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Old 26-03-22, 10:27 PM
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Jelly Terror Jelly Terror is offline
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Default ‘Memoirs of an Infantry Officer’

Just finished Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘Memoirs of an Infantry Officer’… beautifully written (as might be expected from the pen of a poet).

I didn’t know too much about Sassoon prior to reading this book, and although it is a novel and therefore technically fiction, it is, in fact, the fictionalised account of his life and experiences with the so-called Flintshire Fusiliers, in the trenches and (briefly) thereafter.

Anxious to stay within the forum’s prescribed guidelines for this book recommendation forum in keeping it brief, but feel compelled to add a few memorable passages:

‘And now, once again, we could hear along the horizon that blundering doom that bludgeoned armies into material for military histories. ‘That way to the Sausage Machine!’ some old soldier exclaimed as we passed a signpost marked Arras, 32k.’

‘The raw material to be trained was growing steadily worse. Most of those who came in now had joined the Army unwillingly, and there was no reason why they should find military service tolerable. The War had become mechanical and inhuman. What in earlier days had been drafts of volunteers were now droves of victims.’

‘At the Caxton Hall in Westminster I spent a few minutes gazing funereally round an empty waiting-room. Above the fireplace (there was no fire) hung a neatly-framed notice for the benefit of all whom it might concern. It stated the scale of prices for artificial limbs, with instructions as to how officers could obtain them free of cost.’

‘10:05. I can see the Manchesters down in New Trench getting ready to go over. Figures filing down the trench. Two of them have gone out to look at our wire gaps! Have just eaten my last orange… I am staring at a sunlit picture of Hell, and still the breeze shakes the yellow weeds, and the poppies glow under Crawley Ridge where some shells fell a few minutes ago. Manchesters are sending forward some scouts. A bayonet glitters.’

‘It was going to be a bad look-out for two such bewildered companies, huddled up in the Quadrangle, which had been over-garrisoned by our own comparatively small contingent. Visualising that forlorn crowd of khaki figures under the twilight of the trees, I can believe that I saw then, for the first time, how blindly war destroys its victims.’

Happy reading.

JT

Last edited by Jelly Terror; 27-03-22 at 02:01 AM.
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Old 27-03-22, 09:16 AM
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JT,

Thanks.

Chris
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