ABSTRACT
World War I was the first testimonial conflict to involve British forces in the sense that it eschewed small, professional armies and operated with 'a huge army of citizen soldiers, including numerous well-educated and well-connected men who could record what they saw'. Moreover, the ensuing abundance of testimony in poetic form has become central to our understanding of World War I, to the extent of parody: Captain Flasheart sums up the war in the British television series Blackadder as 'the mud, the blood, and the endless poetry'. Along with its testimony on behalf of supposedly inarticulate infantrymen, 'Insensibility' could be criticized for its vague addressivity. The problems of ambiguous address and vicarious testimony discussed so far should not overshadow the singularity of 'Insensibility'. Insensibility provides anti-sacred testimony for survivors who can laugh among the dying, unconcerned: this process continues in 'Apologia pro Poemate Meo', but with a much more open critique of the poet's representation of the troops.
