‘When the Time comes,I Will go Like Every Brave Soldier’: The Military Identity of Belgian Recruits in the First World War

Abstract

This article explores how Belgian recruits in the First World War approached and articulated their military identity. Within the army, recruits assume a special place: during an armed conflict, they are part of the army without having actually fought on the battlefield in question. They develop a military self without experience of combat and without ever having seen or heard for themselves the war they are training for. Through some elements of critical discourse analysis, their letters and memoirs are analysed as a textual performance of the self, tracing ideas and images used by recruits to construct their military self.