Treaty of London (April 26, 1915) signed by the United Kingdom, the French Third Republic, the Russian Empire, and Salandra government, before entering the conflict was, in effect, not fully carried out at the end of it. In January 1917, British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, wrote a letter to American President Thomas Woodrow Wilson expressing his disapproval of the promise to give Italy the Adriatic territories. In a later diplomatic mission to the United States in May, Balfour made it clear that Britain had no particular ill will against Austria-Hungary and that the planned transfer of the Slavic lands to Italy would only create more problems. While American-Italian diplomatic dialogue regarding the claims did not take place prior to the Peace Conference, Wilson’s own stance on the matter was clear in his «Fourteen Points», which urged for the Italian border with Austria to be redrawn along «clearly recognizable lines of nationality». His first point urged for no international agreements to be negotiated in secret so he refused to recognise the arrangements made under the pact. The program of Italy’s Foreign Secretary, Sidney Sonnino, for securing the Adriatic were ignored, as were the war aims of Italy in Anatolia, Balkan Peninsula, Eastern Mediterranean, and East Africa.

The Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH), a unique health institution in the history of medicine, staffed entirely by women, was founded soon after the outbreak of the First World War, August 12, 1914 in Edinburgh, by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. The founder and the main driving force behind this organisation was Dr. Elsie Inglis (1864-1917). Although her proposition to the British War Office had been rejected, she offered her services to the Allies (France, Belgium, Russia and Serbia). The first 200 bed SWH unit was sent to France in November 1914, and soon after followed other units, so at the end there were 13 very well equipped SWH units working in the various theatres of war in Belgium, Serbia, Russia, Rumania and Greece. The first unit of SWH came to Serbia in early January 1915, and was located at Kragujevac. Soon after, three other SWH units arrived to Serbia and were stationed at Mladenovac, Valjevo and Lazarevac. It was an enormous help to Serbia, full of wounded and sick people, due to the dreadful typhus epidemic which was devastating the country. A large SWH unit, attached to the Southern Slav Volunteer Division, had worked on the Dobrudja front, and there were three hospitals and a special transport unit on the Salonika Front, which were all engaged in the treatment of Serbian wounded soldiers until the end of the First World War. Two other SWH units, located in France, were treating the Serbian refugees. Serving bravely and honorably on the various theatres of war, the legendary Scottish Women's Hospitals made enormous contributions to the allied war efforts, and helped Serbian people a great deal.

The current interest in the psychiatric disorders of the Great War dates back to three innovative and very different studies of the 1970s: The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell, The Face of Battle by John Keegan, and Eric Leed's study of combat and identity No Man's Land . The focus of these studies was the personal experience of war, especially but not exclusively the Great War; the assumptions and understanding brought to it and, often, the damage and loss that result. A second group of studies emerged in the middle and late 1980s, including more specialized works on psychological medicine, feminist interpretation, as well as two extended pieces of research on the British experience. Snowball-like, the chapters presented in the final sections of Traumatic Pasts illustrate the development of comparative and postwar studies, although other issues, such as the experience of war neurotic ex-servicemen and the much wider theme of Great War psychological trauma as a pathology of modernity, are open to further exploration. The Great War and the British soldiers' experience of that war were the starting point for these developments, the studies of the 1970s particularly helped establish a framework within which more recent debates have taken place, and for that reason I want to review the British experience.

When Austria joined the Geneva Convention the "Patriotischer Hilfsverein" (Patriotic Aid Society) which was founded for the concerns of wounded soldiers, was named "Austrian Society of the Red Cross". It had to stand its first big test in 1912 in the first Balkan war; military surgeons and bacteriologists were deployed to all warring states. The cholera dominated under the infectious diseases among the various forces and the civilian populations. Upon request of the Bulgarian king renowned bacteriologists of the University of Vienna were dispatched. Their work presented the first action of bacteriology for disease control on theatres of war. The great success of the surgical and hygienic measures initiated in 1912 a reform of the Austrian Red Cross. In 1913 Austria made a detailed application to the International Committee of the Red Cross in order to extend the Geneva Convention to war epidemics. The Committee forwarded and recommended this application to all member states, however, the outbreak of the First World War then prevented its resolution.

Palestine and Trans-Jordan emerged as modern states; this was in consequence of British war commitments to its allies during the First World War. Sir Mark Sykes, a senior Foreign Office official, together with George Picot, a French diplomat, set out in May 1917, to discuss matters with Sherif Hussein of Mecca, in order to co-ordinate the Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916,1 with the British commitments made previously to the Arabs.2 Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, instructed Sir Mark Sykes if possible to secure the addition of Palestine to the British area. Both the Prime Minister and Lord Curzon impressed on Sir Mark Sykes 'the importance of not prejudicing the Zionist movement and the possibility of its development under British auspices'. Sir Mark Sykes himself held the opinion 'that the Arabs probably realised that there was no prospect of their being allowed any control over Palestine'.' Therefore, Great Britain was free to dispose of Palestine as it wished. Thus, on 2 November 1917, by the 'Balfour Declaration', Great Britain committed itself to the establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine.4 Sir Mark Sykes drew up a political plan by which an Arab Kingdom would be established in areas 'A' and 'B' as had been designated in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, namely, the interior of Syria and the area east of the Jordan.5 The military organization of war against the Ottoman Empire determined that there be a division of the Hijaz theatre of war and the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (hereafter EEF) theatre of war. The line of separation ran from a point south of Akaba to a point south of Ma'an.6 Trans-Jordan and Syria were reserved as sub-theatres of war for the operations of the Arab Army headed by Prince Faisal, son of the Sherif Hussein of Mecca, subject to the supreme command of the Commander in Chief of the EEF. Palestine was designated the main theatre of war for the EEF. The organization of war drew up a sketch map separating Trans-Jordan from the Hijaz and Trans-Jordan from Palestine. At that time, the term 'Palestine' meant 'Palestine proper i.e. the area west of the Jordan-Dead Sea-Akaba line and south of the Lebanon, which forms the Sanjak of