The second volume in Siegfried Sassoon’s beloved trilogy, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston , with a new introduction by celebrated historian Paul Fussell

By the way, the Goodreads’ description of this novel is highly misleading. It is a war memoir, not some dry bit of ranting, and even by the end it is the politicians rather than the generals who are being criticised. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2012-04-17 14:32:34 Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA129605 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City London DonorSiegfried Sassoon is one of the mainstays of World War I literature. He wrote poems (see "Glory of Women"—one of my favorites) and he wrote a trilogy of fictional memoirs. Now, why would anyone want to write a fictional memoir? A thinly veiled fictional memoir, at that. About one man's journey through one of the most visceral and haunting wars of the 20th century.

Siegfried Sassoon is best remembered for his angry and compassionate poems about World War I, which brought him public and critical acclaim. Avoiding the sentimentality and jingoism of many war poets, Sassoon wrote of the horror and brutality of trench warfare and contemptuously satirized generals, politicians, and churchmen for their incompetence and blind support of the war. He was also well known as a novelist and political commentator. In 1957 he was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. He doesn’t want to be rescued from his situation, as he is in it by choice. But his friend Cromlech materializes with important news. It turns out Cromlech has spoken with relevant officials and helped to arrange that his case be treated as a medical one. A “big bug” at the War Office has gotten involved, and they will refuse to court-martial him. For Sherston this is a let-down of sorts, but on the other hand, he has made his statement, and he won’t have to go to prison. Waves of relief wash over him.

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Exploring to the right I found young Fernby, whose demeanour was a contrast to the apathetic trio in the sand-bagged strong-point. Fernby had only been out from England for a few weeks but he appeared quite at home in his new surroundings. His face showed that he was exulting in the fact that he didn't feel afraid. He told me that no one knew what had happened on our right; the Royal Irish were believed to have failed. In 1936, while reviewing the third of the trilogy, Sherston’s Progress, writer Howard Spring described the three books as ‘the most satisfying piece of autobiography to be published in our time. All the equipment of a novelist is Sassoon’s. But what novel could equal in fascination this true story?’ [4] As I stepped over one of the Germans an impulse made me lift him up from the miserable ditch. Propped against the bank, his blond face was undisfigured, except by the mud which I wiped from his eyes and mouth with my coat sleeve. He'd evidently been killed while digging, for his tunic was knotted loosely about his shoulders. He didn't look to be more than 18. Hoisting him a little higher, I thought what a gentle face he had, and remembered that this was the first time I'd ever touched one of our enemies with my hands. Perhaps I had some dim sense of the futility which had put an end to this good-looking youth. Anyway I hadn't expected the battle of the Somme to be quite like this.” The M.P. will wait to bring up the matter in Parliament until Sherston has submitted a copy of his statement to his colonel, which he will do only when he is required to report for duty. In the meantime Sherston goes through the motions of military procedure, applying for an instructorship with cadet officers as his chosen duty when his leave will expire. In reality, he believes he will go to prison. It is painful for him to chat with fellow officers while the time bomb of his declaration is set to explode. He has to spend two weeks with his Aunt Evelyn without revealing his seething thoughts. At a train station bookstall he searches for something that will give him consolation and grabs a copy of The Morals of Rousseau, a thinker with whom he has no familiarity. But rather than consolation, he finds only that a nonsense couplet by Cowper goes incessantly through his mind: “I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau/ If birds confabulate or no.”“I mention this couplet because, for the next ten days or so, I couldn’t get it out of my head.” (234)

Such sights must be taken for granted…” reflects Sherston, but the disturbance they cause deeper in his psyche can ultimately not be ignored.

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That book’s sequel was also well received. The New Statesmancritic called Memoirs of an Infantry Officer“a document of intense and sensitive humanity.” In a review for the Times Literary Supplement,after Sassoon’s death, one critic wrote: “His one real masterpiece, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer… is consistently fresh. His self scrutiny is candid, critical, and humourous. … If Sassoon had written as well as this consistently, he would have been a figure of real stature. As it is, English literature has one great work from him almost by accident.” The Old Century and Seven More Years (autobiography), Faber, 1938, Viking, 1939, reprinted with introduction by Michael Thorpe, Faber, 1968. At the end of Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, we left George Sherston in the trenches, and for the bulk of this book that is where he remains. He is losing friends and acquaintances at a rapid clip. As Siegfried Sassoon sifts through his memories, while preparing to write this trilogy of the “fictionalized” version of his war experiences, I can’t even imagine the number of ghosts he must have stirred up. Faces blurred by time, and memories muddled by just the infinite number of men who passed through the scope of his war experiences. He remembers the nonchalance portrayed by many of these young men that never quite reaches their eyes as they try to maintain a stiff upper lip in the face of complete unthinkable carnage.

As a result the twenty-first-century reader, despite being moved by the sentiment, may be bewildered by the context of Sassoon’s tale. Brian Finney, The Inner I. British Literary Autobiography of the Twentieth Century (London, 1985), p. 172. It speaks volumes that Sassoon ends the chapter there with no further comment and he clearly did go on to ask the “silly questions”. Though Raine gives some pertinent examples, he apparently takes Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man to be a volume of straight autobiography, completely disregarding its finer points. Also, one cannot help feeling that his critical judgment has been impaired by his dislike of the world of the fox-hunter, and his sympathy for the infantry officer’s stand against the war. Classic WW I memoir thinly disguised as fiction in which 'George Sherston' is the pseudonym for Sassoon. It begins several months into Sherston's tour of duty in France and covers his combat experiences and changing attitude towards the war.This is still one of the more effective accounts of life in the trenches and ,even eighty-three years after it's initial publication, an effective and visceral read. Highly recommended for those interested in the so-called "Great War" and the experiences of those who fought in it. One of the best in my opinion.

In 1957 Sassoon became a convert to Catholicism, though for some time before his conversion, his spiritual concerns had been the predominant subject of his writing. These later religious poems are usually considered markedly inferior to those written between 1917 and 1920. Yet Sequences(published shortly before his conversion) has been praised by some critics. Derek Stanford, in Books and Bookmen,claimed that “the poems in Sequencesconstitute some of the most impressive religious poetry of this century.” Sherston is still in the Army and decorated so his superiors proceed cautiously. Sherston's intransigence begins to greatly anger the Colonel however. Eventually Sherston's friend David convinces him not to publish the manifesto The Memoirs of George Sherston (contains Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and Sherston's Progress), Doubleday, Doran, 1937 (published in England as The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, Faber, 1937 ).