ADVENTURES WITH THE BLUNDERBUSS: A WINDOW ON TRINITY IN W O R L D WA R I By Lucy Wark
On a pallid, grey January afternoon, I found myself in the Wren Library, poring over copies of a strange and wonderful publication called The Blunderbuss. The early dark came unnoticed, as I exclaimed and giggled my way through four years of poems, cartoons, reports, photographs and advertisements. Even the name was perfect –military in a jolly, obscure way. The magazine was first published in 1915 by the 5th Officer Cadet Battalion, who were quartered at Trinity (and later at St John’s) for training during the First World War. It began as little more than a lighthearted diversion. The Master’s foreword to the inaugural edition emphasises the magazine’s role in fostering “the spirit of brotherhood” between officers and their men. Perusing the magazine, one cannot help but feel the editors’ motives were slightly more subversive than this sober introduction would imply. Take, for example, the description of the magazine’s crest: “Out of a casque crowned with a chapeau cadeté, a hand grubby, clasping a glass of ale college, proper and very nice too”. Or How to Clean a Rifle, a decidedly unbrotherly tutorial in tricking new cadets into doing your chores. Other comic themes surface regularly. A training exercise called alternately ”the physical jerk” or ”bags of spring!” is mocked ruthlessly, and complaints about the inconveniences
1 2 T H E F O U N TA I N S P R I N G 2 0 1 4
of college life abound, as The Tragedy of the Bath attests. Jokes about the intellectualizing tendency of Cambridge are common too – as in The Rake’s Progress. Contemporary students may feel a sympathy with Examination Hints: “Remember the old adage ’forewarned is fore-armed’ – many a man has been ploughed, though he knew his answers perfectly… afterwards”. Predictably, sporting competitions play a central role in The Blunderbuss, though these range from the expected – cricket and rugger – to the bizarre (see pictures below). A surprising aspect of the magazine is the Snapshots series, collections of photographs from Egypt, Trinidad, the ”Gold Coast Colony” and even Gallipoli, all of which passed the Army censors. Women, when they are mentioned
at all, appear in a narrow set of guises. A Cadet’s Map profiles Cambridge’s public houses; “poor beer”, “good beer”, “good whiskey”, “good beer and pretty barmaids”, and “Business House: with nice girls”. In The Theorist, a young couple take a punting journey. The cadet is horrified to hear that in his absence his love has joined the women’s movement: “He gasped at the enormity of it. She was quoting from some awful pamphlet which he would be compelled to read”. He responds that the war has in fact consolidated the supremacy of men, and when this fails, seems to push her into the river. However, as the fighting wears on, The Blunderbuss reflects the changing realities of the cadets’ lives. Later editions grow more complex and varied in tone, with sombre elements that