At 11am on August 3, 1914, the solemn Prime Minister and his sombre Foreign Secretary waited in the Cabinet Room for confirmation that Germany had rejected the British ultimatum and that the world war had begun. Then “Winston Churchill dashed into the room...you could see that he was really happy.”

As was so often the case, Churchill reflected, if not the national mood, at least the emotions of the more exuberant and less contemplative section of the population. Julian Grenfell - Eton, Balliol and the Royal Dragoons - was typical of the young men who shared Churchill's enthusiasm. Six weeks after war was declared, he wrote home: “I adore war ...It is all the best fun. I have never felt so well, or enjoyed anything so much.” He died of wounds in May 1915.

The spirit of gay abandon did not survive the Somme. R.H. Tawney (another Balliol man who served as a sergeant in the Manchester Regiment) described the reality of battle during the terrible summer of 1916. “On the parados lay a wounded man of another battalion, shot, to judge by the blood on his tunic, through the loins or stomach...But our orders not to be held up attending to the wounded were strict...It was time to make our next objective.” But what most horrified Tawney was the emergence of the “palaeolithic savage within him.” He hated shooting. But he hated missing even more.

Perhaps neither of those extremes of emotion was typical of the feelings at the front. But, to judge from this admirably comprehensive anthology of First World War writing - the letters home and the diaries reflect the complete spectrum of possible human reaction to the reality of battle. They include deep resentment at the “ghastly bungling over the Dardanelles campaign”, plain horror at the “filth and slime and bones and decomposing bits of flesh”, and the calm acceptance that allows a soldier to write a letter home that begins: “If you read this, I will have gone under.”

There is very little jingoism or synthetic patriotism in the letters and diaries of unknown soldiers. Only the poets wrote: “Now God be thanked Who matched us with His hour” or, indeed, spoke of King and country. Despite the bitter brilliance of Anthem for Doomed Youth, and the exquisite irony of The General, it is what was written for family and friends - rather than for publication - that is most moving.

Perhaps the trench songs, in their sardonic gaiety, help to complete the picture of humble heroism - even though those that come from Oh, What A Lovely War are of dubious provenance. But the real strength of For King and Country is what it teaches us about the indomitable human spirit. Because of that, even the repeated accounts of shattered corpses and all-engulfing mud are uplifting as well as an indictment of the men who betrayed the Army.

MacArthur has produced an anthology that it is impossible to read without comparing the folly of the politicians and the generals with the quiet heroism of the men they sent to die.

For king and country: voices from the First World War, edited by Brian MacArthur
Little Brown, £20

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