In the Pink

Abstract

In addition to its role in rumour transmission, the trench press was also a vehicle for complaint. Complaining has always been one of the common soldier’s few pleasures, and the Great War provided ample opportunity to continue and expand this tradition. The chance was seized with enthusiasm. One way of understanding trench journals is as glorified — and sometimes not so glorified — complaint sheets. Regardless of the genre or mode of expression employed, a large proportion of what was printed in these publications took the form of a grievance or a grumble. Few subjects did not come in for jaundiced comment at some time or other, from the ‘chats’ to the food, the mud, the bureaucracy and the sheer madness of it all. As with much else to do with the trench press, the complaint had more than one purpose. It clearly allowed men to let off steam as part of the safety valve dimension of these publications. But beyond that useful though limited function, the complaint was another means of highlighting for those not at the front the many unsatisfactory aspects of the experience. If ‘unsatisfactory’ sounds like an understatement, that was exactly what the grouses and whinges of the trench were: a radically understated amelioration of the realities of life and death at the front. They were pleas for the consideration of their plight.

If you want to see the infantry, I know where they are, Hanging on the old barbed wire …

Trench song