Embellished Memoirs

[DMAC]

With the number of published Great War memoirs running into the thousands, given human nature and the publishers desire to sell copies it is not unreasonable to assume that a small proportion contain elements of writers' or publishers' embellishments about people, events and actions. Not to acknowledge this would be to maintain that each and every published account was 100% honest and accurate, a situation that would not hold true in any other field of biographical writing.

Have any forum members read a memoir and thought to themselves "that doesn't seem entirely plausible", or "surely that couldn't have really been how it was", or similar. With this question I'm not seeking to dispute particular events or to denigrate the bravery and tremendous personal sacrifice people made at the time, simply to see if there are instances where forum members feel that a touch of "literary licence" has crept into particular books.

[David Filsell]

As recently discussed - Graves was not reported as having been killed in the Times as he claimed (see thread) . Other sections of his book have been questioned and he is I believe a generally unreliable witness whose excellent ability as a writer of fiction slipped into his account for artistic (and financial?) purposes. Virtually all authors of personal accounts are inclined to embelish for effect - either for self promotional or self denigrational purposes. It's just what they do to make an account come to life. For some reason I had long had a bee in my bonnet about Graves obituary story - not least because he was not that well known as a poet - but mainly because it just did not feel right to me. I am sure that others can come up with many positively inaccurate items in biographical accounts, either suspisions or proven facts

[bushfighter]

DMAC

This is a very interesting subject because the more I research the more I realize that a lot of published "history" is dependent on what could be embellished hearsay.

Richard Meinertzhagen wrote, among many other titles, "Army Diary 1899 - 1926". For many years it was regarded as an undisputed authority on military activities in East Africa and Palestine.

Recently Brian Garfield's "The Meinertzhagen Mystery" has exposed Meinertzhagen as sometimes being a brazen liar - for example when he describes flying over the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro during the Great War, when that was a technically impossible feat because of aircraft limitations.

This is sad because Meinertzhagen was an excellent diarist. We are now left with having to sift the core of truth, which the man often vastly embellished, out of his very interesting diary notes.

Time also drastically damages memory, as I personally know. I have studied many files in the Liddle Collection at Leeds and seen much misrepresentation of fact due to the time lag between the action being described and the date at which the recollection was recorded. Once again, having noted this, the researcher has to carefully sift out the truth if he or she can.

Perhaps the winners in all this are the non-sifter writers who go for dramatic effect, quote these sources as though they were the gospel truth, and get their books published and sold!

And if we all get a good yarn to read, then who really cares?

Harry

[Mark Hone]

I have often used first hand accounts on my school battlefield tours. In some cases I have noticed significant differences between the versions of the same events given by veterans to different authors.

[DMAC]

Thanks for your reply Harry. To me this is an interesting question, and one that would not have crossed my mind not too many years ago

Today the more I read about the Great War, especially the Western Front, the more I need to reassure myself that what I am reading is authentic. What I mean is that I would rather read a somewhat dull but true account of a soldiers experiences, rather than a memoir with an amalgam of clichés and stock incidents culled from earlier published works.

The problem with this ideal is that it can be virtually impossible to separate the factual from the embellished. We are considering events that happened almost a century ago, where the authors have now all passed away. First hand discussion of specific incidents or actions is therefore no longer possible, and thus our history and understanding of complex multifaceted events must derive from the memoirs of the participants, correlated if possible to war diaries and other official sources - where these still exist.

In my view it is right that any non-fiction book that purports to tell the story of an aspect of the Great War, whether autobiography, biography, or other genre, is put to scrutiny if possible. This should not be seen in a negative context, such as an attack on the author or subject matter, but in the positive light of a search for accuracy and reliability.

I note that a few days ago, questions were raised in a thread about the accuracy and reliability of some of the passages in Somme Mud, only for the questioner to be berated for daring to raise such a thought. Great War passions obviously run high. Perish the thought that I might suffer a similar fate with what follows.

I raised this topic after having read about a half of Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel. Storm of Steel has for many years been regarded as both a classic account of the German experience on the Western Front, and as a book that glorified war. Whilst reading the book I couldn't help thinking on a number of occasions that what he is describing is akin to a James Bond type scenario on the Western Front. I acknowledge that events were frequently dangerous and harrowing, and that survival was often a matter of sheer luck rather than good judgement. It seems to me though that, like Bond, Junger always managed to defy the odds. Shells falling directly on the spot were he was standing just seconds after he had moved away. A dud shell falling directly at his feet. Soldiers just inches away being taken out by snipers. Shrapnel shells decimating his comrades alongside himself. I would need to reread the book again to set out the full list near misses described in graphic detail.

Like Edward Lynch, Ernst Junger experienced first hand a traumatic and brutalising slice of history we can only read about. We will never truly appreciate the fears, hopes, sorrows and occasional highs that they and millions of others had to face up to on a daily basis. In my view we acknowledge the great debt we owe not only to authors such as Lynch and Junger, but to all combatants, survivors and fallen, by studying the Great War in detail almost a century on, seeking the truth as best we can, even if this sometimes means questioning the unquestionable.

[Rob Connolly]

In the edition I have of "Storm of Steel", the editor points out that Junger published several different versions of his book over time, adding or omitting material from his diaries as he saw fit.

I hesitate to add Lloyd George's "Memoirs" to the thread as I've not read them, but I understand that they play somewhat fast and loose with the truth.

[Martin Bennitt]

I hesitate to add Lloyd George's "Memoirs" to the thread as I've not read them, but I understand that they play somewhat fast and loose with the truth.

As do Sir John French's, I believe, though I've not read those either

cheers Martin B