Wyndham Lewis in the Royal Artillery Garrison, 1916-1917: Part 1, Home Service

This article re-examines the twenty-one months that Wyndham Lewis, the modernist artist and writer, spent with the British army’s heavy artillery during the First World War. Using fresh contextual sources, including a previously unknown diary kept by one of his colleagues, it reconstructs his time in the gunners to an unprecedented depth. In so doing, it brings a military historical perspective to our understanding of Lewis’s home and active service. The findings change our understanding of him as a soldier and adjust significantly the image projected in his reminiscences. This is part one of two, with focus on enlistment and training.