‘There was a young girl of the Somme,/ Who sat on a number five bomb’: The Representation of Violence in First World War Trench Newspaper Nonsense Rhymes

Abstract

The nonsense rhymes that were almost ubiquitous in First World War trench newspapers (periodicals produced by servicemen while on active service) present vivid, humorous, and arresting representations of violence. This article draws attention to servicemen’s widespread use of limericks and parodic nursery rhymes to depict soldiers being, variously, shot, shelled, and bayoneted, and establishes the hitherto unrecognised representational significance of these poems. Those portrayals of the First World War most frequently celebrated for their truthfulness and emotiveness tend to be both solemn and, in different ways, ‘new’. In contrast, written in the traditions of nineteenth-century nonsense literature and reflecting the popularity of nonsense in contemporary comic periodicals, nonsensical trench newspaper poems indicate the durability of nonsense as a form of Great War representation.