Her Privates We by Frederic Manning
This book is an account of the day to day life of a group of British soldiers in the trenches of WWI, in the autumn of 1916. They have recently come back from the front, theoretically to rest and prepare for a return to the front later in the fall. They are moved from town to town, they deal with heavy rain, mud, lice, rats, occasional shortage of food, and they are sometimes frustrated by contradictory or pointless orders from their superiors. The central character is a man named Bourne. He is an attractive, well-spoken individual, probably better educated than most of the others. We do not know his first name, nor, with very few exceptions, do we know the first names of any of his associates. Moreover, we are told almost nothing about the histories of these men before the war--where they came from, what professions they may have followed, what schools they may have attended, or their family history. The result is that they seem to have come from nowhere--here they are, in a hideous situation, with no explanation of how they got there.
Not only do we not know the men's histories, we also are not told what purpose they serve by being there. That is, we are not given any rational for the various exercises they go through, nor any sense of the larger course of the war. All we know is that some of them recently fought at the Somme. There is no plot, at least, not in the sense of a story that seems to be developing and moving in a particular direction. The result, which I feel certain is intentional, is that the soldiers seem to have no past and no future; their situation seems unrelated to the rest of the world and unrelated to history. They live, we might say, in a kind of existential limbo--or hell, rather. I have never served in the army or been in a war, but I suspect that the description in Her Privates We accurately describes the conditions of war, especially WWI. It is an ugly picture, and it is easy to read this as an anti-war book, although it does not contain any overt anti-war propaganda. It is not a cheerful book, and it has few touches of humor. But it is well-written and absorbing, occasionally poetic. If you want an account of day to day life in war, you would do well to read it.
Not only do we not know the men's histories, we also are not told what purpose they serve by being there. That is, we are not given any rational for the various exercises they go through, nor any sense of the larger course of the war. All we know is that some of them recently fought at the Somme. There is no plot, at least, not in the sense of a story that seems to be developing and moving in a particular direction. The result, which I feel certain is intentional, is that the soldiers seem to have no past and no future; their situation seems unrelated to the rest of the world and unrelated to history. They live, we might say, in a kind of existential limbo--or hell, rather. I have never served in the army or been in a war, but I suspect that the description in Her Privates We accurately describes the conditions of war, especially WWI. It is an ugly picture, and it is easy to read this as an anti-war book, although it does not contain any overt anti-war propaganda. It is not a cheerful book, and it has few touches of humor. But it is well-written and absorbing, occasionally poetic. If you want an account of day to day life in war, you would do well to read it.