At the Imperial War Museum, I decided to focus on the First World War gallery.
I found the displays of the weapons particularly shocking. One display was completely filled with a variety of different weapons such as grenades and club like weapons, and information on how they are used. Because so many weapons were displayed together, it made this display really powerful and made you question the impact of these weapons. When it came to the guns, there were six bayonets stood up in a row. What I found most powerful about this display is the size of the guns. You don’t realise how big they are, until they are stood up vertically and you start to think about what i must be like to be stood at the ‘wrong’ side of the gun.
I think the museum wants us to consider why these weapons were invented, the destruction they caused and how they helped us win the war. However, I found that I started to question the ‘men behind the weapons’. How can a soldier use these weapons to harm or even kill another human being? What makes them do this? Obviously, there was a lot of pressure from the government for the soldiers to sign up and the consequences of being branded a coward and subject to punishment if they didn’t sign up. But I then think you can raise the question of, how can the government put somebody in that position and be ok with it? But I guess it shows their loyalty to our country.
At one point, one of the walkways turned into a trench replica, complete with projections of soldiers in the trench and airplane/gun shot noises. When walking through this part, it really made me stop and think about what it must have been like for these men on a day to day basis. When in this position, you can start to understand why they are able to use these weapons: it’s your own life or your opponents. The soldiers are constantly living in fear of death or injury and they don’t want to be the next lifeless body bought back to base. Protecting their own lives and the lives of fellow soldiers and the country is obviously what forces these men to use these weapons. I can imagine that the death of a fellow soldier also drives these men to use weapons as revenge.
I think these displays has made me question new things rather than taking the war ‘for what it was’ and accepting the facts given.
(First World War Galleries. Imperial War Museum, London.)
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