“This is war, isn’t it?” Fear and mortality from El Wak to El Alamein, 1940–1942

Abstract

During the Second World War, soldiers experienced fear and became aware of their mortality as a result of those factors that were unfamiliar to  them. Where memoirs or other narratives are available, it is possible to interpret soldiers’ expressions of fear and mortality and to determine the ways in  which they began to deal with these emotions in different war situations, whether in battle, in confronting disease or in handling difficult  environmental conditions. In this instance, the East African campaign and the campaign in North Africa form the background to the investigation into  soldiers’ experience of fear and mortality as expressed in their writings.