Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the concept of mud on the Western Front. The intense and mechanical destruction of the First World War created a new and terrifying world that had hitherto only ever been imagined: one of mud and death and dissolution of form.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will look at the mud of the Western Front as material culture and explore its many narratives. Almost every painting, photograph, poem, diary or book about the First World War involves mud. It is as much a part of the war as artillery or trenches, barbed wire or machine guns, hopelessness or heroism. Yet mud as material culture from the war does not exist for modern day observers to see, except in the literature and imagery of the time. Therefore the role of mud in the Great War is often overlooked, taken for granted and not fully understood. The terrain of the Western Front hugely affected how the war was fought as well as how life was experienced by the men in the front lines. It produced social and cultural landscapes that affected every aspect of a soldier's life. The landscapes it created were felt, tasted and smelt. Mud was lived on and in and became a living object that the soldiers grew to understand and admire as well as dread and hate. This paper will adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to explore the impact that the "Mudscape" of the Front had on the way this modern war was fought and experienced.