Entertainment in Wartime

The men were two weeks on the front line and two weeks back behind the lines. One popular pastime for the men was, of course, gambling! Card games included, brag, pontoon and a game called nap[4]. The most popular of these games was one called Crown and Anchor. Other pastimes were boxing matches and ‘Housey Housey’, or what today we call Bingo.

Trench Art also helped keep the men amused. This was anything which the servicemen made in their down time; from sketches and paintings to sculptures and models. These were made out of any materials they could get their hands on, including ammunition shell cases, bullet casings, shrapnel and pieces of destroyed buildings or downed planes. The materials would have been readily available to the soldiers, prisoners of war and to civilians in the area.[5]

There were of course many soldiers who were talented artists as well as letter writers. One of these men was Barney Griew, who illustrated many of his letters and postcards he sent home. Sadly Barney's final letter was written on 30th June 1916, the day before he was killed on the first day of the Somme. What a talented artist he was.

Then then were diaries. One prolific diarist was Florence Oppenheimer (later Greenberg). In 1915 she served on one of the Ambulance ships at Gallipoli and later was posted to Egypt. Throughout she kept her diary detailing both the enormity of what she saw and how the nurses and the men entertained themselves.

Film was a fairly new genre. One film titled 'Lt Pimple and the Stolen Submarine' made in 1914 follows the exploits of Lieutenant Rose and Lieutenant Daring on a stolen submarine, and includes an undersea fist-fight, a wooden battleship, and a novel alternative to sending a message in a bottle.

There were anti-German cartoons as well as a dramatised account of WWI nurse Edith Cavell's imprisonment and execution at the hands of the Germans was produced shortly after her death. Recruiting films, films of soldiers preparing rations, having showers, recruitment films, even a film of blinded soldiers playing ‘pushing the ball’. All, of course silent.

Entertainment was then as now used as therapy for the injured.

The entertainment industry thrived during the war. Initially there were concerns about people indulging in amusements while there was a war on, but it was soon agreed that seeing a show or going dancing had a morale-boosting effect. Wartime tastes in theatre were for the fun and light-hearted, though revues were often interlaced with songs or sketches that stirred patriotic feelings and encouraged young men in the audience to enlist.

One such impresario was Walter de Frece, later Sir Walter MP. He was a member of a family of theatre managers who owned and ran Hippodrome theatres. He married Vesta Tilley, a popular Musical Hall artiste, at Brixton Register Office in 1890.

Vesta chose to sing cheerful songs, not only with the aim of being patriotic but also to raise the morale of her audience. ‘The Army of To-day’s all right’ was especially successful in encouraging new recruits to join the war effort, and even the War Office used the title for a poster asking for volunteers.

In one week alone, while performing in Hackney, she managed to enlist a whole battalion. The impact of Vesta’s work during World War I gained her the nickname of ‘Britain’s greatest recruiting sergeant’. She gave £500 in War Bonds to the mayors of Liverpool, Edinburgh, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham amongst other cities, to support charitable endeavours.

Entertainment in the field was usually at depots and rest camps in the rear. The staple diet of all concerts was the songs, especially those in which the troops had the opportunity to join in the chorus, songs like 'Take Me Back to Dear Old Blighty', which tells a story of three fictional soldiers on the Western Front suffering from homesickness and their longing to return to 'Blighty' which provided the right sort of relief. These concerts would be performed by a male and female singer, a tenor and a soprano, a comedian, at least two instrumentalists with a violin and piano that had to be carried with them, a ventriloquist or magician, and also some serious actors to perform sketches and short plays.

Entertainers like Jack Terresfield, known as Jack Terris, played the violin and with his partner Martin Romaine who played the piano, toured the country playing not only in theatres but also spending time entertaining injured troops in hospitals. Sadly Martin Romaine was called up and was killed on 9 April 1917.

In many areas the First World War changed the way we live. In the areas of medicine, where life saving treatment was taken out to the front line, technological warfare: with camouflage (devised by Solomon J. Solomon), tanks etc., but in the area of entertainment I think we can see that change had already started and what didn’t change evolved.

Researched and written by Lola Fraser. 

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/aug/19/education.politics

[2] https://www.postalmuseum.org/discover/collections/ww1/

[3] https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/war_letters_communication_between_front_and_home_front

[4] https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/voices-of-the-first-world-war-wartime-leisure-and-entertainment

[5] https://www.armymuseum.co.nz/whats-on/world-war-one-centenary/personal-treasures-wwi-trench-art/