Popular Arts of the First World War by Barbara Jones & Bill Howell

“The men who went from these parlous to become the armies produced, for the first and last time we know of, a great outburst of military popular art. The armies of earlier wars have left little evidence of how they spent such free time as they had. Their wars were, on the whole, less static, the maintenance of their uniforms and gear took a long time, and they usually had to do their own catering, even being left to get the raw materials by fair means or foul. The best-known handicrafts from an earlier war are the lovely boxes, carvings and ship-models made in straw, bone or feathers by French prisoners in the Napoleonic wars. Otherwise soldiers did not get down to serious artwork before 1914, but after that, in the trenches, hospitals and prison camps, bored and frustrated men, taken from their trades, sat down and fiddled with used shell cases and bully-beef tins, making and decorating things to pass the time. These objects reflected the war as they wanted (as the only way they dared) to see it. It was a decorative and decorated war; little brass aeroplanes made of cartridges, with arabesques incised on their wings; tanks made of wood with flower designs inlaid in brass.”

-Jones & Howell, 1972