On August 4, 1914 what D.H. Lawrence later described as “The Nightmare” began. Being part of the “aristocracy of the arts” did not protect the five Modernists from the life-changing and often devastating events of the First World War. This does not mean that they all lived through it in the same ways. In fact, like the population of Britain in general, their experiences of, and reactions to, the war varied greatly. The most tragic case was that of T.E. Hulme. Immediately after the declaration of war Hulme enlisted. He fought at the front from late 1914 to September 1917, with an interval of a few months in 1915 when he was recovering from wounds. Hulme was killed on September 28, 1917. According to an obituary in The Cambridge Magazine, “the shell which is supposed to have blown him to pieces burst unobserved, and its explosion left no trace of his remains.”

Ford's war also was dominated by active military service, but with less devastating results. He enlisted in the army in July 1915, fought at the Somme in the summer of 1916 and was hospitalized for illnesses caused by shell-shock and gas.