A Soldiers’ truth

The title of the dissertation is “a soldiers’ truth: a comprehensive analyses of soldiers’ lives through diary narratives. This dissertation is about soldier’s experience in the Middle Eastern theatre, during the First World War. Soldier diaries can be seen as the leading source of understanding how the common man experienced the war and the brutal conditions he encountered while serving his country. However, soldier diaries may not provide an accurate account on the war, as a soldier’s mind can be influenced through anger, fear, tiredness or illness. Forty diaries were examined and theoretical frameworks were applied in understanding how a soldier composed his thoughts into a diary. The thesis is structured into three chapters, focusing on three distinctive topics. Chapter one focused on propaganda within the British Empire and examined the methods and theoretical concepts of how the common man was swayed with a pro-war stance and enlisted in the British army. The goal here is to understand how effective propaganda was on soldiers’ and did it affect their opinion of the war from the knowledge of their diaries in later chapters. Chapter two examined the diaries of the soldiers’. The chapter begins with possible ethnic diversity in soldiers’ diaries between the British and commonwealth soldiers. The chapter moves on to the soldier experience at Gallipoli and Kut and researched the conditions they encountered, such as the threat of the enemy, ethnic diversity, lack of supplies and risk of diseases. The chapter concludes on analysing the optimistic moments from a soldier diary and the reasons why. Chapter three questioned how the British media perceived Gallipoli and Kut and if they did provide an accurate account of both campaigns. Newspapers were assessed from Britain, the Dominion states and from the enemy (Ottoman and German) in order to compare and comprehend the differences in regards to coverage between newspapers and soldier diaries. Furthermore, the chapter implemented theoretical concepts about newspapers and diaries to develop a clear understanding of how they were composed and why there was a sense of inaccuracy within them. For newspapers, theories such as censorship, propaganda were used, while theory of emotion, collective memory and the timing narrative were utilised in understanding soldier diaries. The results from the dissertation indicated that soldier diaries and newspapers differed in regards of how the war was perceived. The British public received a different outlook, whereas the soldiers’ witnessed the full extent of the brutality of the war front in the Middle Eastern theatre. However, the use of the theories suggest that an individual soldier’s emotional state can lead to a different perception of war, while other soldiers’ may have another outlook