557987

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MWC0010.1177/1750635214557987Media, War & ConflictWilson

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Article

Media, War & Conflict

Sad shires and no mans

2014, Vol. 7(3) 291308
The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1750635214557987
of reference in the British mwc.sagepub.com

media representation of the

Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

Ross Wilson
University of Chichester, UK

Abstract
The focus of this article is the manner in which media representations in Britain of the 21st
century conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan drew upon the terms, allusions and imagery of the First
World War. The application of these visual and textual frames of reference has been used to
demonstrate the failings of government, the need for national support or the validation of anti-
war perspectives. Through the use of a critical discourse analysis, this assessment will highlight
how the war of 19141918 is used within contemporary Britain as a vehicle for political and social
commentary upon the actions of authority. Despite being fought at the outset of the last century,
the newspaper coverage of the British Armys operation in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates
how the First World War still goes on within sections of British society.

Keywords
Afghanistan, Britain, discourse, First World War, Iraq

Introduction
As the 100th anniversaries of the First World War are marked, the meaning and value of
a conflict fought at the outset of the 20th century has become an object of debate in for-
mer combatant countries. Within Britain, this discussion is taking place within the con-
text of the denouement of two other protracted wars fought at the outset of the 21st
century. The conflicts in Afghanistan from 2001 and Iraq from 2003 were highly divisive

Corresponding author:
Ross Wilson, University of Chichester, Room NH 124, College Lane, Chichester PO19 1AY, UK.
Email: rossjwilson@gmail.com

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292 Media, War & Conflict 7(3)

issues within British society and raised considerable dissent and debate within the media
(Lewis etal., 2006). Indeed, the reporting of these wars marked a new wave of scholarly
studies of how the War on Terror was framed within newspapers, online sources and
television (Hoskins and OLoughlin, 2010). However, what was noticeable in the British
newspaper coverage of both theatres of operation was that it was frequently couched in
the terms associated with the First World War. Within these accounts, contemporary
British soldiers were placed in the figurative landscape of the Western Front as they
conducted operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This association between the past and the
present can be regarded as more than just the standard employment of journalistic cli-
chs; rather, it evidences the manner in which the war is remembered in Britain as an
active engagement with the events of 19141918 (see Wilson, 2013). This stands in
contrast to recent interpretations of the popular memory of the First World War in
Britain that regards it as a product of vapid consumption of media representation.
Through a critical assessment of the discourses present within the newspaper reporting
of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the ideas and values associated with the First World
War can be examined. This can be used to reveal wider issues of how the past is brought
to bear on the present through language, allusion and imagery as a means of challenging
or supporting the operation of power and authority (Fairclough, 2001).

The First World War in memory and history

The First World War still possesses a significant, emotive power in some former combat-
ant countries, despite the passing of time and the death of the last veterans. In Australia,
Britain, Canada and New Zealand, to mention the Somme, Ypres, Gallipoli or Vimy is to
almost automatically evoke images of blasted war landscapes, atrocious trenches and
dugouts all inhabited by piteous soldiers suffering the maelstrom of industrialised war at
the behest of an indifferent or incompetent military and political elite (Fussell, 1975;
Thomson, 1994; Vance, 1998; Winter, 2006). In Britain, these sentiments have been reit-
erated within popular culture, as film, television programmes and literature have all
sought to represent the rats, gas, mud and blood image of the war (Todman, 2005). Such
perceptions have been frequently critiqued by historians over the last two decades as they
seek to revise the popular memory of the conflict (Bond, 2002). In their assessment, the
war of 19141918 was a forgotten victory, a moment when society was mobilised for
the war effort, the economy was transformed and the army was triumphant in the field
(Sheffield, 2002). To understand why within Britain the image of suffering and trauma
should hold sway over the wider public consciousness, rather than the concept of noble
sacrifice, revisionist historians have sought to assert that the popular memory of the
war is a product of media consumption (Hanna, 2009).
In this interpretation, the war poetry and memoirs of such literary figures as Siegfried
Sassoon, Wilfred Owen or Robert Graves are regarded as providing a skewed perspec-
tive on the First World War (Bond, 2002). Their foundational work, which focuses on
suffering, futility and disillusion, are considered to be a product of a psychologically-
thwarted, well-educated, middle- class background which was not representative of the
wider sentiment within the British Army (Badsey, 2001). Scholars have examined how
this disenchanted literature attracted a great deal of sympathy in the turbulent interwar

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Wilson 293

period. The accessibility and popularity of these representations saw it cement a place as
the war within British society during the 1930s, regardless of the limitations of the
authors and their work (Corrigan, 2003). Indeed, despite this restricted interpretation, the
sentiments of the war poets have come to dominate popular depictions of the war since
their publication through a variety of cultural forms. From the 1963 dramatic production
of Oh! What a Lovely War (dir. Attenborough, 1969) to the television programme
Blackadder Goes Forth (dir. Boden, 1989) and the novel Birdsong (Faulks, 1992), the
same motifs of absurdity and brutality can be distinguished (Braun, 1996; Korte, 2001).
The similarity in these representations has led to the assessment that the war is entirely
remembered within Britain through this media, thereby dislocating the history from the
memory of the conflict.
In Britain, with the preparations for the anniversaries of the outbreak, battles and the
denouement of the war, this disparity between the popular memory and academic history
of the conflict has become politicised with accusations of bias and ulterior agendas in
how the hundredth anniversaries of the conflict should be marked. The issues at stake
were highlighted by the comments in support of the revisionist perspective of the war
made by the Conservative MP Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Education, in
January 2014:

The war was, of course, an unspeakable tragedy, which robbed this nation of our bravest and
best. But even as we recall that loss and commemorate the bravery of those who fought, its
important that we dont succumb to some of the myths which have grown up about the conflict.
Our understanding of the war has been overlaid by misunderstandings, and misrepresentations
which reflect an, at best, ambiguous attitude to this country and, at worst, an unhappy
compulsion on the part of some to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage.
(Gove, 2014)

This assessment of the representation of the war as myths perpetuated by the media
was immediately countered by critics who stated in turn that such interpretations of the
conflict as an exemplum of nobility and loyalty in British society were similarly col-
oured by political connotations (Hunt, 2014). Such debates emphasise that despite
being fought at the outset of the last century, the war still evidently possesses signifi-
cance within British society. However, as the memory of the conflict becomes a bat-
tleground itself, with rival groups seeking dominance in their interpretations, the
assessment of the wars legacy within British society can be somewhat eclipsed. The
debates surrounding the revision of the conflict as a victory or as a tragedy serves to
neglect how the war actually functions within contemporary British life (after Samuel,
1994). The effect and affect of referencing and remembering the conflict evidences
how the First World War possesses a social and political utility (Wilson, 2013). Such
conceptions of place and meaning are not developed by the simplistic assessments of
memory emphasised in the revisionist debates.

Frames of reference, memory and meaning

Rather than assume society vapidly consumes media representations but actively selects
particular, favoured visions over others, a nuanced examination of the value of the First

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294 Media, War & Conflict 7(3)

World War within contemporary Britain can be conducted. If media, whether film, televi-
sion programmes, literature or newspapers are regarded not as a directive but as a means
of expression for society then the way in which war still goes on can be assessed (see
Wertsch, 2002). This can be demonstrated in how the conflict of 19141918 is evoked
not directly in the print media but as a means to understand current socio-cultural and
political issues (Williams, 2009). This usage of the conflict can be observed across mod-
ern British newspapers, where the war serves as a means to highlight concerns regarding
authority, power and responsibility. In this fashion, referring to parties as in the trenches
regarding reform, or left in no mans land by a negligent institution, using the Somme
as a byword for ill-fated or ill-planned ventures, or referencing the poetry of Sassoon and
Owen to highlight pity or irresponsibility enables a critical engagement with current
affairs (Wilson, 2013). These allusions and discussions of the First World War can be
regarded as a socially-understood frame of reference as it requires a knowing and engag-
ing readership (see Fish, 1980). This utility of the conflict as an orientating tool, not as a
clich, but a means of expressing public opinion, was most clearly demonstrated in the
reporting of the Afghanistan War (20012014) and the Iraq War (20032011) in Britain.
The deployment of British troops in operations as part of the War on Terror was a
highly contested subject within political and social life across the nation (Kampfner,
2003; Lee, 2012). In response to Britains role in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq,
these debates were conducted through a wide variety of media which were mobilised
both in support and against such actions (Hoskins and OLoughlin, 2010). However,
what marked these debates, which covered the initial announcements of war, the nature
of the wars objectives, the tactical and logistical pursuance of victory and the end of
both conflicts, was the manner in which the First World War was evoked as a means to
support, counter and critique. Such references appeared as direct visual or textual analo-
gies, comparative pieces, allusions to the wars cultural legacy or the employment of
terms associated with the events of 19141918. This war of representation was con-
ducted in the tabloids and broadsheets from 2001 to 2014 as newspapers assessed the
policies of the British Government, the operation of the British Army and the wider
Multi-National Forces (Tumber and Palmer, 2004). This usage of the First World War
appears to counter the revisionist argument that the conflicts popular perception as
mud, blood, rats and gas is derived from its media representation. In this example, the
conflict was used as both a conservative and dissenting factor in the accounts of the
development of the War on Terror. Therefore, the appearance of such references indi-
cates a far more complex use of the heritage of the First World War within British society.
Politics, power, place and identity are all mobilised with the mention of the war of 1914
1918 and these sentiments were drawn upon to create frames of reference for the con-
flicts in Iraq and Afghanistan (after Van Dijk, 1985, 1987).
These frames of reference can be regarded as the product of social and political
relations which indicate the values and ideals of society (Goffman, 1974). These rela-
tions can be identified through the application of a critical discourse analysis (CDA)
that reveals the wider meanings of the First World War (after Fairclough, 1995, 2001).
This approach recognises that the application of discourses is purposeful and pos-
sesses social and political effect. Therefore, the analysis of discourse, whether visual
or textual, forms a means of identifying values and perceptions within a group,

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Wilson 295

community or society. CDA is a significant method of analysing the discourses used

in society to understand how this means of representation structures experience
(Fairclough, 2001: 15). This approach is based upon the identification of the function
and value of communication (p. 26). Each of these particular themes highlights the
complex interaction that occurs between representation and consumption. With the
agenda defined by CDA, the discourses used within any media do not represent a
prescriptive demand upon society to view an issue in a particular manner but a means
through which society defines itself.
To clarify the approach taken with CDA, Fairclough and Wodak (1997: 271278)
highlighted a series of fundamental tenets to direct the application of the technique.
These guidelines identified CDA as a tool to address social problems by defining power
relations as discursive and constituting how society, politics and culture function. In this
respect, discourse possesses an ideological value that can both assert norms but also
resist the operation of authority. As discourse is mediated and interpreted by individuals,
communities and governments, it constitutes a form of social action. In this approach,
CDA examines discourse, whether textual or visual, as emerging within specific socio-
political contexts that define a particular historical era. This is central to the study of this
article as the employment of discourses regarding the First World War in the reporting of
contemporary conflicts can reveal how the memory of the past is employed in the present
(after Wertsch, 2002). Therefore, by examining how a community represents issues, the
language used, the imagery that is drawn or the subtext that is present, an insight into
how that community assesses the significance of an event or concern can be stated (after
Miskimmon etal., 2013). At the centre of these debates is the operation of power within
society through discourse; the ability to control and organise discourse evidences a high
degree of authority but it also ensures that discourse itself becomes a means of resistance
to that authority. Through the framing, position and identification within discourses that
reference the past, the operation of power can be evidenced and challenged (after
Fairclough, 2001: 26). Therefore, by identifying phrases, allusions, references and motifs
relating to the First World War, CDA can be employed to expose the structures of control
and resistance within society as the memory of the conflict of 19141918 is used to acti-
vate a variety of concerns.
Analysing the output from British newspapers from 2001 to 2014 that draws upon the
conflict of 19141918 to report on the War on Terror demonstrates how the media does
not shape opinion on the First World War but serves as a mirror for observing how soci-
ety uses the war to understand contemporary issues. Over 150 newspaper editorials,
columns and reports in both tabloids and broadsheets were used to compile this analysis.
This range of material is taken to ensure the widest possible social spectrum for the
study. These pieces of evidence were obtained through database searches for keywords
and phrases within the 20 most popular titles in Britain during the period 2001 to 2014
(National Readership Survey, 2014). The presence of First World War references in these
newspapers does not indicate that such framing devices were frequent occurrences;
rather it reveals the presence of this previous conflict as a common reference point within
society (Wilson, 2013). Indeed, as media coverage in Britain of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan has been found to be largely favourable towards official government posi-
tions, the assessment of how the war of 19141918 is used as a means of mobilising both

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296 Media, War & Conflict 7(3)

dissent or support across social and class divides offers a further means of analysing this
newspaper content (after Robinson etal., 2010).
Within the context of the centenaries of the conflict during 2014 to 2018, the place of
the war within contemporary British society will be placed under greater scrutiny (see
Pennell, 2012). The manner and form of the remembrance activities will be assessed for
their political neutrality or bias whilst the popular understanding of the war will be chal-
lenged and revised (see McCartney, 2014). However, the complexities of the heritage of
the war for British society lie beyond such simplistic examinations. By an assessment of
the ways in which the First World War is used to assess and frame current issues, the pub-
lic perception of the conflict can be regarded as more than a vapid consumption of film
and television. Through the media reporting of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, using the
framework provided by such phrases as in the trenches, no mans land, over the top
or representing the war within the context of Owens or Sassoons poetry, the place and
value of the events of 19141918 can be observed. Indeed, within these references, allu-
sions and comparisons, the war still goes on for contemporary British society. This is not
the result of a nostalgic, sentimental vision of the war brought about by viewings of Oh!
What a Lovely War (dir. Attenborough, 1969) or readings of Birdsong (Faulks, 1992). It is
evoked because the conflict is used as a symbolic resource, to affirm or to challenge cur-
rent issues. As such, both procedural and substantial newspaper accounts of the War on
Terror used the conflict of 19141918 to mobilise opinions throughout the course of 2001
to 2014. This demonstrates how the meaning of the First World War and other such uses
of the past are interpreted and re-imagined rather than fixed in purpose and meaning.

In the trenches, a war of attrition and home by Christmas

In 2006, the cartoonist Steve Bell, publishing in The Guardian newspaper, highlighted
the problems faced by the British government in policing and developing Afghanistan
after the international coalitions invasion of the country in 2001 (Bell, 2006: 21). With
the caption In Afghanistan its not going over the top, its reconstruction with extreme
prejudice, Bell sets the scene with the then Defence Secretary Dr John Reid standing
in the trenches in the Afghan desert, whistle ready, whilst lines of soldiers line up by a
ladder ready to move up (Figure 1). Accompanied by such strong connotations to the war
of 19141918, including the trench setting and the call to go over the top, the cartoon
offers a means of placing the current conduct of the British Government in the critical
context of the operations of the First World War. Issues of blame, responsibility and
incompetence are thereby immediately attached to the operation of government. The use
of the First World War in this fashion is significant; it demonstrates how the conflict
serves as a critical device in the reporting of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This use of allusions to the First World War, to the trenches or trench warfare oper-
ates as a means to heighten emotional and political responses in order to censure military
or civilian authorities for their policies in the War on Terror (after Van Dijk, 1985:
6970). In these accounts, newspaper reports evoked the imagery of the 19141918 war
and specifically the battlefields of the Western Front in critical pieces that decried the
tactics and the progress of operations. For example, The Scotsman reported in January
2007 on the incredulity of troops occupying trenches in Afghanistan; Almost 100 years

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Wilson 297

Figure 1. Copyright Steve Bell 2006 All Rights Reserved (see http://www.belltoons.co.uk/
reuse). Reproduced with permission.

after WWI, British troops have returned to the trenches (Cumming, 2007). Similarly,
Michael White (2010), writing in The Guardian newspaper in May 2010 evoked the
bloodier existential conflict on the Western Front to highlight the failings of the 2003
invasion of Iraq. In this mode of representation, the First World War serves as a frame to
situate an understanding of the war in Afghanistan. This use of explicit or implicit refer-
ences to the trenches, to denote the conditions faced by troops in modern-day
Afghanistan and Iraq, offers a means of critique. For example, the court case launched
by veterans of the British Army for foot injuries sustained in tours of service was specifi-
cally linked in some media outlets to the wounds sustained in trench warfare by British
First World War soldiers. Such references were used to highlight issues of negligence
and the irresponsibility of the British Government in failing to protect its troops at a time
when the level of fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan were severe:

About 150 troops, many from Commonwealth countries, are seeking compensation after
sustaining the modern equivalent of trench foot. (Ingham, 2009)
The Ministry of Defence said today it regretted any physical suffering caused by the condition
similar to the infamous First World War trench foot and would pay out where liable.
(Bentham, 2009)

The inclusion of the trenches serves as an intensifier of emotions: a means to emphasise

the absence of care towards the ordinary man in the field (after Fairclough, 2001: 7). The
association with the perceived victimhood of the soldiers of the First World War is used

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298 Media, War & Conflict 7(3)

by the popular press in the reporting of the modern conflicts as a mode of judgement (see
Van Dijk, 1992: 9091). The comparison frames the contemporary conflicts in
Afghanistan and Iraq within the context of the events of 1914 to 1918. Indeed, this asso-
ciation can be made directly in some cases, such as the following extract from The
Observer newspaper, which published extracts from letters written by a front-line British
soldier serving in Helmand Province in 2009:

We got smashed the other day, mate, and got pinned down in a compound 150 metres from the
base. We fired the Javelin to cover our withdrawal but had to wait 10 minutes for smoke again
fucking criminal. I can honestly say mate I was fucking terrified and now know what the
blokes went through waiting for the whistle in the trenches in WW1.

Similarly, the Glasgow newspaper The Herald made the same unequivocal comparison
with its reporting of the British soldiers experiences in 2003: Iraq War Diary: It was
more like a scene from the Somme Rain and mud make life a misery on the front line
with the Black Watch near Basra (Bruce, 2003).
In November 2001, at the outset of the war in Afghanistan, a report in Scotland on
Sunday featured an interview with Scotlands last veteran of the First World War,
Alfred Anderson, whose experiences were used to warn of the folly of war: But as a
nation remembers the millions of men slaughtered on the battlefields of France and
Belgium, Andersons thoughts are on the present-day conflict consuming lives on a
different continent (Young, 2001). In this manner, the First World War can be regarded
as a spectre, haunting the representation of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars (after
Derrida, 1993). However, this presence is far from an immaterial, ghostly apparition;
rather, it serves as a corrective device, calling into account the actions of authority
(after Fairclough, 1992). The usage of the expression war of attrition is particularly
significant in this regard. The phrase emerged during the First World War to describe
the tactics employed by the Allied and Central Powers as each sought a means to break
through the opposing lines of trenches. As an idiom particularly associated with the
impasse on the Western Front, it has been especially significant as a means to politicise
and to criticise the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where British troops have been
deployed in a long-standing engagement against insurgents. The expression appears to
constitute a lament in this context, as the protracted and costly nature of the contempo-
rary military operations in the two warzones became abundantly clear as the wars
progressed. Within the print media, describing military, political or civilian experi-
ences in Afghanistan or Iraq as a war of attrition thereby emphasises a perception of
the conflict as a bloody, pointless endeavour which has no end in sight (after Teo,
2000). The war is in this sense reported in the framework provided by the conflict of
19141918:

They will blunder on, not to a clean defeat but to something far worse, a war of attrition whose
poison will spread across a subcontinent. (Jenkins, 2003)
The war of attrition in Iraq continued its bloody course yesterday with at least 63 people killed,
including a busload of soldiers who died when a roadside bomb exploded in the northern city
of Beiji. (Beresford, 2006)

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Wilson 299

These allusions do not indicate the repetition of media clichs in the reporting of the
war but an active engagement with the memory of the First World War in the comprehen-
sion of the present (after Wertsch, 2002: 15). Rather than being derived from a passive
consumption of media, the use of the imagery, allusions and associations from the war of
19141918 serves to emphasise how the memory of the conflict is used within society as
a vehicle of protest and dissent. Such a mobilisation can be further evidenced with the
reporting of former Prime Minister Tony Blairs comments in 2004 that the Black Watch
Regiment, deployed to the so-called Triangle of Death near Fallujah in Iraq, would be
home by Christmas. This statement, made as part of a speech in the House of Commons
in October 2004, was immediately placed by opponents within the context of the First
World War. The haunting quality of August 1914 is observed here as the phrase home by
Christmas has become associated with the short-sightedness or incompetence of the
British military and political elite that assured volunteers that the war would be a short,
adventurous escape from civilian life (after Halifax, 2010). These connotations implied
by the phrase were heavily exploited within the popular press. Indeed, writing in the
Daily Mail, the columnist Peter Hitchens (2004) emphasised his incredulity that such a
term could be employed:

Nobody who knew any history would have used this ominous phrase, recalling as it does the
claim that the First World War would be all over by Christmas in 1914. Would to God that it
had been, but wars are not like that. We should all pray that the Black Watch are indeed home
by Christmas. But I do not see how Mr Blair can make this promise.

Similarly, The Independent newspaper drew attention to the connections between the
phrase and how it offered a cruelly ironic presage to a far more damaging and horrendous
military engagement:

In 1914 men rushed to enlist, fearful they would miss the adventure unfolding in Belgium and
France in return for a promise that the men would be home by Christmas. Four years later
the survivors returned from the front, with 8.5 million of their comrades dead. (Elliot, 2004)

However, the notion that troops would be home by Christmas, replete with its associa-
tion with August 1914, is not restricted to this one incident. The phrase is repeatedly utilised
throughout the period of military engagement by opponents, especially in reference to the
operation of British troops in Iraq, to emphasise the duplicity, ineptitude or indifference of
the British authorities. By 2006, the journalist Robert Fisk uses the inaccuracy of the phrase
to illustrate the march of folly that has led to a bloodbath in Iraq (Fisk, 2006). This critical
employment of the claim that troops would be soon home after a short engagement abroad
is further evidence of the active use of the memory of the war. The continued employment
of the term demonstrates its capacity to serve as a means of indicting the policies of the
British Government. In 2006, the Daily Telegraph reported on the war in Iraq through this
specific frame of reference: Home by Christmas? Make that 2010 at least (Harding, 2006).
Whilst in 2009, the London Evening Standard reused the phrase in an article by their
defence correspondent, Robert Fox, who examined the seemingly endless and poten-
tially fruitless pursuit of victory in Iraq, affirming the connection between the expression
and notions of ineptitude:

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300 Media, War & Conflict 7(3)

In April 2003 he pitched some 40,000 British servicemen and women into southern Iraq in the
belief that, like the Tommies going to war in August 1914, they would be home by Christmas.
The facts on the ground soon revealed that the British and Americans were in a land and facing
a people they did not understand and could not possess and had landed themselves with huge
and unexpected problems of governance and security.

Despite the varying political hues of British newspapers, the employment of First
World War frames of reference to examine the contemporary Afghanistan and Iraq Wars
was conducted in the same critical manner. This similarity in form does not entail the
homogeneous, media-led remembrance criticised by some commentators, but it high-
lights how the war of 19141918 is used by social and political groups to advance argu-
ments and to understand the present (after Schudson, 1992: 56).

No mans land in Iraq and Afghanistan, sad shires in Britain

The use of First World War frames of reference in the reporting of the First World War is
not solely conducted within a dissident political agenda. Indeed, the conflict of 1914
1918 can be observed to be mobilised throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to
support the cause of the British Government and to emphasise the endeavour of the
British Army (after Fairclough, 2001: 16). Such conservative perspectives undermine the
oft-quoted argument from revisionist historians that the popular memory of the war has
emerged from left-leaning media representations (see Bond, 2002). Indeed, in this man-
ner, the newspaper reporting of the war demonstrates that the First World War operates
as a symbolic resource that can be drawn upon to reiterate a range of viewpoints and
agendas. This is clearly illustrated with the employment of the term no mans land with
reference to the operations conducted within the War on Terror as well as wider refer-
ences to the battlefield landscapes of the First World War. The purpose of such allusions
is significant as it immediately places the current soldiers of the British Army in connec-
tion to the sympathetic figure of the Tommy in the trenches (see McCartney, 2014).
Writing in the conservative newspaper, the Daily Mail, Colonel Richard Kemp, a former
Commander serving in Afghanistan, utilised this association in November 2009 as he
reflected upon the recent death of a soldier in Helmand Province. Highlighting how the
soldier had served in the same regiment as Harry Patch, the last veteran of the First World
War, a direct association between the conflicts are made to present the heroic virtues of
the armed forces: From the muddied fields of Agincourt to the quagmire hell of the
Somme to the dry plains of Afghanistan, the British soldier has overcome his opponents
in countless campaigns (Kemp, 2009).
This mode of reporting the sacrifices and endeavours of the modern army within the
context of the First World War operates to negate the criticisms of what was a highly
contentious decision to involve British troops in operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as
part of a multinational coalition. This can also be evidenced in the reporting of the tour
of duty of Afghanistan taken by Prince Harry in 2008. Indeed, favourable reports of this
member of the British royal family focused on the similarity of the experience of the
soldier prince with his ordinary predecessors who fought in the First World War. Prince
Harry compared the two warzones directly in an interview: The whole place is just

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Wilson 301

deserted, there are no roofs on any of the compounds, there are craters all over the place,
it looks like something out of the Battle of the Somme (Hickley, 2006).
Such a means of representing the contemporary conflicts through the compassion-
ate frame of the war of 19141918 is illustrated with the use of no mans land in
newspaper reports. This term, with its origins in the 14th century, is most clearly asso-
ciated in Britain with the First World War on the Western Front in France and Flanders.
It is no mans land which appears to be so redolent of the suffering of soldiers in the
trenches and its use in recent newspaper reporting of the War on Terror serves to
emphasise a degree of solidarity with the work of British soldiers in Iraq and
Afghanistan:

Major Alex Turner, an Old Etonian who read war studies at Kings College London, has been
awarded a medal for his pioneering work that led to insurgents being forced out of a no mans
land in Helmand. (Mansey, 2011)
Scots sniper Harry Black stares through his rifle sight into no-mans land. Eight hundred metres
in front of the 24-year-old Lance Corporal is the enemy the Taliban. (Hamer, 2007)

The use of no mans land in this manner also accompanied the reports of Prince Harrys
deployment to the warzone in Afghanistan. In this representation, the prince was depicted
as occupying or surveying no mans land. The effect of such a discourse is to ensure
that the prince is depicted as an ordinary soldier; an everyman whose experiences on the
front lines evoke the sympathy of support granted to the Tommy in the trenches:

And with nerves of steel he declared: Its just no-mans-land. They poke their heads up and
thats it. Yet at the time he was just three weeks into his posting. (Hughes, 2008)
Harry was posted to the operations room at Forward Operating Base Delhi, the southernmost
Allied outpost in Helmand. Its a stones throw away from Line Arbroath, the frontline that
looks on to a 500-metre area of No-Mans land. (Daily Record, 2008)

Such reporting serves to normalise the Prince as an ordinary soldier but also to
garner support and sympathy for the conflict that the British Army has been detailed
to fight. The media accounts that fuse the landscape of the First World War with that
of Helmand or Basra offer a means to reflect on the heroism and sacrifice of the troops
but not necessarily the cause for which they serve. Therefore, accounts of soldiers in
the field that occupy the trenches or no mans land do not necessarily condemn
military authorities, but rather acknowledge the efforts undertaken by the armed
forces. For example, the following account of a soldier in Afghanistan in 2007 pub-
lished in the Daily Mirror equates the environment of the Western Front with the
endurance of modern British soldiers:

Days later, he was part of a patrol on Taliban Hill, overlooking the no-mans land between the
coalition-run area and the green zone held by the terrorists. A Taliban mortar exploded in a
cloud of black smoke just five metres from Marine Dodsworth, but he was saved by a crumbling
mud and straw wall. You cant train for that, he says. But we know we cant run scared. You
have to get on with the job. (Lyons, 2007)

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302 Media, War & Conflict 7(3)

The use of the imagery of the First World War to support the efforts made in
Afghanistan and Iraq by the British Army illustrates how the conflict of 19141918
does not occupy one single meaning or another. Rather, its use in reports concerning
the War on Terror, demonstrates a variety of functions, from dissent towards author-
ity to support and sympathy for the soldiers serving in the theatres of war (see Griffin,
2004). What is distinct about this process is that regardless of the cause for which the
First World War is mobilised, it is done so with the intent to highlight contemporary
concerns. Therefore, the imposition of the war landscape of no mans land to frame
perceptions can be compared to the use of the imaginative landscape of the war poets
of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in British newspaper reporting. Articles and
editorials examining the military action in the regions of Helmand and Basra during
the deployment of British troops from 2001 to 2014 were frequently placed within the
framework provided by the war poets of 19141918 (Van Dijk, 1996: 1012). The use
of this reference provided an opportunity to draw upon the tragic, piteous image of the
war to highlight issues of neglect and irresponsibility by the authorities but also the
callous, futile waste of war. For example, during periods of intense operations and a
corresponding rise in fatalities amongst coalition troops and civilians in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the works of Owen (Anthem for Doomed Youth or Dulce Et Decorum
Est) or Sassoon (Suicide in the Trenches or The General) could be evoked as a damn-
ing indictment of the war:

Every conflict produces its anthem for doomed youth, but this is an elective crusade, fought not
in extremis but because of political desires. They call it a humanitarian war. There is no such
thing. (Riddell, 2003)
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est That old lie being that it is sweet and proper to die for
ones country. Though the First World War poets may never be bettered Their message needs
to be applied to Iraq and Afghanistan, lest we become too enamoured with such hazardous
pursuits. (James, 2011)

Whilst the reporting of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq utilised the themes addressed
by Owen and Sassoon, the war poets were also drawn upon as a means to criticise con-
temporary politicians for their policies, thereby forming a direct correlation with the
presumed incompetence of the political and military elite of the First World War and the
present day. For example, the journalist John Pilger, writing in the New Statesman,
remarked upon former Prime Minister Tony Blairs appearance at the Cenotaph during
Remembrance Day in 2003:

Having shown his studied respect to the Queen, whose prerogative allowed him to commit his
crime in Iraq, Blair hurried away. Sneak home and pray youll never know, wrote Siegfried
Sassoon in 1917, The hell where youth and laughter go. (Pilger, 2003)

Such a critical perspective was particularly noticeable with the reports of the arrival
back to Britain of the bodies of the dead, those who were killed in the service of their
country in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a practice emerged of parading the military funeral
cortge through the Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett, the phrase sad shires from

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Wilson 303

Owens Anthem for Doomed Youth, was regularly employed to illustrate the scale of
death and the futility of war:

Watching this weeks vaunted big push in Afghanistan has been infuriating beyond belief, not
least because of the latest procession of soldiers coffins, driven in the rain through sad shires,
valuable and irreplaceable lives honourably lost in a rotten cause. (Hitchens, 2010)
How apt that seems now as young soldiers return from Afghanistan in coffins and bugles call
for them from sad shires. Sacrifice on nowhere near the same scale of course, but sacrifice all
the same. (Austen, 2008)
Wilfred Owens poem of the Great War, Anthem for Doomed Youth, is deeply embedded in
the culture. Among its most haunting line is the one that evokes the home front bugles calling
for them from sad shires. Wootton Bassett takes that on for this century: it is a sad shire of the
national imagination. (Leith, 2011)

Rather than merely illustrating the habitual use of clichs and standard illustrative
devices within contemporary war reporting, the application of references to the First
World War in the coverage of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is a significant phe-
nomenon. The use of this interpretative framework demonstrates the manner in which
the remembrance of the conflict of 19141918 is more than the result of a passive accept-
ance of film, literature and television. Indeed, the newspaper reporting of the War on
Terror through allusions to the First World War highlights its significance within British
society as a vehicle for popular opinion. In this manner, the war fought at the outset of
the 20th century still goes on as it provides a means of highlighting fears, concerns and
debates in the present day. As such, the First World War can be used to understand the
conflicts that were fought at the outset of the 21st century.

Conclusions
The application of CDA to the media representation of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars
demonstrates the potential of studying the relationship between war, media and culture
through a wider chronological setting (Stewart and Carruthers, 1996). The manner in
which articles and editorials from British newspapers that engaged with the political,
social and military ramifications of the War on Terror utilised the cultural legacy of
the First World War was highly evident. This use of references offers a means of engag-
ing with how contemporary conflicts are represented within the spectre of previous
military engagements. Scholars have highlighted how the ramifications and aftermath
of wars shape future political agendas (Badsey, 2000). However, this area can be
greatly enhanced through studies which seek to catalogue and comprehend the particu-
lar tropes and discourses employed in the media reporting of conflicts (Maltby and
Keeble, 2007). Within these descriptions and assessments of war, a subtle interplay of
language, politics and power is played out that illustrates wider social values and
norms. Within the media reporting of contemporary conflicts, the echoes of past wars
and engagements demonstrate more than truisms but a commentary on public and
political life (after Hallin, 1989).

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304 Media, War & Conflict 7(3)

In the context of the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in August 2014 as
well as the subsequent anniversaries of events, battles and declarations of peace through to
2018, the media representation of the conflict will be crucial in understanding public
remembrance. However, rather than assuming that it is television programmes such as
Blackadder Goes Forth (dir. Boden, 1989) or films such as Oh! What a Lovely War (dir.
Attenborough, 1969), that are responsible for public perceptions, it is in the use of the con-
flict as a discursive element that British societys attitudes towards the war can be assessed.
The reference, allusion and comparison points taken from the conflict provide a frame of
reference that is used to analyse situations from a variety of perspectives, from the dissident
to the supportive. The war in this sense has no inherent meaning; it gathers its significance
through the manner in which it is applied to contemporary conflicts. This demonstrates
how the legacy of the First World War constitutes an active cultural response within Britain.
Despite the passing of a century, the conflict can still be evoked with considerable effect.
This prominence of the conflict, as illustrated by its use within the wider media regarding
the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ensures that the war will not pass from public
discourse. Indeed, society will continue to return to the trenches and no mans land as it
seeks to imbue symbolism and significance upon contemporary concerns. Examining this
specific mobilisation of the past to serve the interests of the present can demonstrate how
through language, imagery and allusion, historical events can be utilised by individuals and
communities to comment on current affairs (Brownlie, 2012, 2013). In this manner, the
way in which the past is brought to public recognition and remembrance through these
discursive frames of reference can be used to bring governments, institutions and wider
society to accountability (Fairclough, 2001).

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

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Author biography
Ross Wilson is Senior Lecturer in Modern History and Public Heritage at the University of
Chichester. He has written on the experience, representation and memory of the First World War
in Britain and the United States. His wider research focuses on issues of museum, media and herit-
age representations in the modern era. This work has been published in the books, Representing
Enslavement and Abolition in Museums (Routledge, 2011), Landscapes of the Western Front
(Routledge, 2012), Cultural Heritage of the Great War in Britain (Ashgate, 2013) and New York
and the First World War (Ashgate, 2014).

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