For me the First World War was always just remote enough to be outside living memory but not far back enough to feel like history proper: it felt too recent, too recognisable; with motor vehicles, electricity and telecommunications. With so much else in the world to learn about I’d not really considered it until I came across a box of letters in the Royal Institution archives.

Robert Charles Bragg, son of the physicist William Henry Bragg who won the Nobel Prize in November 1915, was a young soldier serving in the British Army and sent out to the Gallipoli campaign. I wrote about his ill-fated journey to the Dardanelles and his brief time on the peninsula, recorded in letters to his mother, a few months ago. Looking at history through one person’s eyes can really bring it alive, especially when they’re not writing an account for posterity or trying to form a narrative, just writing home.

The letters give an insight into the speed of change during the war years and the chaos that ensued as some commanders remained reliant on traditional military strategies, already becoming obsolete, while others took on technological inventions in an attempt to gain an advantage. In an army where the majority of soldiers were volunteers with little or no experience, Robert’s personal experiences reflect the confusion caused by the collision between new innovation and ingrained tradition.

Robert had more training than many: in the years before the war he was part of the army cadets, running ‘field day’ exercises with his schoolmates. In one letter to his mother he describes in detail a training exercise against the local Yeomanry:

“…we marched on towards the enemy & when we got near extended so that each man was about 15 paces from his neighbour. We went in a straight line over & through everything I can tell you it was no joke running over a few miles of ploughed fields all damp & sticky with the rain…. In the afternoon we tried to take the camp… this time I am sorry to say we were outflanked. After the sham fight we were entertained at the camp so to speak. We were given mineral water & cake the drink was most welcome.”

After school Robert joined a part-time territorial unit, King Edward’s Horse, and when war broke out they were called up to active service to bolster Britain’s small standing army of professional soldiers. The territorial cavalry were traditional units with little in the way of large equipment such as artillery. Robert’s letters to his parents mention a few details about his training , he focuses mostly on practical matters but never loses his boyish enthusiasm, his glee over being issued a sword is one example:

“We have been doing a good many charges lately & yesterday were given our swords. Great joy. They are the old pattern cavalry sabre. They now make them so that you point only but with these you cut as well. We fairly swank along now feeling awful [k]nuts”

When I first read this letter I was shocked that Robert was issued a sword as part of his kit: it seems archaic for someone in the twentieth century but it’s clear he looks on it as a useful tool. In fact, at the beginning of the war, despite the introduction of weapons such as the machine gun and probably more for tradition than for practical reasons, the cavalry was still considered essential by British military command. Horsemen were used for reconnaissance and communication but also as shock troops, charging enemy lines and disrupting the infantry. There were several attempts to charge the enemy lines in the early days, which ended in disaster: the German army had been much faster to adopt new weapons and the cavalrymen armed with pistols and swords, were mown down by machine gun fire.

As many families must have done, the Braggs speculated about when and where Robert might be deployed, his father wrote home from a lecture tour in America: “you know I have an idea they are going to Egypt because of the swords: I understand there is no opportunity now in France for cavalry to use swords.”.

In the event Robert didn’t stay with the regiment long enough to be deployed. He was encouraged to apply for a commission and became a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, a move which meant he was fighting a very different sort of war. Robert’s decision mirrors a general shift from a traditional direct style of confrontation towards one which relied more on the new weapons of war: the artillery and later tanks and aerial squadrons. Artillery had been used on the battlefield for centuries as support for troops but by the start of the war it had developed to be devastating at long range, with faster loading guns and standardised shells to improve accuracy.

After a few short months’ training Robert’s artillery brigade, consisting mostly of newly recruited volunteers, was sent to join the campaign at Gallipoli. They were supposed to land up the coast from the current battlefronts to surprise the enemy, a tactic which might have worked better before the development of long-range artillery. It didn’t go to plan: heavy fire led to some barges changing their landing beach at the last minute and lack of proper communication and the inexperience of the men added to the confusion. Robert’s letter to his father reveals the haphazard nature of the first few days on shore: