... from before the industrial age, it is not hard to see that the people who wrote them never had so much fun in their lives (exceptions do apply). Of course, the memoirs were mostly written by officers, who are from the upper classes, and for whom mud and blood and a glorious death were indeed most sweet and proper. This should have changed around the Boer War, but the lessons learned there didn't carry over into 1914-1918, where suddenly everybody involved seemed to realize that war was a really bad idea. Might have had something to do with the casualty rates, although in that case you'd have thunk that the US Civil War would have had a salutary affect on US war-mongering, at least. Not Europe, however, who drew no lessons from that war despite sending observers to watch it.
Casualty rates, as I say, may have something to do with it. Although people remembered 1914-1918 well enough in 1939 that the previous participants didn't send their men off gaily, if one compares, say, Eastern Front memoirs with African memoirs, you can see that in the latter participants on both sides (still mostly officers, of course) were having a ball and perpetuating the Dulce et Decorum for all their little hearts were worth. The view from Russia, however, is not so light-hearted.
Looking at the Wikipedia articles, it appears that When Johnny Comes Marching Home and Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye are different songs with the latter coming after the former. It also appears that the latter was originally seen as "humorous!" Which I suppose shows that some things never change. Not hard at all to imagine a pack of privileged good old boys nowadays making fun of someone who had his arms and legs blown off to line their Daddy's wallet. Feel free to accuse me of cynicism.
-- Mal
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