The Long, Long Trail

Why "Tommies life?" British soldiers were always known as Tommies after "Thomas Atkins", the archetypal soldier. It was nothing to do with the Tommy Gun, the Thompson sub machine gun of a later war. In 1914-1918, the soldiers often referred to themselves as Fred Karno's Army, after a famous pre-war music hall impresario.

What was life as a Tommy really like? Popular memory is all about mud, rats, lice, machine-guns and being shot at dawn if you disobeyed. All of these things are part of the history, but the facts of a typical Tommy's life paint a rather different and perhaps surprising picture. For example: did you know that a typical infantry soldier was only in the front line trenches for about one quarter of his total time overseas and involved in action for a few days in the whole war? Did you know that a large proportion of soldiers never went near the front lines?