Arnold Bennett’s Literary Journey into World War I Transport

Arnold Bennett made a valuable contribution to understanding what the W.W. I was like for people who lived at the time. In The Pretty Lady and The Roll-Call (1918), and Lord Raingo (1926), he evokes this period as it was experienced in London. But he also witnessed the conditions of British and French troops fighting the Germans, recording his impressions in a remarkable but rarely discussed example of wartime travel literature—Over There: War Scenes on the Western Front (1915). Bennett is a keen observer of the large-scale use of technologically advanced weaponry and the development of a range of vehicles designed for war. This article focuses on his observations on transport in W.W. I. While great changes in the movement of troops and supplies were occurring at and behind the battlefront, old methods of military transport continued to play an important role in the war.