‘Supernatural stories and superstitions circulated freely among troops on all sides of the conflict. Some also kept amulets to which they attributed magical powers of personal preservation.

‘Supernatural stories and superstitions circulated freely among troops on all sides of the conflict. Some also kept amulets to which they attributed magical powers of personal preservation. Faith in the existence of an afterlife, along with a belief that future events could be foretold from signs, provided soldiers with a means of coping with the always-present threat of death (Winter, 1995, pp. 65–7). Blunden uses these tropes in Undertones of War to represent soldiers’ psychological responses to the uncanny aspects of the First World War battlefield.’