SOURCE: “Neither Worthy Nor Capable: The War Memoirs of Graves, Blunden, and Sassoon,” in Modernism Reconsidered, edited by Robert Kiely, Harvard University Press, 1983, pp. 101- 21.

[In the following excerpt, Hildebidle discusses the lasting trauma and guilt experienced by World War I veterans. According to Hildebidle, Sassoon's memoirs, as well as those by Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden, reflect his effort to come to terms with the horrors of war and his own survival.]

Those of the modernist generations who experienced at first hand the apocalypse of the Western Front faced unusual difficulty in achieving that “impersonality” variously prescribed by Eliot and by Stephen Dedalus. By those who had lived through 1914-1918 at some greater distance from Ypres and the Somme, the war could be used as the substance or material of great, if harsh, art—the no-man's-landscape of The Waste Land, for instance, or the history that Virginia Woolf borrows for Septimus Smith. One can trace in the war poets an attempt to find or to make a form and language that could control the immediate and shocking experience of the trenches, an effort all too often cut short by death. The survivors of the war did not necessarily prosper as a result of their apparent good fortune; for it fell to them to devise a way to recall the war both fairly and usefully. To many it seemed, as Erich Maria Remarque insisted in his dedication of All Quiet on the Western Front, that even those who had survived physically were nevertheless destroyed by the war.

In an essay written to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Armistice, Robert Graves poses what must have been, for those who found themselves still alive after 1918, the supreme question: “Death lurked around every traverse, killing our best friends with monotonous spite. We had been spared, but why? Certainly not because of our virtues.” The question is both unanswerable and inescapable. Beneath the question of physical survival there lies another problem, as is made clear by Edmund Blunden's poem “The Welcome,” which describes the first moments in the Line of a man just back from leave. No sooner does he sit down in the headquarters pillbox than it is struck by a shell which reduces six men to “a black muck heap.” The newcomer, the sole survivor, finds himself “alive and sane”; and the poem, which has up to that point been couched in the plain language of reportage, suddenly rises into near-Scripture: “it shall be spoken / While any of those who were there have tongues.” It is not just life, but sanity as well, that is miraculous.

The problem of psychological survival has been extensively studied with reference to survivors of concentration camps and of the Hiroshima bombing, but not, I think, with reference to the veterans of World War I. One need not necessarily equate the experiences of Auschwitz and Ypres to see parallels. R. J. Lifton, writing of the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima, mentions, as what he calls “an indirect manifestation of guilt,” the hibakusha's “stress upon the ‘accidents of survival’” ; and it is exactly this element of accident which recurs not only in the Blunden poem, but throughout the memoirs of the First World War.

What I propose to do is to look at three memoirs—those of Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, and Siegfried Sassoon—and to consider some of the mechanisms of psychological survival which they describe. As artists, these writers faced the problem of lending at least the appearance of coherence to a situation that was, by all accounts, utterly inchoate. They all write, in apparent contradiction to the norm of modernism, about themselves; but only in a curiously abstract way. We will be true to the intention of each work if we see it less as confession or “personality” than as an attempt to generalize from the muddle of the war a description of the peculiar kinds of “heroism” that were effective in the trenches. While description could not provide explanation, it was, at least, a way of at once accepting and deflecting the shame of having lived when so many had died; and such description might allow each writer to rise far enough above the emotions of the war to endeavor to make of those emotions the stuff of art.

I emphasize the psychological rather than the physical aspect of survival, since all three writers agree that the latter was purely a matter of luck. In each book the protagonist, early on, sees graphic representation of exactly how widespread and arbitrary death at the Front is. Blunden, for example, fills the first chapter of his book with reminders that the war is inescapable: “… the knowledge that the war had released them [he is referring to the convalescent soldiers he had been in charge of] only for a few moments, that the war would reclaim them, that the war was a jealous war and a long lasting.” And that people in its grip are essentially powerless and doomed: “I never saw them [a troop headed from Etaples to the Front] again; they were hurried once more, fast as corks on a mill-stream, without complaint into the bond service of destruction.” He provides a chilling instance of the omnipresence of death—and of the fact, as he says, that “experience was nothing but a casual protection.” The grenade instructor, having just announced, “I've been down here since 1914, and never had an accident,” promptly manages to blow up himself and his students.

One could multiply examples almost indefinitely—the cricket game in Goodbye to All That which must be abandoned because of a literal and deadly rain of bullets is an especially striking instance. In contrast to these intrusions of death stand the “lucky” moments when a character who by any kind of logic or reason should be killed, survives. So, for instance, Blunden, about to leave the Front for good, through “ill-luck and stupidity” flashes a signaling lamp at the German lines and, by a “lucky jump,” escapes the ensuing hail of machine-gun bullets.

The irony—the word seems unavoidable—which is at the heart of all three books is the persistence, to borrow a phrase from Terence Des Pres, of life in death: human beings manage to play cricket, write poetry, form and maintain friendships, joke, enjoy jam from Selfridges, in the midst of a world that seems absolutely devoted to death. As Blunden puts it, “There was a grace that war never overcast,” even though war, like some great beast, was characterized by a “long talon reaching for its victim at its pleasure.”

It is of course the pressure of this irony that, psychologically, was one of the greatest obstacles to keeping one's sanity. Graves's admission in Goodbye to All That that it took ten years for his blood to recover points to the immensity of the task, and the limited success these memoirists had. The war, like more recent holocausts, was not something to be gotten over. …

SASSOON: THE ACCIDENTAL HERO

Siegfried Sassoon's three-volume “memoir” of George Sherston seems to me to be not only the longest but the richest and most complex of the three memoirs, in part at least because it combines the irony and “caricature” of Goodbye to All That with elements of pastoral and protective ignorance such as we find in Undertones of War.

The texture of the book is apparently so straightforward that it is easy to ignore how carefully arranged it is. For example, Sassoon uses the early pages of the first volume to establish some fundamental paradigms, especially a pattern of what we might call “accidental heroism.” Part 2 of the Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man （“The Flower Show Match”） is a convenient case in point. The atmosphere of remembrance and rural simplicity is characteristic, as is the gently deflating humor, much of it directed at Sherston himself. What is not so apparent at first reading is the way the narrative shape of the incident parallels many of Sherston's later experiences.

The incident is quite simple: George is involved in the match unexpectedly and by someone else. His initial reaction is disbelief, although he manages a brave front for his Aunt Evelyn; but he seriously doubts his own ability. The match involves Sherston rather little. George spends much of the day watching, not the match but the flower show; and the underlying question of whether he will bat and if so, how well he will do, is present only as a kind of counterpoint. In the end, he does bat; and, almost accidentally, he wins the match: “There was the enormous auctioneer with the ball in his hand. And there I, calmly resolved to look lively and defeat his destructive aim. The ball hit my bat and trickled slowly up the pitch. ‘Come on!’ I shouted, and Peter came gallantly on. Crump was so taken by surprise that we were safe home before he'd picked up the ball. And that was the end of the Flower Show Match” （Fox-Hunting）.

The pattern of unwitting involvement, self-doubt, waiting, and abrupt and ironically “heroic” （to everyone but Sherston） activity is repeated almost exactly later in the race for the Colonel's Cup （Fox-Hunting, part 6）. And it fits rather well many of his experiences in the war, most especially Sherston's part in the Battle of the Somme （Infantry）. Indeed, it could stand as a kind of outline of the war itself, which was full of orders from above, anxiety and doubt （especially when apparently superior men are killed）, long periods of waiting, and sudden and often apparently pointless （to the participants） activity which is quickly （on the Home Front） converted to great deeds and heroic victory.

Even when the entire pattern does not recur, elements of it do. Consider how many figures nearly take over Sherston's life, as Tom Dixon the groom does in the early chapters: Denis Milden later in Sherston's hunting career, Cromlech/Robert Graves and Tyrel/Bertrand Russell during the antiwar crisis, and finally the psychologist Rivers. The power of each of these men over Sherston is based on Sherston's sense of inadequacy and his fear of shame. Sherston, like Graves, feels himself much involved in masquerade; and, even more than Graves, he is morally uncertain about that masquerade. The morning of the flower show match, his great worry is that his pads will not be appropriately white; that is, that he will not look the part （Fox-Hunting）. And of course at the crucial point, quoted above, he wants to “look lively.” Later Sherston again and again will feel himself to be a fraud or imposter. His skills as an actor reach a high point of sorts when, having been seriously wounded, he receives visitors in hospital and carefully tailors his behavior to suit the taste of each （Infantry）. Running all through his gesture against the war is a persistent note of play-acting; as if Sherston （and Sassoon） can never quite be sure of his own motivation.

Part of that doubt is Sherston's sense of his own lack of knowledge. Waiting to confront the authorities with his statement on the war, Sherston goes home to Butley “resolved to read for dear life—circumstances having made it imperative that I should accumulate as much solid information as I could. But sedulous study only served to open up the limitless prairies of my ignorance” （Infantry）. Sherston reads, it would appear from this, only under the pressure of circumstance; earlier, he spends most of his time perusing the hunting news and Surtees novels. Sherston feels his ignorance, but not necessarily as a bad thing or an accident. In the present circumstance it chafes a bit, to be sure; but earlier he has made it clear that his parochialism is a matter of choice. For example, he consciously and intentionally ignores lawyer Pennett's advice to go back to Cambridge, even though he admits that “everything [Pennett's] letter said was so true” （Fox-Hunting）.

Sherston, then, seems able to combine the play-acting which is so important to Graves with something like the protective ignorance of Blunden; but with a crucial element of self-consciousness added to the latter, an element which Blunden （the character） totally lacks. As a result, Sherston's moments of heroism, however real they may be, seem to him to be based on fraud and stupidity. This is one reason he can so easily accept the Medical Board as a way out of his antiwar dilemma; he has throughout the affair been rather doubtful about the whole business. He seems （by his description） to have stumbled into the decision almost by accident of circumstance. A wound, a convalescence, a period in the country, an impulsive letter and lunch with an antiwar editor—all add to the possibility of the ultimate decision, but none seems to have been more than accident or impulse. Finally Sherston makes his decision: “I was conscious of the stream of life going on its way, happy and untroubled, while I had just blurted out something which alienated me from its acceptance of a fine day in the third June of the Great War … I saw myself ‘attired with sudden brightness, like a man inspired,’ and while Markington continued his counsels of prudence my resolve strengthened toward its ultimate obstinacy” （Infantry）. The language is of great importance: “blurted” and “obstinacy” combined with the self-important literary tag line allow Sassoon to deflate what might otherwise have appeared to the reader to be a moment of heroism; and Sassoon implies that this deflation is not the act of the older man thinking back, but an essential part of Sherston's mind at the time. Linguistically, it is the same as the way in which, at the climax of the flower show match, he deprives young George of any real credit for his game-winning blow by arranging the syntax so that the ball hits the bat, and not vice versa.

But the language here fits another side of Sherston's character as well. Aside from his moments of rather detached “accidental heroism,” Sherston is from time to time seized by fits of irrational or （as Sassoon calls them） “suicidal” activity. Here the motive force is not suggestion but news of a death which strikes Sherston with unusual force—the death of Dick Tiltwood, or of Lance Corporal Kendle during the Somme, or, as a kind of variation on a theme, his own wound: “I began to feel rabidly heroical again, but in a slightly different style, since I was now a wounded hero, with my arm in a superfluous sling … I felt that I must make one more onslaught before I turned my back on the War … My over-strained nerves had wrought me up to such a pitch of excitement that I was ready for any suicidal exploit” （Infantry）. Again the language is the key—“rabidly” and “suicidal” are the important words. This is, in a sense, what Sherston has in place of the apparent calculation and logic of Graves; but Sherston at least knows precisely how mad it is, while Graves, explicitly at least, would deny any madness whatever.

In the third volume of the memoir all these characteristics come into play to get Sherston through his last tour in the trenches. His sense of masquerade and fraud underlies his mood as he returns to the Battalion: “In what, for the sake of exposition, I will call my soul （Grand Soul Theatre; performances nightly;） protagonistic performances were keeping the drama alive” （Progress）. But now the masquerade is not something to feel guilty about, despite the irony of the description; it is a vital part of continuing to live, psychologically: “For my soul had rebelled against the War, and not even Rivers could cure it of that. To feel in some sort of way heroic—that was the only means I could devise for ‘carrying on’” （Progress）.

The previous two volumes make it clear what an immense task it was for Sherston “to feel in some sort of way heroic.” He must now intensify his mental limitations into a kind of willed stupidity （he calls it being “as brainless as I could”; Progress）, and he must learn to play-act without discomfort, to allow “myself to become what they expected me to be” （Progress）. His sense of irony—which depends on a kind of detachment—must become something greater; he must, as he puts it, get completely outside what is going on, not physically （he has in fact immersed himself intentionally in the war） but psychologically: “Since last year I seem to be getting outside of things a bit better” （Progress）.

But this detachment founders. Sherston feels a loyalty to the men which at times verges on the Messianic, but which at least provides a purpose for his life and for his presence in the trenches. And his old impulsiveness crops up again: “I was lapsing into my rather feckless 1916 self” （Progress）. In the end what allows him to survive, really, is luck—the good fortune that makes the shell landing right next to him a dud—and, in the real crisis, his humor. Lying wounded he thinks, “I had been young and exuberant, and now I was just a dying animal, on the verge of oblivion. And then a queer thing happened. My sense of humour stirred in me, and—emerging from that limbo of desolate defeat—I thought, ‘I suppose I ought to say something special—last words of a dying soldier’” （Progress）.

“Emerging from that limbo of desolate defeat”—expanded a bit beyond its immediate context, the phrase can stand rather well as a motto for the survivors. How to emerge is the problem; and more, how to emerge sane. To Sassoon, it is only possible by means of a complex of devices, such as he recreates in the mind of Sherston.

FORMULATIONS AND MEMOIRS

These three men did survive, physically and （at least to some degree） psychologically; but all of them find it difficult to decide precisely how this came to be. Each writer sees the limitations of the psychological devices he proposes; which points to the greater problem. Granted that they survived at the time; could they survive the remembering?

To put it another way, each of these men had to face the problem of guilt, the sense that their survival was undeserved—the feeling that is the common inheritance of all survivors of twentieth-century holocausts. R. J. Lifton emphasizes the crucial importance of “formulation,” the “process by which the [survivor] re-creates himself” as a means of dealing with this guilt:

Formulation includes efforts to re-establish three essential elements of psychic function: the sense of connection, or organic relationship to the people as well as non-human elements in one's life space, whether immediate or distant and imagined; the sense of symbolic integrity, of the cohesion and significance of one's life … and the sense of movement, of development and change, in the continuous struggle between fixed identity and individuation.

These war memoirs represent, I think, a polished and literary form of “formulation,” a way of making psychological order out of the experience of the First World War.

But as a literary form, the memoir adds a difficult dimension to this process of formulation. Formulation as Lifton defines it is personal and need have no necessary correspondence to reality. It need not, in other words, be factually correct, because （if for no other reason） few people except its creator will ever hear of it. A memoir, on the other hand, pretends to be a kind of history, however impressionistic; and these memoirists were all aware of their audience. That audience would inevitably test the memoir against its own war experience; these men wrote, quite consciously, to their fellow survivors, and even to those who did not survive. The memoirists could find some protection in an acknowledgment of the distortions of memory, as Blunden does: “I know that memory has her little ways, and by now she has concealed precisely that look, that word, that coincidence of nature without and nature within which I long to remember.” And they could indulge, to a degree, in an artistic rearrangement to heighten the consistency of their experience. So Blunden says nothing about his own wounds or gassing, maintaining the picture of the oddly protected “Bunny”; Sassoon, to draw more fully perhaps on the tradition of the dimwitted country gentleman, says nothing of the literary career that was well under way while Sherston was still single-mindedly fox-hunting; and Graves, as Fussell shows, changes the chronology of his own near-fatal wounding for dramatic effect.

But neither the “little ways” of memory nor the usually allowable distortions of fiction would justify straying too far from the nature of the war experience, as these three men had known it and as their fellow-soldiers, like the mysterious Stetson in The Waste Land, had also known it. But then, of course, they were brought face to face again with the commonly agreed upon fact that the war was, in almost all important ways, indescribable, even unimaginable. Both segments of their audience—those who had been in the war and those who had not—were potential critics, the one because what was said did not match their own knowledge, the other because the description seemed unreal. The idea that the experience cannot be communicated—“you had to have been there”—is precisely the note that one finds in the accounts of survivors of other holocausts. Here, for example, is Blunden: “I know that the experience to be sketched is very local, limited, incoherent; that it is almost useless, in the sense that no one will read it who is not already aware of all the intimations and discoveries in it, and many more, by reason of having gone the same Journey. No one? Some, I am sure; but not many. Neither will they understand—that will not be all my fault” （italics Blunden's）. And here is Elie Wiesel, talking about a recent television recreation of the later and always capitalized Holocaust: “The witness feels here duty bound to declare: What you have seen on the screen is not what happened there. You may think you know now how the victims lived and died, but you do not. Auschwitz cannot be explained nor can it be visualized … The dead are in possession of a secret that we, the living, are neither worthy of nor capable of recovering.”

But alongside that sense of the impossibility of the task goes what Terence Des Pres calls “the will to bear witness.” Blunden states it as a matter of necessity: “I must go over the ground again.” His poem “II Peter ii, 22” amplifies that statement; it is the sense that knowledge of the war is somehow fading away, that people will not remember, that drives him to write.

Although the war in the trenches seems to an outsider neither as catastrophic nor as unimaginable as the death-camps or Hiroshima, in one way at least the psychological problem may have been worse for these memoirists than for later survivors. Instead of being mere victims, these men were volunteers and agents. They enlisted freely and they were officers; and therefore they were inescapably responsible for what happened to themselves and to those around them. Graves, in a typically pseudo-scientific way—Sassoon says “he was always fond of a formula” （Infantry）—explains the peculiar difficulties of the officer:

After a year or fifteen months [in the trenches] he was often worse than useless. Dr. W. H. R. Rivers told me later that the action of one of the ductless glands—I think the thyroid—caused this slow general decline in military usefulness, by failing at a certain point to pump its stimulating chemical into the blood. Without its continued assistance the man went about his tasks in an apathetic and doped condition, cheated into further endurance … Officers had a less laborious but a more nervous time than the men.

Of course, as Sassoon realized, even for an officer there was nothing much to be done about the war; and for him, at least, his own agency, his ability to make things a little easier for his men, was a vital part of his ability to carry on. But the burden of that responsibility and guilt was something that Blunden and Sassoon at least seem never quite to have overcome （Graves may have been a bit tougher and therefore more able to go on）. In any case the difficulty of psychologically surviving the war and the scars it left on its survivors may be a partial explanation of the fact that the greatest art of that generation was made either by those not involved in the war at all, or by those involved only rather peripherally. The participants could neither escape nor completely accomplish the difficult task of personal, psychological self-preservation.

It is important to remind ourselves that modernist detachment is more than an aesthetic rebellion against the “personality” of Romanticism; it is as well a response to what modernists felt was an increasingly unlivable present: paralyzed Dublin, Mauberly's culturally vapid London, Eliot's yellow fogs and gas works, the monstrous forces of Conversion personified by Woolf's sinister Dr. Bradshaw, Chatterley's sterility—the list is nearly endless. Graves, Blunden, and Sassoon, as memoirists, are modernist in their effort to work out this response under conditions of unusual pain. As works of art their books are unlikely to challenge Ulysses or Mrs. Dalloway, but they stand, at the very least, at the head of that tragically rich vein of twentieth-century writing which has its roots both in modernism and in atrocity: the literature of survival.