The Love Poetry of the First World War

Abstract

The love of soldier for soldier has always been more controversial than the issue of male homosexuality in general. Two points are, in particular, noteworthy. The first is that the intensity of this love is frequently, perhaps usually, greater than amongst non-combatants, if diaries, letters and poems are to be considered true reflections of writers’ states of mind.⁴ This is hardly surprising, given that human ties are always more intense during periods of extreme emotional experience (in a mine, a disaster, a shared grief).

No one turning from the poetry of the Second World War to that of the First can fail to notice there the unique physical tenderness, the readiness to admire openly the bodily beauty of young men, the unapologetic recognition that men may be in love with each other. (Paul Fussell)¹

I can never express in writing what I feel about the men in the trenches; and nobody who has not seen them can ever understand…(Lt-Col. Richard Fielding, in a letter to his wife)²

When the war ends I’ll be at the crossroads; and I know the path to choose. I must go out into the night alone.(Siegried Sassoon)³