A new book, Making Sense of the Great War, by Alex Mayhew, explores how soldiers coped with its horrors.
He believes that while WWI soldiers had no choice but to live in a state of constant crisis, they didn’t endure the horrors by focusing on them.
Amidst the bleakest of circumstances, they saw their fight as a defence of something invaluable: family, friends, community, nation, and way of life.
Mayhew’s work, based in diaries, isn’t just about past wars. He points out that humans are masters of adaptation. This strength can help survive tough times, but it also highlights why larger, systemic changes (like combating climate change) are so difficult.
Mayhew A. Making Sense of the Great War: Crisis, Englishness, and Morale on the Western Front. Cambridge University Press; 2024.
The above is my TL/DR version. For a longer summary see https://www.lse.ac.uk/research/research-for-the-world/society/the-great-war-crisis