THE FIRST WORLD WAR: THE HOME FRONT

The Diaries of Andrew Clark, Rector of Great Leighs, Essex, from the Bodleian Library, Oxford

Publisher's Note

"The First World War was a war of unprecedented scale and was called 'great' at the time. Yet Clark's vantage point, which he had the imagination to realise was a useful one, was neither that of the battlefield nor of Whitehall but of a village rectory in Essex.He is concerned with the immediacies of experience and response and with collecting all kinds of material, even the most trivial and ephemeral, to reveal such immediacies to future generations."
Asa Briggs, writing in the Foreword to Echoes of the Great War, edited by James Munson, 1985

The Clark diaries are one of the most extraordinary social historical documents ever compiled. They describe in minute detail life and society in a small, secluded Essex village and the gradual, withering impact of the Great War on local life.

The gentle, class-based, rural society, with the squire in the manor and the quiet, scholarly rector, are contrasted with the indiscriminate horrors of mechanised warfare.

The war changed society forever and the beauty of the Clark diaries is that they capture many of these changes as they happened.

Andrew Clark was a scholar with a deep fascination for local and social history. The son of a farm labourer, he took a double-first in Greats at Oxford in 1879 and served spells at St Andrews and Oxford before being ordained in 1884. He edited Anthony Wood's diaries and John Aubrey's Brief Lives. During the South African War he posted news for local villagers and became aware of the possibility of systematically collecting together a vast range of material detailing the local impact of an international event.

When he heard of Germany's invasion of Belgium, he resolved to do precisely this:

• Every day, often on several occasions, he noted everything that he heard or saw relating to the War, from air raids to billeting, and from health issues to news of fatalities.
• He gathered rumours and conversations, comparing 'official news releases' displayed at the local Post Office, with information gleaned from people that he spoke to in Great Leighs or in Oxford.
• He recorded conversations with men on their way to the front line and also with those sent back to recuperate.
• He pasted in or transcribed many letters from soldiers at the front in Flanders, Salonika and Italy that had been sent to Clark or to local villagers.
• He commissioned essays from schoolchildren describing their impressions when, for instance, 8,000 troops marched through the village en route to war.
• He corresponded with his daughter in Scotland, who also gathered news from friends and colleagues across Europe.
• He collected ephemera, recruiting posters and propaganda and added them to his diaries.

The result was a multi-faceted account of the Great War, offering the views of housewives and soldiers, farmers and doctors, the eager and the injured. He was encouraged by the Bodleian's librarian, who could see the value of the resource that was being created.

There are accounts of poison gas attacks - one of which decimated a Canadian division, reducing it from 2,000 to 220 active soldiers.

There are descriptions of the constant noise of warfare, which often resulted in shell shock. On 21 November 1914, for instance, he met a sergeant from the South Staffordshire Regiment who was back on leave. "The Boer War, he said, was a 'picnic' in comparison. In several of the actions he had seen more shells discharged in twenty minutes than he had seen in the whole course of the South African War. He said that this war is not 'fighting, but murder'."

The impact on the local village was considerable. There were 614 villagers at the start of the war; 67 served in the War and 19 didn't return, including the squire's son. The description of loss is well conveyed as is the impact on local working habits. There are also accounts of wives waiting on husbands who have been described as 'Missing, presumed killed'.

The work of the VAD Hospital in Braintree is covered and there are many letters from Clark's daughter, Mildred, who was training to be a doctor in Scotland. She brings a different perspective on the war and also solicited contributions from women doctors in Belgium and France.

The effect of air raids on local communities is fully described. For instance, on 1 April 1916: "At 11pm, just as my wife had come up, there were two tremendous explosions, just to the North which shook the house, and caused her to call out, involuntarily Oh! Oh! The second call woke me, and I got up to find my daughters disturbed by the great bangs and the dog roused and barking. At 11.10pm I was dressing-gowned and out. It was a starlit night, slightly foggy. By this time the Zeppelin was roaring like a railway train somewhere nearby, apparently just over the Rectory stables.11.50pm. Several explosions in the South, followed by lights."

The billeting of troops in the village causes a great deal of comment and the differences between American, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand troops are analysed.

"The Australian troops are splendid fellows, but very independent. They will not take any order which they think unreasonable, from any officer, whatever his rank. At mess one evening, the Revd J H heard a General tell good humouredly, how he had been discomfited by the Australians that afternoon. He had come upon a party of Australians lying about anyhow on that hot afternoon. They were some sleeping, some smoking after a march. Altho' they were not in his command, he thought he would like to inspect them. So he gave the order to fall in. Not a man stirred. He repeated the command in a louder voice, but all that happened was that a few faces were turned toward him and looked him up and down, and a few smokers took the pipes out of their mouths and blew a long puff of smoke from their lips. He was nettled, and called out testily, 'Men, I said fall in.' One voice answered him 'Fall in yourself, and be damned.' He saw he had gone too far and rode to his own quarters, taking in the ridiculous part he had played; and told the story against himself, with great glee that evening."

Clark kept the diary for 1,793 days, from the German invasion of Belgium to the signing of the Versailles Treaty, often making more than one lengthy entry per day. The resulting document spans 92 exercise books and amounts to over 3,000,000 words.

James Munson published extracts in his Echoes of the Great War (1985), but could only cover c.120, 000 words, or less than 4% of the whole. This is the first time that the diary has been published in its entirety.

"It is one of the largest and most comprehensive diaries ever kept in English history and one of the most unusual."
James Munson, writing in Echoes of the Great War, 1985

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