"I adore war, it's like a big picnic."
This is a quote from Julian Grenfell, a Captain in the Royal Dragoons.
He wrote it in a letter to his family in October 1914.
He died of shrapnel wounds in hospital in Boulogne on May 26, 1915.
This quote shocked me. Even if one believes a war is necessary (perhaps the lesser of two evils in some situations), I find it difficult to understand how someone could think so highly of it. This quote makes war sound simple and fun: like a game. I cannot see how this can be true of an event in which the objective is to kill fellow human beings.
To me, war is incredibly serious, so to be so light-hearted about it seems absurd.
Grenfell goes on to say: "I have never been so well or so happy . . . Here we are in the burning centre of it all, and I would not be anywhere else for a million pounds and the Queen of Sheba."
Admittedly there are perhaps some aspects of war that people like, such as the soldiers making new friends and feeling proud to be serving their country, but once again I struggle to comprehend how someone can be so upbeat about it, especially when they have experienced it first hand. Having said that, I don't know what experiences Grenfell had in the war before writing that. I suppose it is possible that he was very lucky and genuinely did have a good time.
However, one also has to consider the fact that soldiers writing home would not want to tell of the horrors of the war as they would want their loved ones to believe that they are alright so as not to worry or upset them. It was important to keep the morale in Britain high. For this reason, the writer could be lying, making this source unreliable.
There is also the fact that the letter was written in October 1914, and the First
World War was only declared in late July, 1914, with Britain joining in August, meaning that Grenfell cannot have been involved in it for very long before he wrote the letter, and conditions then may not have been as bad as they were at other times during the war, so the quote may be accurate and believable.
