Philosophiae Doctores
Books of this series are listed in the back.
2
Harro Grabolle
Verdun and the Somme
AKADÉMIAI KIADÓ, BUDAPEST
3
© Harro Grabolle, 2004
Published by Akadémiai Kiadó
P.O. Box 245, H-1519 Budapest, Hungary
www.akkrt.hu
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means or transmitted or
translated into machine language without the written permission of the publisher.
4
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................
7
Introduction ..............................................................................................................
9
I. Verdun ...................................................................................................................
1. The military situation .......................................................................................
2. Fritz von Unruh Opfergang 1919 ....................................................................
3. Verdun as a Topic in German Literature from 1919–1945 .............................
4. Werner Beumelburg Die Gruppe Bosemüller 1930 ........................................
5. Josef Magnus Wehner Sieben vor Verdun 1930 ..............................................
6. Arnold Zweig Erziehung vor Verdun 1935 .....................................................
7. Excursus: The Crown Prince ...........................................................................
8. Literary Echo of Verdun after 1945 .................................................................
18
18
27
52
55
67
77
104
108
II. The Somme ..........................................................................................................
1. The Military Operations ..................................................................................
2. Alec John Dawson Somme Battle Stories 1916 ..............................................
3. Alan Patrick Herbert The Secret Battle 1919 ..................................................
4. Arthur Donald Gristwood The Somme 1927 ...................................................
5. Frederic Manning Her Privates We 1930 ........................................................
6. David Jones In Parenthesis 1937 ....................................................................
7. Aftermath .........................................................................................................
110
110
121
124
134
141
153
177
Conclusion ................................................................................................................
182
Appendix I (Biographical sketches) .........................................................................
Fritz von Unruh ....................................................................................................
Josef Magnus Wehner ..........................................................................................
Werner Beumelburg .............................................................................................
Arnold Zweig .......................................................................................................
Alan Patrick Herbert ............................................................................................
Arthur Donald Gristwood ....................................................................................
Frederic Manning .................................................................................................
David Jones ..........................................................................................................
193
195
198
199
200
202
205
206
208
Appendix II (cartoons / maps / pictures / poems) ....................................................
211
Appendix III (List of Verdun / Somme titles) ..........................................................
219
Bibliography .............................................................................................................
227
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6
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Hilda D. Spear (University of Dundee) who introduced me to First
World War literature. Margaret Shepherd (University of Maryland) was an enthusiastic
and expert guide to the battlefields of Verdun. I am extremely grateful to Aladár Sarbu
(Eötvös Loránd University Budapest) who was willing to supervise a dissertation on a
topic so far removed from his sphere of research interest. I particularly appreciated his
constructive criticism, encouragement and patience.
My thanks also go to Bernhild vom Bruck (Kiepenheuer & Witsch Cologne), Andrew
Mackinlay (House of Commons London), Nicholas R. Mays (News International plc
London), Walter Roller (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Frankfurt), the staff at University
Library Heidelberg who dealt so efficiently with my numerous requests.
Finally, I wish to thank my family for moral support, my son Patrick and Gerhard
Treiber for expert assistance with layout/pictures. The main debt of gratitude, however, is
due to Isobel, my closest “ally” for many years and my staunch supporter in this undertaking. To her the dissertation is dedicated.
May our two countries never again go to war.
7
8
INTRODUCTION
At first glance WWI fiction seems far removed from the canon of Modernism, but closer
scrutiny of works by relevant authors shows that their writing has been influenced, sometimes quite profoundly, by the events of the Great War.
T. S. Eliot stated that his life (and that of Ezra Pound) was altered by that war,1 and it
is obvious that Prufrock and Other Observations (1917), with its dedication to Jean
Verdenal mort aux Dardanelles, and The Waste Land of 1922 were results of that experience. Ezra Pound devoted one of his cantos (Canto XVI) to his friend T. E. Hulme, one of
the brilliant intellects behind Modernism, killed in France in 1917. In Virginia Woolf’s
major novels the War and its consequences are almost omnipresent: Jacob’s Room (1922)
evolves the life and death (in the War) of Jacob Flanders, To the Lighthouse (1927) records
in the second section “Time Passes” the death of Mrs. Ramsay and of her son Andrew,
killed in the War, “and dwells with a desolate lyricism on the abandoning of the family
home, and its gradual post-war re-awakening” (M. Drabble). In Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
the presence of the War is strongest: Clarissa Dalloway’s day is contrasted with that of the
shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith who is haunted by visions of the trenches and at the
end of the day commits suicide by hurling himself from a window. That Woolf insisted on
the mutual dependence of Clarissa and Septimus is documented by her entry in her workbook: “Mrs D. seeing the truth. SS seeing the insane truth.”
The War figures prominently in the writing of D. H. Lawrence, mostly in short stories,
but the strongest manifestation takes place in his novel Kangaroo (1923) (Chapter 12
“The Nightmare”), a bitter indictment against England in war time based on the writer’s
and his German wife’s own very negative experience.2 The Prussian Officer deals with
the sick sadism of a Prussian officer who drives his orderly towards a bloody reckoning,
The Ladybird (symbol of power) portrays the compelling inner power possessed by a
war-wounded German aristocrat convalescing in the company of a conventional English
officer and his attractive wife. Wintry Peacock is the tale of a British soldier who has left
a Belgian girl with a baby and does not want to own up to it, The Captain’s Doll is a story
of infidelity and indecision in occupied post-war Germany, the protagonists being a Scottish officer and a German countess.
David Jones: In Parenthesis (London: 1978), Introduction, p. viii.
Cf. Paul Delany: D. H. Lawrence’s Nightmare: The Writer and His Circle in the Years of the Great War
(New York: 1978).
1
2
9
Popularity of the topic
Although the Second World War still is the main target of martial nostalgia, there has
been an increasing preoccupation with its predecessor, the Great War, in Britain even
more so than in Germany. In the words of a recent British reviewer:
As we approach the millennium, the pall cast across our century by the First World War
shows no sign of lifting. In spite of later and bloodier conflicts, in spite of the gradual dilution
of public ceremonies of remembrance, in spite of the fact that almost everyone who fought in
the war has now died, the Great War for Civilization (as it was dubbed in a more innocent age)
continues to haunt the collective imagination.3
This development has been noticeable since the 1960s, Joan Littlewood’s play (1963)
Oh What A Lovely War (“that quintessential ‘message for the Sixties’ that wars could
always happen as long as power was in the hands of upper class twits”)4 being among the
first important contributions to the subject.5 It was turned into a successful film by the
British director Richard Attenborough in 1969. The 50th anniversary of the outbreak of
hostilities was commemorated by the BBC with a twenty-six part series, The Great War,
in 1964, to be followed later by another series, 1914–1918. The Armistice Jubilee 1968
was marked by an anthology edited by George Panichas,6 there were successful exhibitions of WWI material arranged by the Imperial War Museum in London and throughout
Britain, and the invitation of The Sunday Times to its readers to submit personal stories,
records and diaries of the Great War for publication found an overwhelming response. In
1975, the auction of letters by Sir John French, commander of British forces in Flanders
from 1914 to 1915, to his mistress received much publicity, and the Christmas “hit” in a
major London toy shop the same year was “Verdun–A Game of Attrition”. In 1981, the
Australian director Peter Weir made his war contribution with Gallipoli, a film which
juxtaposed “Antipodean idealism with Pom idiocy” (Ferguson). Paperback reprints of
WWI classics, publications of documentary material such as posters, letters, scrap books,
personal accounts flooded the market.7 In 1988 an Armistice Festival commemorated the
end of the war with an anthology of “The Lost Voices”. 8
A number of fine modern novels have covered the topic, from Susan Hill’s in 1971 to
Pat Barkers’s Regeneration Trilogy, the third volume of which was awarded the prestigious Booker Prize in 1995.9 In 1993 Anne Powell published her literary pilgrimage to
the British soldier-poets killed in France and Flanders,10 and one year later saw a new
Peter Parker, TLS 8 September 1995, p. 4.
Niall Ferguson: The Pity of War (London: 1999), Introduction, p. xxxii.
5
It may be of interest in this context that A. J. P. Taylor’s The First World War: An Illustrated History
(Harmondsworth: 1966), was dedicated to J. Littlewood.
6
G. Panichas (ed.): Promise of Greatness: The War of 1914–1918 (London: 1968).
7
E.g. Darracott/Loftus (eds.): First World War Poster (London: 1972), M. Moynihan (ed.): A Place
Called Armageddon: Letters from the Great War (Newton Abbot: 1988).
8
Timm Cross (ed.): The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets &
Playwrights (London: 1988).
9
Susan Hill: Strange Meeting (1971), Jennifer Johnston: How Many Miles To Babylon (1974), Timothy
Findlay: The Wars (1977), J. L. Carr: A Month in the Country (1980), later made into a film, William Boyd:
An Ice-Cream War (1988), Sebastian Faulks: Birdsong (1993), Pat Barker: Regeneration Trilogy (1995) =
Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993), The Ghost Road (1995). There is also a film.
10
A. Powell: A Deep Cry: A Literary Pilgrimage to the Battlefields and Cemeteries of First World War
British Soldier-Poets killed in Northern France and Flanders (Aberporth: 1993).
3
4
10
Atlas of the First World War by the distinguished British historian Martin Gilbert, together with his new volume on the history of the war.11 The anniversary of the Somme
campaign was commemorated (among others) by Anne Powell with a collection of prose
and poetry by men involved in the battles.12 There were more films, among them 1914 –
Far from the War (1985) which showed how the war affected a small Yorkshire village, A
Month in the Country (1987) about the gradual recovery of two young men from war
trauma in post-war England, and on a more lighthearted note, the latest instalment of the
“Blackadder” comedy series: Blackadder Goes Forth (1995) featuring the antics and
escapades of Captain Edmund Blackadder at the Western Front in 1917. 1995 also saw
centenary celebrations for two British writers now dead, both authors of war books: Henry
Williamson, best remembered for his nature books, and the poet Robert Graves. There
was extensive media coverage highlighting their war experience plus a number of new
biographies to celebrate the date. In August 1996 the poet Geoffrey Dearmer died at the
age of 103; probably the oldest British WWI representative of his craft. In the same year
Britain and France commemorated the events connected with the names of the Somme
and Verdun eighty years ago, the latter with German contributions.
The German scene also showed renewed interest in the Great War, although not quite
as pronounced as the British. In 1976, Buchreport, the official publication of booksellers
in West Germany, announced reprints of lesser known WWI literature, a sure sign of the
publishers’ belief in the potential of the topic. There were paperback editions of the war
classics as well as documentary material relating to the war at home, theology in war time,
and the role of universities in the context of the War.13 In the 1980s, a number of war
diaries by famous artists and authors, written in the trenches of the western front, were
(re-)issued in paperback editions; they included the expressionist painters Max Beckmann
and Franz Marc, the writers Paul Zech and Hermann Löns (whose diary had only recently
been rediscovered in an American archive). In 1989 perhaps one of the last original texts
dating from the Great War was published, Dominik Rickert’s account written immediately after 1918, but because of its main theme, desertion, for a long time too unpopular to
find a publisher.14 In March 1995, Ernst Jünger, controversial author of well-known war
books, celebrated his 100th birthday – a rare feat that, for a short time, made him the only
major German literary survivor of the Great War (he died in 1998), and his role in both
wars was once again discussed in the media.
According to Michael Moynihan the reasons for this re-awakening of interest in Britain were
...a growing nostalgia for the days when Britain was still Great, a bastion of freedom against
the tide of aggression, a backward look from an age when we are all at the mercy of a mere
finger on the button, to the last great wars to be fought “conventionally” by opposing armies,
navies and air forces, a personal identification with times when life seemed heightened by
danger and conflict, a reassuring reminder that today’s violence is minimal compared with
then.15
11
Martin Gilbert: The Routledge Atlas of the First World War: The Complete History (London: 1994),
First World War (London: 1994).
12
Anne Powell (ed.): The Fierce Light: The Battle of the Somme July–November 1916 (Aberporth: 1996).
13
E. Johann (ed.): Innenansicht eines Krieges (Munich: 1968), Karl Hammer: Deutsche Kriegstheologie
(1971), K. Böhme (ed.): Aufrufe und Reden deutscher Professoren im Ersten Weltkrieg (1975).
14
Dominik Rickert: Beste Gelegenheit zum Sterben: meine Erlebnisse im Kriege 1914–1918, edited by
Angelika Tramitz/Bernd Ulrich (Munich: 1989).
15
M. Moynihan: People at War: 1914–1918 (Newton Abbot: 1988), p. 9.
11
This is partly true for Germany as well. Although she was regarded as the sole aggressor, her part in the First World War can now be examined without the self-conscious
feeling of guilt, which for a long time prevented an objective reappraisal of her role.
The research situation
Both in Britain and Germany there was immediate reaction to the publication of war
literature (many of the critics having themselves been on active service) which triggered
off lively discussions, a favourite topic being the “reality” of war books,16 and the first
critical surveys followed soon after publication had reached its peak between 1928 and
1930, the best known in Britain (and the USA) those by Falls, Löhrke, and Bostock.17 In
Germany, Cysarz’ study (1931) carries most weight among the earlier works, but tends to
be too philosophical,18 Jirgal’s survey of the same year deals with European war literature
published after 1928, but as a result of its scope does not treat British or German books in
depth. His bibliography, however, is helpful, as the reader gains insight into the wide
range of the subject.19 Eugen von Frauenholz’ slim volume has a strong nationalist bias,
so has Günther Lutz’ study dating from 1938.20 Most “critical” German texts on the topic
of war literature (be it British or German) between 1933 and 1945 tend to be too uncritically
nationalist to be of real use for research; two prime examples are Hermann Pongs’ lengthy
essay (1934) and Helmut Hoffmann’s doctoral dissertation (1937).21 They demonstrate,
however, to what extent literary criticism is capable of being perverted in a totalitarian
regime. A positive exception in this respect is Margarete Günther’s in the main fair and
reliable study of British war fiction and drama (1936), originally a Ph.D. dissertation
completed in 1933.22
The “highly compromised over-activity in the thirties” (Klein) lead to a long silence in
West Germany after WWII, the field being abandoned to sociology and political history.
The publications by Geissler and Sontheimer may serve as examples of this trend.23 Josef
Wulf’s study on the relationship between literature and politics in NS-Germany also belongs here.24
16
Cf. Douglas Jerrold: The Lie about the War (London: 1930), Sophus K. Winter: The Realistic War
Novel (1930), B. Liddell Hart: The Real War: 1914–1918 (1930), H. Williamson: “Reality in War Literature”, The Linhay on the Downs (London: 1934), pp. 224–262.
17
Cyril Falls: War Books: A Critical Guide (London: 1930), Eugene Löhrke (ed.): Armageddon: The
World War in Literature (1930), J. K. Bostock: Some Well-Known German War Novels 1914–1930 (1931).
18
Herbert Cysarz: Zur Geistesgeschichte des Weltkriegs: Die dichterischen Wandlungen des deutschen
Kriegsbilds 1910–1930 (Halle: 1931).
19
Ernst Jirgal: Die Wiederkehr des Weltkrieges in der Literatur (Wien: 1931).
20
Eugen von Frauenholz: Führer in die Weltkriegsliteratur (Berlin: 1932), G. Lutz: “Europas Kriegserlebnis:
Ein Überblick über das außerdeutsche Schrifttum”, Dichtung und Volkstum 39 (1938), pp. 133–168.
21
Hermann Pongs: “Krieg als Volksschicksal im deutschen Schrifttum”, Dichtung und Volkstum 35
(1934), pp. 40–86, 182–219, Helmut Hoffmann: Mensch und Volk im Kriegserlebnis: Dargestellt an typischen
deutschen Dichtungen aus der Zeit des Weltkrieges (Berlin: 1937).
22
Margarete Günther: Der Englische Kriegsroman und Das Englische Kriegsdrama 1919 bis 1930 (Berlin: 1936).
23
Rolf Geissler: Dekadenz und Heroismus: Zeitroman und völkisch-nationalsozialistische Literaturkritik
(Stuttgart: 1964), Kurt Sontheimer: Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik: Die politischen
Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933 (1964).
24
Josef Wulf: Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich: Eine Dokumentation (Gütersloh: 1963).
12
For two decades preoccupation with the First World War was mainly the domain of
East Germany and other socialist countries.25 Among the many German emigrants in the
thirties there had been a number of war book authors of whom quite a few settled in the
east after the war (e.g. Arnold Zweig, Ludwig Renn, Leonhard Frank). During the Cold
War period these writers were almost completely ignored in the west, and in the east their
war books were invariably given socialist interpretations. In West Germany publications
on individual authors started to appear in the 1960s, some of them in Reich-Ranicki’s
collection of critical essays,26 there were reprints, of Hoffmann’s NS dissertation (in
Liechtenstein) in 1967, and of Cysarz in 1973, the latter with an appendix on WWII. In
the 1970s the nationalist war book (which had been touched on by Geissler) was rediscovered as a literary topic and covered by a number of critical studies, foremost by Denkler,
Gollbach, Müller, Prümm.27 More essays on war fiction were edited by Reich-Ranicki
from 1989 onwards,28 and Arnold Zweig was the topic of major (centenary) studies and of
an international symposium held in Cambridge (to be followed by a second symposium in
Gent in 1991).29
In Britain, for some time poetry of the Great War seemed to be more popular as a
research topic than fiction, but in the 1960s the study by Bergonzi assembled both poets
and writers of prose fiction.30 The 1970s were a fruitful period: extensive studies by the
American Fussell and by Rutherford,31 a small volume by Greicus on British prose writers
(for the British Council), and Holger Klein’s edition of critical essays on war fiction in an
international collection on the basis of comparison and contrast.32 Klein had expressed
regret that research on the topic of war followed nationalist lines (as the War had done),
and his edition was a successful attempt to break down national barriers, view the war as
an international phenomenon, and with his comparative approach point the way to a constructive future way of dealing with the topic.
There were studies on individual authors such as Frederic Manning and David Jones in
the 1970s,33 on authors of biographic fiction like Graves, Blunden, Sassoon in the 1980s.34
25
Cf. publications and a doctoral disssertation by H. J. Bernhard in East Germany, an essay on L. Frank,
L. Renn and Remarque by Petr Pavel in Germanica Wratislaviensia 7 (1962), pp. 19–34.
26
Marcel Reich-Ranicki (ed.): Deutsche Literatur in West und Ost (München: 1963).
27
Karl Prümm: Die Literatur des Soldatischen Nationalismus der 20er Jahre: 1918–1933 (Kronberg:
1974), Denkler/Prümm: Die Deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich (Stuttgart: 1976), Michael Gollbach: Die
Wiederkehr des Weltkrieges in der Literatur: Zu den Frontromanen der späten 20er Jahre (Kronberg: 1978),
Hans-Harald Müller: Der Krieg und die Schriftsteller: Untersuchungen zur Herausbildung des Kriegsromans
der Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart: 1986).
28
Within the three-volume series Romane von gestern – heute gelesen commencing in 1989.
29
David R. Midgley: Arnold Zweig: Eine Einführung in Leben und Werk (Frankfurt: 1987), Wilhelm von
Sternburg: Arnold Zweig: Materialien zu Leben und Werk (Frankfurt: 1987).
30
Bernard Bergonzi: Heroes’ Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War (London: 1965).
31
Paul Fussell: The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: 1975), Andrew Rutherford: The Literature of War: Five Studies in Heroic Virtue (London: 1978).
32
Holger Klein (ed.): The First World War in Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: 1976).
33
David Blamires: David Jones: artist and writer (Manchester: 1971), Jeremy Hooker: David Jones: An
Exploratory Study of the Writings (1975), C. N. Smith: “The Very Plain Song of It: Frederic Manning Her
Privates We”, Klein (ed.): The First World War in Fiction, pp. 174–182. There were also two essays on
Manning by Klein himself.
34
Thomas Mellow: “The Great War and Sassoon’s Memory”, pp. 81–99, John Hildebridle: “Neither
Worthy Nor Capable: The War Memoirs of Graves, Blunden, and Sassoon”, pp. 101–121, both essays in
Robert Kiely (ed.): Modernism Reconsidered (1983).
13
The 70th anniversary of the Somme was remembered with a symposium by the University of Picardy,35 Armistice Festival Year 1988 saw another study of British war novels,
by George Parfitt.36 In 1991 Graz was the scene of an international symposium on British
and German literary responses to the Great War.37
Questions of methodology
This dissertation studies British and German prose war fiction in a comparative approach.
The choice of prose fiction was a matter of personal preference, but has also objective
advantages as one critic informs us:
...one of the principal non-national categories for comparative work is genre. Fiction offers
itself particularly as it continued longest to be used by war writers, no doubt because prose
narrative, taking over in part the tradition of the great epics, is especially suited to the full
recreation of historical events and states of society. Moreover as prose is the most frequently
read genre in the modern era, this is the medium in which the war had its widest impact on the
reading public.38
Prose fiction in this context as a rule means novel (there are one or two exceptions).
Within the genre, a number of limitations have been made:
1. All the works dealt with were published before 1939 which provides common ground
for discussion of the texts and “opens a second perspective: the cultural, social and political climate of the war and in particular of the inter-war period. In this connection the
contemporary reception of war fiction is significant and instructive.”39
2. The study concentrates on prose fiction dealing with the war on the western front.
This choice appears justified for a number of reasons.
In Bergonzi’s words:
...it was here that the major crisis of English civilization was centred, and where most of the
writers who responded to it underwent the experiences that were subsequently matured into
autobiography or fiction.40
This statement applies to the German side as well. It was on the western front that the
war was lost or won, and the majority of important war books to come out of Germany
were based on experiences made on that long front line stretching from Flanders to the
Alps. It was here that a form of warfare developed which most people associate with the
Great War: trench warfare, the result of the deadlock of mighty powers, which rendered
traditional military skills and virtues useless and exposed soldiers (and civilians) to horrors never heard of before: drum fire and incessant shelling by artillery whose calibre was
Michel Roucoux (ed.): English Literature of the Great War Revisited (Amiens: 1987).
George Parfitt: Fiction of the First World War: A Study (London: 1988).
37
Stanzel/Löschnigg (eds.): Intimate Enemies: English and German Literary Reactions to the Great War
1914–1918 (Heidelberg: 1993).
38
Holger Klein (ed.): The First World War, Introduction, p. 4.
39
Klein, p. 4.
40
Bergonzi: Heroes’ Twilight, p. 170.
35
36
14
ever increasing, flame throwers, poison gas, trench mortars, air raids, tanks.41 The fact
that frequently one had the feeling of being murdered by anonymous hellish powers earned
the western front the name of Armageddon. Finally, it was here that British and German
troops confronted each other (in some areas) directly in their trenches and experienced
very much the same kind of hardships and horrors; this provides an excellent basis for
comparison.
3. Within the western front, a further limitation in time and place has been made: concentration on two momentous military events in the War which changed its face, both
taking place in 1916 and both related to each other: Verdun – the German attempt to
capture the ring of French fortresses on the Meuse and bleed the French army white, and
the Somme battles, a major British offensive designed partly to break the stalemate of
stagnant trench warfare, partly to relieve pressure on the French at Verdun. Both events
involved a great number of troops with human losses at an unprecedented scale, were
associated with their own special horrors. They became part of the mythology of the War
and were reflected in the war literature of the nations involved.
Comparative approach in this context is to be understood as follows: Comparison within
German texts on Verdun (surprisingly, there appears to be no major comparative study on
that topic despite the renewed interest in the war novel since the 1970s) and within British
texts on the Somme topic; where possible and profitable, a comparative look across national boundaries to register differences and common experiences between the British
and the Germans. Again, an attempt so far not undertaken in a major literary study, but not
unusual for historians.42
I have restricted the French point of view to a few brief comments. This requires an
explanation; after all, they were the third party involved in the conflict, in the case of
Verdun Germany’s main opponent. The discussion of the Verdun offensive has been deliberately limited to the impact on German fiction with only an occasional glance at the
French; similarly the study of the Somme campaign has been mainly dedicated to the
British echo in prose fiction, with only brief references to the German side, as the principal aim has been to work out the effect of two disastrous military campaigns on the national psyches of Britain and Germany. Bringing in a third party (with a different record,
namely victory, and therefore a different echo in literature) would have increased the
scope of the dissertation (already rich in material as it is) beyond reason.
It is not possible to discuss war literature without a glance at military history. So historical sources both contemporary and modern (from either side of the conflict) have
been introduced at the beginning of each of the two major sections to establish certain
facts and put the reader in a position which enables him to make comparisons between
fact and fiction.
A number of questions arise in this context which the dissertation will try to answer:
Given the fact that both events were traumatic ones for the men involved, is there a difference between the German experience and the British experience? Germany which through
this war had attempted to become a world power both on the Continent and overseas (the
latter with the slogan Ein Platz an der Sonne) came out of this conflict as the loser. If one
believes that there is a specific view of history by a losing nation, how then did German
41
42
Cf. the specialist study by Michael Houlihan: World War 1: Trench Warfare (1974).
Cf. Purnell: Verdun and the Somme, No. 21 of Purnell’s History of the 20th Century.
15
historiography react to the negative outcome? In his recent tome on the First World War,
a British historian points to the problem and shows one German attempt to cope with the
dilemma:
For the victors, the war was comparatively easy to justify: in the British case, Germany had
posed a threat to the Empire, and the Empire had successfully met the challenge. Under the
very different conditions which arose from defeat and revolution, the task was harder. Nevertheless, the Reichsarchiv’s fourteen volume Der Weltkrieg is doggedly proud of operational
success; significantly, its final volume was not published until after the Second World War.43
In this context, the question of how the experience of defeat is reflected in German war
fiction is particularly worth examining.
The fictional texts discussed44 range from 1919 to 1937 expressing differing attitudes
to the military events described and covering different periods of reception. A certain
unevenness of length and quality in the texts has been unavoidable within this selection.
Some of the authors have attracted a lot of critical attention, others are obscure or wellnigh forgotten, some rightly so. As a result, the chapters vary in intensity of discussion
and scope. Some novels were included not so much for their literary merit, but because
they represent the Zeitgeist of a certain period in history (e.g. Gristwood, Beumelburg,
Wehner); some of them dominated the literary discussion at the time (this is particularly
true of the völkisch war novel between 1933 and 1945). As even those works of quality
and their authors are only familiar to specialists in war fiction and to a handful of aficionados, yet unknown to the reading public at large today, this dissertation may also be
regarded as an attempt to salvage certain texts (and their authors) from undeserved oblivion.
Who still remembers Unruh’s Opfergang, an outstanding example of German Expressionism, or Arnold Zweig’s Erziehung vor Verdun, a prime representative of New Realism? Who has ever heard of David Jones and his In Parenthesis, a masterpiece of Modernism? It is hoped that the discussion of these works of fiction may help to revive interest
in the texts and arouse curiosity in at least some readers.
One book which requires no salvaging on my part is Remarque’s Im Westen Nichts
Neues (All Quiet On The Western Front), the most successful war book of all times (by
now well over eight million copies sold, with translations into more than 30 languages).45
There are frequent references to this war classic in my dissertation, but despite this somewhat spectral presence I have refrained from entering into a full-length discussion of All
Quiet (the same applies to Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero) mainly because the
novel does not specifically deal with either the Verdun offensive or the Somme, but rather
gives a somewhat vague impression of the war in the west from the beginning to the end.
Besides, it has already been made the topic of a number of extensive studies. 46 Reference
to Remarque has been unavoidable, though, since at least two of the German novels dis-
Ferguson, p. xxxv.
The first Somme text discussed (Dawson/1916) is, strictly speaking, non-fiction, but in contents so
improbable (war propaganda) that it has been included.
45
Within eighteen months the novel sold three and a half million copies, headed the bestseller lists in
Germany and Britain for months and in lending libraries was booked for years ahead in both countries. Cf.
M. Reich-Ranicki: “Erich Maria Remarque und sein Roman ‘Der Himmel kennt keine Günstlinge’”, in: M.
R.-R.(ed.): Deutsche Literatur in West und Ost (Munich: 1963), pp. 252–257.
46
E.g. H.-J. Bernhard 1959, M. Gollbach 1978, H. Rüter 1980, H. Bornebusch 1985, H.-H. Müller 1986.
43
44
16
cussed (Beumelburg and Wehner) were written in direct response to All Quiet, were militant reactions by right-wing authors to this pacifist novel, at the same time imitating some
of the successful formulae of that hated rival. In some cases this also included conscious
imitation of the very title, e.g. E. Erbelding’s Im Westen doch Neues, 1930. In Britain, too,
there were war novels which shared a number of features with the German model; Frederic
Manning’s Her Privates We (a text discussed in this dissertation) is one of them. 47 A
British publisher even came up with the idea of writing a woman’s book in reply, All
Quaint on the Western Front by “Erica Remarks”. When the journalist Evadne Price was
asked to write the spoof, she was appalled and offered to write a realistic account of a
woman’s experience of war instead. The result: Helen Zelda Smith (a pseudonym): Not so
Quiet...Stepdaughters of War (London: 1930), in which she not only imitated the title, but
many other features from the German model much admired by her.48
Since war fiction is a somewhat specialized field with many of the books difficult to
obtain I have felt justified to give summaries of the contents and quote extensively from
the text. As a rule, discussion of the novels includes a closer look at structure, language,
the main characters and themes, the “message” of the text. Within this pattern, there may
be a degree of variation, a shift in emphasis. Discussing for example “language” in the
context of “Expressionism” (Unruh) or “experimental novel” (Jones) has proved more
rewarding than in the novels by Herbert or Mannings. If, as occurred in some cases (e.g.
Wehner, Zweig), it has been found necessary or profitable to discuss additional aspects,
this has been pointed out in the chapters concerned.
As this is an English dissertation I have not used translations of the British texts into
German (most of them have not been translated anyway). Concerning the use of translations from the German original, published texts have been resorted to as far as possible;
where these have not been available (or non-existent) I have made my own. Working with
versions made by professional translators (and having the German original at hand for
comparison) I have gained some insight into their craft and, as a consequence, I have felt
justified to comment critically on their activity.
Wherever possible, a brief biographical sketch of the author discussed has been compiled; after some deliberation I have decided to separate these sketches from the main
body of the text and present them as additional information in the first of the three appendices. The second appendix contains (besides poems) mainly visual material such as maps,
cartoons and pictures, the third lists additional Verdun and Somme titles (both fiction and
non-fiction) in alphabetical order. Without claiming to be complete the lists still give a
good impression of the whole range of the subject and allows the reader to draw conclusions as to the popularity of the topic in Britain and Germany, the interpretation of events
at certain periods of time.
47
Cf. Holger Klein’s essay: “Dazwischen Niemandsland: Im Westen Nichts Neues und Her Privates We”,
in: Großbritannien und Deutschland...Festschrift für John W. P. Bourke, ed. O. Kuhn, (Munich: 1974), pp.
487–512.
48
Translated into German by Hans Reisiger as Mrs Biest pfeift – Frauen an der Front (Berlin: 1930). For
the many parallels in contents and structure with Remarque’s text see the Introduction by Barbara Hardy in
the Virago Modern Classics edition (London: 1988), pp. 7–13.
17
I. VERDUN
1. The military situation
When in its second year the war in the west had deteriorated into static trench warfare the
Allies for the first time decided on co-ordinated military action. At a conference held at
Joffre’s headquarters at Chantilly on December 5, 1915, the leaders of the French, British, Belgian and Italian armies, joined by representatives from Russia and Japan, decided
on a simultaneous general offensive in 1916. It was hoped that in France it would break
the trench deadlock. As it was appreciated that the new raw British troops (most of them
“Kitchener’s Army” plus men enlisted under the Derby Scheme)1 needed time for training, and Russia time for re-equipment, the offensive was fixed for the summer of 1916. At
a later, more private meeting on December 29, between Joffre and the new British C-in-C,
Haig, Joffre pressed for an attack at the Somme where the British and French lines joined.
For military historians such as A. J. P. Taylor “a strange choice”:
There was no great prize to be gained, no vital centre to be threatened. The Germans, if
pressed, could fall back to their own advantage, with better communications and a shortened
line.2
For Joffre all this did not matter. For him all that counted was British involvement on a
large scale. But the Germans also had a plan and they got in first, thus spoiling completely
the French part of the scheme, and to a certain extent, the British. Erich von Falkenhayn,
Chief of Staff of the German Armies, a believer in the strategy of attrition, produced a
plan by which he hoped France – “England’s best sword” – would be “bled white” thus
striking an indirect deadly blow against Britain. He proposed to achieve this without
forcing Germany to stage a widespread offensive on a larger scale, relying on information
that the military strain on France “had almost reached the breaking-point”. In what the
editors call “a masterly appreciation of the situation from the German point of view” he
indicated the strategy of 1916:
We can probably do enough for our purposes with limited resources. Within our reach behind the French sector of the Western Front there are objectives for the retention of which the
French General Staff would be compelled to throw in every man they have. If they do so the
forces of France will bleed to death – as there can be no question of a voluntary withdrawal –
whether we reach our goal or not. If they do not so, and we reach our objectives, the moral
effect on France will be enormous. For an operation limited to a narrow front Germany will not
be compelled to spend herself so completely that all other fronts are practically drained. She
1
As this scheme proved inadequate, conscription was introduced through the Military Service Act of
January 1916.
2
A. J. P. Taylor: The First World War: An Illustrated History, pp. 119–120.
18
can face with confidence the relief attacks to be expected on those fronts, and indeed hope to
have sufficient troops in hand to reply to them with counter-attacks. For she is perfectly free to
accelerate or draw out her offensive, to intensify it or break it off from time to time, as suits her
purpose.3
Falkenhayn had two objectives in mind, Belfort and Verdun, and he clearly preferred
the latter:
The considerations urged above apply to both, yet the preference must be given to Verdun.
The French lines at that point are barely twelve miles distant from the German railway communications. Verdun is therefore the most powerful point d’appui for an attempt, with a relatively
small expenditure of effort, to make the whole German Front in France and Belgium untenable.
The removal of the danger, as a secondary aim, would be so valuable on military grounds that,
compared with it, the so to speak “incidental” political victory of the “purification” of Alsace
by an attack on Belfort is a small matter.4
Falkenhayn chose Verdun not so much for strategic reasons but for its symbolic value
to challenge France’s pride. The old French fortress was strategically quite useless – at
the head of an awkward and useless salient the French position would have been stronger
without it. Besides it was no longer a fortress as it had been stripped of its guns and the old
forts were neglected. This was kept secret from the French public who still considered
Verdun a cornerstone of their defence. When Joffre, the French commander, forced by
Prime Minister Briand, ordered the defence of Verdun against his own military judgment,
the French had fallen into Falkenhayn’s trap and the tragedy began. Later comments by
Marshal Pétain, the Defender of Verdun, show that Falkenhayn had been right in his judgement:
The French accepted the challenge, for Verdun to them is even more than a great fortress, an
outpost intended to bar the path of the invader on the east; it is the moral bulwark of France.5
For ten months, from February 1916, Verdun was continuously attacked by the Germans, with more than 50 divisions, about half the strength of the German western army,
being thrown – often twice – into the “Hell of Verdun”. The French divisions, no less than
78, were fed into the “mincing machine of Verdun” (Taylor) via the voie sacrée, the
Sacred Road, on which a constant stream of about 3 000 lorries a day maintained transport of supplies and reinforcements. When the fighting had died down by the end of the
year, the combined casualties of both sides reached the “staggering total of over
700 000”.6 Alistair Horne calls the battle of Verdun perhaps the worst in history:
The proportion of casualties suffered to the numbers engaged was notably higher at Verdun
than any other First War battle. Verdun was the First War in microcosm; an intensification of all
its horrors and glories, courage, and futility.7
3
E. von Falkenhayn: General Headquarters, 1914–1916, and Its Critical Decisions in: Newman/Evans
(eds.): Anthology of Armageddon (London: 1937), pp. 147–148.
4
Newman/Evans, p. 148.
5
Newman/Evans, p. 148.
6
Alistair Horne: The Price of Glory (Harmondsworth: 1978), pp. 327–328.
7
Horne, p. 327.
19
According to A. J. P. Taylor “Verdun was the most senseless episode in a war not
distinguished for sense anywhere.”8
Who won the battle of Verdun? Neither side – although for a generation of French
writers Verdun was a supreme symbol of “La Gloire”. It is true that the French held Verdun
and thus inspired those who did not fight there, but the fighting had almost broken the
spirit of the French army with many units on the brink of mutiny. The Germans were never
quite the same again, either, after Verdun; in the words of the Crown Prince (the impotent
figurehead of the Fifth Army at Verdun) “The Mill on the Meuse ground to powder the
hearts as well as the bodies of the troops.”9
In the development of warfare Verdun made some contributions which increased the
hellish aspect of that battle: For the first time flame-throwers and Phosgene gas were used as
assault weapons on a large scale, planes were employed en masse as an air force, and it was
shown that an army could be supplied by road transport. The Germans perfected their infantry infiltration techniques, the French the “creeping barrage” of their artillery. According to
Horne about seven-tenths of the whole French army had passed through Verdun, 10 it was the
battle in which most Frenchmen had taken part, and it made the most profound and painful
impact. The same is true for the German side as regards the effect although the proportion of
their troops was somewhat lower. For Petain had introduced the so-called “Noria” system, a
system of quick rotation which meant pulling out divisions after a couple of days before
decimation of numbers impaired their morale, while the Germans “kept units in the line
until they were literally ground to powder, constantly topping up levels with replacements
fresh from the depots.”11 In Horne’s opinion they were “perhaps banking on the national
ability to accept horror more phlegmatically than their opponents.”12 By 1 May 40 French
divisions had passed through Verdun, compared to 26 German. The impact the difference of
systems had on the German troops must have been demoralizing.
The “War within the war” at Verdun created its own rules, rendered traditional tactics
useless as Jacques Meyer describes in his essay on Verdun:
Verdun was most often a war of abandoned men, a few men around a chief, a junior officer,
a noncom, even a simple soldier whom circumstances had shown capable of leadership. Sometimes it was a single man reduced to leading himself. Handfuls of men or individuals forced to
act, to take the initiative of defence – or withdrawal. Failures of nerve – there were some –
generally occurred in bigger units, which were not always the most hardened but were the most
shocked by the unexpectedness of the disaster. Decisive and courageous acts were mainly individual, leaving most of them unknown.13
It also moulded a very special type of soldier. In the French troops Meyer discovered a
state of mind which could be divided into three successive stages:
When a man went up there, he felt a dim fear. When he left, he no longer was afraid of being
afraid. When he left for good, he carried a sense of pride away in his memory. 14
Taylor, p. 123.
Horne, p. 331.
10
Horne, pp. 339–340.
11
Horne, p. 224.
12
Horne, p. 224.
13
J. Meyer: “Verdun, 1916”, in: G. Panichas (ed.): Promise of Greatness (1968), p. 59.
14
Meyer, p. 65.
8
9
20
The pride is understandable in a French bonhomme – after all he was part of a heroic
and, as the result showed, invincible resistance true to the slogan Ils ne passeront pas.
This pride is partly reflected in the wealth of French literature on the subject.15 If Meyer is
right in claiming that “human beings draw their pride from their worst sufferings”16 then
also the Germans at Verdun had every reason to be proud. But for them Verdun was a
defeat involving hundreds of thousands of dead comrades, so the predominant mood was
one of dejection and utter frustration when at the end of 1916 they had to abandon the
battlefield.
The defence of Verdun made Pétain’s reputation. A colonel before the war, he became
a marshal of France when it was over, and ultimately Head of State. For Falkenhayn
Operation Gericht17 (the foreboding code-name of the Verdun campaign) proved fatal.
His memorandum had made military history:
Never through the ages had any great commander or strategist proposed to vanquish an
enemy by gradually bleeding him to death. The macabreness, the unpleasantness of its very
imagery could only have emerged from, and was symptomatic of, that Great War, where, in
their callousness, leaders could regard human lives as mere corpuscules.18
The leaders of the Fifth Army, the Crown Prince and his Chief-of-Staff von Knobelsdorf,
were led to believe that their objective was to seize France’s most prestigious fortress,
rather than to embark on a long-drawn-out battle of attrition. When his plan failed,
Falkenhayn was forced to step down, to be replaced by the duumvirate of Hindenburg and
Ludendorff.
The battle of Verdun had started on February 21,19 with eight hours of incessant bombardment from 1 400 guns. The German offensive ended on September 2, and by December 15 the French had regained nearly all the territory lost since February. For Pétain, this
date marked the end of the battle of Verdun although isolated areas such as Mort Homme
and Côte 304 were not retaken before the following August.
There were several factors contributing to the defeat of the German army at Verdun.
Perhaps the most serious was Falkenhayn’s decision to limit his action as regards both
aim and scope, attacking initially only on the west bank of the River Meuse, thus exposing
his troops to French artillery enfilade. One authority, the French General Palat, claims
that the fortunate destruction of all the German 17-inch howitzers by the French longrange guns, and the blowing up of the great artillery park near Spincourt, which held
450 000 heavy shell, unwisely kept fused, was decisive.20 More important in Liddell
Hart’s opinion was the allied Somme offensive whose start was put forward at French
request to relieve pressure on Verdun. And it worked, for Falkenhayn stopped the flow of
15
Some titles: Georges Duhamel: La Vie des Martyrs, 1916; Charles Delvert: Histoire d’une compagnie,
1918; Georges Gaudy: Trous d’obus de Verdun, 1922; Verdun et le Chemin-des-Dames, 1966; Henri de
Montherlant: Le Songe, 1922; Pierre Chaine: Les Memoirs d’un Rat, 1930; Jules Romains: Verdun, 1938;
Joseph Jolinon: Le Valet de Gloire
16
Meyer, p. 65.
17
In German a tribunal, a judgment, or, more rarely, a place of execution.
18
Horne, p. 45.
19
The attack, originally planned for February 12, had been postponed several times due to atrocious
weather (sleet and snow) which made artillery observation impossible. See map in Appendix II.
20
Quoted in B. H. Liddell Hart: History of the First World War (London: 1982), pp. 224–225.
21
ammunition to Verdun on June 24, the day the preliminary bombardment began in preparation for the attack on July 1. As Liddell Hart put it:
From that day on the Germans at Verdun received no fresh divisions and their advance died
out from pure inanition. The way was thus paved for the brilliant French counter-offensives of
the autumn, which retook by bites what had been lost by nibbles. It is no disparagement of the
sterling defence to recognize, as we must, that the Somme saved Verdun...21
Other factors were Brusilov’s offensive in the east in June which compelled Falkenhayn
to withdraw seven divisions from the west, and so abandon his plan for a riposte against
the British Somme offensive, as well as the hope of nourishing his attrition process at
Verdun. Besides, the fact that German troops were kept too long in the line proved very
detrimental to their morale and fighting power.
According to Horne, at the end of 1915 Germany still had a good chance of winning
the war, or at least of achieving a good draw via a negotiated peace. It was her last chance,
“and Falkenhayn squandered it at Verdun.” Horne shows that the Germans could have
taken Verdun on three occasions, if Falkenhayn had been prepared to bring in the reserves
he kept at his disposal. He was, in Liddell Hart’s memorable summary
The ablest and most scientific general – “penny-wise, pound foolish” – who ever ruined his
country by refusal to take calculated risks. 22
Falkenhayn, because of his Prussian arrogance and taciturnity never a popular figure in
Germany and Austria (whose C-in-C Conrad von Hötzendorf was not informed about the
forthcoming Verdun offensive)23 had his champions though who pointed to his subsequent successful Rumanian campaign as proof of his commanding genius, ignoring, however, that it was Ludendorff who had devised the actual strategy there and that for veteran
German troops, rounding up the Rumanians (never the world’s most intrepid warriors)
was not far removed from Kitchener’s annihilation of the Khalifa’s Fuzzy-Wuzzies at
Omdurman.24
Rumania’s entry into the war on the Allied side on August 27 (Falkenhayn had predicted that eventuality not possible until after the Rumanian harvest in mid-September)
took the German leaders by surprise and provided his enemies in Berlin, notably Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg, with the opportunity of bringing about his downfall. When
Falkenhayn tendered his resignation, few mourned his departure; in Vienna and at Stenay
(Fifth Army Headquarters) there was particular rejoicing. When the new C-in-C von
Hindenburg paid his first visit to the Western Front together with Ludendorff, they were
horrified at the fighting conditions and the heavy losses, and immediately ordered the
cessation of all attacks at Verdun. Schmidt von Knobelsdorf had been got rid of earlier
when the Kaiser, for once, had listened to the Crown Prince’s justified complaints about
the excessive sacrifice of his men and had sent the former Chief of Staff to the Russian
front.
Liddell Hart, p. 226.
Liddell Hart, p. 207.
23
For details of Falkenhayn’s arrogance and passion for secrecy see Horne, Chapter “The Secret Enemies”, pp. 274–280.
24
Horne, p. 335.
21
22
22
Falkenhayn’s optimism as regards his strategy of attrition never left him. Even after the
war when he was writing his memoirs, he still claimed that during the March fighting “for
two Germans put out of action, five Frenchmen had to shed their blood”, a ratio which the
actual casualty figures show up as pure delusion. And in August, “owing to the brutally
exposed ground it was bidden to defend, Fifth Army casualties for the first time exceeded
those of the French.”25
In one aspect Verdun was successful for Falkenhayn and the Germans: Instead of contributing forty divisions to the Allied Somme Offensive, as agreed upon at the Chantilly
Conference in December 1915, France’s contribution was in fact reduced to fourteen.
Thus Verdun was as much a historic turning point for the other Allies as well, particularly
for the British: “One of its direct results was that from 1 July 1916 – that grim landmark
in British history – the main burden of the Western Front devolved upon Britain.”26
Verdun and its fortifications
The town of Verdun is surrounded and protected by the steep Meuse hills whose unusual
concentric pattern itself formed an immense natural fort, with a radius of five to ten miles,
“the Keep at the centre of the fort being Verdun itself” (Horne). The crest of each important hill or ridge in this natural stronghold was studded with powerful forts, the outstanding feature of Verdun’s defences. The German map of 1914 shows 20 major forts and
forty intermediary ones (ouvrages in French terminology). The most powerful of all, the
cornerstone, was Fort Douaumont “which, from its 1,200-foot elevation, dominated the
terrain at every point of the compass like a scaled-down Monte Cassino” (Horne). Since
these forts played a key role, a brief description of their nature seems appropriate at this
point:
Each fort was so sited that its guns could dislodge any enemy appearing on the glacis of its
neighbour. The guns themselves, sometimes either a heavy 155 mm or twin short-barrelled 75s,
were housed under heavy steel carapaces in retractable turrets, and were invulnerable to all but
a direct hit from the heaviest artillery. They were supplemented by equally well protected machine-gun turrets and ingeniously placed block-houses containing flanking guns that could
repel an attack on the fort from any direction. The bigger forts contained a company of infantry
or more underground, and the more modern were armoured with reinforced concrete up to
eight feet deep under a thick layer of earth...Furthermore...the outer lines of the forts had been
left with a protective cordon of trenches...27
The names of these forts became household words both in France and Germany, and
the capture of one of these military objects gave rise to great rejoicing at the home-front.28
Ironically, Fort Douaumont, the strongest of them all, was captured (on February 25) and
Horne, p. 301.
Horne, pp. 331–332.
27
Horne, pp. 57–58.
28
See Ernst Glaeser’s war novel Jahrgang 1902 (Class of 1902), (Potsdam: 1928), for the effect of the
Verdun offensive on civilian life in a small German town where the sound of the guns could be heard. Public
rejoicing at the fall of Fort Vaux is contrasted with the “strange” behaviour of the Headmaster who confronts
the school assembly with the number of casualties suffered so far (Chapter: “Heldentod”).
25
26
23
recaptured (October 24) virtually empty, a fact that prompted a French commander’s
remark of “a singular fate for a fort which during eight months had been the key to a field
of battle watered with the blood of hundreds of thousands of men...”29 There was more
irony, even farce, on the German side. Different parties of Germans had, unknown to each
other, occupied the Douaumont, but the reward went to an officer, Oberleutnant von
Brandis, who had been detailed to report the capture of the fort at Battalion H.Q. On the
basis of his report alone, he and his captain (who fully deserved it) were awarded the Pour
le Mérite.30 According to Liddell Hart worse was to come a short time later:
This piece of official bombast, however, was to be outclassed and outfarced when, owing to
a misunderstood telephone message, the communiqué of March 9th announced the capture of
Fort Vaux – three months too early. But the cream of the jest was that both the divisional
commander who made the report and the officer who had not taken the fort, received from the
Kaiser the highest Prussian order, Pour le Mérite! A bad telephone is not without compensations.31
The recapture of Fort Douaumont was greeted by the French as a second Austerlitz, by
the Germans it was regarded as a grave defeat. Hindenburg candidly admitted:
On this occasion the enemy hoisted us with our own petard. We could only hope that in the
coming year he would not repeat the experiment on a greater scale and with equal success. 32
The fact that French colonial troops had retaken the Douaumont (a crack regiment
from Morocco) would be used by nationalist German writers of war fiction in the late
1920s in an accusatory manner (”jungle” versus “civilization”).
The official German post-war publication providing detailed accounts of individual
battles, usually referred to as the Reichsarchiv,33 started the series with a volume called
Douaumont (by Werner Beumelburg, himself a Verdun veteran) and devoted three more
tomes to Verdun, thus stressing the magnitude of this campaign. The trilogy was named
The Tragedy of Verdun, and according to the Reichsarchiv the German soldier of the First
World War was more deeply affected by this campaign than by any other of the war. That
for all its initial successes it was a military defeat with serious consequences was admitted
right from the start.34 What Meyer had done for the French side, Beumelburg did for the
Germans; he summed up the particular emotional links which bound Verdun combatants
together:
Horne, p. 315.
For more details about the capture of the fort see Horne, Chapter “Fort Douaumont” and Werth, Chapter 7 “Wettlauf zum Douaumont” plus the subsequent excursus “Eine preußische Groteske”. Von Brandis
became a favourite with the Crown Prince, his book, The Stormers of Douaumont, 1917, full of egocentric
bombast, was an instant bestseller. There was a flood of letters of hero-worship from Germany, even offers of
marriage. After the war, a village in Prussia was named after him, and he gave inspiring lectures to schools on
the capture of Fort Douaumont. His role remained undisputed for ten years, until the appearance of the
official Reichsarchiv. Cf. Horne, pp. 132–133.
31
Liddell Hart, p. 224.
32
Quoted by Horne, p. 317.
33
Official title: Schlachten des Weltkrieges: In Einzeldarstellungen bearbeitet und herausgegeben im
Auftrage des Reichsarchivs, 1924ff.
34
“Auch die Lichtblicke großer, offenkundiger deutscher Waffenerfolge...können nicht darüber hinwegtäuschen, daß Verdun eine deutsche Niederlage von erschreckend weittragender Bedeutung gewesen ist.”
Reichsarchiv, Vol. 13, 1928, Introduction.
29
30
24
It seemed to us then as if a quite exceptional bond linked us with those few who had been
with us at the time. It was not the normal sensation of affinity that always binds together men
who have endured common hardships...It derived from the fact that Verdun transformed men’s
souls. Whoever floundered through this morass full of the shrieking and the dying, whoever
shivered in those nights, had passed the last frontier of life, and henceforth bore deep within
him the leaden memory of a place that lies between Life and Death, or perhaps beyond either...35
Philipp Witkop’s collection of war-letters written by German students fallen in battle36
contains numerous testimonies of the horror experienced by sensitive young men most of
whom had volunteered for active service. Most moving perhaps a letter by a student,
whose company returned to Verdun, who summed up the horrible experience of that hellish place for his whole generation. He died there in October 1918.37
For nationalist German writers and their National Socialist interpreters Verdun was not
so much the military catastrophe (which it in fact was) but a symbol of heroic and tragic
fighting. Some, schooled in a crude social Darwinism much in favour at the time, went
even further:
Verdun destroyed everything that was sickly or weak, it meant the extinction of everything
that was unfit for survival. At the same time, however, it was the painful birth of something new
which had only begun to emerge in pre-war times: the community of the German people. 38
It is almost needless to comment on such lack of realism and piety towards the dead of
Verdun (of all nations involved) and their families. One of those “unfit for survival” (to
use Hoffmann’s cynical phrase) was the Bavarian painter Franz Marc, detailed to design
and paint camouflage nets and canvases to cover the big guns at Verdun. Together with
the Russian Kandinsky he had founded the Munich-based avantgarde group Der Blaue
Reiter in 1911, which, among others, included the painters August Macke, Gabriele Münter,
Paul Klee. The Bavarian government had decided to pull Marc out of the front-line (together with other promising artists to be saved for posterity), but news of this decision
reached the front too late: Marc was killed at Verdun on March 4, 1916, shortly after his
36th birthday. His letters from the front, mainly to his wife and close friends (among them
Elisabeth Macke), give us an insight into the mind of a creative artist in war time.39 In
September 1914 he was still full of romantic notions about the war (“Wallensteins Lager”), but a year later the frustrations of an artist were very noticeable:
My thoughts wander aimlessly, restlessly, unproductively, filled with hate of this war; and
what makes this state of mind particulary strange – as a soldier I’m becoming increasingly
more professional (5. X. 15).40
W. Beumelburg: Douaumont, Reichsarchiv, Vol. 1. Translation Horne, p. 326.
Ph. Witkop (ed.): Kriegsbriefe gefallener Studenten (Munich: 1928).
Witkop, pp. 351–352.
38
Helmut Hoffmann: Mensch und Volk im Kriegserlebnis (Berlin: 1937), originally a doctoral dissertation. It is difficult to imagine that such a text could be reprinted after WWII – (Wendeln/Liechtenstein: 1967).
39
Franz Marc: Briefe aus dem Feld (Berlin: 1941). A slightly different collection (a reprint from the 1920
edition), was published in 1982. Quotations have been translated from the 1941 edition.
40
Marc, p. 163.
35
36
37
25
The final part of the above sentence reminds one of similar observations made by T. E.
Hulme in his war diaries. At the start of the Verdun offensive Marc was still optimistic
about the outcome, yet fully aware of the horrors it involved for both sides:
I have no doubt that Verdun will fall – but will we succeed in aiming the cruel blow at the
heart of poor France? For days I have seen nothing but the most horrible scenes human brains
can imagine (2. II. 16).41
He was particularly concerned about the fate and condition of animals, especially horses,
animals which he felt very close to and had so often made the topic of his paintings. What
Marc wrote to the widow on the occasion of August Macke’s death in France in 1914 may
be read as a befitting obituary for himself:
In war we are all equal. But among a thousand brave soldiers a bullet kills one who is
irreplaceable. With his death a hand is cut off the cultural life of a nation, an eye blinded. To
what extent and how terribly may this cruel war have mutilated our future civilization? Many a
young mind may have been murdered who – unknown to us – carried within himself our
future...With his death one of the most beautiful and boldest arcs in our artistic development
breaks off abruptly; none of us is capable of continuing it...wherever we artists shall meet, he
will be missed...42
In September 1916, with the Germans at Verdun now on the defensive, President
Poincaré bestowed the Légion d’Honneur upon a triumphant town. The festivities to go
with it were postponed until later. On November 10, 1920, a moving ceremony took place
in the underground Citadel of the town: from among the coffins of eight unidentified
French soldiers one was selected to be sent to Paris the next day (anniversary of the
Armistice) to be solemnly buried as the Unknown Soldier underneath the Arc de Triomphe.
The eight corpses had been transferred from all the battlefields; the one chosen (coffin
No. 6) happened to be a poilu from the Douaumont.43 In April 1932, Douaumont Ossuary
with its dome shaped like a shell, was opened to the public. According to the official
Verdun guidebook it houses the unidentified remains of around 130 000 French and German soldiers collected from the chaotic battle-field.44 In 1936 Verdun was the scene of an
international rally of former combatants from all nations involved, where about 100 000
pledged to keep and protect the peace of the world.45 What the German writer Ernst Glaeser,
filled with the emotions of that moment, referred to as the “Miracle of Verdun”, seemed to
have come true at last:
Marc, p. 150.
Marc, pp. 165–166.
43
Cf. German Werth, Verdun: Die Schlacht und der Mythos (Bergisch Gladbach: 1984) pp. 514 –519.
William Faulkner, in a novel published in 1954, A Fable, deals, among other things, full of irreverent irony
with this post-war episode.
44
Verdun: Vision and Comprehension – The Battlefield & Its Surroundings, 1982, p. 36. This somewhat
contradicts the information given by Werth (p. 525) that, if at all possible, the Germans were buried separately, in large mass graves, by the French (the actual work usually done by German prisoners of war). A
similar strict segregation for the known dead: separate cemeteries with white crosses for the French, black
ones for the Germans (one of the stipulations of the Versailles Treaty – the symbolism attached to it was
intended).
45
For a detailed description of this ceremony see P. C. Ettighoffer: Verdun: Das Große Gericht (Gütersloh:
1936), pp. 300–303.
41
42
26
Verdun is the great equation among three great peoples of Europe. Where Verdun begins,
the nations end. Its ground belongs to all, for it has been wetted by the blood of all.46
But four years later, on June 15, the Wehrmacht conquered Verdun, and Pétain, recalled from retirement by a desperate nation, was forced to ask for an armistice. Hitler
and the German generals, many of them former combatants at Verdun, rejoiced at this
successful revanche. In 1966, France – under Charles de Gaulle – celebrated the 50th
anniversary of the battle, without American or German participation. Despite repeated
pleas by the anciens combattants Petain’s ashes were not allowed to return for burial to
the place which the Saviour of Verdun had once reserved for his grave. On September 22,
1984, Verdun was the site of the public reconciliation of France and Germany. Under a
photograph of the scene, The Times reported the following:
In a gesture of reconciliation President Mitterand and Chancellor Helmut Kohl hold hands
as the French and West German national anthems are played at Verdun, a scene of one of the
most bitter battles of the First World War. Before visiting the graves of French soldiers, M.
Mitterand and Herr Kohl paid tribute to the German dead at Consenvoye, one of the many
German cemeteries in the area.47
2. Fritz von Unruh Opfergang 1919
There can be no doubt that Verdun was a horrifying experience for combatants of all
nations involved; in Germany, due to the course of events, it achieved the status of a
national trauma which writers (nearly all of them Verdun veterans) attempted to come to
terms with in different ways, according to their ideological point of view.
The first fictional prose text on the topic was Fritz von Unruh’s Opfergang (English
title The Way of Sacrifice).48 Although in volume more a novel (204 pages in the German
edition), it is referred to either as a “story” (Erzählung),49 a “prose epic”50 or a “Monodie”.51 Unruh himself used the term Schilderung (account).
The genesis of the text
In February 1916 Unruh (who had already made his name as a playwright) was asked by
Major Nicolai of Higher Army Command to write about the Verdun offensive with a view
of preparing those at home and the troops at the front for sacrifice (“um der Heimat den
Ernst der Lage zu schildern und um die Truppe beim Portepee zu fassen”).The result – a
mercilessly realistic and at the same time visionary description of the gradual destruction
Quoted in Werth, pp. 7–8.
Gilbert, p. 540. Kohl’s father had fought there, Mitterand been taken prisoner in 1940.
48
F. von Unruh: The Way of Sacrifice, Translation by C. A. Macartney (London: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928).
All quotations will be from this edition.
49
E.g. Ludwig Harig: “Verdun ist keine Taube”, in: M. Reich–Ranicki (ed.): Romane von gestern – heute
gelesen (Yesterday’s novels read today) vol. 2: 1918–1933 (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1989), pp. 16–22.
50
A. Kronacher: Fritz von Unruh – A Monograph (New York: R. Schick, 1946).
51
Holger Klein: “Literarische Reaktionen auf den Ersten Weltkrieg”, in: Propyläen Geschichte der
Literatur, vol. 6. (Frankfurt/Berlin/Vienna: 1982), pp. 37–58.
46
47
27
of human beings – was not at all what Nicolai had been looking for. According to the
author Unruh was court-martialled and sent on a suicide mission at Verdun. The intervention of the Crown Prince – an acquaintance from days spent as cadets at the military
college of Plön, to whom he had read the manuscript – saved Unruh’s life.52 In the book
itself the author only informs us in a prefatory note that the text had been completed by
summer 1916 but that publication had been prevented by the Censor until winter 1918.
Thus Unruh appeared as an independent mind who – after an initial euphoric phase
marked by the publication of nationalist war poetry53 (a phase he shared with the majority
of intellectuals and creative writers, both at home and abroad) – was hailed by generations of literary critics as one of the few militant pacifists in the middle of the War, a
“soldier of peace” as he would later describe himself. 54 Their action seems justified, at
least to a certain extent, if one shares their assumption that the earlier version of Opfergang
was basically identical with the published text. The myth of Unruh as a courageous
Cassandra as early as 1916 was destroyed in 1980 when Dieter Kasang published his
dissertation on the early works of the author.55 Kasang was the first to be granted access
by the family to the unpublished writings in Unruh’s estate,56 and among other surprising
finds he discovered the complete proofs of a prose text named Verdun, the 1916 predecessor of Opfergang. A comparison of the two versions57 shows that Unruh made significant
alterations which changed a nationalistic, bellicose text into a document of peace and
humanity which was welcomed by the new Republic in 1919. It is difficult to defend
Unruh against the reproach of opportunism (the Crown Prince was one of the first to
accuse him of that when he discovered that almost all the passages dealing with him –
symbol of a future monarchy – had been cut out)58 and of creating his own legend as
regards his wartime past. His post-war statement that he had only published what had
already existed in writing during the War,59 is no longer acceptable in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. There is no doubt that Unruh was a convinced pacifist after
the War (and a courageous fighter for the Republic against the enemy from the right) but
his conversion took place later than he made us believe.
Cf. Unruh’s biographical sketch: “Der Kronprinz” in his Politea, 1933.
In an early collection of war poems edited by Julius Bab: 1914: Der Deutsche Krieg im Deutschen
Gedicht (Berlin: n. d.) Unruh’s well-known “Reiterlied” is printed on facing pages with a jingoist poem
bearing the same title, by Gerhart Hauptmann, dedicated to Fritz v. Unruh, “dem Dichter und Ulan”, pp. 16–
17. Among the manuscripts in Unruh’s estate is an unpublished poem “An England” from September 1914,
which in its spirit of hate and aggression against the treacherous “nation of shopkeepers” was clearly modelled on Ernst Lissauer’s notorious “Hymn of Hate”, and a poetic expression of ideas popularized a year later
by Werner Sombart’s Händler und Helden: Patriotische Besinnungen (Munich/Leipzig: 1915).
54
Cf. Friedrich Rasche (ed.): Fritz von Unruh: Rebell und Verkünder (Hanover: 1960), p. 50. And more
recently, M. Durzak: “Nachgeholter Expressionismus? Zur Vollendung von Fritz von Unruhs Dramen-Trilogie
Ein Geschlech”, in: Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft, XVIII (1974), p. 571.
Durzak writes: “In der Erfahrung von Grauen und Elend des Krieges, in der Augenzeugenschaft des
mechanisierten Tötens in den Materialschlachten vollzog sich in Unruh jene Wandlung von der patriotischen
und aktivistischen Verherrlichung des Krieges zur Geißelung des den Menschen unterjochenden, militärisch
inszenierten Mordens” (p. 571).
55
Dieter Kasang: Wilhelminismus und Expressionismus: Das Frühwerk Fritz von Unruhs 1904–1921
(Stuttgarter Arbeiten zur Germanistik Nr. 78) (Stuttgart: 1980).
56
Since then most of Unruh’s estate has been transferred (and so made generally accessible) to the Deutsche
Literaturarchiv in Marbach.
57
Cf. Kasang, pp. 258–279 and particularly pp. 290–303.
58
Kasang, pp. 300–301.
59
In the draft of an unpublished explanatory letter of reply to the Crown Prince, Kasang, p. 301.
52
53
28
A review of the action
At first the story is told by an anonymous member of the group whose fate he describes,
but soon this point of view is abandoned for that of an omniscient author. Opfergang is
the story of an infantry company in northern France which in January 1916 is moved to
Verdun. There it is detailed to form the first wave of infantry to attack Beaumont, Côte
344 and later the Bois de Fosses and Louvemont. The men achieve these military objectives, but are decimated in the process. On home leave the men are confronted with a
civilian world bent on amusement, which has no idea of the hell the troops have gone
through. In the final chapter the survivors prepare for a last attack.
The text is divided into four major sections varying in length from about 20 to 70
pages. The first, “Advance”,60 has expository functions, introduces the main characters of
the group: Hauptmann Werner, the company commander, his deputy Leutnant Dr. Hartmann, a vicar, Vizefeldwebel Clemens, a teacher, Sergeant Hillbrand whose wife is expecting a baby, Tambour-Gefreiter Preis, the drummer, a soldier called Kellner (a waiter
in civilian life), Kriegsfreiwilliger Heinz, a volunteer, and Fips, the cook, who claims to
have belonged to the household of the King of Greece. The men are not informed about
their final destination when they board a train bound south along the western front, but
Clemens, the teacher, guesses that it will be Verdun. He is a pacifist from the start, voices
his pessimism and despair quite frankly and does not believe that any of his comrades will
survive; he is convinced that death is waiting for them all at Verdun. The approaching
disaster is foreshadowed by nightly visions and other premonitory scenes: Heavy 42 cm
guns pass through the sleepy town like juggernauts threatening human existence – a soldier has both his legs smashed when he gets into their way, the men see the enormous
supplies piling up in a depot, and one of them, the Kellner, becomes mentally unhinged, is
tortured by visions of barbed wire, nails threatening him. Heinz, the volunteer, comes
across a deranged officer who tells him he is going to his death. Heinz practises bayonet
attacks on a dead cat and finds it most repulsive. Later he will stab three Frenchmen with
his knife. Thus the first section is a preparation for Verdun which is seen as a major
catastrophe. At first only Clemens voices his protest as a pacifist, then we learn that the
company commander – seemingly a fanatic of discipline – also has his doubts, which he
puts down in his diary. When it gets lost for a short time, together with the plan of attack,
he loses his head, believes that he is finished. The vicar laments the general lack of understanding and communication, thus criticizing his fellow theologians at home and in the
other countries involved. In a scene with the officer in charge of a railway station the
traditional cliché of heroic death is questioned and its representatives are accused when
the officer proudly recalls how he led young volunteers into enemy gunfire at Langemarck.61
”Approach” would be a better translation of the German original, Anmarsch.
The death of so many young, inexperienced volunteers advancing into British fire (according to legend
singing the Deutschlandlied) at that small Flanders village in October 1914 created a myth, and anniversaries of that ”heroic event” were celebrated all over Germany. Cf. J. M. Wehner: Langemarck (München:
1932), Rudolf Binding: Deutsche Jugend vor den Toten des Krieges (German Youth Before the Dead of the
War), 1933, and, more critically, Uwe Ketelsen: “Die Jugend von Langemarck: Ein poetisch-politisches Motiv
der Zwischenkriegszeit”, in: Koebner/Janz Trommler (eds.): Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit: Der Mythos Jugend,
(Frankfurt/Main: 1985), pp. 68–96, Karl Unruh: Langemarck (Koblenz: 1986), Bernd Hüppauf: “Langemarck,
Verdun and the Myth of a New Man in Germany after the First World War”, in: War & Society, Vol. 6, No. 2
(Sept. 1988), pp. 70–103. The spirit of Langemarck would be invoked later whenever young Germans were
asked to make the “supreme sacrifice”. For an ironic treatment during WWII see Günter Grass: Katz und
Maus (Reinbek: 1964), p. 64.
60
61
29
In the second chapter, “Trench” (Schützengraben), the commander informs his men
that they will form the first wave of attack; they take the news quite well, spend all their
money on drink, and some of them become even optimistic. The drummer for example
muses on all the chances of earning a decoration:
“May we not suddenly become famous in a day?...There are more possibilities... than we
have valiant words! More forts are arrayed around Verdun than pearls round a woman’s neck.
And each one is good for a Pour le Mérite. Here’s to possibility, brothers! You take Douaumont”
...“I’ll take Fort Vaux!” Pointing to the others, he distributed with jovial gesture the forts of
Souville, Vacherauville, Marre, Bourrus, and Belle-Epine. (63–64)
There are traces of gallows humour, though: One man polishes his identity disc so that
he will know who he is when he is in a mass grave (66). Clemens has more visions about
a horrible future. In a nightly discussion with the commander, he expresses the hope that
Verdun may be a promise, an end of all wars. He feels that for young idealists in particular
their deaths must have a deeper meaning than the mere conquest of some more territory:
...Do you believe the young men up there die for naught? That their bright spirit perishes to
gain new lands? Can you not perceive at last that we die to join a holy communion? To make a
true fraternity of the soul, of a people? What care we for fortresses or lands? And if the world
has grown rotten, poisoned so that corruption eats at its soul, then let it be burned!...Ah, ye
peoples of the earth, unless the light of your spirit is the price – then all this powder has been
shot off in vain! (71)
Clemens also attacks the concept of duty used by the authorities, a word that once was
great but now has become “the cancer at the peoples” heart”. The discussion with the
Hauptmann shows that he shares these feelings (although Clemens does not realize that).
The attack, supposed to take place in three days, must be postponed several times due to
bad weather. The period of waiting is a bad time for the company, the men have too much
time to think. Besides, a French deserter tells them that their plan of attack is known to the
enemy. The commander feels responsible because of his lost diary. Hillbrand communicates with his wife, compares Verdun to a surgical operation necessary to make the patient
(i.e. mankind) healthy again. Meanwhile the Kellner has escaped from hospital and follows his comrades, on his way pulling out of the earth all the barbed wire he sees. At the
end of the chapter we see him standing at a roadside crucifix with two other casualties.
Together with the crucified Jesus, whose body is blown off its support by the starting
drum-fire preceding the attack, the group of men, one gone mad, one blind, one deaf, is a
powerful symbol of the horrible effect of war.
The third chapter, “Attack” (Angriff), shows the company going into battle as the first
line. It is an archaic scene: Hillbrand brandishing an enormous axe, the drummer leading
the attack with his beat. The enemy is killed in hand to hand fighting, Heinz stabbing three
Frenchmen with his knife; Hillbrand while strangling an enemy is killed by a sniper who
in turn is knocked dead by Heinz” drum. Later Heinz sympathises with his dead opponent, shakes hands with him, and has visions of three bloody faces. Clemens sums up their
feelings by calling all of them beasts, not human beings. At the same time Hillbrand’s son
is born.
The final chapter, from whose title the whole book takes its name, “The Way of Sacrifice”, confronts us with the result of the attack: the company has gradually been reduced
30
to about 40 men, there are no more reserves, there is neither food nor water; soldiers
quench their thirst by drinking urine. The commander feels like a murderer when he thinks
of his men and looks forward to death. One group of soldiers returns from the battle halfdemented, swinging torn-off human limbs in their hands like clubs, others greet a passing
general with words of disrespect or ignore him altogether. The savage ruthlessness of the
Higher Command is exposed: The Commander-in-Chief wants to push the worn-out troops
further on, takes casualties of 400 000 men for granted and publicly humiliates one of his
generals who, as a consequence, covers the red tabs of his uniform with dirt and goes to
the front to share the horrors with his men. When the Hauptmann has been killed and the
vicar has both his eyes shot out, Clemens leads the remains of the company to a new
attack – gaining three metres of territory.
The main characters
The story revolves around a handful of men, part of a company, thus belongs to a type of
war fiction which is more widespread on the Continent than in Britain, frequently with a
characteristic title. Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu: Journal d’une escouade, 1916 (English
title: Under Fire: The story of a squad) is probably one of the earliest relevant examples,
a novel with which Unruh’s text has been compared several times.62 (After the War Unruh
will meet the pacifist and socialist in France.) Other titles to be included here are Beumelburg’s Verdun novel63 and Remarque’s bestseller All Quiet on the Western Front. Wehner’s
Sieben vor Verdun is slightly different as the seven men who meet frequently do not belong to the same unit. The main speakers within the company are the Hauptmann and his
NCOs, Sergeant Hillbrand and his friend, Vizefeldwebel Clemens. The Hauptmann’s
deputy, Leutnant Dr. Hartmann, the curate, is a conscientious but taciturn officer.
When he is first introduced, the Hauptmann has the air of a strict disciplinarian who
does not tolerate any slackness among his men (300 in all): on the march he makes Heinz
carry a second rifle as a punishment for having opened the top buttons of his tunic. He
comes from an aristocratic family (von Werner) with a long tradition of military service.
We learn that his “great-grandfather checked a routed battalion at Jena (in 1806), and led
them back with colours flying, against the enemy. The name of that white-haired herogeneral was in every mouth” (23). There are signs of sympathy with the fate of his men
and of his realization that those days of the past are gone for ever. When he hears laughter
of merriment after a funny joke told by the drummer, he smiles in satisfaction and shares
his bread and butter with the men, although in a slightly condescending manner. He doubts
the rules of the old order of pre-war society and reveals these doubts in his diary, his
“second self” which plays a crucial role in his existence. When it gets momentarily lost,
together with the plan of attack, the Captain completely loses his head and considers
suicide. The plan of attack might be betrayed to the enemy and he court-martialled. Foreseeing the trial, he justifies the private entries before an imaginary court. So much pathos
is followed by a scene of bathos: a driver squatting beside his horse is about to use the
62
Cf. Walther Küchler: Romain Rolland, Henry (sic!) Barbusse, Fritz von Unruh: Vier Vorträge (Würzburg:
1919) (Frankfurt: 1949).
63
W. Beumelburg: Gruppe Bosemüller, 1930.
31
papers for toilet purposes when they are saved from under his bottom by Hillbrand, and
the diary is also found. Closely connected with his diary in its symbolism is Werner’s
uniform. In a night scene, overcome with the feeling of approaching spring, he takes off
his tunic. The uniform represents suppression of freedom, of emotion, of democratic rights
and is addressed by Werner accordingly. Filled with the new spirit, Werner decides to tell
his men that they will be storm troop, will form the first wave of attack on Verdun, and the
men take it quite well; scenes of wild drinking accompanied by comments of gallow’s
humour follow the announcement. But in the same night, during a conversation with
Clemens, he seems to revert to a traditional attitude of duty and of war as a natural force
that cannot be stopped. Yet his final sentence, after Clemens has left him, reveals to us
that he shares the other man’s feelings. The attack on the enemy trenches (which as a
whole is more archaic than realistic) shows the Hauptmann once again in an emotional
(unprofessional?) attitude: Werner walks unarmed, fists clenched, before his troops in
silence. The emotional mood continues after Beaumont has been taken by his men. He
first steps up to the dead Hillbrand, then (shedding tears) carries the unconscious drummer to the dressing-station. Afterwards he dashes round the village like a madman calling
names of his men (who can’t reply because they are dead) trembling so much that he has
to scream in the night. When he is stopped by his deputy, the curate, who announces
victory, he questions the success of their attack. He is killed when his company has repulsed an enemy attack, welcomes death (and makes sure that his newly found diaries are
torn up). The Hauptmann, as Unruh has drawn him, is not a realistic portrait of a professional career officer – he is far too emotional for that, but the author wishes to present a
vision of the new type of commander who will be able to do justice to his men and to
changed circumstances. Quite obviously von Werner is a reflex of Unruh’s own development from aristocratic militant Prussian preserver of the status quo to radical, democratic
pacifist.64
Sergeant Hillbrand is introduced as a caring father-figure. He “looked after his men
like a father. This was his delight” (5). During the march he helps the cadet by secretly
supporting the second gun Heinz has been ordered to carry as a punishment. He accepts
the war and its bloody consequences – “Joyously...go we the way of sacrifice” (7) – as he
(like many others) is convinced of it as a just cause: “...we fight the good fight” (12). He
is in constant communication with his pregnant wife, by letter or through nightly visions.
The letter characterizes him as a somewhat naive, trusting person, who believes that at the
end of suffering there will be a better fatherland. The same night, out on a windy height,
he feels his wife’s presence beside him, touches her swollen womb and exults at the thought
of new life. Contact with a Madonna, a sacred mother figure, seems to renew his energy as
if by miracle. Later, on the eve of the attack, he talks to his wife as though she were sitting
on his knees, consoling her, comparing this war to a necessary operation performed by a
doctor on a fatally sick patient: humanity. In the thick of the battle, because of their perfect communion, Hillbrand is aware of the birth of his son (127). Spurned by this vision of
his child, full of hate of the enemy that planned their destruction (“Ye would poison our
homes?...Defile our hearths?”) he tears off his tunic and “wrestled with naked paps against
the sulphurous, deadly fumes that reached out against him” (128) – another archaic scene
64
32
See Appendix I for details of Unruh’s biography.
– kills an attacking Frenchman with his bare hands, but is himself shot from behind by an
enemy sniper in the bell-tower.
Vizefeldwebel Clemens, a teacher, is Hillbrand’s closest friend in the company. He is
distinguished from the others by two qualities: he is a militant pacifist and he has the gift
of visions. When the company entrains in late January, it is he who knows immediately
that their destination will be Verdun (3). During the train journey, prompted by the sound
of wheels on iron, he has the first of many visions. He does not falter in his belief that the
war is madness, and repeatedly speaks about his determination to stop it. In his despair
Clemens even appeals to God from the pulpit for help:
Ah, thou Captive...didst Thou not promise a kingdom of heaven? Come and look at this
earth. Madness has smitten all men. If Thou livest, Thou that art dead, then arise! Thou that
didst still the sea, dam the flood of sin! Call out with us, who call hour by hour that this hell
pass away from our days! Lift the scourge! Cleanse the temple! Ah, money-changers and thieves
traffic in the soul of the world! (31)
The dialogue with the Hauptmann when he returns from the corps commander with
details of the attack is one of the central passages of the text. Werner does not quite share
the optimism of the Staff as regards success, but Clemens is much more radical and only
prepared to fight “if Verdun were but a promise!...That we were tearing the chain from
humanity’s neck!” (69–70) That is: no more war. Against Werner’s concept of Nature’s
law and duty he sets the vision of a new, emancipated brotherhood of man which has
broken the chains of tradition. Only in that context is the present war acceptable for him.
Clemens’ radical pacifism does not prevent him from being a brave soldier. We see him in
Beaumont “cleaning up” cellars; he has “already set over 300 prisoners marching” when
he learns about his friend Hillbrand’s death. After he has overcome his profound shock he
carries the body from the burning church under shelter, draws it on to his knee and talks to
his dead friend about days spent together in Heidelberg, days of romantic dreams, of
youthful optimism. The more the fighting continues, the more the soldier in Clemens
becomes active, although his visions do not vanish altogether. After Werner has been
killed and the curate been blinded he takes over. Clemens is the only one not to go home
when it is his turn for leave. He stays in billets but lives in a trance-like condition, having
visions of the drummer and of Heinz on home leave, both forlorn in a strange world that
does not or does not want to comprehend them. When the morning of the final attack
dawns – described as the glory of a new earth – Clemens resolutely tears his dream asunder and with a command to Kox (“Let us hurl fire into the earth!”) he leads his men
forward out of the trench (174).
Close to the three men mentioned so far in sensitivity and suffering is the Kellner, a
common soldier, who first attracts our attention by his inquisitiveness, his curiosity about
forthcoming events, which is forever frustrated by the authorities. He has heard from a
nurse that a hospital with a thousand beds has been put up and goes out at night to lift the
secret of the attack. In a depot full of military equipment he believes to find the answer.
Slipping under barbed wire he wounds his hands (”Everywhere metal sticking into one’s
flesh.” [13]) which, in retrospect, can be perceived as the beginning of his suffering. He
feels threatened by the piled-up arms. Feeling his own impotence against the machinery
of war, he uses the little power he has against flies whose wings he burns in the candleflame. When he tries to stop the passing-by seventeen-inch batteries, he is nearly killed by
them; his mental instability already shows. From then on he will be in and out of hospital,
33
suffering from paranoia, feeling threatened by armies of nails (34–35), by entanglements
of barbed wire with which he will be associated till the very end. Nails and wire, first only
connected with military use, are gradually fused with Christian symbolism.
Comic relief from so much suffering is provided by two characters who have been
given the role of “clowns”. One of them is Preis, the drummer. Introduced as one who
initially commands some respect because he once saved his captain’s life, he soon turns
out to be a notorious womanizer and braggard as regards his military exploits. He keeps
the company amused with funny stories, but occasionally the laughter is at his expense:
when he returns from one of his outings his face all scratched (nobody believes that he
had a fight with a cat), or when he is repeatedly “taken short” because of diarrhoea (too
much beer), and has to relieve himself behind a tree. He develops quite a taste for military
decorations, dreams of the Pour le Mérite or at least the Iron Cross. When he is sent out
to reconnoitre, his rebelling bowels again get the better of him and full of panic he flees
into a dugout occupied by a Frenchman, who is even more frightened than himself. He
sends him back as his prisoner and returns to a hero’s welcome, claiming that he is the
only survivor. But when his comrade Hillbrand is shot by an enemy sniper, Preis” more
courageous self comes to the fore. Cold with rage and revenge he climbs the bell-loft
where he finds the Frenchman, “terrified to the marrow”, putting up his hands in surrender, but to no avail; he is beaten to death with “the company’s most sacred storm-music”,
the drum. Preis later returns to the church to make peace with his dead enemy and to
recover his drum-hoop (138). He feels incomplete without his instrument and among the
debris of bombarded houses in Beaumont looks for a replacement, but in vain.
The occupation of a drummer in this highly mechanized campaign seems somewhat
out of place, obsolete, but the drum is an old accessory of war and assumes symbolic
status. In the introductory chapter we hear Preis drum the company into step:
As he played, he whistled, “Friedericus Rex, our king and master,” and curved his thighs
against the drum, that the cloth of his breeches grew tight. From the boot-soles of his comrades
sounded rude, lusty rhythm. Legs straddled as they marched on, weightily gaining space. (19)
When the company attacks at Zero Hour, the drummer is part of the archaic tableau
referred to above (p. 26).
The second “clown” is Fips, the cook, a civilian at heart who has no pretension of
valour in wartime. He detests the Verdun scenario and wishes he was back in Greece. He
tries to be a competent cook providing his company with hot meals even during the attack.
An educated man, he quotes Latin (96) and drops allusions to his days as chef to the King
of Greece. He is familiar with the name of Verdun, but in a different context (which as it
turns out is not so far from his new reality), namely as a brand name for “the best oven for
roasting ever known to man”. During the attack, while he and his driver are moving forward with the field cooker, he meditates on the devastation around them in Caures Wood
and puts the present action into historical perspective:
Dear contemporary, we should do wiser to halt here; it looks to me very much as though
France had her eye on our dixie, and I venture to say that the sight of burning Troy can challenge comparison with this asparagus wood. And if you insist on driving on farther, do it on
your own responsibility, although the horses, in view of the fact that they are delivered helpless
to human despotism, seem to me to deserve a plea... (97)
34
What makes Fips funny is his incongruously elevated language, his unique historical
analysis, and the candour with which he admits that he is no hero, but a selfish person who
wants to survive this mess. But he is not as egotistical as he makes himself sound here.
When Preis” stomach is in an uproar again, he provides medical help in the form of a
bottle of brandy, and when he sees the waiter arrive just before the attack is scheduled, he
manages to get him out of the way before anyone has seen him (97). There is a postscript
to Fips. When Unruh was invited to speak at the Pen Club in Paris in 1924, the dinner
there was prepared by a similarly literate French chef (for a year d’Annunzio’s cook) who
had read the book and believed that his cousin in Athens might have served as a model for
Fips. He wanted to make contact with the writer, so one of the waitresses secretly passed
a message to Unruh asking him to look up to the gallery where he saw the cook gazing at
him with such intensity and “longing to be freed from the prison of his soul” that Unruh
dropped his spoon.65
Kriegsfreiwilliger Heinz is the most sensitive and inexperienced member of the company, who gets excited when the train passes by the town of Sedan, remembering the
German victory there during the war of 1870–71; none of the others care. He looks after
a wounded bird and must learn how to kill: he practises bayonet-attack on a dead cat, an
experience he finds most disgusting and wishes that wasn’t necessary. The same night he
is confronted with a demented officer who wants to be buried; Heinz runs away horrified
(47). He is still very close to his mother and in the night before the action communicates
with her in his dream. For the attack he is detailed as a runner because of his young and
fast legs and on that occasion kills for the first time, driving “his bare bayonet into three
French breasts” (123). The following night, in Caures Wood, he speaks to his mother
again, laments the destruction of forests, of nature (”Like a shrieking giant the wounded
forest stood there” [124]), and has a reminder of past and future events:
Scent of blood came from his dagger. He shivered as in fever. Three bloody human faces
stared at him. He shrank from them in hot despair and looked forward to darkling Beaumont.
(125)
The “dagger” (a bayonet, really), a present from his Hauptmann, is another one of
those symbols of war; the cadet still has problems coming to terms with the more bloody
aspects of it. When the surviving men of the company have repulsed yet another French
attack he wishes for “a direct hit to blow him into atoms” (155). Like Lady Macbeth he
sees blood which reminds him of his guilt:
Trembling, he looked on his dagger, the trophy of Dixmude and Langemarck. The blood
would not vanish from the blade. “Mother, can I meet your eyes again?” Blood, shrieks, shots,
the crash of explosives, clutched at his soul like the brands of hell. Suddenly he drove his
dagger into the soft bark of a treestump. (155–156)
Heinz’ rhetorical question points forward to the end of the story: he is home on leave
and faces his mother who is utterly devastated when she learns what he has done.66
F. von Unruh: Flügel der Nike (Frankfurt: 1925), pp. 137–138, 148.
A comparison of this scene in both versions of the text shows how decisively Unruh has changed the
ideological direction of his story: In Verdun (whose final chapter carries the title “Sieg” [Victory]) the cadet’s
mother receives her son’s bayonet full of reverence and solemnly places it next to her Bible (p. 82). Cf.
Kasang, p. 299.
65
66
35
Caesar Schmidt and Kox are two minor characters who seem to walk in and out during
the story. Schmidt, an actor in civilian life, is attached to a different company. When we
meet him for the first time his behaviour is somewhat strange: “in the middle of the marketplace...he is pacing with slow steps and folded arms, a square some two yards across”
(24). When the others make fun of him because of his profession (actor), he reminds them
that they are all actors, have been given a part in a play for which the Hauptmann provides the title: Verdun. Now the secret is out, and laughter gives way to grave, questioning
miens. Schmidt refers to himself as a European but accepts war as destiny. He has become
friendly with Preis, whose sense of humour he appreciates, and as a parting gift makes
him a present of a play he has written: “The Battle of the Crickets and Beetles against the
State of the Ants”. In the final chapter Schmidt turns up again. He has played his part well,
has lived up to his militant first name,67 has taken part in the attack on Fort Vaux in which
many of his comrades have lost their lives and he himself the use of his legs which must be
amputated. He finds his pal, the drummer, again and their conversation shows that their
sense of humour has not quite left them.
Kox has been attached to the company fairly recently as an engineer68 and specialist in
high explosives. He is a war veteran, sports a silver death’s-head on his cap as a badge of
the Argonne campaign (1914–15). When provoked by the excited drummer he keeps his
calm; besides, his gleaming badge seems to exercise a magic power over his enemies:
“Hands off, that’s the Argonne corps, blast you. Don’t dirty it. That’s got to be white for
Verdun, that the French shriek and chatter their teeth before it!” (26)
The charm also seems to work on the drummer who shrinks back and turns from it. By
nature and occupation Kox is a loner; in perpetual close contact with death in all its
horrendous varieties he keeps aloof from raw infantry troops:
Kox, unperturbed, was arranging his engines of destruction with provocative calm: light
trench-mortars, high-explosive charges, containers for flame-throwers and gas. Then he buttoned the tarpaulin carefully over the wagon, went forward to the horses, took the bit, and led
them away from the infantry with an encouraging “Hey-up,” flinging over his shoulder: “Wait
till you’ve seen a Frenchman. Why don’t you learn drumming with mines, you calf-drummer?”
(26–27)
Á propos mines, there is one moment when Kox’ reputation suffers a bad blow: The
mine he has been told (105) to explode immediately before the troops attack at zero hour,
does not go off. This means that the company must “advance over that surface that might
burst under them at any moment” (121–122). But he makes up for it later when he blows
the enemy into surrender (160). His condescension towards his comrades is still very
obvious; he believes more in dynamite than in the efficiency of the infantry. At the final
attack we meet Kox once more, successfully in command of the situation: His greatest
67
There is something incongruous about the combination of heroic first name (with connotations of
military prowess) and a very common surname like Schmidt, which gives the person a humorous aspect.
68
The translation of the German Pioneer in a military context as “pioneer”, as Macartney
does throughout the text, appears to me doubtful. I replace it by “engineer” (“sapper” perhaps another
alternative), unless in a quotation.
36
wish has been granted; he has been allocated “a load of dynamite big enough to deal with
anything not built of granite” (174). Unlike the drummer whose keenness for a medal is
not matched by his bravery (see the reconnaissance), Kox is full of quiet courage, but
seemingly without ambition. While Preis stoops to pocket an Iron Cross belonging to a
dead comrade, Kox reappears to the surprised drummer (who believes him to be dead) in
conquered Beaumont sporting the same decoration on his tattered tunic, but his has been
well-earned (133).
In the four chapters the generals, including the Crown Prince, nominal commander of
the German forces before Verdun (V. Army), remain in the background, the main action
centering round the fate of the storm company. While many of the ordinary soldiers are
mere victims of orders and circumstances69 the three leaders of the company, Werner,
Hillbrand, Clemens combine action and reflection more than anybody else. Their attitude
to war allows us to draw conclusions as to the author’s own military point of view. There
are three patterns visible which are combined by the idea of unity born in the war: for
Hillbrand war is a fateful act of nature, Werner believes the contrast between heroic individual and the masses will be overcome in an organic body of the people, Clemens sees
material existence transposed into spiritual life. The notion of war as a natural/organic
event points forward to such war authors as Ernst Jünger, Franz Schauwecker, Werner
Beumelburg, Josef Magnus Wehner. Battle is portrayed as an eruption of elemental energies in which not political/social forces clash but forces of nature, and war as a whole is
interpreted as an organic process; a historic event is thus reduced to an act of mythical,
prehistoric nature no longer open to scrutiny and criticism.
Language, style, imagery
Language, style and imagery reflect this interpretation of events. The dynamics of the
preparation, of the attack are described in vocabulary full of thrust and power, in metaphors of flame and fire. By means of animal metaphor Unruh shows how elemental forces
and urges are released in the fighting men.70 They become bloodthirsty predators:
In tensest excitement, lovely as a crouching panther, Clemens threw
bombs into blue heaps... (122)
Werner...turning his head like an eagle,...sprayed waves of coolness
and energy over the attack. (122)
The bodies of the company crouched like tigers about to spring under
the steel song of rushing fuses, to leap upon Beaumont and Hill 344. (127)
Like neighing steeds that guess at triumph behind them, each man
fretted at the curb. (127–28)
69
I do not quite agree with Kasang’s claim that to a great extent the ordinary soldiers are portrayed as
victims of events incapable of comprehension (266). Men like the Cook, the Waiter, the Actor do comprehend what is going on.
70
Ernst Jünger, in the 1920s, made frequent use of this type of metaphor to describe the German soldier,
cf. Karl Prümm: Die Literatur des Soldatischen Nationalismus der 20er Jahre (1918–1933) (Kronberg:
1974).
37
The battle scene culminates in Hillbrand killing a Frenchman with his bare hands:
Hillbrand ran, the last sun in his hair, through fiery waves of burning streets...He lifted his
adversary’s lissom body from the ground and sent him crashing backwards on to the stones,
that blood gashed out over his tongue. Then he gripped the Frenchman’s hairy neck with straining arms, with raging fingers... (128–29)
Unruh’s syntax supports the dynamics of the action. It is characterized by short, rushing paratactic sentences, frequently elliptic, and creation of a new vocabulary. An example from the first chapter conveying the energy of the German advance through the
power and thrust of a railway engine:
Wheels on metals! Metals on wheels! Rush of the steam in pipes and cylinders, groaning
and exulting!...purposeful flight of millions of atoms! Taming discipline, commanding spirit!
Iron on iron, flying strength! (5)
The same energy grips the men and fuses their individual hopes and wishes into one:
From the boot-soles of his comrades sounded rude, lusty rhythm. Legs straddled as they
marched on, weightily gaining space. Within the groups was steam of bodies and tang of earth...
Exultation swung arms towards the home they left behind them. Meadows and woods, mills
and running water, we overtook them swiftly. As the milestones were conquered in turn, our
own hopes fled away. One hope prevailed. (19–20)
Paratactic syntax, shortening of sentences through nominal construction, participles,
elliptic sentences create a density of language, a compactness, which expresses the power
and dynamics of the German war machine on its way to Verdun, and later, of the attack.
The contraction of adverbial phrases into one word, a stylistic feature throughout the text,
as well as newly-created compound nouns, support this as well. Here are some examples
from the original with the English translation:
9
10
16
19
13
14
25
42
153
feindgeschleudert
sternenweit
eng maueran
zitterjubelnd
Kugelweg
Bluttennen
verpelzte Offiziere
knospendrall
Finsterblut
3
4
9
11
6
7
16
30
128
“hurled foe-ward”
“at the distant stars”
“so close against a wall”
“trembling-exultant”
“bullet-way”
“threshing-floors of blood”
“befurred officers”
“full with bud”
“black blood”
Linguistically and stylistically Unruh has created a major example of Expressionist
Literature (why it falls short of being a masterpiece will be discussed at the end of this
chapter). The text displays typical features of that literary movement which flourished
particularly in Germany between 1910 and 1925, not only in language and style, but also
in contents: the search for a new meaning in life, protest against the pre-war bourgeois
complacency.71 What critics (Durzak and others) have overlooked is the fact that in Unruh’s
71
“Das Streben nach Erneuerung, Verwesentlichung des Menschen und neuer Sinngebung des Daseins...”,
in: G. von Wilpert: Sachwörterbuch der Literatur (Stuttgart: 1961), p. 170.
38
text this style is not necessarily expression of a pacifist attitude, but serves to give the
German attack on Verdun heroic and monumental stature. We are reminded of Vorticism
in Britain and Marinetti’s Futurismo in Italy, both aggressive movements, particularly the
latter with its apotheosis of war.
The concept of war as a natural force represented by Hillbrand is expressed in the
ancient organic metaphor of rivers and ships hastening towards the sea, here a kind of
symbolic leitmotif whose development reflects and interprets the progress of action. During the transport from the north of France to Verdun Hillbrand writes to his wife:
It is as though our noses and lungs were filled with salt tang. Yet we see not the ocean. So we
go, and look out to the horizon. Knowest what this sea means to the fighter? Battle-storm we
feel it; but beyond the waves? (7)
During the march, a little later and somewhat closer to Verdun, we find Hillbrand
reading a sign mounted on a pole:
“Boundary of L. of C. area...”72 and looked on it as the seafarer looks on the last houses
when the stream grows broader and the ocean drives first movement into its mouth. (21)
Before the battle Clemens experiences the turmoil of advancing troops “like the plashing
of a thousand brooks hurrying to the sea” (31). In the following chapter, the “ship” of the
fighting men has already reached the ocean:
As waves against a ship’s sides, the breathing sleep of the company beat against the wooden
walls of the camp. (67)
During battle, the men appear completely lost and absorbed in the dynamics of the sea
which transcends individual strength:
Wie man im Meer aufjauchzt, wenn Welle uns aufhebt und wir, eigene Kraft verlierend, den
Ocean fühlen, so ließ sich die Mannschaft mitreißen im verschanzten Walddickicht.73
(Verdun 68)
(As one whoops with joy when a wave lifts us up and we, losing our own strength, feel the
ocean, so the men let themselves be carried along in the fortified thick of the forest.)
And a last example, from the final passage of the text:
New regiments moved up, others were relieved and drawn out of the line... Like ships that
pass one another, these entering harbour, those the tempest, so they saluted one another. (166)
War seen as a synthesis of currents of life which, in peace time, were disconnected.
Individual life may be destroyed in the process but during absorption into the whole experiences an intensity of life never felt before. For Kasang this idea of unity clearly has
apologetic function as regards war.74 The idea of unity, propagated by the authorities in
In the German original : Grenze des Etappengebiets = Boundary of Communication Zone
Deleted in the Opfergang text. Cf. Kasang, p. 272.
74
Kasang, p. 272.
72
73
39
Germany (and elsewhere), had the purpose of overcoming (covering up?) existing conflicts of class in society and of creating a new Volksgemeinschaft, a national community.75
In Opfergang it is Hillbrand and, above all, the Hauptmann who expresses relevant
sentiments, and who combines a number of Unruh’s own biographical traits: the greatgrandfather at the battle of Jena, the keeping of a diary, the being rooted in the Prussian
military tradition. Declaring the people as the makers of history replaces Unruh’s pre-war
belief in Treitschke’s dictum that it is men who shape history. It follows that a central
heroic character is no longer required. The main characters speak as representatives of a
fighting people. This, however, does not mean that a change of history through many will
take place; according to Unruh’s concept of history (war as a force of nature) it rather
means that laws of nature have an effect on the people: “Mightier than spring, sap stirs in
thy people.” Volk becomes a mythical force, a notion foreshadowing the nationalist ideology of right-wing politics in Germany.76 What qualifies it for such a role is the fact that it
is prepared to overcome material and sensual greed and is willing to make sacrifices
(Kasang’s “heroischer Opferidealismus”).
More abstract, less clear in its social relevance than Werner’s is the idealism of Clemens.
What characterizes for him the new element of the age is not so much the willing sacrifice
of the people (by which the former separation of hero/people is lifted), but a striving for
a more spiritual life (Das Streben in den Geist). He is prepared to accept war with its
horrors if it leads to a purification of the minds:
Body become the temple of the soul again! Were Verdun that promise, then henceforth let
every inch go armed! Away with ruth!...Ah, ye peoples of the earth – unless the light of your
spirit is the price – then all this power has been shot off in vain!...Woe to him who bars our way!
(71)
What Clemens is proclaiming here is exactly what will happen to him in the course of
action: The more he is drawn into military action the stronger his inner vision becomes
and in turn the more determined does he become as a fighter, surpassing all his comrades
including Hillbrand and Werner. He rejects home leave (despising the superficial/empty
amusements of people who ignore war and are unaware that they are dancing on a volcano), identifies completely with the battle and thus transcends all material life:
Clemens lived in the spirit. Hunger and thirst he mastered. Reality he saw no more. (172)
The final sentence of the text reads:
On his resolute brow full morning shone as he carried the company forward out of the trench
– more than three yards. (174)
Durzak (and other critics) interpret this statement as an expression of the “absurdity of
war” which is “documented without comment and because of that more convincingly”.77
75
Cf. the Kaiser’s famous statement at the outbreak of war: “Ich kenne keine Parteien und keine
Konfessionen mehr; wir sind heute alle deutsche Brüder und nur noch deutsche Brüder.” Quoted from
Diether Raff: Deutsche Geschichte (München: 1994), p. 263.
76
Cf. Kasang, p. 274.
77
Quoted in Kasang, p. 277.
40
Kasang reminds us that the aim of the Verdun campaign was not so much territorial gains
but the “bleeding white” of the enemy. Clemens in the end has become the perfect Verdun
soldier fighting for the sake of fighting and for the mental ecstasy it provides. The final
tableau shows Clemens and Kox, the homo faber for whom “victory is a handicraft like
every other trade” (134). Together they symbolize the synthesis of mind (vision) and war
machinery, the two strands which make up Unruh’s tale.
It is hardly surprising that a book dealing with heroic sacrifice should contain elements
of religious imagery and language. The very title Opfergang – Alvin Kronacher translates
it as The Road to Calvary78 – alludes to the sacrificial death of Jesus. In the German text
there is a variation on the title made by Hillbrand : “Fröhlich,...wir gehen den Ostergang”
(14) (“Joyously...go we the way of sacrifice”[7]). Actions and ideas of the main characters are frequently associated with religious language/metaphor, the setting quite often a
religious precinct, usually a church.79 There is Biblical language from the vicar as can be
expected. “Are we passing through Gethsemane?” he asks, looking up from his Bible, to
give expression to the mental torture for the troops when the attack has been postponed
once again (100). And early in the text he utters his criticism of nationalized religion in
war time in suitable terms:
...when the Babel of our fleshly life was built, our senses were confounded again, so that
there is no more understanding; today we have a French God, a German God, a Russian, an
English, and so on. (29)
Less direct, and therefore more interesting, are allusive references. When the 17-inch
howitzers are moved through the town at night, tearing up the pavement and destroying
every obstacle in their way, including human bodies, they are invested with features of
monsters, Höllenmaschinen (“night-goblins”) and the reactions of the awe-struck onlookers
bears semblance to a crowd watching a procession of juggernauts (17–18).
Preis is associated with the drum and the Iron Cross; the Christian connotations of both
become ever more obvious in the course of the text. In Beaumont he drums “as if the walls
of Jericho should fall down” (129), in the bell-tower of the church he kills the French
sniper with his drum (129), later returns there to make peace with his dead enemy (137)
and to recover the remains of his instrument which he then offers up at the altar:
...the church where burning beams cast a solemn glow. The drummer was kneeling at the
altar. The drum-hoop glimmered under his head, bowed in prayer. (139)
Here Preis is portrayed not as the frivolous jester and braggard; the halo of a saint is
more than hinted at in this tableau. A little later a miracle takes place: The sound of a
drum is heard from the church sounding the alarm, although the instrument left there is all
in tatters (149). In the final chapter, suitably named “The Way of Sacrifice’, Preis and the
cadet bury the statue of the Saviour together with the Iron Cross thus reinforcing the
sacrificial aspect of the decoration. Here sacrificial in two ways: One normally is awarded
the decoration for risking one’s life. Preis makes a sacrifice by parting with something
78
79
A. Kronacher, p. 63.
Church as setting at least eight times: p. 29, 30–32, 78, 129, 137–39, 143, 149, 169.
41
which he has not earned, but would have liked to keep: “Lordy, yes, Heinz, I’d given
anything to have been taking that home” (171). Preis has matured. The pietà allusion and
the miraculous are present, too, in this scene:
The cadet took the Saviour in his arms. Timidly and cautiously he laid him down on melting
snow. Fragrant flowers were shooting up. (171)
Similar pietà tableaux are connected with Werner and Clemens. In Beaumont, Werner
carries the seemingly lifeless body of Preis from the church and his tears reanimate the
unconscious drummer (130), shortly afterwards Clemens holds the corpse of his friend
Hillbrand in his arms to lament his death (131). Werner is killed in the second attack, dies
in the arms of Clemens (161). Shortly before, Fips, who longs after the blue Mediterranean sky, has an “epiphany” in a church (a sentimental scene, dangerously close to kitsch):
In a window an angel shone. He climbed down out of infinite blue sky and touched not with
his tender feet the violets and anemones in the grass... Blue sky streamed over him like warmth
and health... (149)
Heinz is at the centre of a Communion scene: Jesus with his disciples:
Then the cadet...took out the white arm-band from its tissue-paper and fastened it on his
sleeve. The others followed his example, all except one... The cadet gave each a bit of bread
that his mother had baked for him. (65)
His initiation into killing other human beings is expressed in biblical language:
And it came to pass that, seeing comrades fall beside him, struck by fire from a blockhouse,
he rushed in and drove his bare bayonet into three French breasts. (123)
Beaumont, the objective of their attack, has for him the appearance of evil personified:
Magical, devilish, the goal of their attack grinned back. Like a magic mountain it sprayed
ceaseless arrows of fire and balls of light into the darkness. (125)
The most impressive character in the context of religious imagery is the Kellner. Suffering from paranoia from an early stage, feeling under perpetual threat from nails and
barbed wire, he is most closely associated with Christ’s Passion. He has visions of nails
being driven into him (34), believes that he must free the world from barbed wire. Diagnosed by the doctors as mentally deranged, he spends time in dressing-stations (= churches),
is often to be found in the proximity of graveyards and wayside crosses. With two other
patients let out for the day he spends Zero Hour watching the artillery drumfire preceding
the attack. When the atmospheric pressure of the detonations loosens the nails at the
Saviour’s feet on the cross, the waiter first tries to nail them back into place, eventually
binds the feet to the cross with his braces. It is the same statue of the Crucified later buried
by Preis and the cadet. Two church scenes in the text mark stations of his quasi-religious
activity: In Merles Church he acts out the part of a surgeon promising to remove barbed
wire from imagined bodies occupying the beds of the dressing-station, finally lies down
on the operating table at the high altar where he is overwhelmed by a vision of bleeding
42
men. In his cry for help (”Where are you, where are you? Do you want to let us all bleed
to death?” [78–79]) Doctor and God have become one. The second scene, in the final
chapter, has the quality of a climax. This time the audience, the wounded, are real, not
merely imagined in his sick mind:
Suddenly all stared up at the pulpit. There stood the waiter. He held out a crown of thorns
over the church. “Look here, you sane people, I cut the barbed wire off the Saviour. What?
Who’s that grumbling? Wasn’t I right to do it? Look! I cut this barbed wire off His brow. You
sane people, why do you put up with it so long?” Then he collapsed. All that could be seen over
the hostile heads was the vision of the crown of thorns.80 (169–70)
Christ’s Passion and human suffering through war are equated in this scene. It is ironic
and moving that someone diagnosed as mentally deranged should ask this very reasonable and obvious question and indirectly urge mankind to shake off the tyranny of war.
Unruh as a visual artist
The visual impact of Unruh’s metaphors and tableaux is quite powerful. A look at his
biography shows that this is not accidental. The cadet at the military college in Plön was
a promising painter whom the Empress herself encouraged and sent to the art college in
Danzig to perfect his talent, but his father’s opposition forced him back into the strict
military discipline of Plön.81 In 1909 he won first prize at an art exhibition in Dresden
which enabled him to make a study trip to Egypt. During WWI he met the expressionist
sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck in Switzerland and tried his hand at plastic art.82 Many
years later, when Unruh had been forced into exile in the USA, painting became his second medium of expression. He was quite successful at it, Albert Einstein proving a most
helpful friend and contact. In Alvin Kronacher’s monograph there is an essay on “Unruh
the Painter” by Max Osborn, who was, like Unruh and Kronacher, an emigrant from
Germany. Surprisingly, he ignored (or was ignorant of) Unruh’s early talent and claimed:
Near the end of his fifties he was driven by a crushing experience to follow...an utterly
unfamiliar path. In the endeavour to steady a fearful tremor in his soul he took up – not his
accustomed pen – but utterly unfamiliar implements: paintbox and brushes. He produced his
first picture...83
The centenary catalogue of 1985 contains a list of paintings, earliest examples dating
from the first decade of this century. Among them an undated oil painting named “Never
Again” showing a soldier with a crown of thorns on his steel helmet seems particularly
fitting in our context (although obviously painted much later).84 In 1970, the first EuroBoth Hillbrand and Clemens have some of their intense moments in churches.
See Chapter “Der Maler Fritz von Unruh“ in the catalogue of the centenary exhibition, Wernfried
Schreiber (ed.): Fritz von Unruh: zum 100. Geburtstag und 15. Todestag, Katalog zur Ausstellung Stadtbibliothek Koblenz und Rathaus Diez (Koblenz: 1985), pp. 128–133.
82
There is a bust of Unruh by Lehmbruck; according to Osborn, Unruh in his turn, made one of the
sculptor shortly before his suicide in 1919.
83
Kronacher, p. 57.
84
Reproduced in the centenary catalogue, p. 132.
80
81
43
pean exhibition of Unruh’s paintings took place in Frankfurt/Main (at the “Galerie im
Rahmhof”).
The quality of Unruh’s text lies in the acute description of reality (including German
deserters, bad food, and diarrhoea) complemented by scenes of symbolism and vision
(another feature typical of Expressionism). There is high pathos followed by comic relief.
Not everyone shares my positive reaction to the text. Holger Klein finds this very mixture
unsatisfactory and claims that the men endure the horrors not without a certain amount of
pleasure.85 It is true that to modern readers the language may sound too pathetic and
stylized – as is the case with most representatives of the Expressionist Movement – but I
do not agree with Cyril Falls’ criticism of Unruh’s language; in my opinion it is grossly
exaggerated and superficial:
It is a celebrated and much-praised book which has to be included here, and doubtless those
who like this sort of thing will like it very much. For ourselves we could stand the soliloquy,
but when everyone, from officer to private talks in the same manner, we find ourselves growing
rather weary of it.86
I hope that I have been able to show that the characters do have their own language.
Incidentally, the most frequent phrase in the text (so obvious that we hardly need L. Harig’s
reminder) is the drummer’s omnipresent “Weiß der Kuckuck!”87 If Unruh’s text is not
quite satisfactory, it is so for reasons different from what Klein and Falls imply in their
judgement. The pacifist message is not as clear and straightforward as the author (and
most of the critics) want to make us believe. Due to incomplete alterations made in the
original version, there are inconsistencies which irritate the reader. What Klein describes
in his last sentence as “nicht ohne Lustrausch erlitten”, points to one such inconsistency:
While the company as a whole is decimated, the men portrayed fight with archaic lust and
courage (even the drummer) and appear to be quite successful at it. We remember that
originally the book was to end with a German victory.88 Further relevant items are the
ambivalent character of Clemens, part of the Biblical imagery (e.g. the walls of Jericho)
which reinforce the idea of this war as a “just cause” and a German victory as justified.
According to a preface in Verdun, later deleted, the text was to proclaim the “soul of
strength, of German strength of “all heroes” and precede the message: victory has been
won!”89
85
“Dagegen schwankt Unruhs Opfergang zwischen Bericht und Romanhaftem, wechselt zwischen
naturalistischen Schilderungen und atemlos hetzender, alptraumhaft drückender oder höllentrotzendhimmelstürmender Traumsprache, ja expressionistischem Schrei. Das Grauen von Verdun stürmt auf den
Leser ein, aber zugleich entsteht das Gefühl, daß es nicht ohne Lustrausch erlitten ist.” Holger Klein:
“Literarische Reaktionen auf den Ersten Weltkrieg”, in: Propyläen Geschichte der Literatur, vol. 6 (Frankfurt/Berlin/Vienna: 1982), p. 49.
86
Cyril Falls: War Books: A Critical Guide (London: 1930) p. 300.
87
L. Harig, p. 22. Translated as “Lordy / Heaven knows / Lordy knows / My God”. See pp. 4, 5, 12,14, 25
etc. for examples.
88
For details of the changes made from Verdun to Opfergang see D. Kasang: “Exkurs: Grundzüge der
Umarbeitung von Vor der Entscheidung und Verdun”, pp. 290–303.
89
Kasang, p. 298.
44
The Image of the Enemy
There is a discrepancy between the pacifist notion of a “brotherhood of all men” referred
to by Clemens on several occasions and the way Unruh portrays the enemy, the Frenchmen in their blue uniforms. The image he draws and the attitude behind this action are
part of a nationalist stratum that has survived, after he has “cleansed” the text of the most
obvious chauvinist slogans. As regards the French enemy, the tone is set right from the
start (a certain amount of repetition cannot be avoided in this context). The reader is
reminded with Heinz of the overwhelming German victory at Sedan in the Franco-German War of 1870–1871 (4), later in the chapter hungry French children are seen licking
bean-soup off the street, soup spilled from a German dixie (24). And shortly afterwards
Kox proudly shows off the silver death-head on his cap claiming that “the French shriek
and clatter their teeth before it!” And this is only the beginning. Throughout the text the
reader is shown that the poilu is no match for the German soldier; he is less civilised,
unclean, without fighting spirit, treacherous, fights dirty. Quite a contrast to the way Arnold
Zweig will later portray the French soldier in his novel about Verdun. During his reconnaissance in the enemy trenches Preis panics and jumps into a dug-out to relieve himself,
finds a Frenchman there doing the same, and yet manages to send him back to the German
line as his prisoner (108–109). Most of the relevant passages are to be found in the “Storm”
Chapter. When Heinz sees his comrades killed by enemy fire from a blockhouse he rushes
in and single-handed stabs three Frenchmen with his bayonet (123). Hillbrand, who kills
an enemy with his bare hands, is shot by a “treacherous dog” of sniper, who, “terrified to
the marrow, put up his hands” when confronted by Preis, the avenger (129). Those who
have not fled hide in cellars and dug-outs. This is a job for Clemens who has been shown
as a super-human fighter before when he “threw bombs into blue heaps, which hung on
their fate with staring eyes” (122). Now we see him in action together with Kox. He has
already “set over three hundred prisoners marching” and is now “cleaning up” the last,
“heavily fortified” dugout. German courage is effectively contrasted with French sloppiness, lack of morale; vermin and malodorous smell adding to the characterization:
Twenty-five Frenchmen, seated on plank beds, were smoking, dicing, and playing backgammon as though the whole battle concerned them not. Rats big as cats leaped round between
their legs. Sickening air assailed nostrils and gums. Indifference faced threat. (130–131)
As a rule, we read only about French prisoners in the text. At Beaumont, one soldier
informs his comrades (and us) of “Nearly a thousand prisoners. Now let the church bells
ring and all Frankfurt go beflagged!” (134) In the next attack cold-blooded German efficiency can only be stopped, temporarily, by French treachery which is duly punished
(there is even time for a bit of grim humour coming from Preis):
Blue over the trenches appeared the enemy. With quiet hand the curate worked a machinegun, traversing along the front wave of the attack. One man after another fell... Kox sent his
mine up. Several human limbs flew over the company’s heads. “Lordy, can’t they keep their
limbs together, blast them?” grumbled the drummer, as an arm hit him on the nose. The red
stalks of the hand-grenades darted like small flames between the trenches. “They are putting up
their hands!” Werner leaped up. Towards him came slowly a white, ghastly wall. He shrank
back. “Gas masks!...” He blew his whistle over them...and the company groaned forward till
the foe fell on their bayonets. (160)
45
These martial scenes appear to belong to a text whose last chapter was headed “Victory”; they are in in marked contrast to the process of decimation within the company
(which logically leads to a final chapter “The Way of Sacrifice”) from 300 strong in the
first chapter down to fewer than forty in the final passages. One critic, Kasang, even
claims that at the end only Clemens and Kox are left. 90 If he is referring to the original
version, he may be right, although it would not fit logically to the German victory. For the
Opfergang version his interpretation is contradicted by the very text: “On his [Clemens’]
resolute brow full morning shone, as he carried the company forward out of the trench –
more than three yards” (174).
The Crown Prince
According to Kasang, the figure of the Crown Prince played a central role in the Verdun
version; he personified Werner’s (= Unruh’s) hopes and ideas of a future monarchy after
the war. Most of the cuts made in the text for the new edition referred to the Crown Prince
(he was not completely cut out, though, as Kasang claims), 91 so many that HRH accused
his former protegé92 of opportunism. Unruh’s reply,93 in which he tried to justify the deletions (Major Nicolai, according to the author, protested against all the relevant passages
and claimed that the way Unruh portrayed the Crown Prince was a distortion) is illuminating: Unruh did homage to the Hohenzollern heir at a time when this was no longer politically correct for a writer serving the Republic. But at the same time, he insisted on Nicolai’s
orders which could have been ignored after 1918 since he had no longer any power. It was
an excuse and not a very convincing one. So the letter shows Unruh vacillating between
monarchy and republic, opportunistically trying to please both sides. This is also reflected
in Opfergang. On the one hand there are revolutionary phrases (inserted as a tribute to the
new Zeitgeist) – Clemens protesting against being ruled by “thrones” and “dotards”:
That which sat on thrones behind, sits now at telephones, pale and quaking, and watches
us... In us lives youth! Behind us the dotards! (156–157)
On the other hand there is a passage which has survived the republican fervour of the
author. The scene, part of the first chapter, takes place at night. ‘Befurred’ officers pass by
in motorcars and are asked by a soldier on guard-duty the purpose and goal of their journey:
Hillbrand stepped forward out of the night and asked: “Who were those?” “The Crown
Prince, of course,” and laughter echoed behind the guard-room’s closed door. Then the sergeant touched the track of the tire with his hand and went back to his quarters, murmuring with
emotion: “Thou Prince of the Crown!” He covered the cadet with his cloak and sat down on a
heap of fir branches. From his helmet he took the badges94 and looked at the eagle. “Holy bird
Kasang, p. 278.
Kasang, p. 300.
See Appendix I for biographical details.
93
Reprinted in Kasang, p. 301.
94
Misunderstood by the translator. The German text reads: “Von seinem Helm zog er den Bezug [cover]
und schaute den Adler an.” The German spiked helmet (Pickelhaube) could be camouflaged by a grey canvas
cover and the spike unscrewed. Predecessor of the steel helmet issued in 1916, very popular as a souvenir
with the Allied forces. Symbol of German militarism.
90
91
92
46
of Jupiter, Charlemagne destined thee once in Verdun, nigh twelve hundred years ago, to be
symbol of our might. Secret associations are at work.” Intoxicated by the consciousness of
mighty events, he stretched his hands to the window. “The people whose citizen I am needs no
symbols more.” – On his rifle fell dull light; out of the darkness it glimmered like a holy flame.
(16–17)
A perfect scene of homage, with the appropriate gestures (almost of worship) and the
appropriate emotional language. The simile in the final sentence reinforces the quasireligious aspect of the passage.
Translation
Like all Expressionist literature, Unruh’s text is not easy to translate, for reasons mentioned earlier in the chapter. On the whole, C. A. Macartney, the translator, has done quite
well. What does get lost, however, in the translation to a large extent are the newlycreated words and compounds:
(42) stammauf – “which thrusts its trunk mightily upward” (30)
(14) Bluttennen – “threshing-floors of blood” (7)
That he has attempted to preserve them, whenever possible, is documented by successful examples like the following:
(19) zitterjubelnd – “trembling-exultant” (11)
(19) Blutfahnen – “blood-flags” (11)
(25) verpelzte Offiziere – “befurred officers” (16)
(13) Kugelweg – “bullet-way” (6)
There are several instances (to some of which I have referred before) where the translator has obviously not quite or not at all caught the meaning of the German text:
(11) “...heulst du, Heinz?” Macartney: “...what are you shouting for, Heinz?” (4)
should read: “...are you crying, Heinz?”
(14) “Weib, bereite das Haus wohl.” M.: “Woman, garnish well the house.”(7) better:
“....prepare the house well.” (Make sure the house is ready) (25–26) see footnote 47.
(29) “Eigenen Kummer hatte er mit Wasser abgeschlagen”. M.: “His own trouble
he had rid with water.” (19) clearer: “His own trouble he had got rid of by passing
water (urinating).’
(164) “Gib mir deine Flosse her, Bengel.” M.: “Give me those floats of yours, lad.”
should read: “Give me your paw, lad.”
A review of C. A. Macartney’s English translation appeared anonymously in The Times
Literary Supplement shortly after its publication on 5 July 1928.95 The reviewer was
95
TLS, Thursday, July 19, 1928, p. 532.
47
generous with his praise of Unruh, but realistic enough as to the reception of his “novel”
in Britain:
There follow his greatest works, “The Way of Sacrifice,” a novel, and the unfinished dramatic trilogy, Ein Geschlecht... These two works represent his highest thought – we may say,
perhaps, the highest thought of post-War Germany... and although it is doubtful that they will
ever be popular in England on account of their extreme subjectivity, yet they carry a message
from Germany to the world which should not be neglected.96
In his comment on Unruh’s style he referred to the familiar characteristic features (collected by me earlier in this chapter), stated with regret (like myself) that “the synthetic
words of the original must lose some of their strength in the longer phrasing of the English.” He was more generous than myself (or simply unaware?) as regards obvious faults
in the translation, for he made no mention of any. On the whole, however, I agree with the
critic in his concluding sentences:
The translation reads well, if the necessary concentration be given, and the book deserves a
wide welcome in England, both for its art and for the greatness of its leading thought.97
An earlier translation of Opfergang into French, with the more explicit title Verdun,
made by Jacques Benoist-Méchin,98 preceded by his translation of Unruh’s war diary
entries between 8 and 11 September 1914 (published in the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1920)99
made the French intellectuals familiar with this powerful pacifist voice from across the
Rhine; some of them may even have remembered that Romain Rolland’s international
Déclaration de l’Indépendance de l’Esprit published in L’Humanité in 1919 carried
Unruh’s signature (along with those of other prominent German/Austrian representatives,
e.g. Einstein, Hesse, Kollwitz, Werfel, Stefan Zweig, Heinrich Mann). The French accepted Verdun as a literary pacifist document100 and did not appear to mind some of the
chauvinist traces left over from the first draft (e.g. the rather negative portrait of the
poilu). There is no doubt that an emotional preface written by the author for the French
edition101 helped to reinforce the message. It was mainly due to Benoist-Méchin’s efforts
that in June 1924 Unruh was in Paris as a guest of the French PEN-Club, the first German
writer to be invited to France after the war. The literary result of this journey was his book
Flügel der Nike, published in 1925. Highlights of this visit were meetings with French
Verdun veterans, among them Duhamel, with Barbusse in his house outside Paris. He
visited England and during a short stay in Cambridge compared enviously his mindless
military training at Plön with the privileged liberal education of a St. John’s Fellow. In a
letter to Jacques (the translator who had become a friend) from England he told how he,
decorated with the Iron Cross at Verdun, was confronted during home leave with the
futility of decorations in the face of death (he watched a funeral procession going by: the
widow completely broken down, but an Iron Cross on a cushion carried in front of the
TLS, p. 532.
TLS, p. 532.
98
Published in Collection de la Révue Européenne, vol. 5, Spring 1924.
99
Fragments d’un journal de guerre de Fritz von Unruh in Nouvelle Révue Francaise, September 1922.
100
Review of Verdun by Alexandre Vialatte in Nouvelle Révue Francaise, June 1924, pp. 762–765.
101
Published in German by Unruh in his Politeia, 1932–33, pp. 106–107.
96
97
48
coffin), and with the contempt of the woman he loved for military pomp and ritual. After
much soul-searching he threw the decoration into a snowy field.102 The epilogue culminated in a visit by Unruh and his French friends (men and women) to the Grave of the
Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe where they pledged brotherhood and love,
and where the men renewed their vow of peace made at Verdun.
Unruh’s Opfergang and the critics
One of the earliest critical contributions was a series of four papers by Walther Küchler
given in Würzburg in May 1919.103 Küchler praised Unruh’s courageous stand for international peace and understanding at a time when the harsh conditions of the Versailles
Peace Treaty were made public in Germany. Küchler saw the text as a remedy in times of
national catastrophe, he contrasted Unruh’s idealism with the false gods the Germans had
worshipped too long. Comparing Unruh with Barbusse, he worked out the fundamental
differences in language, style, mental attitude behind their texts. (Forty years later, in
1949, after an even bigger collapse of civilization, Küchler’s papers were re-issued as he
believed they were still topical and salutary for the nations’s psychic regeneration.) Two
months later Edgar Groß104 praised the pacifist message of the text, but criticized exaggeration in the attacks on the Higher Command, on the Home Front, and, to a certain
extent, in the language (“Manches überschreitet in seiner Herbheit die Grenze des
Möglichen”) and concluded with a qualified compliment: “Keine ausgereifte, aber eine
Dichtung zukunftssicherer Männlichkeit.”105 (Not a mature work of fiction but one of a
manliness in no doubt about the future.) Three months later, Hanns Johst106 interpreted the
text as the outcry of youth against war and praised the author for being capable of instilling hope in spite of desperate facts.107 In March 1921, Rudolf Binding,108 a poet and
writer, published a study of Unruh in which he dealt mainly with the plays, but also referred briefly to Opfergang. He praised Unruh’s intensity, but also saw weaknesses, particularly in his drawing of characters, and he found too much use of allegory, even touches of
kitsch. This also applied in part to his prose text.109 Binding described Unruh as a manly,
aggressive poet, appreciated his idiosyncratic use of language and style, compared him to
a sculptor at work, carving words out of rock.110 During the War, stationed in West Flanders,
102
Flügel der Nike (Frankfurt: 1925), pp. 338–341. Cf. Siegfried Sassoon’s similar action (he threw his
Military Cross ribbon into the Mersey) but with a different motive: not sacrifice but protest against the
continuation of the war, see The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston (London: 1937), p. 621.
103
W. Küchler: Romain Rolland, Henry Barbusse, Fritz von Unruh (Würzburg: 1919; Frankfurt: 1949).
104
E. Groß: “Fritz von Unruhs erste Prosadichtung”, Das literarische Echo 21, vol. 19, 1 July 1919,
columns 115–161.
105
Groß, c. 1161.
106
H. Johst: “Resultate”, Die neue Rundschau 30, vol. 11, November 1919, pp.1384–1389. Unruh’s book
was one of eight reviewed, pp. 1387–1388. Johst, himself an Expressionist poet and playwright, later became
a leading literary figure in NS Germany. Cf. Joseph Wulf (ed.): Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich
(Gütersloh: 1963).
107
“Dieses Buches Krone aber ist: daß es über die Verzweiflung der Tatsachen die Sehnsucht und den
Glauben innerer Hoffnung zu stellen vermag.” Johst, p. 1388.
108
R. Binding: “Fritz von Unruh – Eine Studie”, Frankfurter Zeitung, 17 March 1921, pp. 1–2.
109
“Auf der Schärfe eines Grates bewegt er sich ebensowohl am Kitsch vorüber wie an der Allegorie, zu
der er manchmal eine geradezu gefährliche Neigung hat... Noch mehr erinnern mich manche Figuren der
einzigen Prosadichtung “Opfergang an allegorische Gebilde...”, pp. 1–2.
110
“Sprödes brüchiges Gequader steht manchmal in den Weg getürmt. Aber funkelnd, köstlich, fast schon
klassisch fügt sich deutsches Wort unter der bildnerischen Gewalt.”
49
Binding came across one of Unruh’s poems and commented favourably on it in his diary:
I read Fritz von Unruh’s poem on Roye; it really did me good. So magnificently careless and
casually powerful; not written for any market or any circle, but hewn out of Rage, Courage,
Necessity, and Pleasure – and slung together. I like it.111
In the same year the writer Paul Ernst attacked the playwright Unruh (and with him
other Expressionists, such as Kaiser, Hasenclever, Edschmid) as a “revolutionary philistine” who was only successful because he expressed the Zeitgeist, and prophecied that he
would be finished within the next few years (“Unruh wird in drei bis vier Jahren von
selbst erledigt sein...”).112
In 1931 Opfergang was re-issued, together with a long dramatic poem Vor der Entscheidung (Before the Decision), the result of his experience at the Marne in 1914 , ready
for printing in 1915 and, like the first text, decisively altered for post-war publication.
The writer Friedrich Sieburg (well-known in Germany for his sensitive books and essays
about France and its civilization) commented on Unruh’s prose text and on his post-war
commitment.113 For Sieburg, of all the writers of war fiction only Unruh and Barbusse
had, from different positions, pointed towards the future.114 In his opinion, the shaping of
the central event, the infantry attack on Verdun, was unsurpassed.115 According to Sieburg,
Unruh wanted to make the heroic element part of the new German state because he realized that Germans required a certain touch of the heroic, and if they couldn’t find it, they
would look for some kind of alternative. This point had been reached now, the false prophets
had claimed their places (1932).116 Sieburg saw Opfergang as one of the few remaining
centres of resistance that were left.
Although some of Unruh’s ideas appeared to be quite close to those representative of
the nationalist spirit and its National Socialist continuation, such as the concept of war as
a mythic force, fateful, destined by nature, the superiority of the German soldier, his
courageous and determined post-war stand against militarism, for international brotherhood and love across national boundaries made him an enemy of right-wing circles in
Germany. Hermann Pongs, university professor and leading figure in literary criticism
111
Rudolf Binding: A Fatalist at War (London: 1929), entry 13 July, 1916, p. 109. The poem was most
probably Unruh’s “In der Kirche von Roye” dating from 1914, published in the Berliner Tageblatt, 20 October 1914, cf. Kasang, Annotations, p. 571.
112
See P. Ernst: “Fritz von Unruh” and “Fritz v. Unruh und sein Verteidiger” in: Münchner Neueste
Nachrichten, 19 July 1921 and 3 September 1921. The quotation is from the later text.
113
In Frankfurter Zeitung, 13 March 1932. Reprinted in Fritz J. Raddatz (ed.): Friedrich Sieburg: Zur
Literatur 1924–1956 (Stuttgart: 1981), pp. 127–131.
114
“Nur der preußische Ulanenoffizier und der französische Kommunist haben, jeder aus einer anderen
Welt heraus, durch ihre Kriegsdichtungen die Zukunft bestimmt. Es liegt nicht an der Schwäche ihres
dichterischen Wortes, wenn die Welt von dem Wege in diese Zukunft abirrt.” Ibid. p. 128.
115
“Unruh ist bei der Gestaltung dieses Ereignisses von keinem Nachfolger je erreicht, geschweige denn
übertroffen worden. Er ist weder sentimental, noch naturalistisch, noch bedient er sich, wie sein bekanntester
Nachfolger [= Remarque], eines Gemischs aus diesen beiden Elementen. Die Schlacht ist fast völlig in den
Dialog der Männer aufgelöst und diese Männer sprechen nur von dem Einen, von dem Einzigen, was der
Schlacht Sinn gibt und das menschliche Herz vor dem Zerspringen bewahrt, nämlich von der Zukunft.” Ibid.
p. 128.
116
“Nun wohl, er hat Recht behalten. In die Lücke, auf die Unruhs Finger wies, sind die falschen Propheten
getreten, das Heldenhafte wurde durch die sklavische Lust zur blinden Unterwerfung, zum tauben Opfermut
ersetzt, und Deutschland taumelt dahin.” Ibid. p. 131.
50
between 1933 and 1945 was divided in his opinion about Unruh’s Opfergang. On the one
hand, he acknowledged the writer’s intrepid idealism, which he claimed as typically German (“urdeutsch”), contrasted him favourably with Barbusse’s Le Feu,117 praised the text
as the first powerful vision of the Materialschlacht,118 on the other hand he criticized this
heroism as isolated, not rooted in the community of the people, 119 and concluded with an
attack on the Expressionist Movement in general, whose members – disoriented creatures
– had lost their fatherland because they had fallen for the claptrap of the brotherhood of
man, and had been driven to express their war experience in bitter abstractions or in
uncontrolled visions.120 Helmut Hoffmann, in his doctoral dissertation (1937) referred to
earlier,121 not surprisingly struck very much the same note. He interpreted Unruh’s text as
the protest of an individual against the destructive force of battle; he was bound to lose
the contest because he was not supported by any roots. And he followed this up with an
attack, in best Darwinist tradition, on all intellectuals: those men, uprooted, separated
from the soil and the blood of their people, lost their mental support and were destroyed.122
A highly successful and influential playwright in the Weimar Republic, honoured with
important literary awards, Unruh spoke out against Hitler’s politics, lost his German citizenship, fled to France, was interned there in 1940 but managed to escape to the USA. His
return to Germany after WWII was followed by disappointment about the restorative
political climate. In 1948 (11 March) he read parts of his Opfergang on the radio, in the
same year he was awarded the prestigious Goethe Prize in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt. A
new edition of his prose work appeared in 1966, with a preface by fellow Expressionist
Kasimir Edschmid who used this platform to complain that 50 years after Verdun Unruh
had once again been passed over for the Peace Prize awarded by the organized body of
German booksellers (“Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels”). Four years later, the
definitive edition of his Complete Works began to appear in print,123 in the same year his
paintings were exhibited in Frankfurt. Unruh died in the same year (28 November). The
centenary of his birthday (and 15th anniversary of his death) was marked by an exhibition
in his birthplace Koblenz and in Diez, the place of his residence,124 and there was a re117
“...dieses Zola-Bild des Massenmenschen im Rudel der Kompanie mit dem Überbetonen der animalischen Natur und dem alten Rousseau-Ideal der Gleichheit aller.” In: H. Pongs: “Krieg als Volksschicksal im
deutschen Schrifttum: Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte der Gegenwart”, erweiterter Abdruck aus Dichtung
und Volkstum, Neue Folge des Euphorion, vol. 35 (Stuttgart: 1934), p. 12.
118
“...die Ekstase des Entsetzens und des Mutes schafft die erste gewaltige Vision der Materialschlacht,
die Urschlacht der neuen technischen Eisenzeit...” p. 12.
119
“Vom Volksgrund ist dieser krampfhafte Heroismus losgerissen, wie sein Gewaltstil den natürlichen
Satzbau verzerrt.” P. 12.
120
“Die Phrase der Menschheitsverbrüderung hat diesem haltlosen Geschlecht Volk und Vaterland
genommen.” P. 12.
“...so treibt die Zeitwelle des Expressionismus, dieser ‘Alarm der geängsteten Seele’ das Kriegserlebnis
der Volksentwurzelten bald aus aller natürlichen Sinnbindung heraus in die erbitterte Abstraktion oder in die
entzügelten Visionen...”, p. 12.
121
Cf. Chapter I, footnote 39.
122
“Nicht alle Kämpfer der Materialschlachten des Westens bestanden den Kampf, den sie mit sich selbst
zu führen hatten, um durch das Höllenfeuer von Verdun hindurch zu gelangen. Diejenigen, die losgelöst
waren von der Erde und dem Blutstrom ihres Volkes, denen Deutschland nicht mehr die Heimat war, mußten
den inneren Halt verlieren, wurden zerstört. Es sind die Intellektuellen, die von Verdun zermürbt werden, die
in den Somme-Schlachten zerbrechen.”
123
Fritz von Unruh: Sämtliche Werke, Endgültige Ausgabe im Einvernehmen mit Kurt von Unruh,
herausgegeben und versehen mit Anmerkungen und einem Nachwort von Hanns Martin Elster, Bd. 1–20
(Haude & Spener, Berlin: 1970ff.), volume 17 (1979) containing Opfergang (together with other texts).
124
See footnote 33.
51
appraisal of Opfergang by Ludwig Harig,125 who paid tribute to a poet and writer endowed with courage and a rare gift of language. All these activities could not, however,
obscure the fact (also stated with regret in the Preface to the Catalogue), that today Unruh
has been largely forgotten (“Fritz von Unruh ist heute ein Vergessener”), a state of affairs
which this gifted writer and courageous “soldier of peace” has not deserved.
3. Verdun as a Topic in German Literature from 1919–1945
Given the enormity of the German defeat at Verdun – according to Horne (and other
military historians, such as Liddell Hart)126 it turned the scales in favour of the Allied
Powers – it is not surprising that the topic should have taken some time to appear in print.
When it did so in fiction about ten years after the war had ended – historical accounts
were earlier127 – it turned out to be a popular topic; writers and their audience belonged to
the majority of German troops at the western front who had been involved in the campaign at one stage or other. And after “Langemarck”, Verdun had become the second
powerful myth of this war, a code word for the highly mechanized impersonal warfare
which characterized the war at the western front from 1916 onwards and which brought
forth the new man who faced the modern battle, the Materialschlacht:
It was the Hell of Verdun from which this new man had emerged, equipped with steel helmet, without emotions, without ideals, functioning like a machine and by second nature ideally
suited to the conditions of battle. This Hell symbolized the war since 1916, and its sweeping
threat was increasingly made use of as a political weapon in the Weimar Republic. 128
During the War there was, apart from Unruh’s prose text, which owed its existence to
special circumstances as has been shown above, some expressionist lyrical poetry, such
as Paul Zech’s poem Verdun, published in 1916.129 The author, at the age of 34 an established poet and literary translator when he was called up in 1914, also wrote a fictitious
war diary based on his own experience, published in 1919, which contains impressive
chapters on Verdun (among them a description of his visit to Franz Marc’s grave).130
Ten years after the outbreak of hostilities, the left-wing liberal weekly magazine Die
Weltbühne devoted much space to the topic of war. In an essay by Ignaz Wrobel (= Kurt
Tucholsky) Vor Verdun the author used a post-war visit to the battlefield to name and get
125
p. 25.
See footnote 2. Harig’s essay appeared first in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No.144, 26 June 1985,
Cf. Horne, p. 330.
E.g. W. Beumelburg: Douaumont, 1923.
128
Bernd Hüppauf: “Erziehung durch Krieg” in: David Midgley (ed.): Arnold Zweig – Poetik, Judentum
und Politik (Bern/Frankfurt/New York/Paris: 1989), p. 57. See also his essay: “Langemarck, Verdun and the
Myth of a New Man in Germany after the First World War”, in: War & Society, vol. 6, no. 2. (Sept. 1988), pp.
70–103.
129
In: Die Schaubühne 12, 1916, vol. 31 (3 August), pp.101–102. Reprinted in: Thomas Anz/Josef Vogl
(eds.): Die Dichter und der Krieg: Deutsche Lyrik 1914–1918 (Munich: 1982), pp. 125–127.
130
First published as Das Grab der Welt in 1919, a second edition (slightly altered) ready for print in
1932, due to political circumstances not published (posthumously) until 1986 as Von der Maas bis an die
Marne (Rudolstadt, GDR) ( Frankfurt: 1988).
126
127
52
even with those groups responsible for that carnage and to ask why, after the end of
censorship, no one up to now had the courage to tell the truth about Verdun. He ended his
essay with a vision: an arrogant, monocled German officer shouting, in a voice that made
the world shudder, for a repetition of the “performance”. 131 Tucholsky’s text was one of
the rare attempts by a German writer to cut through the mythical fog surrounding Verdun
(Kästner’s poem was another example and Arnold Zweig’s novel did the same on a larger
scale).
There were a number of plays/radio plays, the earliest probably Die endlose Straße by
Sigmund Graff and Carl Hintze,132 based on Graff’s own Verdun experience. Published in
1926, it was first performed in Britain in the wake of R. C. Sherriff’s successful pacifist
play Journey’s End staged in December 1928. Three years later, in 1929, Eberhard Möller’s
play Douaumont oder die Rückkehr des Soldaten Odysseus (D. or the return of the soldier Ulysses) was published. His radio play Douaumont (based on his drama) was broadcast on Armistice Day 1932. In 1931, Hans Chlumberg’s play Wunder von Verdun (Miracle
at Verdun) was published, and on 21 February, the15th anniversary of the Verdun offensive, a radio play by Edlef Köppen, Wir standen vor Verdun (We were in front of Verdun),
was broadcast. In the same year Erich Kästner raised his critical voice in a poem named
Verdun, viele Jahre später (Verdun, many years later), in which he reminded his readers
that every day corpses were still dug up by farmers from the soil of the battlefields, corpses
which warned the living not to forget what had happened there.133
In the final, illiberal phase of the Weimar Republic a number of war books (many of
them novels) were published which were in marked contrast to their pacifist predecessors. War was not depicted as a senseless sacrifice (Remarque) or as a class struggle
organized by a clique of economic and military powers for their own ends (Zweig/Glaeser).
The books rather followed the tradition of Ernst Jünger’s (and to a certain extent, as we
have seen, von Unruh’s) war books with such ideas as sacrifice of one’s own life for the
greater good of the Fatherland, war as a natural and mythical force, and fatalistic heroism.
The horrors of war were interpreted as a big test, the furnace that melted the individual
into a common body which was to form the basis of the new state. In order to give some
meaning to the senseless slaughter the military defeat was sometimes even regarded as a
necessary prerequisite to building the new nation; in the words of Franz Schauwecker,
one of the early influential nationalist writers: “We had to lose the war to win the nation.”134 Three years earlier, in the preface of his war account Feuer und Blut, 1926, Ernst
Jünger expressed very much the same idea and showed the direction to the state of the
future:
The preliminary work has been completed, the character of the new state which can’t be
achieved by compromise is clearly visible. Patriotism, comradeship, courage and discipline
will be part of it, or in other words, it must be national, social, fit to fight and authoritative.
These four principles are the basis of the nationalist programme. May soon all those powers
Die Weltbühne 20, vol. 32 (1924), pp. 218–222.
Translated by Graham Rawson as The Endless Road (London: 1930).
133
First published in Die Weltbühne 27, vol. 9, 1931, p. 320.
134
F. Schauwecker: Aufbruch der Nation, 1929. Translation by R. T. Clarke with the programmatic title
The Furnace (London: 1930). The frequently quoted slogan is taken from the final chapter where it sums up
the main character’s ideas on the meaning of the war, p. 344 (final page). It is also used as a “motto” of the
novel.
131
132
53
unite which have gathered to form the great common front line...as the first step to victory
which to a great extent has been made possible through a lost war, through a most severe test of
our vitality.135
The direction Jünger pointed to here was clear; it was the same sort of state the National Socialists had in mind. From Joseph Wulf’s documentation we are informed about
Jünger’s infatuation with Hitler (whom he sent an inscribed copy of his Feuer und Blut).136
With this ideological background Jünger should have been a good National Socialist –
but surprisingly he was not. As early as 1933 his elitist intellect and ‘aristocratic’ sensibility were repelled by the vulgar spirit of the movement and its representatives.137
Other prominent authors of the nationalist school were Werner Beumelburg, Paul C.
Ettighoffer, Josef Magnus Wehner, Hans Zöberlein; all of them wrote about Verdun. 138
The early 1930s saw a number of prose works, mostly novels, on the topic of Verdun, also
some dramatic works and radio plays. The year 1930 appeared particularly fruitful: there
was Alfred Hein’s Eine Kompanie Soldaten: In der Hölle von Verdun, a mixture between
novel and non-fiction,139 two novels, Werner Beumelburg’s Die Gruppe Bosemüller (Squad
B.) and Josef Magnus Wehner’s Sieben vor Verdun (Seven before V.); both of which will
be discussed in detail. In 1931 Paul Coelestin Ettighoffer’s first, novelistic book based on
his Verdun experience, Gespenster am Toten Mann (Ghosts at the Dead Man), was published, followed by a more comprehensive second, a history of the campaign, Verdun–
Das große Gericht, in 1936. There was also a radio play by the same author, Traum am
Douaumont.140
In 1933, a play by Fritz Laukisch, Verdun, was published, also Ernst Toller’s autobiographical text Eine Jugend in Deutschland. According to the preface, Toller started writing the text in May 1933, on the day his books were burnt in Germany. It was published by
Querido in Amsterdam, the renowned publishing house of German speaking literary refugees. For the German Jew Toller, the war volunteer, Verdun marked the turning point in
his intellectual and social development; the traumatic experiences there made him a pacifist and revolutionary socialist.141 In 1935 Querido published Arnold Zweig’s novel
Erziehung vor Verdun142 (the third novel to be discussed). More novels on the topic followed, e.g. Edgar Maaß: Verdun, 1936, and Hans Schoenfeld: Maas-Mühle (Mill on the
Meuse) in 1937.
E. Jünger: Feuer und Blut (Hamburg: 1926), Preface of the 2–4. editions.
J. Wulf: Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich (Reinbek: 1966), Introduction, especially pp. 6–7.
137
See Wulf for details in Introduction.
138
H. Zöberlein’s war book, Der Glaube an Deutschland (Munich: 1931), for which Hitler himself wrote
an Introduction, covered events at the western front from Verdun to the Armistice (subtitle: Ein Kriegserleben
von Verdun bis zum Umsturz).
139
Translation by F. H. Lyon: In the Hell of Verdun (London:1930). Hein’s war book popularized the
slogan of the “Hell of Verdun”.
140
Exact date not verifiable.
141
See his poem “Leichen im Priesterwald”.
142
Translated by Eric Sutton as Education before Verdun (London/New York: 1936).
135
136
54
4. Werner Beumelburg Die Gruppe Bosemüller 1930
The novel – subtitled Der große Roman des Frontsoldaten – spans the time between May
and December 1916 at a sector of the Verdun front. It describes the part Bosemüller’s
squad of sappers plays in the German attempt to recapture one of the Verdun forts conquered by the French (according to Midgley, it is Fort Hardoumont).143
Summary of events
The first chapter introduces the main characters, the Leutnant, a fine leader of his men but
obviously under acute nervous strain and of almost suicidal recklessness, which makes his
death easy to predict, Unteroffizier Bosemüller, a happy dreamer and fine performer on the
organ, just married and looking forward to a post in the police force of his Black Forest
village after the war; there is his friend who comes from the same area, Otto Geppert, who
will be made ADC of his Hauptmann shortly, Feldwebel Braschke, the grim sergeant-major
with a heart of gold, Gefreiter Wammsch (to whom the book is dedicated), a pillar of mental
strength and full of concern, especially for young Erich Siewers, 17, who has just joined the
squad as a volunteer. Other, minor characters are associated with typical habits or defects:
Krakowka, a Pole from Upper Silesia, fat and always greedy for food, Offiziersstellvertreter
Benzin, who always manages to be “seriously ill” before an attack, Schwarzkopf with his
unbridled tongue and sweaty feet, Stracke, a taciturn gardener with an alimony charge to his
“credit”, which gives rise to many jokes at his expense. Fröse, a carpenter from Hamburg,
Casdorp from Magdeburg, and Zwiebelmeier, another North German complete the squad.
We also get a first impression of the setting, the moon-like landscape in front of the Douaumont
ploughed up by ceaseless shelling, the air reeking with gas and the smell of dug-up decaying
corpses. Together with other troops the squad fights its way to the fort to relieve units there
while the French are attacking. When the attack has been repulsed, Frise and Zwiebelmeier
are dead, Casdorp is mentally deranged.
When Bosemüller receives the news that his wife has borne him a son, Wammsch
spontaneously sacrifices his own home leave to give his pal the chance to see his family
for a fortnight. At home Bosemüller is confronted with the local Stammtisch patriots who
want to win the war with the methods of 1870–71. The sympathetic Amtmann has secretly
arranged permission for Bosemüller to stay at home as he is the only son on the farm and
has been at the front since August 1914. Nobody in the village can understand that he
goes back to his unit. A stupid order from headquarters to fix wires in a section of the
front completely exposed to enemy fire results in many unnecessary casualties, also among
the squad. When a house in which they are sheltering collapses under fire, Bosemüller’s
superhuman energy and strength saves a number of lives. Wammsch looks like a mother
after young Sievers and the other wounded. To put an end to such senseless orders the
Hauptmann takes two staff officers with him to examine the area, exposing them to sights
of horror and dangers they have never encountered before.
The Leutnant is back from home leave (he went after all) full of defeatist talk. A secret
letter from his home garrison to the Hauptmann complains about wild bouts of drunken-
143
D. Midgley: Arnold Zweig (1987: Frankfurt), p. 102.
55
ness and debauchery every night and asks for suitable action – the Hauptmann tears up
the letter. Meanwhile the squad has been sent back behind the line to recover, but the
Leutnant can’t wait to get to the fort again. With others Bosemüller’s squad is chosen to
attack Fort Souville whereupon Casdorp commits suicide. The men spend a week preparing together with the infantry and a specialist unit equipped with flame throwers. The
attack fails, the brave battalion commander is killed among his men; the squad loses
Krakowka and Esser who has been left lying by young Siewers when he panicks before
the advancing enemy. Wammsch returns with him to recover Esser’s body and the dead
comrades get a ceremonious burial. When the Germans are attacked by French aeroplanes
Siewers saves one of the wounded, thus making good his former act of “cowardice” (the
brave action earns him the Iron Cross) but is severely wounded himself by the plane’s
machine gun. Bosemüller and Wammsch visit him in hospital; they come into contact
with the life at the Base which contrasts sharply with their own.
On the day Siewers returns to the front (it is autumn) the squad has orders to repulse a
French attack on the fort. On reaching it with utmost difficulties they learn that it must be
abandoned as part of it is burning and the ammunition depots will explode soon. The
Leutnant violently resists the idea, then stubbornly insists on a counter-attack which is
arranged by the regimental commander. The action is doomed from the start, the Leutnant
deliberately exposes himself to enemy fire and is killed. On the way back Stracke is
blinded by a shell splinter.
It is December. The squad is due for a spell in a quieter sector of the front; Wammsch
and Bosemüller are to go home on leave at Christmas. Two days before his leave is due
Wammsch dies in a collapsing gallery. The final scene shows the squad on Christmas Eve
in a mood of dejection and frustration at their loss, a mood which even the news that they
have all been promoted cannot change. One Iron Cross (First Class) has arrived – two
days too late. It is for Wammsch.
The story is told by a third-person omniscient narrator who deliberately limits his scope
to that of the squad, from whose perspective the war is shown. Most of its members come
from an agricultural or lower-class background, Siewers with his grammar school education (his father is an Amtsgerichtsrat) is the exception. The men come from different parts
of Germany (with a slight predominance of the Black Forest); the author thus emphasizes
how the war has unified the various German tribes.
The squad as the new family
The members of the squad are portrayed as mostly likeable people with individual foibles,
but characterisation is deliberately vague, frequently by way of a humorous anecdote or
undifferentiated remarks, such as “His heart’s in the right place” (25–204)144 or “A splendid fellow, they all enjoy his company” (9), a labelling by clichés which facilitates identification of the reader with the men. Fundamental contrasts do not exist, in most things
there is tacit agreement. Some members are less likeable though. Krakowka, a Pole from
Silesia, for example: he is fat and greedy, eats like a pig and does not believe in sharing.
Perhaps being Polish he does not really count? (He conveniently dies soon.) Casdorp is
144
56
All quotations are from the edition 41–50. thousand.
another case in point: Not a strong character he takes his life when a new attack has been
ordered. In this context an observation by Rolf Geissler is of interest. He sees a “conscious, if polemic dependence” of GB on Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg, a correspondence
in structure and situation (initiation), even of names: Hans Castorp, the passive anti-hero
in Mann’s novel becomes the decadent weakling Casdorp whose perpetual fear (and finally his suicide) contrast him sharply with the model soldiers of Bosemüller’s squad.
Geissler believes that Offiziersstellvertreter B e n z i n , a most unpleasant character, is a
deliberate “dig” at another literary model, Arnold Zweig’s novel Der Streit um den
Sergeanten Grischa, 1928 (The Case of Sergeant Grischa) whose protagonist Werner
B e r t i n eventually becomes a critical analyst of the war and a pacifist.145
The family character of the squad is particularly evident when someome has died or is
otherwise absent. After the deaths of Krakowna and Esser, with Casdorp mentally ill in
hospital, the squad is three people short and supposed to be filled with reinforcements,
but the men want to be left alone among themselves for a while – like a family in mourning. And when Siewers is in hospital his place is kept free by his pals when the company
stands to attention at roll call, in spite of the sergeant major’s furious shouts to close
ranks:
“This is Siewers’ place”, Struck says quietly, “and we’ll make sure it’s kept for him till he is
back again.” (258)
In more peaceful moments there is good-humoured banter among the men; Beumelburg’s
interest in representing soldiers’ humour as something natural, traditional, healthy is very
much in evidence, in contrast to Remarque, where it is a somewhat cynical reaction meant
as a protection from the horrible effects of war. The majority of Bosemüller’s men do not
try to digest mentally their front experience; this is left to three protagonists which
Beumelburg has singled out as “serious” characters.
Life at home is described only once, when Bosemüller is on leave. The function of this
passage is twofold: the portrayal of home as a rural idyll – Beumelburg chooses a village
rather than a town where “the home versus front syndrome” might be more evident – and
the demonstration of the importance which the squad has for the individual member. Although the author shows that the people at home have unrealistic ideas of life at the front,
he does not criticize them – this contrasts with the majority of war novels after 1928 – but
paints a rather sentimental picture of home where everything revolves round people’s
private lives. “For Beumelburg home is an apolitical space in which the dreams and sentiments of an idyll largely without problems are predominant.”146 The first outing of
Bosemüller’s baby son with his proud parent is thus described:
Bosemüller walks beside the pram. He walks like in a dream. Happiness surrounds him.
Everything is beautiful, everything is good. He pulls himself together. No, nobody must read in
his face what he feels inside. (85)
145
Rolf Geissler: Dekadenz und Heroismus: Zeitroman und völkisch-nationalsozialistische Literaturkritik
(Stuttgart: 1964), Chapter “‘Der Zauberberg’ Thomas Manns”, pp. 104–120, here pp. 104–105.
146
Michael Gollbach: Die Wiederkehr des Weltkrieges in der Literatur: Zu den Frontromanen der späten
Zwanziger Jahre (Kronberg: 1978), p. 172. Gollbach’s essay on Beumelburg’s novel (pp. 167–184) has
provided a number of stimulating thoughts.
57
The last part of the quotation points to the second function of Bosemüller’s home
leave, presentation of his mental conflict between private happiness at home with his
family and strenuous, dangerous duty and sacrifice at the front. Despite the Amtmann’s
tempting offer Bosemüller, to the great consternation of his family, decides in favour of
the front community. The front has become the real home and the squad has taken over the
role of the family. This message is repeated in variations by the author several times. The
Leutnant does not want to go on leave at all, young Siewers twice rejects opportunities of
getting away from the murderous front: When his mother is dying and his father implores
him to apply for home leave, he refuses. A second chance comes when he is wounded in
hospital; the doctor offers to declare him garnisondienstfähig, that is, fit for home service
only. For a moment Siewers thinks of his newly-widowed father but then decides to decline the offer and asks to be pronounced fit for active service as soon as possible. We
learn this from Siewers’ letter to Wammsch and his other pals at the front, in which he also
states his reasons:
...it is so nice at home and yet again not nice. They all are so good to me, and that makes
leaving them so difficult. But how can I explain to them that I’m no longer at home here and
that everything has changed? I have a different home now... And out there at the front something has come into being which is stronger than everything else. (260)
Finally, when Wammsch and Bosemüller are sent home on leave for Christmas, they
decide to celebrate Christmas Eve (in Germany the most important part of the festivities)
with their pals before taking the train, which for Wammsch’s wife and three children
means the third Christmas without husband and father.
It is not surprising that a group made up of such altruistic and dedicated men should be
successful. Each member of the squad has been decorated with the Iron Cross – “now all
of the squad have got it and that is only right” (258) – and appreciation of their work is
unanimous (“Squad Bosemüller has deserved it” [191]). As the regimental commander
sums it up admiringly after a “show”: “Boys, you have no idea what kind of (super)
people you are” (308). Beumelburg does not try to give the impression that his characters
are fearless front line heroes. Occasionally, they show signs of fright in the face of horror,
and if there is some hope of rest behind the lines this creates a “cautiously celebratory
mood” (92). But they do their duty without much ado and without complaints. According
to Beumelburg it is this taciturn and fatalistic discharge of duties that makes up the specific heroism of the squad. In this context a discrepancy in the make-up of the text should
be pointed out. If Beumelburg intends to present Bosemüller’s squad as a general type of
social existence at the front – and on the basis of internal evidence I believe with Gollbach
that he does – the positive contrast of the group with other front line troops, their special
position,147 contradicts Beumelburg’s intention.148
147
The “show” mentioned above provides a good example: An infantry NCO starts an argument with one
of the squad and full of envious scorn refers to them as “scheißfeine Barone” (stuck-up barons) (310).
148
Cf. Gollbach, p. 173.
58
Front-line group versus Staff and Base
Unlike other nationalist war fiction (Schauwecker, Zöberlein) Beumelburg’s novel contains no real criticism of the pre-war world (which plays no part in the text), of home, or
of the enemy.149 There is no defamation of the French, and wounding or killing capitulating troops is frowned upon. The main targets of criticism are the officers on the Staff, the
bureaucrats at the Base, and those front-line soldiers who shirk their duties and behave in
an antisocial, egotistical manner (“leadswingers”). Beumelburg’s rejection of these soldiers is largely emotional, sweeping and malicious. An example from the front area is
Offiziersstellvertreter Benzin (not an ordinary private!), a coward, who, for very selfish
reasons, manages to avoid being drawn into any dangerous front-line activities, but behind the lines brags about his heroic feats. Beumelburg contrasts him with the taciturn
members of the squad who risk their lives almost every day, and it is obvious for the
reader that the man must be taught a lesson. Benzin’s own arrogance finally brings about
his downfall: he is sent to the front and as he can’t cope with the situation is shown up as
a ridiculous figure behaving “like a giraffe,...like a blind animal...with his arms like windmill sails” (103). The lesson for the reader is clear: According to the author, the individual who is not part of the group is an egoist, a coward, therefore an inferior human
being and so doomed to fail in the face of reality (= war). First-hand front experience of
the squad is contrasted with theory and planning of the Staff well behind the lines.
Beumelburg leaves the reader in no doubt as to the inefficiency of staff management and
orders; they are too far removed from reality. For example, gunners hit their own troops
because they fire according to mathematical tables instead of using their own experience.
As the author demonstrates time and again, practice and experience of the front-line troops
prove superior to theoretical planning. In the words of the regimental commander, after
Bosemüller has reported on the present military situation: “Very good,... gentlemen, this
NCO has a better grasp of the situation than all the different staffs right up to the top”
(306). At the Base Beumelburg shows either arrogant staff officers with golden cigarette
cases150 or mere caricatures such as the “Stellungsbaukontrolloffizier” of the division in
charge of fortifications (the very name almost a parody of the spirit of bureaucracy):
He is a fat major. His steel helmet rests on him like a pumpkin on an upturned tin pail. A
whole bookshop of maps is hanging from him. His equipment is marvellous, nothing has been
forgotten. Binoculars, folding-up campstool, two revolvers, gasmask, rubber coat, coat made
of cloth, bag for provisions, cap, everything is there. He is loaded like a camel plodding through
the Sahara. (219)
When he arrives at the front (a rare thing to happen), an argument between himself and
one of the squad is cut short by a close enemy barrage in favour of the men and their
reality. After the smoke has lifted, the major is found pale as a sheet covered in mud
sitting in the trench believing he is wounded. He has survived unharmed, only his uniform
has suffered a minor injury, but enough to make him the laughing-stock of the front:
149
One exception: French planes are described deliberately attacking German wounded lying on the
ground, pp. 227–228.
150
In the German army a fitting derogatory nickname for those self-important soldiers at the Base is
“Etappenhengst” (lit. stallion of the Base).
59
Most disrespectfully a piece of the major’s trousers has been torn out, in a place where it is
needed most... It is his naked posterior that is shining through the hole. (222)
Another striking example of “Base Bashing” by the author, connected with an ironic
dig at “red tape” is an episode after Esser’s and Krakowka’s burial: One of the squad has
stolen a pot of geraniums from the window-sill of the town-major’s office at the Base to
put on the grave, has been caught red-handed and is now formally questioned after complaints have been made to his NCO (202–205). With the men at the front Beumelburg
resents regulations, bureaucracy, unjustified privileges and an arrogant know-it-all attitude. But his one-sided front perspective makes him generally reject the work of the staff
officers and life at the Base, using emotions instead of convincing arguments, defamatory
ridicule in the place of sound criticism.
The squad and the experience of war
For the majority of the group war has become a fact to the extent that discussion about its
origin and justification does not take place. Beumelburg chooses three characters as protagonists to provide an answer to the question of the meaning of the war; they are the
Leutnant, Private Wammsch and the young volunteer Siewers. Answers are not found by
means of intellectual argumentation or discussion among the three (Beumelburg obviously does not believe in that), but are the result of individual encounters with the phenomenon of war before the background of the group. To sum up the result: The Leutnant
does not find an answer, Siewers arrives at a solution after a lengthy process of development, Wammsch practices the meaning in the comradeship of the squad.
a) The Leutnant
Physically almost super-human, “a giant from primeval times” (11), the Leutnant is introduced as a man with a conflicting personality. On the one hand he is popular with his men
– “They all like being in his group, for his heart’s in the right place” (25) – he is a “perfect
example of a Leutnant, very decent, unflappable, always the first of his men...principally
always against the sergeant in favour of his men” (10), on the other hand he fails to digest
mentally his war experience. When he interviews young Sievers his question (“why?”) is
followed by many more which he keeps to himself; they shed much light on the state of his
psyche and on the unique “quality” of Verdun as a fighting theatre:
Why did you come to the front? Why to Verdun of all places? Don’t you know what Verdun
means? Don’t you know that one never gets rid of it? Don’t you know that here everything
becomes a farce, youth, cheerfulness, idealism, faith? ...Do you know that the best thing that
can happen to one here is death?... (25–26)
Because he can’t make his war experience meaningful, he has no perspective for a
post-war future at home, according to Beumelburg, who marks his “forced laugh” (9), his
“infernal laughter” (16) as an expression of his cynical nihilism. This nihilism also shows
in the Leutnant’s antisocial behaviour during his home leave, which he has been very
60
reluctant to take. War has become a kind of drug which allows him to suppress painful
thoughts in battle. As his life has become without value for him, he deliberately courts
death and has his wish fulfilled: he dies in an attack on the fort doomed from the start.
Beumelburg does not condemn the Leutnant, he respects his attitude although he does not
share it. After all, he is a model officer, a brave, if reckless leader of men who does his
duty. Shortly before his deliberate death, glorified by the author as the fall of a heroic
giant (319–320), he remembers a religious song from his childhood, and this memory
triggers off some vague hint of a concealed meaning: “there’s bound to be something
else” (316). The resort to popular/religious song is part of the stereotyped emotional
world in this type of novel, as Geissler reminds us.151 Gollbach’s claim that Beumelburg
in this passage intimates (very vaguely though) the existence of a Christian Weltanschauung
as a necessary prerequisite for the interpretation of war appears to me doubtful as this is
an isolated episode in the text.152
b) Siewers
The novel is, among other things, the story of the initiation of a young volunteer into the
“business” of war. Erich Siewers is seventeen when he joins the squad, for the same
reasons as all the other young enthusiasts. A sentimental mother-fixation is replaced at
the front by the equally sentimental father-son relationship between Wammsch and Siewers:
Quietly he lets himself be embraced by Wammsch, be stroked by Wammsch’s rough hands,
and there is wondrous release in this sensation. (199)
“As long as you are with me, nothing can happen to me.” (159)
Siewers who panicks (understandably) when the French attack and leaves his dying pal
Esser behind considers himself a coward afterwards. Desperate to make good he violently
rejects Wammsch’s suggestion to go on leave until his nerves have recovered; he suspects
they want to get rid of him. Keeping watch beside Esser’s grave at night, he arrives at
accepting the horrors of war and death as unchanging facts and finds his peace of mind
again. He is no longer afraid and knows that he will make up for his ‘cowardice’. The
scene, supported by biblical quotations, has religious connotations reminiscent of Christ
at Gethsemane. His opportunity comes when French aeroplanes attack the German trenches
and strafe the troops. As the planes return to fire at wounded soldiers, Siewers deliberately exposes himself to distract them from their victims, then leaves the trench to bring in
one of the wounded. The decisive moment is thus described:
At that moment something tears in the chest of the little one. Something overwhelms him
which is ten times stronger than himself. Something contracts inside him and at the same time
expands indefinitely. Suddenly it is quite light, quite clear, quite simple. There is suddenly a
wild, intoxicating solemnity. In ten long jumps he is over there. He does not hear anything,
does not see anything, does not think anything; he is not alive and is not dead. Where is he? In
which regions is he stumbling about? There is the wounded man... (228)
151
152
Geissler, p. 92.
Gollbach, p. 178.
61
This act of bravery, which earns him the Iron Cross, does not come all that surprisingly
as there has been a similar episode right at the start of Siewers’ ‘career’ when he takes
part in the advance to the fort and is confronted with death for the first time. The squad is
attacked by a French machine gun, and when all, including the Leutnant, are helpless for
a moment, Siewers rushes at the obstacle single-handed:
Suddenly the little one feels something very hot inside him. Something is falling away from
him, everything is very light all of a sudden. He utters a cry, a desperate and wild cry. Is that
himself? He leaps forward...right at the glistening and lightning, whipping and cracking. He is
empty-handed, has dropped his helmet and his gun. What is he doing? Has he gone mad? He
must have. With two hands he reaches for the red hot barrel of a machine gun. He does not
leave go, he holds tight like a cat... The gun has stopped firing. (49)
Beumelburg shows that the courageous act makes Siewers overcome his fear of the
horrors and of death. As the quotations demonstrate the author is forced to resort to irrational phrases to convey the powerful process of mental change and development in the
boy. Siewers’ function in the novel is to express the meaning of war, to explain and justify
it. Through him Beumelburg tells the reader that the ideas and notions of war brought
from home, the motives for joining up do not pass the test, are useless for coping with the
front experience. When Siewers is questioned by the Leutnant153 about his motives, these
are his thoughts:
He might perhaps say: “The Fatherland...it was taken for granted, the final result of family,
education, ideology.” Or he might say: “It was the urge for manliness in its crudest form, the
desire for action, a mixture of romanticism, heroism, and egotism.” (71)
Later, in hospital, seriously wounded, he reflects about the change he has undergone
meanwhile, comments, almost ironically, on his former self and the collapse of old values
and admits to himself that these had only been a pretext for his ambition and his “desire to
excel before others”. During his nightly watch (“Gethsemane”) Siewers realizes that altruism (“doing good to one’s fellow human being”) is the utmost value in and the real
purpose of human existence, and in retrospect legitimizes war as the only possible means
to achieving this aim (208). In the context of war, which has the aim of killing and wounding men, there seems to be a contradiction between reality and the realisation of such a
noble idea, but for Beumelburg it is quite clear that the ‘neighbour’ in the biblical sense
can only be the German frontline soldier. The question of who is responsible for the
existence of war is not put in the novel. Beumelburg deliberately omits any economic/
historical/political context and – again making Siewers his mouthpiece – asks the reader
to accept war as something removed from the responsibility of man, as an irrevocable fate
given by “some higher power” (208). By using the Christian formula from the New Testament: “Except ye be converted, and become as little children...” (Matth. 18.3.) Siewers
(Beumelburg) reduces man to the state of a naive child with a child-like “clear conscience”
(207) free from any responsibility for his action, that is, the fight at the front. Gollbach’s
reference to a Christian Weltanschauung (cf. footnote 10) would be more justified in this
context as Siewers voices his ideas (based on his religious upbringing) quite openly.
153
The dialogue also provides more insight into the broken character of the Leutnant combined with
another evocation of Verdun with all its hellish aspects (pp. 68–75).
62
c) Wammsch
While Siewers strives to formulate in words what the meaning of the war consists of,
Private Wammsch personifies it with his exemplary existence. He does not use words, his
actions speak for themselves. His question: “What is all this about? What can I say?”
(127) is not an expression of doubt, but rather points to his unreflecting nature. Beumelburg
carries this dialectical relationship of roles right through the novel. Wammsch’s example
frees Siewers from all his doubts by way of action, while Siewers through his action
eventually arrives at the realization and formulation of the meaning of war, which he then
communicates to Wammsch. Private Wammsch combines the qualities of fearless, resourceful fighter (an expert at throwing hand grenades) with those of caring ‘mother’ and
spiritual comforter. It is he who saves the squad when they have been buried under the
collapsing roof of their billet (a passage of anticipation: he will later finds his death in the
same manner while taking measurements of a new tunnel for the Stellungsbaukontrolloffizier). Afterwards he comforts the wounded with Veronal and some soothing words
and watches over their sleep:
Wammsch rises noiselessly and walks to the entrance of the dugout. He blows the candle out
and listens to the breathing of the squad. Everything is all right. Then he softly moves to one
side the tarpaulin covering the entrance, sits down on the lowest step of the stairs, rests his
elbows on his knees and puts his head in his hands. He dares not lean back lest he might fall
asleep. (120)
His tact and generosity are unsurpassed. He wangles home leave for Siewers, and when
Bosemüller’s child is born he cancels his own leave in favour of the new parent. Only
once does he break down (after Siewers has been seriously wounded by the French
aeroplane); the tension and concern for his young protegé are relieved in a flood of tears
(231). The end of this quasi-mythical hero is equally sentimental. He dies just before
Christmas, shortly before he is to be decorated with the Iron Cross (First Class). He might
have survived, if he had accepted the offer to leave the squad earlier. His altruistic wish
not to abandon his “family” on Christmas Eve brings about his death.
For Beumelburg the fundamentally new element and meaning of war is the social form
of the group which emerged and was experienced at the front, as he describes it in his
novel. He believes this type of group could form the nucleus of a new national community
after the war. The author puts this message, which constitutes the climax of the novel, into
Siewers’ letter to Wammsch:
...something new, something a hundred times greater, something never thought of has dawned
on me. That is you all, you and Bosemüller and Schwartzkopf and the others. And perhaps
when I think about it, we are on our way to the Fatherland. Perhaps comradeship is only the
small, visible, for us comprehensible part of the whole. For I am telling myself that it is the
same way with the whole army as with us, only we cannot see it. But later, when we return, we
will surely see each other, and then the many small circles will form the big one encompassing
everything. I suppose it is like that, we have to start from the beginning, the small circle, from
man to man, in order that we will later grasp the whole, the big circle. And that was our mistake
in the old days that we wanted to understand the big circle without knowing the small one. Now
fate has taken us into a cruel apprenticeship. He whom it allowed to come through, has passed
the test. (261)
63
Without any socio-political and historical basis Beumelburg’s desire and demand are
bound to remain a mythical vision without any concrete contours. “The apolitical timeless
myth of comradeship propagated by the author is not capable of constituting and supporting a form of society and government.”154
Critical evaluation
Beumelburg’s GB belongs to the large group of right-wing (“völkisch” ) war novels which
increasingly dominated the German market after 1929. In the face of severe economic
and political crisis the reading public was no longer interested in a critical analysis of the
war but preferred an idealized nostalgic version of military events, which stressed its
positive aspects and ostensible virtues. The nationalist authors started with the claim that
they would correct the distortions of pacifist war literature (Remarque in particular) by
showing the true picture of war. This did not prevent them from adopting important structural principles of the novels they combated (after all, they were successful!). 155 The most
relevant are listed here:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
A claim as to the reality/authenticity of events described is made,
The perspective is limited to the front,
War is praised as a convincing model of a national coming to terms with fate,
Sacrifice and renunciation, loyalty, subordination under proven authorities are demonstrated with the help of small front groups,
In the groups harmony and agreement exist without any military compulsion,
Climax of these novels is the “message” (Prümm: “Sinnrede”), in which the fight for
an idealized national community is declared the sole aim,
The speaker as a rule is an educated member of the middle class, surrounded by
simple, docile people who invite identification with a proletarian readership,
The authoritarian structure of this model is barely covered by the pathos of “comradeship”,
Archaic patterns of fight, blood sacrifice, heroic prowess are employed,
Extensive use is made of religious terminology and motives to elevate war and to
establish moral authority,
There is no moral responsibility and no identification with the victims.
Beumelburg’s GB contains most of these elements as I have shown. It was written in
response to Remarque’s pacifist novel. The subtitle Der große Roman des deutschen
Frontsoldaten, added in 1933, must be interpreted as the author’s challenge to his hated
colleague. Yet not surprisingly did Beumelburg imitate some popular features from the
bestseller: Wammsch corresponds to Katczinsky (Kat), Sievers is a second Bäumer (with
Gollbach, p. 182.
Cf. Karl Prümm: “Tendenzen des deutschen Kriegsromans nach 1918”, in: Klaus Vondung (ed.):
Kriegserlebnis: Der Erste Weltkrieg in der literarischen Gestaltung und symbolischen Deutung der Nationen
(Göttingen: 1980), pp. 215–217. See also his more comprehensive study, K. Prümm: “Das Erbe der Front:
Der antidemokratische Kriegsroman der Weimarer Republik und seine nationalsozialistische Fortsetzung”,
in: H. Denkler & K. Prümm (eds.): Die deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich: Themen – Traditionen – Wirkungen
(Stuttgart: 1976), pp. 138–164.
154
155
64
a different message, though); his age makes identification for young readers easy. In both
novels there is death of a protagonist, shortly before the end. And like Remarque Beumelburg followed his success up with a sequel: Das eherne Gesetz: Ein Buch für die Kommenden, 1934, a pattern noticeable since the late 1920s.156 His sequel deals with the postwar life of the squad. Siewers still feels guilty about his act of ‘cowardice’ before Verdun
and once again is given an opportunity to make amends. He saves the life of his dead
mate’s (Esser) son (a National-Socialist activist) by sacrificing his own: He throws himself into the way of a bullet meant for the young man.157 Psychologically it does not sound
very convincing. Like the war books of Remarque and Glaeser GB belongs to a category
of war novel which Holger Klein has named Repräsentationstyp, of three categories the
most popular, including among others Wehner’s war novel and Frederic Manning’s Her
Privates We. This type strikes a balance between ‘interesting individualization and general relevance’ with the protagonists offering easy identification.158
GB was a successful war novel right from the start;159 after 1933 it was welcomed
warmly by the NS representatives, given much publicity as it was seen (rightly so) as an
ideal instrument to prepare youth for future service and sacrifice in the name of the Fatherland. It became a set text in schools, frequently in the abridged version Mit 17 vor
Verdun (1931) and was recommended for public and school libraries: In 1935 a collective
review of twelve books by Beumelburg was published,160 undertaken by members of the
Bibliotheksschule in Berlin the previous winter (an indication of the author’s popularity)
in which GB was recommended as a good war novel because of its plain language, its
thrilling and often humourous scenes, despite occasional weakness of characterisation.
Two years later, Walter Linden in his popular literary history161 praised Beumelburg for
demonstrating in his novel how empty rhetoric was broken, how the original human element was reborn. Linden’s positive review was brief and superficial; it is representative
of a period which tended to neglect aesthetic aspects in favour of the ideological. Despite
its success, as a literary text GB must be considered a failure. The points made in favour
of the novel by the Bibliotheksschule review in fact constitute some of its weaknesses:
– In his effort to recreate the diction of the common soldier the author uses plain
language full of banalities,
– The attempt to animate the battlefield (personification) results in kitsch,
– The characters are unrealistic, they are types instead of images of reality,
– His so-called humorous scenes are often concessions to the coarse taste of an undemanding public,
– The unsubtle use of irony (to demonstrate his position as an omniscient author) is
rather painful.
156
Glaeser: Jahrgang 1902, 1928 / Frieden, 1930, Renn: Krieg, 1929 / Nachkrieg, 1930, Remarque: Im
Westen nichts Neues, 1929 / Der Weg zurück, 1931, Zöberlein: Der Glaube an Deutschland, 1931 / Der
Befehl des Gewissens, 1936.
157
Cf. Weerth, p. 454.
158
Holger Klein: “Typologie des Kriegsromans”, in: K. Vondung, pp. 210–214.
159
Deutsches Bücherverzeichnis (DBV) 1930: 30.000 / 1941: 230.000. Cf. Dietrich Strothmann: Nationalsozialistische Literaturpolitik: Ein Beitrag zur Publizistik im Dritten Reich ( Bonn: 1960), p. 91, p. 377.
160
Die Bücherei, 1935, pp. 258–259.
161
W. Linden: Geschichte der deutschen Literatur, 1937, p. 455. Similarly Hellmuth Langenbucher’s
Volkhafte Dichtung der Zeit (Berlin: 1935), which summarily praised (among other writers) Beumelburg’s
books as works of art, p. 79.
65
Some examples from the text may serve to substantiate my criticism. Personification
of nature, of the battlefield is one of Beumelburg’s favourite devices. A sunrise in May is
described as follows:
Morgenrot am Ende der Maiennacht. Hinter dem Hardoumont zur Linken steigt es zum Himmel
herauf, blaß, übernächtig, gelangweilt, als habe es an der ewigen Wiederholung keinerlei Spaß
mehr und tue lediglich seine vom Herrgott nun einmal vorgeschriebene Pflicht. (12)
A French fort on a mountain top shelled by German artillery reads thus:
Der Berg trägt eine Krone. Sie ist aus gelben Feuerstrahlen und schwarzen Schleiern
gesponnen. Der Berg brüllt unter dieser Krone, Nacht für Nacht. Aber er kann nicht aufstehen
und sie abwerfen, nein, das kann er nicht. Sie hat sich auf ihm festgefressen wie ein Kranz von
Eitergeschwüren, sie läßt ihn nicht los, bis er am Ende ist. Aber der Berg ist zäh. Er trägt seine
Marterkrone nun schon ein Vierteljahr lang. (12)
Animation of the French shells hitting the German battery:
Es kreischt und surrt und jault mit hellen Katzenstimmen... Dann hängen zwei mitten in der
Batterie... Nun haut es Schlag auf Schlag ein. Kracht die eine, so heulen schon zwei andere
heran. Es krepiert oben in den Baumstämmen und schüttet Gießkannen von Eisensplittern
herab... Von dem Berg im Süden ist nichts mehr zu sehen. Die Mondlandschaft hat sich in einen
Tanzboden verwandelt. Die sonderbarsten Kobolde springen darauf herum. (15)
In an attempt at irony, one of the ravines, scene of fierce fighting, is addressed as
follows:
Gute, liebe Hassouleschlucht...heute muß man dir Abbitte leisten, wenn man jemals gesagt
hat, du seist eine Schweinerei. Heute sieht man, daß du bisher das reinste Waldidyll, das reinste
Sanatorium gewesen bist. Wer hat denn gewußt, daß du noch so entwicklungsfähig seiest... (276)
His sense of humour is very basic: allusions to Schwartzkopf’s sweaty feet (200–324),
to Stracke’s alimony charges (200–202), and the torn trousers of the Stellungsbaukontrolloffizier are considered to be very funny. Ironically, it was Hermann Pongs, a leading Germanist in the Third Reich who in his lengthy essay on war literature pointed out
the weaknesses of the novel; his criticism was altogether damning.162
Why then was GB such a success? Pongs’ review gives some of the answers. The novel
provided a popular cliché which the general public liked. It introduced simplified characters, some of them of a humorous nature, and it expressed the right ideology. The last
point was particularly important as it guaranteed the author the support of the party machine in promoting his books.163 A good example in this context is the sequel to GB,
published in 1934. In his work of reference Franz Lennartz described Das eherne Gesetz
(The Iron Law) as a “mature novel”;164 the team from the Bibliotheksschule, however,
H. Pongs: “Krieg als Volksschicksal im deutschen Schrifttum” (Stuttgart: 1934), pp. 43–44.
See Strothmann’s study for details.
164
F. Lennartz: Die Dichter unserer Zeit, p. 36.
162
163
66
considered the book a failure both in style and structure. But despite their criticism they
spoke out in favour of the text:
Because of its topical theme the novel must be recommended for acquisition, even if the
attempt to create and shape artistically the inner connection between World War and the National-Socialist Revolution has not been successful: in language and even more so in composition much remains unfinished.165
Another important factor contributing to the success of Beumelburg’s GB must have
been the popularity of his other war books. In the 1920s he published accounts of individual theatres of action at the western front, partly based on material from the Reichsarchiv:
Douaumont in 1923, Ypern, 1924, a year later Loretto, and in 1927 Flandern 1917. The
first and the last of these monographs were re-issued in slightly altered form in 1933
within the series “Bücher der Zeitwende”. In 1929 Sperrfeuer um Deutschland was published, a comprehensive history of the years 1914–1918, interpreting the war as an event
forced on Germany – “The years in which we laid the great barrage around Germany”
(hence the title) fighting off the attack of the enemy (from the Preface). The Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back legend) was repeated here when the final phase of the war
was described, and “fate” played an important role in his interpretation of events. A sequel, Deutschland in Ketten: Von Versailles bis zum Youngplan, followed in 1931.
Sperrfeuer um Deutschland was Beumelburg’s most successful war book: 135 000 copies
after eight years.166 An abridged version (reduced from 542 to 159 pages), especially
arranged for young readers was also a bestseller; it was declared the “Weihnachtsbuch
der deutschen Jugend 1939”. By 1939, his books, 17 titles (not all of them dealing with
the war) realized a total of over a million printed copies.167 During WWII, despite rationing of resources and paper shortage in Germany, Beumelburg’s war books continued to
flourish and to instil the spirit of young Siewers and of Bosemüller’s squad into yet another generation of future fighters for the Fatherland.168
5. Josef Magnus Wehner Sieben vor Verdun 1930
Wehner’s text, like Beumelburg’s, was one of the right-wing novels written as a direct
response to Remarque’s pacifist bestseller. In an early autobiography Wehner stated:
...now that I saw my nation in danger of falling victim to the pettiest resentment against
everything heroic, I rose up and wrote my Seven before Verdun.169
Die Bücherei, p. 259.
Strothmann, p. 377.
Strothmann, p. 377.
168
Publication figures according to DBV in 1942: Gruppe Bosemüller: 250 000, Mit 17 vor Verdun:
142 000. Cf. Gollbach, p. 167.
169
J. M. Wehner: Mein Leben (Berlin: 1934), p. 71. Cf. Gollbach, p. 187, also Hans-Harald Müller: Der
Krieg und die Schriftsteller: Untersuchungen zur Herausbildung des Kriegsromans der Weimarer Republik
(Stuttgart: 1986), p. 297.
165
166
167
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Structure and plot summary
The novel is dedicated to the dead (“To the dead brothers a monument”). In the brief
preface the author comments critically on Falkenhayn’s tactics, who weakened the more
offensive plan of the Crown Prince and did not want to overrun Verdun but intended to
bleed the French forces white. For Wehner the battle of Verdun is representative of all the
great battles at the western front inasmuch as it shows the fateful dual fight of the young
generation against the enemy and against the spirit of old age (= Falkenhayn) in the German army, a fight which still goes on at the time of writing the book. Finally he announces
the appearance of the seven soldiers who share the experience of Verdun. We learn that
five have died, the sixth is alive, also the seventh, who tells the story. In an epilogue he
informs us that he volunteered when the war broke out and was continuously at the front
until he was severely wounded at Fleury (Verdun) on 12 July 1916. He also refers to his
sources: the publications of the Reichsarchiv, the memoirs of the French commander Raynal
and the works of the French writer Henri Bordeaux.
The novel is divided into three major “books” (each containing four chapters with
individual headings) of about equal length.170 The first, “Douaumont”, opens three days
before the intended German attack on Verdun (12/2/16) and ends with the capture of Fort
Douaumont two weeks later. The seven friends are introduced, who have arranged to
meet once more before the attack. They are Leutnant Buchholz, his younger brother
Bernhard, the painter Karl Kasiske, Unteroffizier Eduard Lang, a teacher who can foretell
the future, Unteroffizier Junne, Gefreiter Werner, a ventriloquist, who also keeps a diary,
and Roppel Blank, a runner. They tell their adventures over a barrel of wine provided by
Junne and learn that the date for the attack has been fixed. Lang is asked to forecast their
fates but he declines as he has seen his own death in his dreams. Torrential rain and fog
enforce a postponement of the date, which is hard on the nerves of the men; besides,
Alsatian and Polish deserters have informed the enemy about the German plans. When
the attack finally takes place on 21 February supported by the new weapon, the flamethrower, the French start running. Bernhard Buchholz and Lang are heard singing full of
ecstasy during the attack, Werner chases the French by imitating a hundred different voices.
Kasiske, the artist, in his trench paints the attack on Fort Douaumont, which he hopes to
see. The Leutnant carries a black kitten with him during the attack which saves his life in
a hand-to-hand fight by giving the Frenchman a shock. The French troops are no match
for the advancing Germans, they surrender en masse or behave in a very uncivilized manner: Colonial troops first shoot German prisoners who have put down arms, then kill
German parlementaires. Côte 344, the key to Verdun, is taken almost without losses;
finally, on his own initiative a captain captures Fort Douaumont on 25 February. Some of
the seven friends are there. One evening Kasiske, after duty, decides to draw a sketch of
the now open landscape towards Verdun; he is killed by a French bullet.
The second book deals with two other forts: “Vaux-Souville”. Again Robert Buchholz
has assembled the five surviving friends and they drink and tell tales. Ruppel Blank in his
capacity as a runner has seen quite a lot of the attack; he tells the story of a stallion moving
in No-Man’s-Land fed by French and German troops, who arrange a sort of truce in that
area. One night, however, a soldier from either side tries to capture the horse simulta-
170
68
At a closer look quite a symmetrical structure: I = 93 pp., II = 103, III = 92.
neously, a shell kills them both together with the animal. They talk about the meaning of
the war, the need for more German Lebensraum, and about a victorious Germany as
liberator and instructor of all other countries. The Germans take Fort Vaux and are amazed
how many French troops surrender. As gentlemen the winners look after their prisoners
well. Eduard Lang has visions about the deaths of his friends, of the German victory
almost achieved, and of the order which will prevent this victory. After the British attack
on the Somme Falkenhayn moves two divisions from Verdun there; the attack on Fort
Souville is stopped for the same reason. The effect on the troops is disastrous; they now
know that victory has become impossible.
The third book, “The End”, begins with the death of Junne who perishes in the muddy
craters in front of Douaumont after administering help to other wounded soldiers there.
Eduard Lang learns that his wife has borne him a son, then is mortally wounded by a shell
splinter, and the Buchholz brothers meet again inside the Fort. Meanwhile, the French
prepare for a counter-attack, with colonial troops as the first wave. While the Germans
are fighting the fire of an explosion inside the Douaumont, the French attack and eventually conquer the Fort. The French commander hands over the prisoners to the Negro
troops who brutally massacre them, including Bernhard. Robert, while burying his brother,
is himself killed by a Negro gunner. Eduard Lang in Fort Vaux has a vision of all these
events and communicates them to his pals there. On All Souls’ Day the Germans evacuate
Fort Vaux for good.
Although Wehner describes exactly defined action at Verdun between 9 February and
2 November 1916 (drawing from various historical sources), title and structure show that
he intends to give more than a documentary. The title has a deliberately archaic, heroic
ring reminiscent of Aeschylus” Seven against Thebes,171 and like a tragedy the text is
divided into three acts, with the German nation as its tragic hero. The meetings of the
seven friends with the stories they tell, their individual fates, are deliberate contrasts to
the battle descriptions and help to structure the text. They also provide changes in point of
view by an omniscient author. The seven are not members of a squad as in Remarque’s or
Beumelburg’s war novels; they fight in different regiments of the same division and belong to different social spheres thus providing the whole spectrum of German social life
with all its fighting representatives united by one idea. They are meant to be symbolic
figures, but the whole arrangement strikes the reader as somewhat artificial and unbelievable.172 The action is restricted to Verdun, other theatres of war are excluded as are home
or pre-war Germany. For Wehner the battle of Verdun serves as example and symbol of
the First World War as a whole. The author avoids to give a rational justification of the
war, only occasionally hinting at the defensive nature of a war forced on Germany:
For we were not told with what eagerness the enemies encircled us before the war and would
have strangled us in the name of their idols if we had not risen as a man, in time and terrible.
(260)173
171
A successful formula, used for example in later films, Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, 1954,
John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven, 1960 (screenplay based on Kurosawa’s film) being two prominent
examples.
172
Similarly H. Pongs in his otherwise very positive review of the novel, in Krieg als Volksschicksal, pp.
41–42.
173
All quotations from the 1930 edition.
69
The war is not analysed and interpreted as an event of contemporary history, but justified irrationally by a simple self-contained image which is not explained in any detail. As
pointed out in the Preface, the central topic of the novel is the fatal rift between the
Supreme Command (Falkenhayn), planning, carefully calculating, and the “spirit of storm”
(7) at the front. Wehner refers to the actions of the military leaders in front of Verdun as a
Dolchstoß (stab in the back) of the attacking front whose will to win is broken by it, for
the troops have to fight a twofold battle: against the enemy and “against the spirit of old
age” (8). This is the main theme of the novel. The seven protagonists, elevated to the rank
of mythical heroes, represent the German front and its spirit. In the following, four aspects of the text will be examined in detail: the nature of the German soldier, the conflict
between front and military command, the idea of nationalism, and the interpretation of the
war.174
The nature of the German soldier
The dominant characteristic feature of the German soldier as portrayed by Wehner is his
Angriffslust (belligerence), his “inexplicable wildness” (224). Compared to Beumelburg
the feeling of ecstasy during an attack is more pronounced. Without giving any explanation
Wehner celebrates the “assaults as a man’s utmost desire” (32), continuing the tradition of
early WWI authors, such as Walter Flex.175 The soldiers’ real and sole task is not defense or
trench war but the attack, “for that is our only science” (112). The delirious state of the
advancing Germans is described as the “fever of the soldiers” (96) which makes them lose
all inconvenient reflections and obstacles such as fear and strain. Like Unruh, Wehner uses
metaphors which stress the unstoppability as if by natural law of the German attackers, who
themselves have become part of nature: “they glowed” (42), “they flooded..., surged up”
(152), “impossible to stop the masses. They picked up the scent...they were addicted to their
aim” (196). The soldiers are transformed into primeval “giants and hunters” (196) whose
courage and strength in war are proof of a perpetual irrational core in man:
They were giants and hunters who were attacking, and they were let loose...they charged at
the enemy where they saw him, and where he fled they rushed after him. (196)
They appear as a mass of people, equally structured, without any individual military
qualities. For young soldiers fresh from home the communal front experience is a necessary prerequisite to this sameness: “the young ones had to pass their apprenticeship off
their own bat” (84). The process of integration and reduction (to a being ruled by instinct)
is swift and takes place according to laws of nature:
But soon they smelled the reek of fresh blood, they looked into the torn shell of human
bodies as if into the abyss of the world... Then one of theirs was killed, and now they were
already old men and had experienced eternity within one day. (84)
This analysis is in part based on Gollbach’s study of Wehner’s novel, in Gollbach, pp. 190–209.
W. Flex: Der Wanderer zwischen beiden Welten (Munich: 1916), a memoir of his friend whose greatest wish had been to take part in an attack. A very popular book which, with its spirit of sacrifice and death
for one’s country, was exploited after 1933.
174
175
70
Unlike the enemy the German soldier does not know fear of wounds or of death: “the
next moment the attackers had rushed forward again regardless” (68). The frenzied wildness of the soldiers is glorified by the author who has no qualms about making the Germans cheer about their military successes which carry with them death and injury. The
soldiers are portrayed as heroes, much more aggressive, courageous than the French, who
are usually numerically superior, and as a rule they are victorious. This claim is supposed
to prove the superiority of the German front spirit. As in Beumelburg’s novel comradeship at the front is a matter of course. There is no disagreement, neither in words nor in
deeds. It goes without saying that the “German brothers” (232) help each other in battle:
“Those still alive...help and rescue” (138). Wehner describes the bond within the masses
as a living principle functioning irrationally:
The closer he came to the front he felt as if he was sucked in by a very real power which
spread in a broad lane across ravines and ridges. That was the first whiff of warlike comradeship, a strong wind from the breath of thousand men... (51)
and: “one was a beating heart among a thousand beating hearts” (53). The individual
soldier is an integral and necessary part of the front. The achievements of the front as a
whole are made up of these individual contributions: “Thus a hundred individual acts
resulted in a single action” (126). As in Beumelburg’s GB the immediate superiors of the
front-line soldiers possess natural authority, which implies a higher degree of bravery,
cooperativeness, willingness to make sacrifices and aggressiveness. Without any privileges, they are father figures who know their men, encourage and comfort them.
The conflict between front and military command
Wehner’s aim is the heroic portrait of the German front-line soldier, whose character
finds its fulfilment in the frenzied attack. The resulting military success is for the author
proof of his theory. He is convinced, as he states in the preface, that the Supreme Command (OHL = Oberste Heeresleitung), the members of the Staff are responsible for the
military failure and the eventual defeat. This is Wehner’s variation of the Dolchstoßlegende.
According to the author it is the unerring instinct of the soldiers, the spirit of the front and
the will to win which guarantee success. Wehner completely fails to appreciate the necessity of planning in a war of such a large scale as regards both men and material. He
condemns the reflexion and planning of the OHL as an obstacle to the spontaneous, instinctive and, as a consequence, successful action. The front-line soldiers know “that
victory will fall to him who forces his law of action upon the enemy, and all through the
war it was the Germans who dictated the law...” (87).
Wehner’s condemnation of the military leadership is total. He lays all the blame on
Falkenhayn, the embodiment of doubting, planning, rational old age, while he associates
the Crown Prince with youthful instinct, visionary action. The first means military defeat,
the second victory.176 In this context “the worst pain of the soldier” (191) is the fact that
176
The Crown Prince was considered part of the front, although nominally he was the commander of the
Fifth Army (with von Knobelsdorf making the decisions).
71
his attack is stopped by orders from the military commanders who do not know the front.
First the soldiers face these incomprehensible orders with disbelief and loathing: “Nobody wanted to go, the officers were forced to use their authority” (55). Wehner’s soldiers, however, do not refuse to obey these counter-productive orders: “The soldier accepted this order” (137), although he feels “as if split by an axe from top to bottom”
(208). Wehner does not give reasons for the soldiers’ obedience but states it as a fact.
They obey orders in spite of knowing better, which is part of their heroism. And the aspect
of heroic sacrifice is very much in the foreground: “He did the impossible, and if he failed
it was a sacrifice.” (137) In Wehner’s novel the military command exposes itself as traitor
of the troops when in direct contact or confrontation with trench reality. When General
Falkenhayn has got to know the front during a brief visit, he retires to his quarters “bewildered and shocked” (139). Theory and planning must capitulate before reality, mind is
defeated by action. Wehner describes Falkenhayn’s retreat as a deliberate flight from
reality, which means that the author can put all the blame on him.
The idea of nationalism
Wehner’s nationalist arrogance is expressed in the characterization of the German soldiers: all front-line troops are brave, determined, prepared to make sacrifices; each of
them is a hero. They are motivated by what the author sums up in the graphic slogan of the
“place in the sun” (99) which Germany requires for its existence. Wehner justifies this
imperialist demand by the formula of an existential war of defence forced on Germany:
the enemy had “secretly made a circle round the breast of the German” (99). The soldiers’
idea of the Fatherland is irrational and emotional. This idea is never defined, the author
simply stresses the unbroken and uncomplicated relationship of the soldiers to their native land by having them sing “O Deutschland, hoch in Ehren, du heil’ges Land der
Treu!” (23) ( Oh Germany, highly honoured, you holy land of trust). There is a passage in
which Wehner hints at his idea of the Fatherland in a series of vague images, but there is
no proper definition:
Let’s not argue now about what constitutes the Fatherland: a growing empire, a striding
people, a brown field, a glistening river, the glance of a person at home, or an unborn babe that
wants to be delivered. Let’s lock up our thoughts with the power of love and be still. (144)
Not wanting to argue means stressing the non-verbal unity of the front-line soldiers,
but it also means not wanting to (or not being able to) define rationally the term Fatherland and, by introducing the “power of love”, retreating into an emotional irrationalism.
Some of its contents are hinted at: a rural world close to nature, a moving people and an
empire. In comparison with the enemy the very special quality of the German soldier, that
is, the German people, is evident, for in this war the fight is “nation against nation” (86).
According to Wehner, the French troops are cowards, weak-willed and of inferior morale.
Their reaction to the incessant German attacks is either flight or capitulation, or even
suicide.177 Sometimes Wehner has one single German soldier take between fifty or a hun177
Two suicides by French officers motivated by shame about the military situation are described on one
page, p. 86.
72
dred prisoners. The French poilus are afraid of death, they are described as “pale and
trembling” (153). They capitulate “in great numbers” (57 ) and they desert.178 This negative image is in marked contrast to the author’s own experience at Verdun: French prisoners voluntarily carried his wounded body through a barrage from the battlefield to a dressing-station.179 A particular target of Wehner’s hate are the black and coloured colonial
troops fighting for France. His defamatory racism is very obvious. While he praises the
frenzied attacks, guided by instinct, of the German “giants and hunters”, he condemns the
same actions by the black troops as brutal bloodthirstiness originating in a subhuman evil
animal kingdom: “The beasts from Senegal...smelled like animals from the jungle,...when
they picked up the scent of a white man, they drew their knives” (235). The “grinning ugly
faces” are “straight out of Hell” (229). They are strong only in large numbers and are
perpetually drunk. Wehner contrasts the heroic courage of the individual German soldier
with the brutality of the black masses, German discipline with the unrestrained behaviour
of the blacks. Their way of fighting characterises them as subhuman animals; Wehner
condemns their use of the knife, their kicking and biting as unheroic, unmilitary and unworthy of a German.180 The climax of the author’s racial hatred is reached when, towards
the end of the novel, the numerically superior drunken blacks who can no longer be controlled by their French commanding officers kill the defenceless German prisoners. After
1933 this action was condemned as “the violation of the idea of race by the British and the
French who abandon defenceless Germans to the mercy of the Negroes.”181 Wehner’s
conviction of the racial superiority, singularity of the German people determines his idea
of the meaning of the war. After the victory it will be up to them “to give the peoples
freedom” (141) and “to teach them” (141). His conception of history is anachronistic,
determined by the unrealistic desire to continue the medieval German Empire into his
own century. He puts it into the mouth of one of his protagonists:
“The Empire...the Empire” said Bernhard Buchholz looking into the flames. “Once it was
great in his [God’s] name. When I think of the emperors: Charlemagne and Friedrich II, Otto
and Heinrich and all the powers of the Middle Ages, then I’m overwhelmed by music. For such
an Empire I would like to die.” (141–142)
This desire for an idealized past shows Wehner’s naive notion of an idyllic apolitical,
hierarchic community which replaces contemporary history and politics by an unchanging
myth. In conjuring up the emperors and the “powers of the Middle Ages” the author implicitly demands voluntary subordination under the social principle of leader and followers,
which he realized at the front. Verdun, formerly freie deutsche Reichsstadt (free imperial
city) offers itself conveniently as a symbolic link between this past and the present war:
Verdun...only two hundred and eighty years ago it was a free imperial city. Now we bleed
where our ancestors ploughed. The Empire, that is the German Empire, and that is everywhere
where we once were.182 They have broken off bits of it, have swallowed it and the name of
178
Wehner mentions deserters in the German army (who divulge the plan of attack to the French), but
characteristically they are Alsatians and Poles, so they don’t count as real Germans, another racialist “dig” by
the author, pp. 40–41.
179
Werth, p. 527.
180
That these feelings were widespread in Germany (barbarism versus Kultur) is documented in several
cartoons in the German press. See Appendix II for examples.
181
H. Pongs: Krieg als Volksschicksal II, p. 205, quoted in Prümm, p. 149.
182
My italics.
73
Empire has almost died away. German Empire – is that the irregular square between the fortresses
of nature and the boundaries of our will?... We haven’t got room, we haven’t got space. We must
expand, consciously and as a people. No drop of our blood must be lost in foreign nations any
more, as has been the case for centuries. The migration begins again, we are its first wave. And
where we stand, there is the German Empire. This is for me the meaning of the war. (142)
Wehner naively transposes a falsified mythical German past into the present and uses it
as a pretext for demanding an imperialist expansion of Germany. The historical development of national states since the Middle Ages, interpreted by Wehner as a continual act of
injustice towards Germany, must be revised by this war. Wehner’s answer to the question
of meaning of the war, to quote Rolf Geissler, “is revealed as racial imperialism.”183 The
soldiers at the front serve as the pioneers of an expansion declared a justified migration of
peoples. The ambiguous question about the German borders points out how vague and
therefore arbitrary the space of expansion is according to the author. In this context God
has an important function; He is witness and intermediary of this visionary empire and
also solely responsible for it:
When God gives us victory he gives us His empire. The empire of justice, order and peace in
His name. Our task is to administer it. Our victory will be the result of His instructions. (141)
War itself becomes a kind of religious service. Prayers are said, hymns are sung. Runners are described as kneeling “like choir boys” (72) beside their general, the act of counting
time before throwing hand grenades is referred to as “the rough prayer of the sappers”
(57). I do not agree with Gollbach, though, who claims that “the reality of war is painted
over by doubtful quasi-sacred metaphors.”184 I see a different function of religion here,
rather, as in Unruh’s text, an elevating of everyday events, adding solemnity and authority
to the novel.185
In my opinion Wehner has tried to incorporate some features copied from successful
predecessors, and Unruh appears to me a very likely source. The function of religion, the
metaphoric description of the German soldier, the characterisation of some of the seven
friends give the impression of being modelled on Unruh. Thus Unteroffizier Eduard Lang
shares a number of significant features with Vizefeldwebel Clemens in Unruh’s Opfergang:
he is a teacher, a courageous leader (and saviour) of his men, he has visions and he has the
gift of forecasting the future. In a vision he experiences the birth of his child as if it were
Christ. A climax of his leadership qualities is the episode in which he saves his men dying
of thirst by digging and finding a spring. Roppel Blank, the runner, is also associated with
the supernatural: while on duty, he is first carried through the air by the blast of an explosion, this is followed by the appearance of the Virgin out of the dawn (a painfully sentimental passage both in language and contents which is quoted in the German original to
facilitate critical appreciation of the “precious style” used by the author in this episode):
Aus der zarten Röte der Morgendämmerung trat eine Frau hervor. Sie war hoch gewachsen
und trug einen blauen, mit Sternen besäten Mantel. Ihr Antlitz war von unsäglicher Hoheit,
Geissler, p. 100.
Gollbach, p. 202.
185
Similarly Prümm, p. 155.
183
184
74
und Roppel Blank wußte, das sei die Gottesmutter. Nun streckte sie dem jungen Soldaten ihre
Hand vor dem Gewölke hin. Blank traute sich nicht die edlen Finger zu berühren, doch das
schien auch nicht not. Denn nun wurden auf einmal seine lehmigen Stiefel so leicht, daß er den
Hang hinaufging, als sei er eine ebene Wiese und als fahre das Fort ihm entgegen. Und als nun
die hohe Frau gar zu ihm heruntersprach, er solle sich nicht fürchten, und es werde ihm nicht
das Geringste geschehen, da ging er offenen Mundes dahin, während die Röte zu seiner Linken
und die holde Frau in ihr schräg vor ihm herzog. (192–193)
Another, rather unbelievable episode is associated with Unteroffizier Junne, who sacrifices his life for his men (III,1, pp. 217–232). Associations with Christ’s passion are
invited when dead Bernhard Buchholz is thus described: “A crown of rusty barbed wire
was wound round the head of the young officer” (282). 186 Wehner’s arsenal contains a
mixture of heathen mythology and Christian (Catholic) religion difficult to disentangle.
As one critic remarks “it is noticeable that the religious vocabulary does not describe
genuine religious circumstances, but is supposed to evoke at best an “aura of religious
sentiment’.”187 The seven friends are portrayed as heroes in the Germanic tradition; their
close relationship with God, through dream and vision, provides additional qualities like
innocence, purity and a child-like naivety. Since there is no context of contemporary
history and because the war experience is embedded in myth and quasi-religious imagery
the concept of the future must remain hazy. It is only known to God and entirely in His
hands.
While the German army is successful the meaning of the war is defined by one of the
protagonists as “victory” (140), but this optimistic definition gives way to a more subdued and vague version as a German victory becomes more and more doubtful. It is
expressed in a long speech by the teacher, Eduard Lang, full of analogies between military incidents and biblical events of the Salvation (142–144) culminating in the following
sentences:
Don’t give a name to the meaning of war. It will be here some day and yet won’t be recognized. He who names it draws it down into his arms and thus is held up to ridicule. (144)
With the German defeat becoming more of a reality, the tragic note of heroic suffering
at the front gains more prominence. Death is played down, becomes irrational, since it
cannot be utilized as a justification of victory; the German soldier is justified solely “by
the example of his sacrifice in the face of which any purpose comes to naught” (261).
Having thus avoided a rational explanation of death, Wehner concentrates on glorifying
the dead in effusive, emotional language:
They know what they have given to the world: the example of a sacrifice unheard of over the
centuries. They do not want any thanks, they are immortal. So they hum and talk inaudibly
about the invisible German Empire which is rooted in their wounds. And they know that this
Empire is immortal among dying nations. (307)
186
187
An image possibly borrowed from Unruh.
Geissler, p. 101, cf. Gollbach p. 203.
75
The poetic interpretation of the war
Wehner’s novel does not – as Beumelburg does – present a story of initiation, the development of a ‘hero’. The seven men are old friends from pre-war days, finished products,
not members of a military unit, which renders the arrangement somewhat artificial. 188
They are endowed by the author with mysterious and superhuman traits, which makes
them unrealistic figures. Their exploits cover a considerable part of the novel giving it an
air of the supernatural and unreal. The language used by Wehner contributes to this effect.
It is archaic, rich in metaphor and archaic symbolism, drawing on the arsenal of Greek
and German mythology, the Bible, including also items of folklore, such as the ‘wilde
Jäger’ and the ‘Walpurgisnacht’. He uses personification, frequently to illustrate the magnitude of horror at the front, but is not very successful, as the following example shows:
the accumulation of metaphors does not render the description any more graphic:
The bombardment increased from day to day. The many hundreds of thousands of shells,
which filled the boiling air put down a deadly net over the crossed ridges before Douaumont
and Vaux, a suffocating, perpetually shaking net of red-hot iron, of raving excavators189 looking
for ground, forever digging until all the bones, those of the living and of those already torn to
pieces thrice, flew against the derailed sun. The air boiled, the earth was turned a thousand
times, kneaded by iron hands, and after three days it had truly become flesh. (254)
There are only a few passages in which the historical events are reported objectively
(here the influence of the sources quoted at the end is noticeable), apart from that, the war
is removed from any contemporary dimension, is stylized into an archaic myth. Central
topic of the novel is the glorification of the German war dead and the irrational attempt to
give their sacrifice some meaning. The author sees the war in relationship to a mythical
German past, but neither does he realize rationally the medieval past, nor does he grasp
the war in its contemporary context. So “Wehner’s irrational interpretation of the war
proves to be an expression of illusory yearning and of arrogant nationalism.”190
Reception of the novel
In nationalist quarters Wehner’s novel was highly praised. The critic H. Wocke called it
”a novel which counts among the few war books which promise to last”,191 Pongs, despite
criticism of details (referred to earlier) considered it the most successful attempt of recreating the events at Verdun, surpassing Unruh, Schauwecker and Beumelburg.192 Walter
Linden named it “the most perfect literary work about the front line soldier.”193 In NS
188
A point made also by Pongs in his review: “...the comradeship of the seven is an idealistic construction. It is not the natural form within the army, the squad, which comprises these seven men...”, p. 41, and
more critically: “He has eliminated the community of the fighting unit, the living cooperation of leader and
group, and thus the opportunity to demonstrate how war as the fate of a people is experienced in the primordial cell (Urzelle) of a people at war.”, p. 42.
189
Refers to a machine, not a person.
190
Gollbach, p. 209.
191
H. Wocke: “Josef Magnus Wehner”, Zeitwende, vol. 8. 1932, pp. 153–156.
192
H. Pongs, p. 39.
193
W. Linden, p. 7.
76
Germany it was, like Beumelburg’s novel, one of the books promoted by the authorities
(there was also a so-called Volksausgabe, a cheap edition) and was thus commercially
very successful.194 In 1933, a sequel followed, Wallfahrt nach Paris (Pilgrimage to Paris),
‘a patriotic fantasy’ about a German war veteran returning to the Verdun battlefield. Between 1930 and 1945 Wehner was one of the nationalist writers whose voice was heard
again and again in the service of the new Germany.195
6. Arnold Zweig Erziehung vor Verdun 1935
While in National Socialist Germany the minds of young men were filled with the spirit of
sacrifice for the Fatherland (and thus mentally prepared for the next war to come)196 by
writers like Beumelburg, Wehner, Schauwecker, Zöberlein and others, a completely different Verdun novel was growing in exile and published there, in Amsterdam in 1935:
Arnold Zweig’s Erziehung vor Verdun.197
Werner Bertin, writer and junior lawyer (Referendar) with poor eyesight has joined a
non-combatant sapper unit destined for Verdun. His compassion for French prisoners and
the fact that he is Jewish make him very unpopular with his anti-Semitic superior. In front
of the Douaumont, captured by the Germans, Bertin gets involved in a case of corruption:
A young infantry NCO, Christoph Kroysing, has found out that his colleagues embezzle
the food destined for their men. His report to an uncle high up in the military hierarchy is
intercepted by the censor. As a court-martial would incriminate those involved in the case
too strongly, his superiors decide to solve the problem by not relieving Kroysing in his
front-line position; after 60 days in the trenches he gets killed. Before his death he informs Bertin about the scandal and asks him to post a letter to his family thus bypassing
the censor. At Kroysing’s funeral Bertin meets his elder brother, a lieutenant in an engineer battalion posted in the Douaumont, who vows to avenge his brother. At his instigation the complete staff of his brother’s battalion is moved into the fort; he wants to use
their fear of the dangerous life there as a means of extracting a confession of guilt. When
Hauptmann Niggl, commander of the battalion, is confronted with young Kroysing’s death,
he realizes that he has been caught in a trap. A priest, Father Lochner, called by Niggl,
acts as a mediator between the two parties. When the French in a counter-attack retake the
Douaumont, Niggl escapes in time, and Kroysing, after an abortive attempt at recapturing
the fort, ends up wounded in hospital. Meanwhile Bertin is mentally and physically near
the end of his strength; his home leave has been cancelled deliberately and he has been
given three days of arrest. The latter turns out to be a blessing as he uses the time to do
some hard thinking and to start writing the Kroysing story. Bertin’s state reflects the general demoralization in his company where food parcels are no longer shared and sometimes even stolen and where the company commander goes on leave in the middle of an
attack. In the hospital Bertin meets Kriegsgerichtsrat (judge-advocate) Posnanski, a Jew-
According to Strothmann, 125 000 printed copies in five years, Strothmann, p. 376.
For details see the Biographical sketch of J. M. Wehner in Appendix I.
196
Cf. Alfred Kantorowicz: “Literatur, die den Krieg vorbereitet”, Die Sammlung, vol. 12. (1935), pp.
682–694.
197
Transl. by Eric Sutton: Education before Verdun, Secker & Warburg (London: 1936) and Viking Press
(New York: 1936). All quotations are taken from the latter edition.
194
195
77
ish lawyer and humanist, who agrees to reopen the Kroysing case and decides to save the
writer by applying for Bertin’s transfer as his clerk. When the application is refused,
Schwester Kläre, a nurse, who once had a short-lived affair with the Crown Prince, arranges his intervention on Bertin’s behalf.
Bertin has been before Verdun for one year now. Discussions with the Leutnant, his
socialist pals Lebehde and Pahl have gradually opened his eyes and his political mind has
developed. Pahl is due to be sent home (self-inflicted wound) where he plans to start
agitating against the regime, Kroysing and Kläre are in love; they plan to get married after
Father Lochner has dissolved Kläre’s first marriage. In exchange Kroysing has agreed to
stop persecuting Hauptmann Niggl. Suddenly the hospital is hit by a bomb, Pahl and
Kroysing are killed, a second hits the priest on the road. Bertin, though, is saved and is
moved to the East. In an epilogue we see Bertin – it is the day after the signing of the
peace treaty at Versailles – on his way to the Kroysings to inform them about their sons’
fate, but on second thoughts he changes his mind.
Zweig dedicated his book ‘to the victims’ and put the following line – a more pragmatic enlargement on the Delphic inscription – as a motto at the beginning of his novel:
“Know thy lot, Know thine enemies, Know thyself.” The novel contains a number of
features familiar from Zweig’s earlier war book Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa,
1927: There is a case of large-scale corruption and injustice involving deliberate murder;
the main plot is connected with many episodes and there is a wealth of detail.198 And again
Zweig leaves no doubt about his total condemnation of war.
Bertin’s Education
To make his “Analyse der moralischen Verwilderung”199 particularly effective Zweig
takes a sensitive, gifted writer and puts him among the ranks of the non-combatant sappers
(the author’s own experience in the war) who lead a slave-like existence immediately
behind the front line. To make things worse his “hero” is Jewish and his superior an antiSemitic nationalist. And the setting is the front at Verdun, a synonym for hell among
German troops. There the education of Werner Bertin takes place (the irony of the title is
intended). At the beginning he is an idealistic young man, a rather naive humanist, “a
Parsifal in regulation boots” (145) without any insight into the sinister machinations of
his superiors. Listening to enemy bombardment he regards war as a natural force:
But he did not hear the sound of implements made by human hands, for the scope and use of
which men were responsible. For him it was a primeval force that roared above his head, like an
avalanche, for which natural laws were responsible, not men. The war, projected and maintained by human agency, appeared to him more and more as in the guise of a storm decreed by
fate, a release of malignant elements, not amenable to judgment nor accountable to anyone.
(99)
198
To facilitate orientation, for English/American readers a map of the area is provided plus a “list of
characters” naming no less than 72 names, including 3 French and one Swede, a war correspondent.
199
Holger Klein: “Literarische Reaktionen auf den Ersten Weltkrieg”, p. 50.
78
On his way to and from the Douaumont Bertin is suddenly directly confronted with
shellfire, mud, gas; for the first time he realizes what war really means and this truth
shocks him profoundly. But he still wonders what makes people kill each other who lived
in peace before:
And Bertin reflected bitterly how these men of 1916 had, in the spring of 1914, met these
same Frenchmen and Belgians and English in peaceful sporting encounters and learned gatherings; and how they had thrilled with pride and pleasure when German firemen hurried across
the frontier to help in a mine disaster, or French rescue parties appeared on German soil. They
were murder parties now. What shameful enchantment had bewitched the world? (170)
But even then, despite the shock and fear during a barrage, he still feels ecstatic excitement:
The hiss and scream of the hurtling missiles, all the hellish, overmastering uproar of the
bombardment, made Bertin’s heart quiver, while, in that same moment, he clutched Süssmann’s
arm in ecstasy, exalted by the fury of the human impulse to destruction – the joy of omnipotence in evil. (176)
Gradually, through his own experience and some outside assistance, Bertin realizes
that militarism and war involve abuse of power, that they are instruments in the hands of
the ruling class, that, in the final analysis, war is more a conflict between social classes
than between French and German soldiers. Sympathy for ‘the enemy’ is shown right at the
beginning when Bertin and his pals offer French prisoners water from their mess tins and
are stopped by an enraged colonel. Bertin is publicly reprimanded and his whole company punished for this “outrage”; from now on Bertin has a bad name with his superiors.
His involvement with the case of young Kroysing gives him insight into massive corruption and leads to further chicanery from the hands of his superiors. During his arrest
which he uses to do some hard thinking he registers that the officers abandon their men
before a French attack; for his own circumspect conduct during the event he has been
recommended for the Iron Cross but is passed over in favour of his superior. He feels that
he must put to paper his experience. So, during his solitary confinement, he writes down
the Kroysing story.
Bertin’s development is watched sympathetically by two socialist members of the working class, Pahl, a compositor, and Lebehde, landlord of a pub, who realize that he is slowly
going to the dogs. They decide to ask him to join their fight against the capitalist system.
When Bertin is really “down”, depressed by the bad atmosphere in his unit (an outward sign
of his poor state: he eats a tin of Schmalzersatz all by himself) Judge-Advocate Posnanski
who is familiar with his pre-war literary works and has read the Kroysing story decides to
save that gifted writer. Lying in a hot bath (the first for nine months!) provided by Sister
Kläre, another fan of his books, Bertin is aware of his demoralized state:
Would he ever write again? Would the frost that had eaten into the marrow of his bones ever
melt? Would his life in uniform, all his fury at the infernal folly and villainy that had dogged
him everywhere, ever take convincing shape in words? His foes had beaten him at last. He, like
the rest, had been brought up to stand in the breach for the Fatherland, and there stand fast, and
not to evade the common destiny. Now he was tired. He wanted peace; he wanted to turn his
back on the heaped abominations that ever threatened to engulf him, escape this malignant
79
persecution of intellect and its possessors, which tried so hard to bring it down and crush it out
of life... He was sick of the soldier’s life, he wanted to take refuge in books, and plunge into the
play of fantasy; to dissolve this corrupted world into a farce... He knew that all this experience
would have to ripen within him, as a good ham is smoked, for year upon year. Would it ever be
expressed? (351–352)
In a discussion with Kroysing, Pahl, Lebehde and Father Lochner, Bertin speaks out
fervently against all this senseless butchery and slaughter thus winning the hearts of the
two socialists, but signalling to the others that it is high time to get him transferred before
he endangers himself with such “defeatist” talk. Later, on watch that night, he reflects on
his outburst and realizes how much he has changed.
Aspects of war as a class struggle
Arnold Zweig’s sympathies are with educated humanists such as Bertin, whose ‘education’ has parallels in the author’s own development, Posnanski, Mertens (both lawyers),
and with the suffering members of the working class who bear the brunt of the war. With
intelligent, class-conscious men such as Pahl and Lebehde Zweig shows potential leaders
of the socialist movement. A crucial scene in the novel revealing Lebehde’s self-confidence and authority is the encounter of four sappers (Bertin among them) with the heir to
the throne. Worn out, wet, longing for a good smoke they are trudging back to billets
when a staff car with the Crown Prince passes by splashing them with mud. The adjutant
throws a few packets of cigarettes to the four surprised men: 200
What was the Crown Prince doing here? What business had he at the front? It was said that
he showed a kindly interest in his troops; none the less, the army shrugged their shoulders over
him because it was only too well known how little the fact of the Verdun battle was allowed to
interrupt the lordly tenor of his life; he played with his greyhounds, with pretty French women
or nurses or tennis partners, while for the past seven months all the tribes of Germany had
poured out blood for him. But here he was, scattering cigarettes as he drove by, and they would
be wet and spoilt if not speedily picked up. Otto Reinhold, prepared to dirty his fingers for all
four, had already bent down with a grunt of satisfaction. But someone seized him by the wrist.
“Let them lie,” said Lebehde, the innkeeper, in a harsh undertone; “they’re not for us. Anyone
who wants to give us a present will please give it properly.” Startled and ashamed, Reinhold
looked into Karl Lebehde’s fleshy, freckled countenance, his set lips and angry eyes. And stepping forward Lebehde stamped the nearest packet into a pulp. (185–186)
This episode has most probably been influenced by a very similar version described by
Unruh in his biographical sketch of the Crown Prince. There the royal heir meets a rifle
battalion back from the battle of the Douaumont. The soldiers “almost ground to pieces
by war” pick up the cigarettes from the road – and throw them back at him in anger and
disgust! Hit on his head and chest the Crown Prince races away like a madman.201 For
Zweig’s sappers this reaction is not possible, as the car has already passed. The slight
200
Such encounters (contrasting in detail) are related in a number of texts, e.g. Sven Hedin: Ein Volk in
Waffen (Leipzig: 1915), pp. 65–66.
201
Fritz von Unruh: “Der Kronprinz”, in: Sämtliche Werke, vol.17. (1979), pp. 375–391.
80
change arranged by the author increases the tactless behaviour of the Crown Prince and
replaces a spontaneous act of anger with a deliberate gesture emphasizing the working
man’s strength of character and pride. A similar act of protest by Lebehde takes place at
Christmas when the Crown Prince sends “each of his brave Verdun warriors an enamelled
steel case filled with cigars or cigarettes, adorned with a medallion of the donor” (252).
Lebehde this time accepts the cigarettes but with his pocket-knife dexterously detaches
the portrait of the Crown Prince from its embossed setting and with dry humour observes
that the case looks better without it (253).
On the news of the revolution in Russia, Pahl, the compositor, has decided to make his
way home from the front to spread the socialist message among his fellow workers. With
the help of a rusty nail he has managed to contract severe blood poisoning and is now in
hospital where he has his big toe amputated without an anaesthetic. For Zweig his pain
and suffering are yet another illustration of the state hierarchy where the working man is
at the very bottom. To Bertin, his face “ploughed by pain” assumes Christ-like qualities.
The writer is reminded of medieval paintings depicting the Descent from the Cross (317).
When Pahl describes his painful experience and moves his hands “Bertin found himself
looking for the red nail-wounds on the backs of them” (318):
“My lad...it beats me to think that such a thing could happen in the world, that one man
could inflict upon another such agony as that. I tell you it went right through me, up to my heart
and brain and back again... It hardly goes with the world of blue skies and sunshine and birdsong
that we’ve all heard so much about. It belongs to a society where men strike, and strike to hurt:
to the under world, where a man is damned from birth to fetch and carry for others, and waste
the talents that should be at the service of humanity...The slaughter bench... It is always there
and in war it is everywhere. We were conceived and reared and trained to serve it, and on it at
last we die. And that is what is called life.” (318)
The bedside conversation with Pahl’s conclusion that “the proletariat would be forced to
come to a reckoning with the capitalist class” (319) does not convince Bertin who claims
that ‘some capitalists were very decent fellows’ (319) and tries to find his own solution.
Pahl, physically unattractive yet intelligent, politically involved, proves an equal match for
Eberhard Kroysing, the individualist, when they discuss politics in hospital. He shows conclusively that the case of the younger Kroysing is not an isolated, individual act of injustice,
but symptomatic of the system which can only be overcome by solidarity and sharing.
Eberhard Kroysing
EvV is Zweig’s only war novel which contains a certain amount of direct front-line action
because he wished to appeal to the sentiments of ex-servicemen (as Remarque did so
successfully), but he also wanted to make them aware of the machinery of war which they
were unable to see in their trenches. Thus the main character is not an infantryman, but a
sapper behind the front, and “Verdun serves more as background than as topic”202 of the
novel. The function of the title, according to Hüppauf, must be interpreted as a deliberate
counter-position to nationalist attempts in the late 1920s of surrounding the war with a
202
Holger Klein, p. 50.
81
myth, focusing on Verdun.203 A passage in a letter to Freud in February 1934 supports this
statement; Zweig wrote that in EvV he planned to “create the thorough requital with the
Germans and the Nazi”.204 Although the basic plot of EvV goes back to the year 1928,205 it is
quite possible that Zweig deliberately varied motifs which were predominant in the völkisch
Verdun novels around 1930. Thus Wehner’s characterisation of the Crown Prince as a vigorous and determined commander in contrast to Falkenhayn, is refuted by Zweig, who shows
the royal heir mainly concerned about the prestige of the Hohenzollern dynasty which must
not be endangered. Leutnant Kroysing has parallels with the Leutnant in Beumelburg’s
Gruppe Bosemüller (e.g. his stubborn attempt to recapture the lost fort, his nihilistic cynicism) but while Beumelburg draws him as a broken character deliberately seeking death,
Zweig’s officer is a human being full of vitality, a forceful protagonist who dominates the
action of the novel to a large extent.206 Cast as a disillusioned individualist his person exposes the comradeship of the front-line soldier as a nationalist myth.207 Eberhard Kroysing
is motivated by an unreflected will to live; danger is the element in which he thrives. He
completely identifies himself with his role. “As a portrait of the typical front-line soldier,
Kroysing is unrivalled in the entire oeuvre of Zweig.”208 His shabby appearance, his contempt of the mere formalities of military life such as salutes and titles, his language full of
irony and sarcasm reflect his disillusionment with the officially proclaimed lofty aims of the
war. So he is the right person (together with his Unteroffizier, little Süssmann) to rectify the
heroic tale about the German storming of the Douaumont (in reality a farce) and in general
to open naive Bertin’s eyes about the realities of the war:
“My lad...don’t you yet know that the whole thing is a put-up show – in the rear, in the frontline, on our side, and on theirs; we bluff and they bluff – only the dead don’t bluff and they’re the
only people I respect... Nothing is true that you see in print, including the Bible, and all men are
permitted to do exactly what they like, including you and me if we’ve only got the guts...” 209
(145)
Little Süssmann’s last message before his death spells out the same:
“Tell my parents that it was worth while; and to Lieutenant Kroysing that it wasn’t; it was a
bloody fraud from beginning to end.” (368)
Another Kroysing statement, used by Zweig to attack the writers of nationalist war
novels:
“This isn’t a girls’ school. The lies about the spirit of the front and the comradeship of war
may be all right, and they may be necessary to keep the show going for the benefit of the chaps
203
Cf. Bernd Hüppauf: “Erziehung durch Krieg. Arnold Zweigs Frage nach einer moralischen Begründung
des modernen Kriegs”, in: Midgley/Müller/Davis (eds.): Arnold Zweig-Poetik, Judentum und Politik (Bern/
Frankfurt/N.Y./Paris: 1989), pp. 54–77.
204
Freud/Zweig: Briefwechsel, p. 75, quoted from David Midgley: Arnold Zweig, p. 84.
205
See “Author’s Note” on the back page of Grischa.
206
The fact that Eberhard Kroysing was not introduced into the plot of the novel until after 1931 or even
1933 supports the point made above.
207
Cf. Hellmuth Nitsche: Die Bedeutung des Grischa-Zyklus von Arnold Zweig (Diss.), (Leipzig: 1959),
pp. 219–220, quoted from Midgley: Arnold Zweig, p. 120.
208
Heinz Wetzel: “War and the Destruction of Moral Principles in Arnold Zweig’s Der Streit um den
Sergeanten Grischa and Erziehung vor Verdun”, in: Charles N. Genno & Heinz Wetzel (eds.): The First
World War in German Narrative Prose (Toronto/Buffalo/London: 1980), p. 59.
209
Cf. the very similar outburst of the Leutnant about Verdun in Beumelburg’s GB, pp. 25–26.
82
behind, and the chaps across the way. Sublime self-sacrifice, you know, excellent pabulum for
war correspondents, members of the Reichstag, and the reading public. But as a matter of fact
we all grab what we can reach. It’s a war of all against all – that’s the proper formula.” (117)
Kroysing has learned that no moral principles are respected, least of all Christian ones.
He is not the only one to arrive at this point, Judge-Advocate Mertens draws a similar
conclusion. Zweig shows two extreme ways of reacting to the awareness both officers
have gained. Mertens, a sensitive, cultured man, fond of music and French paintings,
commits suicide because he cannot endure the atrocities committed by the army in which
he tries to maintain a sense of justice; he is officially declared a victim of a French air
attack. Kroysing chooses a different solution: “He disregards the discrepancy between
appearance and reality by dismissing the first and by facing the latter.”210 He does not try
to find a moral justification for his action of revenge as he knows that the very notion of
justice has become meaningless. After all his brother has died because he complained
about the injustice of the world. Kroysing is impressive and almost frightening in his
thirst for revenge.Where the restraints of civilization are abandoned, human behaviour
turns into that of a beast, and Zweig, emphasizing Kroysing’s vitality, gives him the appearance of a beast of prey, a wolf. With the instinct of this animal he moves at the front,
he stalks his prey with determination and skill (Niggl/Sister Kläre); Zweig stresses this
aspect by frequent use of suitable similes and metaphors: The chapter appropriately named
“Driven Game” (III,6)211 contains a number of examples:
The interminable, tortuous path up from the infantry position, the shameless agility, born of
a hundredfold experience, that was needed to evade the French shells – all this gave him positive pleasure... (129) “I’ve pretty well got my teeth into Herr Niggl.”(129) A wolf like Kroysing
was not thus to be beguiled. His set grey eyes glared through the wall at his ultimate prey, the
captain. (130)
The ‘wolf’ metaphor is varied in the text:
Kroysing laughed genially, but there was a wolfish glint in his eyes... (163) Kroysing started
up, glared and bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. (201) That was not Bertin’s insignificant
voice; it was the voice of a beast of prey, whose claws might be dangerous... (202)
When the Douaumont must be evacuated by the Germans and Captain Niggl manages
to ‘give Kroysing the slip’ he vows to get him back:
“But...he shan’t escape me. I won’t give up the game yet. He can’t have got far, and I’ll catch
him again if I have to grab him by the scruff of his neck. But first I must deal with those gentry
opposite who have had the impertinence to turn me out of my little private hell.”212 (205)
A second metaphor, similar to the ‘wolf’, associated with Kroysing is that of a hunter:
Wetzel, p. 62.
The German title “Abgejagte Beute” makes the animal connotations perhaps even more prominent.
212
The translation “my private little hell” in relation to Kroysing does not really make sense since he
actually enjoys being in the Douaumont. Again the German text transports the desired connotations: “die
mich aus meiner Höhle geräuchert haben” (who have smoked me out of my den/lair). A mix-up of German
Hölle (hell)/Höhle (den).
210
211
83
“I feel like a boy again, full of violence and vengeance. Those were the days for hating and
hunting down a victim. It may be that the war has laid bare the primeval hunter that lives in all
of us and drinks his evening tea from his enemy’s skull...” (117)
The ‘wild avenger’ (367) is a translation of ‘der Mann und wilde Jäger’ and as such
Kroysing is referred to by Father Lochner in his conversation with Sister Kläre (“What is
this I hear, Sister Kläre, and not from you, but from the Wild Huntsman himself!”) (391)
this time even raised to the rank of the mythical character of German folklore. Zweig (and
the characters in the novel) interpret war as a temporary intensification of the incessant
struggle among human beings.213 The question now is: Is war to be considered a medium
in which man displays his true nature or does the brutalization which war brings about
alienate man from his true being? Kroysing, as we have already seen, answers in the
affirmative to the first, so does one part of Bertin, the part which is “exalted by the fury of
the human impulse to destruction” (176). Judge-Advocate Posnanski is of the second
opinion. After he has heard of the Kroysing case he comes to the conclusion that only the
moral law as it prevails in peace time can safeguard a truly human existence. “Both sides
agree that war is a relapse; what they disagree about is its evaluation. Kroysing regards it
as the restoration of natural behaviour among human beings, while Posnanski, who believes in progress, regards it as a deplorable setback.”214
Kroysing, an engineer by profession, is full of contempt for mankind in its present
state. Stuck in the mud “it flashed into his mind that the earth and not sky was what
damned his efforts, the clay on which man is born and condemned to crawl about till he
dies and is reabsorbed in it once more”. It was “no better than a springboard, for a man to
stamp on and soar upwards and away” (213). At that moment he decides to become a pilot
– “a being of a higher order, a step ahead in the sluggish development of the vertebrae
called man” (212) – once “this blasted business” is over. While he muses on a future in the
air, he is stuck in a swampy terrain, unable to lift his feet (a situation not without symbolism), hit by shrapnel. The discussion in hospital with Father Lochner shows that he has
not given up his dream. A fellow-patient taking his leave warns Kroysing: “I’m afraid, my
dear Kroysing, that you won’t find flying at all in your line.” 215 This is spoken while a
French plane is seen flying in the sky which will return at night and by mistake bomb the
hospital. When Kroysing has triumphantly come back to his room from the conquest of
Sister Kläre (who has carelessly aired her room with the light left on!), he hears the sound
of the falling bomb. Thus, in retrospect, Kroysing’s courage and his lust for combat remain ineffective, except for his having conquered Kläre. Niggl escapes, and the Douaumont
fortress is lost to the French. In the end, Niggl who always shrewdly looks after his personal advantage, is promoted, while Kroysing dies.216
Zweig’s Leutnant Kroysing shares a number of traits with front-line soldiers in Unruh’s
Opfergang, those in Wehner’s war novel, and “comes alarmingly close to Jünger’s new
213
Cf. Zweig’s essay “Kriegsromane”, in: Die Weltbühne, 16 April 1929, pp. 597–599. (“Der Krieg ist
nichts and als eine Form des menschlichen Lebens ganz nackt zur Ansicht gebracht” [p. 598.])
214
Wetzel, p. 66.
215
The unhealthy, even dangerous aspect of flying for Kroysing is lost in the translation and with it the
inherent element of tragic irony which the German text contains (“...das Fliegen bekommt Ihnen nicht”).
216
Wetzel, p. 67.
84
man, the futuristic fighting machine without any conscience and ideals”.217 As the author
describes him with sympathy (and we as readers admire his honesty, courage and vitality)
he may be seen as yet another means for Zweig of appealing to a readership of ex-servicemen. What the front-line soldier looks like in a picture may be guessed from the work of
a so-called Frontmaler such as Fritz Erler who, as a guest of the Crown Prince at Stenay
in 1916, painted portraits of Verdun fighters, models for his later “Unknown Soldier”. 218
In January 1917 he recalled how he was haunted by the men he had met:
You pale apparitions, whitish like new fresco-paintings, in the chalk-hollows and corridors...you are always with me, you follow me until your real face becomes plain and you finally
take shape as the man with the steel helmet before Verdun.219
Where Kroysing differs from Jünger’s amoral ‘man of steel’ is his capacity for compassion with the suffering of other people and his sense of justice. At the outset he seems
to have lost these human virtues in his zest for fighting and it takes a personal shock to
revive them. This outwardly hard man gains Bertin’s sympathy when he apologizes to his
dead brother for past acts of lovelessness and injustice (46–47) and maintains it by his
determined fight for the restoration of ‘outraged justice’ (142).
Another trait which Zweig’s text shares with almost all war novels (not only nationalist
ones) is the contempt expressed for the Base, and the author can be sure of the approval of
all front-line soldiers. Christoph Kroysing’s experience “that immediately behind the foremost trenches, baseness, selfishness and treachery held sway” (34) is played out in variations throughout the novel. And further to the rear it was even worse:
As the distance from the front increased, the more clearly did the war take on the semblance
of a system of administration and organization. A horde of officials in military array here exercised unfettered dominion; and they frowned on any suggestion of the ultimate return of conquered territory. What they needed they impounded, and paid for it in stamped paper which the
French would have to redeem in due course. Smartness, alertness, promptness, all the soldierly
qualities for their own sakes – these in their eyes were the highest values. (57)
These men, at home insignificant figures, afraid of their superiors (sometimes even of
their own wives: e.g. Major Jansch [430]) assume a new sense of importance during the
war, as part of the military hierarchy.
Point of view
By choosing the perspective of an omniscient author who describes events from a point of
view he changes at will, Zweig achieves a complex, multidimensional picture of war
beyond the limits of the immediate Verdun front, conveying to the reader the impression
217
Hüppauf: “Erziehung”, p. 67. Jünger’s characterization was originally based on observations made at
the Somme, but in the post-war years the various sources amalgamated under the label “Verdun”.
218
Cf. Unruh: “Der Kronprinz”, p. 388.
219
Quoted from Joseph Darracott & Belinda Loftus (eds.): First World War Posters (London: 1972), p.
25. The same page contains a war loan poster with a typical Erler frontline soldier portrait (see Appendix II
for picture).
85
of truth, objectivity. Official news are unmasked by contrasting reports, thus the “heroic,
successful German assault” on Fort Douaumont is put into perspective by Leutnant Kroysing
who was there. From Süssmann the reader also learns about a terrific explosion inside the
fort (which has been kept secret) which kills about 1 000 men; their burnt corpses are left
in the vaults which are bricked up. Nobody must know that the catastrophe has been
caused by the stupid carelessness of some German soldier (who tried to warm his dinner
by lighting the gun powder from an unscrewed hand grenade [147]). Süssmann notices
afterwards that he has been robbed of all his personal belongings, a sad contrast to the
officially propagated esprit de corps of the troops (148–149). Zweig informs the reader
about large-scale German crimes committed in Belgium and Luxemburg; told by trustworthy men such as Father Lochner (or Judge-Advocate Mertens)220 they are given particular credibility:
“I was with our Rhinelanders in Belgium when force was put upon neutrality and justice.
What I saw, and what our men proudly did, as being the whole duty of a soldier, was murder,
robbery, outrage, arson, sacrilege – every crime that can burden the soul of man. They did these
because they were ordered to do them, and they joyfully obeyed because the devil of destruction had possessed himself of men’s souls – German souls not excepted. I have seen the corpses
of old men, women, and children; I was there when towns were burned, merely to terrorize a
nation weaker than our own into allowing us to march through their country. As a German, I
was horror-struck, as a Christian I wept.” (165)
Being an omniscient author he includes the use of auctorial comment and prophecy.
Thus Bertin’s development is accompanied by these:
...he had faith in his luck. Well, it stood written that he was to feel something very different
and much more hirsute against his skin and in his conscience, before he reached an insight into
reality. (88)
Sometimes the prophetic comment is put into the mouth of a person in contact (positive or negative) with the naive protagonist, e.g. the socialist Pahl:
If Wilhelm Pahl knew anything about Prussians, there would be something coming to this
fellow who appeared to regard the prospect with indifference. (8)
The deaths of both Kroysing brothers are prepared by ample use of prophecy and
brought about by incidents outside normal routine, particularly in the case of the younger
brother. Here Zweig is the omnipotent (negative) deus ex machina. The relevant chapter
is suitably headed “Events Sometimes Move Fast”; the victim is in a good mood because
he has been able to communicate with Bertin. “There was no danger, “he” never fired at
that hour. What day in the week was it? No matter. Not a good day, in any case, for
Christoph Kroysing” (36). The reader learns why it is not. The French gunners opposite
have a visitor, Axel Krog, a Swedish war correspondent who is now with the battery
“which had never yet fired out of season” and must be given a demonstration of their
skilled accuracy:
220
He has similar stories to tell of atrocities committed by the German army in Luxemburg, Belgium, and
France (261–263).
86
Guns One and Two were ready and awaited their target, the game that would so soon be put
up two and a half kilometres away within the circle of vision of the field glass.
Eberhard Kroysing is killed in a chapter named “The Tile from the Roof” which stresses
the accidental aspect of his death and warns the reader. When Sister Kläre opens her
bedroom window leaving the light on we know that this will be fatal, for we have seen the
French pilot preparing for his night duty and looking out for any sign of the enemy. She
has done this before and has been severely reprimanded for it. Her stubborn reaction:
“You aren’t in Douaumont now...the French airmen have got something better to do than
mess about here”(330). The reader (who has also read the title of Book VIII: “The Eleventh Hour”) knows better. Both deaths fill us with sadness because we have developed
sympathy with the characters and because they die shortly before they have achieved
what they set out to do.221 Use of tragic irony in both cases increases the feeling of a sad
loss.
Zweig a traditionalist?
Zweig leaves no doubt in his novel that he does not share Jünger’s ideas of the modern
“man of steel” (Kroysing dies), or of this war as the beginning of a militant future. For
him war is a relapse into barbarism. Bertin, who stands for Zweig’s own humanist tradition, survives, if somewhat changed (no longer a starry-eyed Parcifal), and will take up
the fight with his pen for a civilized society. This attitude, together with certain formal
aspects which we do no longer expect in the period of Modernism alongside such authors
as Döblin and Musil, Joyce and Woolf, creates the impression that the author is indeed a
traditionalist, a twentieth century Theodor Fontane. This label was mainly the work of
Georg (György) Lukács, the most influential socialist critic of German literature until
1956, who used Zweig as his chief witness for his theory of epic realism, playing him off
against supposedly more modern writers such as Brecht and Seghers.222
Since the middle of the 1920s, Freud’s psychoanalysis had played a decisive role in
Zweig’s intellectual and ideological development223 and had also affected EvV. By the
time Lukács published his essays on Zweig,224 Freud and his theories had been widely
accepted; they were ostracized, however, in authoritarian structures and states such as the
Catholic Church, Hitler’s Germany, and the Soviet Union under Stalin. Lukács ignored
(was unaware of?) Freud’s influence; his attitude dominated literary criticism during the
221
Other (famous) examples in war literature of death at the “eleventh hour” include Remarque’s Bäumer
(All Quiet...), R. Aldington’s Winterbourne (Death of a Hero) who both die shortly before the Armistice, F.
Manning’s Bourne (Her Privates We) who is killed in a raid the night before he is to be sent home for officer
training.
222
Georg Lukács: “Arnold Zweigs Romanzyklus über den imperialistischen Krieg 1914–1918”, first published in: Internationale Literatur. Deutsche Blätter, vol. 3. (1939). Reprinted in: Wilhelm von Sternburg
(ed.): Arnold Zweig: Materialien zu Leben und Werk (Frankfurt: 1987), pp. 136–169. Cf. also Hans-Albert
Walter: “Vom Elend der Zweig Rezeption”, in: Sternburg, pp. 237–255, and H. A. Walter: “Traditionalist
oder Neuerer. Bemerkungen zur Rezeption von Arnold Zweig”, in: Midgley (1989), pp. 13–32.
223
Cf. Midgley: “Die Macht des Unbewußten. Zur Funktion psychoanalytischer Motive im Werk Arnold
Zweigs in der Phase seiner Aneignung der Freudschen Theorie”, in: Midgley, pp. 110–123.
224
An earlier review of EvV by Lukács was published in Moscow, in: Internationale Literatur, vol. 3.
(1937), pp. 136–137.
87
period of exile between 1933 and 1945. As a consequence, in post-war Europe, in the
GDR and the other socialist states of the Eastern block it was deliberately ignored or even
denounced.225 Walter shows that Germany’s leading contemporary critic, Polish-born
Marcel Reich-Ranicki (who repeats the Fontane cliché)226 for all his acknowledging of
Freud’s influence is still not quite free from Lukács’ shadow. 227 In an essay (based on a
speech made in Berlin in 1932), “Der Krieg und die Schriftsteller” 228 Zweig summmed up
his insights at the time. In this novel, Freud’s influence is perhaps most noticeable in the
actions of Eberhard Kroysing as Müller has demonstrated convincingly.229 Kroysing is
originally not in the least interested in the corruption case within his brother’s company.
When the younger brother informs him about his intention to report the embezzlement of
rations, the older brother reprimands him for his “jugendliche Eselei” (act of juvenile
stupidity), dissociates himself from this action and claims that each “müsse seine Suppe
selber auslöffeln” (take the consequences). It is only after Cristoph’s death that the older
Kroysing takes an interest in the injustice committed against his brother. Zweig very carefully motivates this interest with guilt complexes dating from childhood days:
Breathing heavily, his clenched fists outstretched before him, Eberhard Kroysing, mastering
himself with an effort, looked down at the lad’s belongings. He had not been a good brother to
him – he had bullied him a good deal. Elder brothers do not love the late-comers; they are
jealous of their parents’ love and resent having to parcel out their sphere of influence. But
though the elder cannot rid himself of the later-born, he can at least subjugate him; and let him
beware if he should disobey. A nursery can become a little hell. Children are infinitely resourceful in the instinctive use of secret instruments of war. (130)
This grim childhood scenario is used by the author as the direct basis of Eberhard
Kroysing’s character; he is determined by hatred of his brother (not openly acted out), by
latent aggressiveness tabood in his Protestant home, and by an unrealized impetus to
increase his sphere of power. War for Kroysing provides the opportunity to act out all
these suppressed instincts and urges about whose origins he remains unconscious. Bertin
realizes this intuitively:
More than any man Eberhard Kroysing had needed the war to realize himself, to express his
being and to test his reach, as he himself put it. (152)
The world of peace taboos these instincts; that is why Kroysing hates it: “He was
seized by a savage loathing of this false and bloated world of peace.”(66) Standing at his
brother’s coffin Kroysing muses on their childhood:
225
Cf. the illuminating essay on the influence of psychoanalysis in EvV by Hans-Harald Müller: “Militanter
Pazifismus. Eine Interpretationsskizze zu Arnold Zweig’s Roman Erziehung vor Verdun”, in: Weimarer
Beiträge 36 (1990), vol. 12. pp. 1894–1914.
226
M. Reich-Ranicki: ”Der preußische Jude Arnold Zweig”, in: M. R.-R. (ed.): Deutsche Literatur in
West und Ost (Stuttgart: 1983) [Munich: 1963], pp. 253–288.
227
See the essays by Walter (footnote 27).
228
In: Die Sammlung, 12/1934, pp. 621–628. Most of his discourse on mass psychology and army relied
heavily on Freud’s “Massenpsychology und Ich-Analyse” (1921).
229
Cf. Footnote 30.
88
“I’ve got a great deal to be sorry for, old chap,” he thought; “it was a tough job for you to
grow up with me around all the time. But why were you so like Mother, you young ruffian, and
I only like Father?”230 (46)
I do not agree with Müller, though, that Kroysing is incapable of mourning.231 The
following passage bears me out:
Eberhard Kroysing...did not conceal the two tears that were trickling down his cheeks... The
lieutenant kissed his little brother on the forehead...(46) ...choking down the dry sobs in his
throat, he kissed his little brother once again on the cold mouth and the dark down round his
lips... (47)
It is true that initially, Kroysing tries to suppress his share of responsibility for his
brother’s death, when doubting Bertin’s report of the incident; but later he will admit it:
“And God forgive me, I let him be eaten up.” (69)232 His childhood tyranny over his
brother and the sense of responsibility for his death lead to a feeling of incomprehensible
loss and a desire to make amends. How this is to be achieved is revealed in a dialogue
between the brothers: “And Bertin shall be a lieutenant in your stead.” (131) Bertin, a
poet like young Christoph, is to be his brother’s substitute and instrument of his revenge.
But Kroysing is prepared to drop both the man and the plan if Sister Kläre consents to
marry him and give him the love which he believes was denied him as a child. Kroysing’s
revenge fantasies are just as unscrupulous and unrestrained as those of his adversaries,
Major Jansch, Hauptmann Niggl, and after the Douaumont debacle shows himself incapable of admitting defeat. Stuck in the mud he decides to fight as a pilot in future, and
gives his aggressive fantasies free rein. His futile threatening gesture with his pistol against
the plane which sends down shrapnel shows the inappropriateness of both his reaction
and his fantasies. In the end, Kroysing dies from a cause which earlier he refers to as
“cowardly” (167), but which he has no qualms of inflicting on the enemy (‘hurling’ bombs
that would scatter gas and bullets among the crawling multitudes below). In the character
of Eberhard Kroysing Zweig demonstrates what fantasies of omnipotence and an unchecked potential of destruction, of whose origins their carriers are unconscious, may
lead to. Kroysing’s helplessness vis-à-vis his infantile fantasies of destruction is illustrated in his pilot’s dream preceding his death:
Beneath him appeared an English city, full of English people, planned like Nürnberg; yonder was the castle, home of Alfred the Great and of Christopher Columbus; let us drop one on
the chimney. (420)
Kroysing, the seemingly heroic sapper Leutnant is dropping bombs on his father and
brother. Despite his claims to the contrary – “I ...am a man of fact; I’m a civil engineer, a
230
The translation is not very successful here. It ignores the hint of jealousy, of hierarchy expressed in the
original: “neben mir, unter mir”. And “young ruffian” is hardly adequate for “Nesthäkchen” (pet of the
family, usually reserved for the youngest child).
231
“Kroysing erweist sich als unfähig zu trauern: seiner Wehmut gestattet er nicht sich zu äußern”, Müller,
p. 1900. The last phrase from the text actually refers to Bertin.
232
Not a very good translation of “Und ich, ein Schwein, hab ihn die Sache allein ausfressen lassen.” (p.
80).
89
profession that leaves no room for fantasies” (49) – he is given, as we have seen, to
infantile fantasies, and his superiority is based on a domineering urge of destruction which
transcends all rules of morality. Zweig leaves the reader in no doubt about Kroysing’s
dangerous character and his disturbed psyche; in Bertin’s words not only a man ‘made of
iron’ but ‘mad too – a man possessed’ (278). The Leutnant’s suicidal plan to recapture the
Douaumont with a handful of men illustrates the fact that such unrealistic infantile madness is not the private affair of a man with a warped psyche, but a grave danger to society
at large. All the officers involved in the discussion of the plan consider Kroysing a lunatic
(“Look at his eyes. And the way he grinds his teeth...” “His proper place is a padded cell”
[201]), but one of them realizes that the regressive conditions of a large army may make
such a madman the natural leader:
“And as we all think it mad, we shall all three join in, and drag a lot of other folks into the
show, simply because we daren’t stand out.” … “Now then, Seidewitz, keep your hair on, it’s
just a way we have in the army. Besides, a madman gets a lot of things done.” 233 (201)
There is a letter from Zweig to the secretary of the ‘Schutzverband Deutscher Schriftsteller’ (SDS) in exile, Rudolf Leonhard, in which the author regretted that in characterizing Eberhard Kroysing, “a Nazi”, he had refrained too much from making comments.234
Which is probably a good thing, as it forces the reader to think for himself, see the typical
of the character behind the individual.
Socialist influences in EvV
In Zweig’s novel a psychoanalytic approach to explaining the war is intricately interwoven with a socio-economic one. In connection with this latter approach two minor characters in the novel, the compositor Pahl and the landlord Lebehde, are given the status of
“Erzieher”235 (teacher) and “Bundesgenossen”236 (allies) of the bourgeois protagonist
Bertin. The development began during the years of exile in the 1930s and continued in
socialist countries after the war; literary reception of the novel in the GDR apostrophized
Pahl and Lebehde as Bertin’s “Lehrmeister”. One early critic, Werner Türk, even claimed
that these two characters represented progressive thinking in the novel and provided the
book with a powerful impetus, although they had been designed as only minor characters.237
A close reading, however, of the text of EvV clearly shows that the influence of the two
Social Democrats on Bertin has been grossly exaggerated238 and that Kamnitzer’s proposition (after 1933 Zweig transferred his hopes onto the German workers and on Marxism)
233
The original reads: “Ein Verrückter macht viele” (One madman creates a lot of other madmen). The
translation misses the negative implications of this sentence completely.
234
Cf. Müller, p. 1903.
235
G. L. (i.e. Georg Lukács): “Arnold Zweig: ‘Erziehung vor Verdun’”, in: Internationale Literatur, 3/
1937, pp. 136–137.
236
F. C. Weiskopf: “Judäa – Dachau – Verdun: Zu einigen neueren Werken der deutschen Emigrationsliteratur”, in: Der Gegenangriff, 50/1935, p. 6.
237
Werner Türk: “Erziehung vor Verdun”, in: Die Neue Weltbühne, 45/1935, pp. 1406–1409, p. 1409. He
also uses the term “Lehrmeister” (1409).
238
As demonstrated by Müller, cf. footnote 30.
90
must be considered wishful thinking.239 The relevance given by Zweig to Pahl and Lebehde
in the novel may be summed up as follows:240
– Pahl’s plan to take Bertin with him to Berlin (propaganda among munitions factory
workers) fails; Pahl dies when the hospital is bombed, Bertin is transferred to the
East.
– Pahl’s plan to give “the right turn and point” to Bertin’s education is only marginally
successful. There is no continuous ideological learning process, on the contrary,
there are political relapses. Bertin is more impressed by Lebehde’s authority and
Pahl’s suffering in hospital than by their tenets.
– The novel presents the two characters in unflattering terms. In his attitude towards
Bertin and in his overestimation of himself, Pahl displays psychic urges and traumas
which are not taken into account, neither by Pahl’s rationalist ideology nor by
Lebehde’s conviction regarding emotions: “Sentiment is for refined folk...What
people like us need to do is to think” (435).
– Zweig demonstrates that ethical values, such as compassion, humanity, morality are
not only of no interest to the two men as regards their ideology, but are also mostly
irrelevant for their actions.
– There is a latent conflict between Pahl and Lebehde with regard to the intelligence
of the German workers. While Pahl is optimistic (his plan of agitation among the
factory workers is based on his hopes of their educability), Lebehde, from his own
experience as an innkeeper, considers them to be pretty stupid:
I’ve listened to all you’ve told me these long winter evenings, and I don’t fancy your prospects myself. The German workers are a bit too stupid – how stupid they are only a man knows
that’s been brought up behind a bar and listened to the rubbish they talk, year in year out. (295)
– Because of his conviction Lebehde pleads for the use of force, while Bertin speaks
out against violence, even if it is, as the landlord puts it “the force that will abolish
force” (438).241
The German writer and poet Johannes Bobrowski satirized the specific syncretism of
psychoanalysis and socialism in Zweig’s novels in an ironic Xenion:
Der immer blühende Zweig
Grad’ wie sein Grischa-Roman entzückt auch die Kunst seiner Rede;
hoffnungslos bleib, Synkretist, hinter dem Meister zurück.
Fängt ihm ein einziger Satz mit zwei Leninschen Zeilen an, hat er
stets auch aus Siegmund (sic)Freud schon ein Zitat für den Schluß.242
239
Heinz Kamnitzer: “Arnold Zweig. Weg und Ziel nach 1933”, Neue Deutsche Literatur 4/1974, pp. 29–
43, p. 40.
240
Cf. Müller, pp. 1898–1899.
241
The problem of use of force (“Gewalt”) was one source of Zweig’s criticism of the German Communist
Party (KPD) and of the Soviet Union during the Weimar Republic. Cf. Müller, footnote 30.
242
Johannes Bobrowski: Gesammelte Werke. Hrsg. von Eberhard Haufe. I. Band: Die Gedichte (Stuttgart:
1987), p. 236. Quoted from: Maximilian Rankl: ‘Litauen soll schwäbisch werden...’ Ironie und Geschichte in
Arnold Zweigs Roman Einsetzung eines Königs, in: Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, XXXI, vol. 2.
1998, pp. 125–143, p. 140. Cf. also Fritz Raddatz: “Zwischen Freud und Marx: Arnold Zweig”, in: Raddatz:
Traditionen und Tendenzen. Materialien zur Literatur der DDR (Frankfurt/M.: 1972), pp. 279–300.
91
Reception of EvV
In an essay, published in 1990, Wolfgang Leppmann, a German critic, stated with regret that
Zweig’s novel had been published into a “rezeptionsgeschichtliches Vakuum” and claimed
that it therefore had been denied any contemporary impact.243 Leppmann referred to Lukács’
essay of 1939 as the only contribution by an important critic. He might have also mentioned
Lukács’ earlier essay of 1937 on the novel. It is true that earlier reviews of EvV were from
the pens of less illustrious critics244 but the fact that there were numerous translations within
the next five years245 would seem to contradict Leppmann’s statement of regret. In addition,
there were comments from well-known German literary contemporaries living in exile. Even
if they were private (e.g. in letters to the author), they were proof that Zweig’s novel was
being read and discussed (not in Germany, though – or if so, only clandestinely), as writers,
wherever they may have found refuge, acted as multipliers.
Lion Feuchtwanger, famous novelist (Jewish), after 1933 living in Sanary/France, had,
like Zweig, a novel published by Querido in Amsterdam in 1935, and the two colleagues
exchanged views of each other’s books. Feuchtwanger’s review of EvV was contained in
a single letter, written on 20 June 1935. He considered the novel the best book so far
written in exile, “a more mature and more manly Grischa”. In his view Bertin had developed into a real character whereas in Grischa he sometimes seemed to be too much carrier of the author’s opinion or criticism (‘Raisonneur und Spruchbandträger des Autors’).
Feuchtwanger praised Zweig for having found the proper distance, “not too close and not
too distant, unsentimental, thoughtful and without empty rhetoric. It is indeed an ample
book, properly aged like good wine.”246 Feuchtwanger raised two minor objections: He
felt uncomfortable with the massacre caused by the bomb at the end of the novel, and
second, the image of the battle given by Zweig on the very first page created a presentment which, however, had disappeared when one reached page three. Apart from that, he
was very positive, considered the diction, which gave the impression of being well thoughtout and polished, as calm and clear. In fine, for Feuchtwanger EvV was a climax in Zweig’s
artistic work.247 In a later essay Feuchtwanger referred to the socio-political basis of the
novel: “One could demonstrate how in a few lives the sociology of war has been captured,
the class struggle within the trenches, the realization of intellectuals that their fates are
bound up with that of the proletariat.”248 In a letter from Paris, dated 24 February 1936,
Anna Seghers, novelist, Communist and Jewish (who later emigrated to Mexico) reported
to Zweig in Haifa that “Education before Verdun is the topic of frequent and profound
discussions here”.249 In 1936, Bert Brecht read EvV and in May wrote to Zweig that this
243
Wolfgang Leppmann: “Der gestiefelte Parzival”, in: M. Reich-Ranicki (ed.): Romane von gestern –
heute gelesen, vol. 3: 1933–1945 (Frankfurt: 1990), pp. 69–75, p.74.
244
Cf. Werner Türk (footnote 42), F. C.Weiskopf (footnote 41), Lola Sernau: “Erziehung vor Verdun”, in:
Das Wort, 6/1937, pp. 93–94.
245
1936: London, Copenhagen, New York, Prague / 1937: Milan, Moscow, Warsaw /1938: Budapest,
Paris / 1940: Kiev. All figures from Georg Wenzel (ed.): Arnold Zweig 1887–1968: Werk und Leben in
Dokumenten und Bildern (Berlin: 1978), p. 231.
246
Harold von Hofe: “Zweig und Feuchtwanger: Wechselbeziehungen im Exil”, in: Midgley (1989), pp.
271–282, p. 274. H. von Hofe is editor of their correspondence.
247
Von Hofe, p. 274.
248
L. Feuchtwanger: “Arnold Zweig”, in: Die Neue Weltbühne, 33/1937, vol. 45 p. 1415.
249
AW16 (Selected Works), p. 491. Quoted from Wenzel, p. 245.
92
novel was ‘superior to all other war novels’ for the reason “that he describes the war as a
gigantic class struggle...I am very pleased that it was you who wrote this book.”250 That
Brecht had some influence on his colleague was shown by the fact that in 1930, Zweig
interrupted work on his manuscript of EvV in favour of the dramatization of Grischa, the
result of advice from Brecht and Feuchtwanger. Brecht invited Zweig to visit him in Denmark and make a trip to Moscow with him in autumn. As he feared one of his letters might
have gone lost, he repeated his favourable impression (above all, he found the ‘representation of the class struggle in the trenches’ most ‘remarkable’) in another letter the following year.251 Brecht’s praise was the more valuable since his judgment of Zweig’s Grischa
had been on the whole negative.252 He did not, however, publish his critical review as an
act of solidarity in the face of rabid attacks from nationalist quarters. 253
The National Socialists banned and burned Zweig’s books; together with eleven colleagues he was declared “injurious to the reputation of Germany” and blacklisted.254 As a
humanist, pacifist and a Jew he was considered a threefold enemy of the Reich (one qualification alone would have been enough reason for a ban). His name was associated with
“nihilism” and the “decadence” of “wurzellose Intellektuelle”. In the words of NS Germanist Walther Linden:
A similarly nihilistic type of literature follows in the wake of Remarque: Ludwig Renn,
Ernst Glaeser, Arnold Zweig and others. The gigantic conflict becomes a farce, something
useless without value or aim.255
Hermann Pongs, a prominent colleague of Linden’s used even stronger language in his
lengthy essay on war literature. His attack (directed foremost against Grischa) unintentionally reflected the qualities of Zweig’s writing:
...The most artistic, most deliberate and best disguised product of resentment, directed against
German militarism in general, originates in the ancient subconscious vindictiveness of the Jew:
Arnold Zweig’s novel The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1928). In the disguise of a lawyer, dealing with a thrilling law case, only serving justice and humanity as it seems, a case of obvious
perversion of justice is disclosed as brutal militaristic thirst for power; the whole case, however, made into a novel betraying the influence of the subtle verbal artistry of Thomas Mann,
only serves the secret Thersites tendency to denounce the German army and to uproot the
German soul.
In this context Zweig’s barely disguised Jewish narcissism is revealing which considers the
Jews a superior race which despises war because of a more profound intellect and a more
mature humanity. These are the types of bourgeois resentments to which is added less subtly
and more openly the class resentment of the proletariat. The fact that this sort of book has been
popular with the masses and has preferably been made into films seems to suggest for the
Letter from Brecht to Zweig (30. 5. 1936), in: Briefe, vol. 1, p. 288.
Letter from Brecht to Zweig (18. 2. 1937), in: Briefe, vol. 1, p. 304. All references to Brecht’s letters
from Jost Hermand: “Über die Tugend der Solidarität. Arnold Zweig und Bert Brecht”, in: H. L. Arnold:
Arnold Zweig, Text und Kritik 104 (Munich: 1989), pp. 56–66.
252
Bert Brecht: Gesammelte Werke in acht Bänden (Frankfurt: 1967), vol. 8, p. 53.
253
Cf. Hermand, p. 57.
254
Cf. Joseph Wulf (ed.): Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich, p. 63.
255
Walther Linden: “Volkhafte Dichtung von Weltkrieg und Nachkriegszeit”, in: Zeitschrift für Deutschkunde, 48/1934, pp. 6–7.
250
251
93
psychology of the masses that they like to follow the destructive tendency and agree to the
destruction of ideas and heroes because of an unconscious enmity.256
Although Zweig’s books were banned and confiscated in Germany, the creditors of his
former German publishing house did a good trade by ‘flogging’ his books abroad, about
20 000 copies, for which no advance, nor any fee had been paid to the author. Zweig
appealed to bookshops and readers abroad to buy these books by all means, but not to
make any payments to Germany as he did not wish the “Konzentrationslager–AG” headed
by Herr Herrmann Göring to profit from his intellect which fought against it with every
breath.257
In June 1936, Anglo-Saxon readers learned about Zweig’s latest novel through an anonymous review in The Times Literary Supplement.258 The reviewer praised the book as “a
novel in the grand tradition” but admitted to difficulties in reading which he attributed to
“a turbid, if none the less, impressive, style”. He referred to some defects of the novel:
One feels, that it is unfair, not in the depth of baseness that it imputes to officers and n.c.o.s
of the German Army, but in the number of them to whom it imputes such baseness, and also that
there are some slips from the technical point of view.
What these “slips” were the readers were not told, but he was generous enough to state
that “the masterly range of character study and the absorbing interest of the main plot and
its side-currents make these defects of small account”. As he formulated it: “Great fiction
can afford such blemishes.” After a detailed summary of main events his verdict was very
positive: “This is a very fine work indeed.” But in a kind of postscript this British officer
expressed – between the lines – amazement that such things should have been possible in
the German Army:
Yet it is not unfair to add that when we read of officer after officer contriving or condoning
iniquity, striving to appropriate decorations won by their men, virtually stealing their men’s
pay; of a commander transferring a man because he had been asked on the telephone to do so by
a nurse who had been his mistress, we cannot altogether wonder that the author is unpopular in
Nazi Germany.
One might reply to Captain Falls that the officers and NCOs involved in these criminal
actions were part of the Base which had a bad reputation in almost all German war books
(fiction or non-fiction) justifying the statement from the novel quoted earlier that “immediately behind the foremost trenches, baseness, selfishness, and treachery held sway”
(34). And one could point out a number of front-line officers who displayed a somewhat
different behaviour: the Kroysing brothers, Leutnant von Roggstroh, the wounded officers in hospital, NCO Süssmann. And the commander in question was not just any average
commander; he was the Crown Prince (with the reputation of a womaniser) and that made
quite a difference.259
Hermann Pongs: “Krieg als Volksschicksal im deutschen Schrifttum”, p. 20.
A. Zweig: “Versuch einer Gegenrechnung” (unpublished, date probably 1938), in: A. Zweig: Essays,
vol. 2: Krieg und Frieden (Frankfurt: 1987) [Berlin: 1984], pp. 104–109.
258
TLS, June 20, 1936, p. 519. The author was Captain Cyril Falls, later Military Correspondent of The
Times, an expert on war literature, cf. his War Books, 1930.
259
Cf. Excursus: The Crown Prince.
256
257
94
Translation(s) of EvV
As we have seen, translations of the novel into major European languages followed in
quick succession, a sign, according to Wenzel, that Zweig’s intention to do his share in the
fight against Hitler had been internationally understood and appreciated. 260 Also a sign of
commercial success (next to Grischa, it was the most successful novel of the cycle). The
following paragraphs concentrate on the English translation made by Eric Sutton for both
the London (Secker & Warburg) and the New York (Huebsch, Viking Press) editions. A
translator first of French literature, then of German, Sutton made a name for himself with
Zweig’s Grischa, his first German text, to be followed by all the other pre-war novels of
the cycle;261 translations of works by Heinrich Mann, Hans Fallada, Max Brod, Vicki
Baum and Erich Kästner helped increase that reputation.262 So among German writers
Sutton’s name appeared to have been excellent. Robert Neumann and Lion Feuchtwanger
praised him, and Zweig himself admired his translation of Grischa as “excellent, even
admirable”.263 The American publisher Huebsch was an exception in this enthusiastic
chorus. Already in the first novel he pointed out ‘mistranslations which demand change’.264
As regarded EvV, he reported that
“one of our able assistants devoted many days to careful scrutiny and revision of Sutton’s
translation of Erziehung vor Verdun, although one would think that a translator of Sutton’s
standing would not have to be revised”.265
How was such a discrepancy of opinion on Sutton’s text possible? The answer may be
found – at least in part – in the expertise which Zweig’s colleague in London, Robert
Neumann, made of Sutton’s last Zweig translation, concerning Das Beil von Wandsbek.266
Neumann attested Sutton’s translation very good readability in careful, excellent English.
The impression was not of a translation but of an original text. The trouble began when
one compared original and translation. According to Neumann Sutton knew German like
an Oxford graduate in foreign languages (first class honours) who had then gone on an
extended tour of Germany and had moved in university circles in Heidelberg. His descriptive passages were normally excellent, his dialogue between intellectuals was frequently first-class, but he was ignorant of the language spoken by ordinary people, and
utterly helpless when it came to army slang of Prussian officers. The number of mistakes
was enormous, but for the uncomparing reader they were not noticeable as they fitted the
context. He had translated all of Zweig’s earlier books in the same way and nobody had
noticed because they read so well. As a consequence Neumann advised the publisher to
employ someone to give Sutton some competent idiomatic help.267 Davis provides numeWenzel, p. 231.
The remaining two novels were not accepted in the USA, as during the McCarthy era Zweig was
considered a Communist; post-war Britain showed no great interest either, cf. Davis, p. 302.
262
Cf. the essay by Geoffrey V. Davis: “‘Mr. Sutton’s Monument’ oder ‘Das Beil von Wandsbek’ auf
Englisch”, in: Midgley (1989), pp. 283–310.
263
Letter from Zweig to Huebsch, 9. 8. 1928 (Arnold Zweig Archiv=AZA).
264
Letter from Huebsch to Zweig, 19. 10. 1928 (AZA).
265
Letter from Huebsch to Zweig, 25. 3. 1936 (AZA).
266
Davis, p. 294.
267
Letter from Neumann to K. Webb, 7. 1. 1946 (AZA). All details of the correspondence from the essay
by Davis.
260
261
95
rous examples from The Axe of Wandsbek which support Neumann’s critical statements.
Much of what he pointed his finger at applies also to EvV, although we should be aware
that some unfortunate or incorrect turns of phrase in the translation may not be Sutton’s,
but the work of the “expert” whom Huebsch had employed to check and revise.268 Apart
from the passages already referred to in footnotes the following has come to my attention:
Der dicke Oberst Stein klemmt eifrig den Scherben ins Auge, sein Bauch überwölbt
die Reiterbeine. (12)269
The corpulent Colonel Stein, his great belly overhanging his breeched legs. (5)
Obviously, the translator was unfamiliar with the slang expression “Scherben” =
monocle, so he cleverly left it out.
refers to the Crown Prince: ...wenn er in Bonn den weißen Stürmer der Borussen
durch die Straßen getragen. (399)
...when at Bonn... he carried the standard of Borussia through the streets. (356)
Should read: the cap of Borussia (name of an exclusive student fraternity)
“Bei uns Fehlanzeige”, sagte Bertin. (103)
Should read: “Supplies Exhausted”, quoted Bertin from the notice that was put up on
such occasions. (91)
Der Fahrer grinste. Der Mann war richtig, der war sicher nicht in Montmédy
zuhause.(85)
The driver grinned. He was a good fellow, whose home was certainly not Montmédy.
(73)
The reference is meant to be to the driver’s passenger (Kroysing).
Rangunterschiede zählten nicht, Umgangsformen verstanden sich von selbst. (86)
Differences of rank were ignored, formalities of address were taken for granted. (74)
Should read: good manners.
“Menschenskind”, sagt er, als Bertin ihn anruft, “so trifft man sich auf dem Savignyplatz.” (224)
“Hullo, my lad,” said he; “another merry meeting, eh?”(200)
The hint of a shared Berlin experience is lost.
Chapter VI, 1, heading: “Was der Jude sich einbildet” (243)
“The Mind of a Jew” (217)
268
It is interesting that the title page of the American edition does not mention any other translator besides
Sutton.
269
All German quotations from the Aufbau Verlag edition (Berlin: 1959).
96
Too neutral; the whole chapter abounds in anti-Semitic slander and vocabulary which
is sometimes not even translated (e.g. Itzig, Saraleben):
Im Sommer ist er nämlich zur Hochzeit gefahren, mit irgendeinem Saraleben, das
er, wie diese Juden schon einmal sind, zur Ausnutzung der gesetzlichen Vorschriften
schlau angestiftet hat. (246)
He had gone home to get married to some wretched little Sarah, whom he had tricked
into marrying him to satisfy the regulations.
Should read: whom he had instigated into marrying him so they would be able to take
advantage of the regulations (i.e. get marriage leave).
There is at least one instance where not only a word, but a whole sentence has been left
out by the translator:
The passage refers to Kroysing’s plan to become a pilot: Er aber wird sich in den
steinernen Lindwurm verwandeln, mit Krallen, Schweif und feurigem Atem, der das
Gezwerg in seinen Klüften aufstört, all die Niggl und Wichte. (239)
Missing (213)
To conclude: a very readable translation with some flaws, some of which are only
noticeable in comparison with the original. On the whole, Neumann’s verdict on The Axe
of Wandsbek is also true for this earlier translation.
Context and Genesis of EvV
At the end of his first novel dealing with the Great War, The Case of Sergeant Grischa
(like EvV a case of legal injustice) Zweig informed the reader in an “Author’s Note” on
his plan of expansion:
The novel called “The Case of Sergeant Grischa” is the central piece of a triptych of which
the collective title will be “A Trilogy of the Transition”. It will be preceded chronologically and
dramatically by the novel called “Education before Verdun” (Bertin); the novel called “The
Crowning of a King” (Winfried) will follow it.
A postscript (Nachbemerkung) to EvV then told the reader that this novel now filled
the gap between Young Woman of 1914 and Grischa, which, together with The Crowning of
a King were to form a cycle named “The Big War of the White Men” (“Der Große Krieg
der weißen Männer”).270 With the addition of two more novels after the Second World
War, the cycle was complete, with the following titles in chronological order of action:
Die Zeit ist reif (1957)
Junge Frau von 1914 (1931)
Erziehung vor Verdun (1935)
270
271
The Time Is Ripe (1962)271
Young Woman of 1914 (1932)
Education before Verdun (1936)
Wenzel, p. 229.
Translated from the German by Kenneth Banerji and Michael Wharton (1962).
97
Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa (1927) The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1928)
Die Feuerpause (1954)
(The Truce) (no translation)272
Einsetzung eines Königs (1937)
The Crowning of a King (1938)
Zweig planned to add a further novel to the cycle, Das Eis bricht, but it remained
unfinished. Bertin, Zweig’s alter ego, is present, together with a number of characters
familiar to readers of Grischa, in all of the novels, which are self-contained and may be
read individually or as a cycle.
Zweig’s postscripts of EvV and of Die Feuerpause give details of the somewhat complicated genesis of the Verdun novel. A first outline was begun in 1927, a first draft
followed in 1928; two years later another draft was started, a first-person narrative. This,
as we have seen, was put aside in favour of a dramatized version of Grischa (influence of
Brecht/Feuchtwanger). In the changed political climate of the later phase of the Weimar
Republic, publication of a critical Verdun novel seemed inadvisable, so Zweig finished
Young Woman of 1914 instead. The unfinished manuscript of EvV was confiscated by the
Gestapo in 1933, together with his other belongings waiting to be shipped to Palestine.
His secretary succeeded in rescuing the manuscript (in which, incidentally, the character
of Eberhard Kroysing did not appear) and took it with her to Haifa where she rejoined the
Zweigs the following year. Zweig realized that changes had to be made. In the words of a
critic:
He thought it appropriate to change the subjective account of his personal experience into a
more objective presentation of the conditions of military life during the war.273
So a new version of the novel was started in 1934 and published in Amsterdam a year
later. As Wetzel points out, this change of perspective does not explain the introduction of
Eberhard Kroysing “since this new central character is a highly exceptional individual
rather than a typical officer”.274 The introduction of Kroysing may have been motivated
by two reasons: First, Zweig wanted to appeal to ex-servicemen and officers who could
share with the Leutnant the dangers at the front and their contempt of the bureaucrats at
the Base; proximity of the character to officers in the nationalist war novel was intended
(cf. Beumelburg’s Leutnant). Secondly, the novel was also, I repeat, a ‘thorough reckoning with the Germans and the Nazis’.275 We remember Zweig’s letter to Rudolf Leonhard
in which he described Kroysing as a Nazi. He was not only an individual, but also a type
of officer who would play his part in the history of the Weimar Republic and in the takeover of power by the National Socialists in 1933. Fifteen years later Zweig decided to
publish the original manuscript of EvV with a new introduction and a rounded-off ending
under the title Frage und Antwort 1917 (the events centering around the Brest-Litovsk
Truce). After some alterations suggested by the publisher, the novel was released with the
new title Die Feuerpause in 1953.
272
At least not up to the late 1980s, cf. Marietta Rost (ed.): Arnold Zweig Bibliographie, vol. 1: Primärliteratur (Berlin/Weimar: 1987).
273
Wetzel, p. 70.
274
Wetzel, p. 70.
275
...eine “gründliche Abrechnung mit den Deutschen und den Nazi”, in a letter to Sigmund Freud, February 10, 1934, in: Sigmund Freud – Arnold Zweig. Briefwechsel, edited by Ernst L. Freud (Frankfurt:
1984), p. 75.
98
In this context it is interesting to see how Zweig himself rated his cycle of war novels.
In 1963 he drew up a list of ‘the seven classic books of German literature’ which included
Luther’s translation of the Bible, the Nibelungenlied, Goethe’s Werther and Wilhelm
Meister, the Schlegel translation of Shakespeare’s plays (in that order), and as number
seven, his own Grischa Cycle, especially book three (EvV), four (Grischa), and five
(Einsetzung). Added to that list were two more works, Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft,
and Schopenhauer’s Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.276 His rating was a sign of well-developed self-confidence as a writer. In 1974, Education before Verdun, was made into a
successful film in the GDR.
Zweig and Anti-Semitism
One of the characteristic features of EvV is the anti-Semitism expressed by certain leading figures at the Base who make life unnecessarily difficult for the Jewish sapper Bertin.
In the chapter euphemistically translated as “The mind of a Jew” (VI,1), Major Jansch, in
civilian life a Pan-Germanist newspaper editor, enlightens his acquaintance, the Bavarian
Hauptmann Niggl, on the destructive activities of Freemasons and Jews:
Had he heard of the Freemasons’ conspiracy against Germany? Never. And yet the Lodge of
the Great Orient (which was in the pay of France) had roused the world against the Reich... And
what about the Jewish press propaganda in favour of the enemy, hey? All the Jew journalists
daily dipped their pens in poison and wrote against German Michael, and most of all the press
jew, Lord Northcliffe, whose pestilential papers had flooded the world with lying stories of
atrocities, especially in Belgium... They cropped up everywhere, the Semitic scribblers; he had
one of the kind in his own company... So long as such people enjoyed equal rights with their
racial superiors, Germany would never prosper in spite of all her heroic deeds. (220)277
In a conversation with Unteroffizier Süssmann, another victim of anti-Semitic sentiment, who mentions a possible transfer for the writer, Bertin passes on his experience:
“You won’t get me, though. A Jew is never transferred; that would violate the Laws of
Nature.” “It’s not a laughing matter,” said Süssmann reproachfully. “Every Jew must be prepared at every moment to defend his equal rights.” “You try to defend them against Jansch &
Co.,” said Bertin frowning; “there are ten of us Jews in the company, and none of them in an
orderly room. Major Jansch is what is called a nationalist editor.” (90)
Another anti-Semite is Vize-Feldwebel Glinsky. When he inspects Bertin (who has
been transferred after all – to the front) he can’t help insinuating some Jewish connivance:
“It must have been a good friend of yours,” pursued Glinsky with a confidential blink, “that
fixed you up this little job. Corporal Süssmann, I suppose?” This remark, too, was malicious in
intent, suggesting as it did that Jew always stood by Jew, at any rate according to the opinion
that men like Glinsky held of Jews. (93)
Wenzel, p. 401.
Many of these ideas were expressed in a pamphlet by General Erich Ludendorff issued (in his and his
wife’s publishing house) on the 20th anniversary (28.6) of the Sarajevo assassinations: Wie der Weltkrieg
1914 “gemacht” wurde (Munich: 1934).
276
277
99
When in another conversation, with Leutnant von Roggstroh and Bertin, Kroysing
suggests that Bertin go for a commission:
Bertin flushed. “Jews too?” he asked with an effort. Von Roggstroh lifted his eyebrows.
“Oh, come! That won’t wash, in the artillery, in 1916.”278
Bertin is incredulous since he knows that the Prussian army does not accept Jews as
officers. Von Roggstroh, on the other hand, claims that this tradition does not exist any
longer, at least not in the artillery. The mess of the sappers, with Hauptmann Lauber, a
man from South Germany as senior officer, is equally relaxed in this matter. The reader
learns that ‘acting officers and Jews were included’. The fact that it is worth mentioning
would suggest that it is the exception rather than the rule. It may be explained by the fact
that technical troops suffered from neglect and lack of prestige (“neither princes nor noblemen ever served in them”).
Anti-Semitism, had, in Zweig’s opinion, from the days of Martin Luther made the Jews
the scapegoat for all ills, had been used to prevent revolutions and to divert the attention
of the exploited working class from their rulers. Zweig was aware of this danger and
fought against it in many publications right up to the end of the Republic; one of his last
essays on the topic appeared in The Manchester Guardian in 1932. His first, an essay
named “Judenzählung vor Verdun”279 was Zweig’s angry reaction to the census of Jews
in the German army ordered by the Ministry of War in 1916. Its results were not published
during the war in order not to endanger the domestic peace,280 thus supporting the rumours
that Jews managed to dodge military service, which lead to even worse treatment of the
Jews among the troops. In a letter to Martin Buber Zweig spoke of the effect this act of
discrimination had had on him.281 “Judenzählung” is a midnight vision of the author, a
dream in which he is shown an angel, Asrael, Master of the Dead, descending from heaven
in a furious rage (which is also Zweig’s!) blowing his horn to awaken the dead Jews in the
German army in order to have them counted. At a table a scribe, sitting in front of a big
ledger, explains that the purpose of the survey is to find out how many Jews have dodged
the rest of the war by getting killed in action. A long procession of soldiers and MOs
passes the table, each of them laying down his badges of rank and military decorations.
They have come from all trades and professions and have died wherever German troops
have been fighting. The roaring furnace of Verdun provides the background to this nocturnal vision. The end may be interpreted as an appeal to the surviving Jews to help build
a new home in Palestine: Gradually the corpses are transformed into bricks which are
used to build a tower in a land of palm trees. 282 The author’s question when the Messiah
278
In the German edition (Aufbau Verlag, Berlin: 1959) this part of the conversation does not exist (231),
an indication of changes made in the German text since the first edition of 1935. Another sign of alteration is
on pp. 230–231, a passage that has got nothing in common with the translation (206).
279
In: Die Schaubühne, 1917, vol. 5, pp. 115–117.
280
Details of the census in: E. Johann (ed.): Innenansicht eines Krieges, pp. 200–201.
281
“Judenzählung” war eine Reflexbewegung unerhörter Trauer über Deutschlands Schande und unsere
Qual; kein Essay sondern ein Bild... Wenn es keinen Antisemitismus im Heere gäbe: die unerträgliche
“Dienstpflicht” wäre fast leicht. Aber: verächtlichen und elenden Kreaturen untergeben zu sein! Ich bezeichne
mich vor mir selbst als Zivilgefangenen und staatenlosen Ausländer. Letter to Martin Buber from the Maas
front, 15 February 1917 (AZA). Quoted from Wenzel, p. 74.
282
Cf. Hans Harald Müller: “Zum Problem des jüdischen Dichters in Deutschland”, in: Midgley (1989),
pp. 155–170, esp. pp. 160–162.
100
will come, and the reply that he is already waiting for him result in a shocked awakening
from the visionary dream.
Traditionally, Jews were not eligible for commissions in the Prussian army. Rudolf
Binding who principally shared that view gave a justification of his conviction in his war
diary (The Jew “has not the psychology of an officer”, cannot be expected “that he should
suddenly show qualities for which the system of breeding has not fitted him”) but admitted that there were exceptions to this rule, and as an example offered the case of a lance
sergeant whom he had detailed as a general’s ADC. The general encouraged the man to
apply for a commission until he learned that the sergeant was a Jew. After lengthy arguments with Binding the general eventually “wrote his “Forwarded and recommended”
under the recommendation of a Jew for promotion to commissioned rank.”283 In the British army anti-Semitism appears to have been rare, but there are occasional glimpses of its
existence. The poet Isaac Rosenberg who because of his short stature joined a Bantam
regiment, found life in the army extremely trying and hard to bear as he complained in a
letter to Schiff in 1915:
...I have to eat out of a basin together with some horribly smelling scavenger who spit (sic!)
and sneezes into it. It is most revolting at least up to now – I don’t mind the hard sleeping, the
stiff marches etc but this is unbearable. Besides my being a Jew makes it bad amongst these
wretches.284
The details of the 1916 census showed that the Jews by no means shirked their military
duties but joined in the general war effort both at home and at the front. When the Kaiser
issued his declaration which integrated Jews fully into German life, the Jewish community reacted very gratefully; at last they were free from the defect of being second-class
citizens, and they offered their full co-operation, sometimes overdoing it a little in their
zeal to prove good Germans, as demonstrated by the press announcement of the “Verband
der deutschen Juden. Zentralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens” of August 1914 which appealed to the Jewish community:
In fateful hours, the Fatherland calls its sons to the colours. That every German Jew is ready
as duty demands to sacrifice of life and wealth goes without saying. Fellow believers! We call
upon you to give your all – to dedicate your whole strength to the Fatherland. Hasten to the
flag! All – men and women – place yourselves at the service of the Fatherland...in personal
relief work of all descriptions, and in the giving of cash and kind.285
This overzealous co-operation is critically reflected in Ernst Glaeser’s war novel
Jahrgang 1902, in the passage in which Leo Silberstein, Jewish owner of a clothes store
now decorated with all the patriotic trimmings, is gratefully selling uniforms to his new
customers who no longer despise him (?), while upstairs his son has died, all his life
victimized by anti-Semitic teachers and class-mates.286 The fervour of Jewish representa-
R. Binding: A Fatalist at War, p. 59.
Isaac Rosenberg display in the Imperial War Museum London.
285
German original/English translation in: Maurice Rickards & Michael Moody (eds.): The First World
War: Ephemera, Mementoes, Documents (London: 1975), item 35.
286
Ernst Glaeser: Jahrgang 1902, chapter “Das Schützenfest”.
283
284
101
tives at the front to prove that they were loyal German citizens occasionally aroused
criticism among Jewish troops, as Zweig describes in another essay about Verdun, “Neujahr
an der Front”, written in 1935.287 When the fighting around Verdun was gradually dying
down towards the end of 1916, Jewish troops were given a two days’ holiday to celebrate
the Jewish New Year in Montmédy, a town well behind the front line. There were remarks
of preferential treatment of Jews in the army, particularly because the Christian holidays,
Easter and Whitsun, had been days of terrible fighting at Fort Vaux, The Dead Man, Hill
304 and the Thiaumont-Ferme. Nearly one thousand men took part in this ceremony starting with a religious service followed by a kosher meal. To his surprise Zweig was invited
to the table of honour occupied by the dignitaries – the rabbi, the doctors and NCOs (for
reasons mentioned above officers were not present) – as most of the audience were familiar with his books. The real surprise, however, was the sermon given by the rabbi the next
morning. All the prayers spoken had been full of the desire for peace, and the congregation had only one wish: to listen to words of peace. But the men came from the front, and
Montmédy and the rabbi were part of the Base. There was a sort of shock when he started
to preach:
...about the great deeds of our army and about the role our beloved victorious Fatherland
was going to play after the final victory had been gained as protector of the intellectual values
of Europe, as the land of Goethe and Schiller which now had become the land of Feldmarschall
von Hindenburg. Full of trust in him we were now celebrating the feast of New Year, forward
into a glorious future – and the sermon was followed, quite naturally, by a prayer for the Royal
Family and our Supreme Ruler in War and Peace, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II.288
As the troops were disciplined Germans, they did not grumble or voice their anger.
Zweig tried to understand the rabbi’s mentality. He realized that it was a good idea to pray
for Hindenburg and Ludendorff and in their spirit, “as it was an old experience that a lost
war was particularly badly lost by the Jews of the defeated country”.289 Zweig found proof
of this last remark in his own time, for in 1935 when the text was written, the Jews in
Germany were a suppressed minority without any support, with bitter memories, an even
more bitter present, and a doubtful, perhaps fatal future.
There are two more essays by Zweig, not connected with anti-Semitism, but with Verdun.
The first, “Verdun 1916”, written in 1940,290 criticized the German military leaders who
no longer believed in the intellect, but in material, masses and calculated brutality, and
who ruthlessly sacrificed their own troops. (Why was the left bank of the Maas not occupied, thus exposing the Germans to murderous enfilades as they advanced?) Zweig retells
the horrible details of the fighting, expresses his admiration of the courageous French,
attacks the privileged groups of landed aristocracy and factory owners who want to recreate the empire of Charlemagne as an industrial power of the 20th century, and leaves no
doubt about his pacifist belief. Despite his anti-war stand the author feels sympathy for
the common soldier who had to pay for all that:
287
In: A. Zweig: Essays, vol. 2, pp. 132–137. First published in: Palestine Post, Haifa, 27 September
1935, and in Pariser Tageblatt, 29 September 1935.
288
“Neujahr an der Front”, p. 135. This episode is also told by Bertin to an audience at the Eastern Front,
in: Die Feuerpause, Chapter ”Feiertage” (VI,6).
289
“Neujahr”, pp. 136–137.
290
In: A. Zweig: Essays, vol. 2, pp. 29–34. First published in: Das neue Tagebuch, Paris, vol. 8/1940.
102
They endured super-human hardships, all kinds of starvation and deprivation, the most horrible wounds, terrible death agonies; in the belief to owe all that to the future of their people
they endured it with childish and manly good humour. Led before the enemy, primed with some
alcohol they committed heroic deeds worthy of great odes and even greater pity. 291
Zweig was an ardent admirer of France, her civilization, her political development
which had served as a model for other states all over the world. He regarded war with
France as a catastrophe and did homage to that country with an essay entitled “Vier
Begegnungen mit Frankreich” in which he described four encounters with French culture
between 1916 and 1940.292 The first encounter is of special interest in our context; it took
place at the Verdun front, at Damvilliers, where Zweig one day delivered a message to
Battalion Headquarters, and, his business done, was sent by the telephone operator to the
local cemetery to have a look at a monument done by a certain Rodin. Zweig rushed there
and spent an unforgettable hour with Rodin’s sculpture of the painter Bastien-Lepage
(whose paintings he would see later in Montmédy). For Zweig the statue symbolized the
immortal genius of France which could not be trampled underfoot by unintellectual brutality:
And thus comforted, at ease about the future of Europe which, without this France, would
have lost one of its pillars, a common soldier went back to the point where the train ended in the
middle of shelled territory...293
Zweig’s admiration for France and French culture may be understandable, but in the
face of contrary evidence it must appear as a form of idealization; the reality was no better
in France than it was in Germany, as was testified by writers from different nations. One
of the masterpieces of Hungarian literature, Fekete Kolostor (Black Cloister) 1931, by
Aladár Kuncz (like Zweig an ardent admirer of French culture) was the result of the
writer’s experience as an enemy alien in France during WWI. On holiday in France when
the war broke out he was interned, along with a number of other Hungarians, by the
French, and their behaviour – on the evidence of the book – was simply abominable. A
similarly negative experience was described by the American writer E. E. Cummings in
his autobiographical novel The Enormous Room, 1922. A driver with the American Red
Cross in France, Cummings, together with a friend, was detained in 1917 on suspicion of
treason for three months in a concentration camp in the South of France, condemned to
abject chores, vile food and the brutality of the guards. No charge could be made against
him, but it took energetic diplomatic steps by his family (culminating in a personal letter
to President Wilson) to cut through the red tape and get the son released. A third testimony came from a Frenchman, Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu, 1916. Using the point of view of
the ordinary poilu, Barbusse criticized the ills and injustices of wartime France, the shirkers and profiteers, the jingoistic war mongers, the politicians, the clergy.294 Surprisingly,
“Verdun 1916”, p. 30.
In: A. Zweig: Essays, vol. 2, pp. 126–133. The individual encounters were written down at different
times. First published in: Neue Deutsche Literatur, Berlin, April 1955, and La Nouvelle Critique, Paris,
Numéro Spécial 1956 (No. 73/74).
293
“Vier Begegnungen”, p. 128.
294
Cf. in particular Chapter IX “The Anger of Volpatte” and Chapter XXIV “The Dawn” (final chapter) in
the English translation, Under Fire, 1917.
291
292
103
the book passed the Censor295 and became an instant success. Obviously it had expressed
sentiments which were widespread among the population. It was awarded the prestigious
Prix Goncourt, and translations into other languages followed rapidly. Zweig became
familiar with Barbusse’s novel while working in the press department of Ober-Ost (Army
Headquarters of the Eastern Front) and was deeply impressed. What Zweig would try to
do later in his war cycle – show that war was a man-made event with many interested
parties – had been done by Barbusse for the French side.
7. Excursus: The Crown Prince
As the Crown Prince was the commander of the Fifth Army at Verdun it was only natural
that he should have been mentioned in war books (fictional or non-fictional) dealing with
that illfated campaign. We shall first look at the factual side and then see how this was
reflected in the Verdun novels that have been discussed.
At the outbreak of war the Crown Prince was promoted general (a corporal at seven, a
captain at twenty-three, and a major at twenty-five!) and “he was manifestly Germany’s
most inexperienced commander.”296 As the Duke of Württemberg and the Crown Prince
of Bavaria, two experienced professional soldiers had received the command of an army
each, it was ‘dynastically imperative’ that the heir of Prussia should also be given one. So
he was appointed commander of the Fifth Army, but his father, the Kaiser, made sure that
he was no more than an impotent figurehead, the real power resting with Schmidt von
Knobelsdorf, his Chief-of-Staff and former mentor. Communications between father and
son were bad; ever since the child was six years old “all communications – even the most
personal – between himself and the Kaiser took place through the formal intermediary of
the Chief of the Military Cabinet.”297 Educated by military tutors at Potsdam and Plön he
rebelled against his spartan and puritanical environment. Before the war he had the air of
a playboy with a taste for amorous affairs, and both in Britain (where he was nicknamed
‘Little Willy’) and at home:
…the leptic, unfinished-looking figure, with the narrow, sloping shoulders and almost deformed Modigliani neck in its high collar, and the elongated features of an amiable greyhound,
was a boon to caricaturists. The two whippets that accompanied him even at the front and the
outsize shako of the Death’s Head Hussars he usually wore rounded out the picture. He looked
an ineffectual fool, and in some ways he was both ineffectual and foolish. 298
It was not surprising that under these conditions he continued his pre-war life-style in
his headquarters at Stenay, which “was a bit far off – far removed from the din of battle”
as one of his critics remarked when he visited Verdun after the war.299 What his critics
295
The letters to his wife (also his secretary) from the front show his permanent struggle against official
and inofficial censorship. Cf. Henri Barbusse: Briefe von der Front: An seine Frau 1914–1917 (Frankfurt:
1974).
296
Alistair Horne: The Price of Glory, Chapter “The Crown Prince”, p. 221.
297
Horne, p. 218.
298
Horne, p. 218. Horne’s book contains two typical photographs of the Crown Prince.
299
Kurt Tucholsky: “Vor Verdun”, in: Die Weltbühne 20, vol. 32, 1924, pp. 218–222.
104
ignored was his real interest in the arts, particularly theatre (cf. von Unruh) and opera, and
his love of music (he himself played the violin fairly well). The American Ambassador in
Germany from 1913–1917, James Gerard, who, at the time of publishing his memoirs,
had no reason to flatter the Crown Prince, was well aware of these (and some more)
positive qualities but also of the one major defect:
...I cannot subscribe to the general opinion of the Crown Prince. I found him a most agreeable man, a sharp observer and the possessor of intellectual attainments of no mean order. He is
undoubtedly popular in Germany, excelling in all sports, a fearless rider and a good shot...The
one defect of the Crown Prince has been his eagerness for war. But as he has characterised this
war as the most stupid ever waged in history, perhaps he will be satisfied, if he comes to the
throne, with what all Germany has suffered in this conflict.300
Once the war had started he appeared to have realized much earlier than other military
leaders the seriousness of the situation. In November 1914, at Stenay, he was reported to
have told Karl von Wiegand, representative of the American Hearst press, that “we have
lost the war. It will yet last a long time, but for us it has been lost long since.”301 Allied
cartoons during the war showed the Crown Prince as a bandit plundering French chateaux
or as an unscrupulous connoisseur of art stealing the ‘Mona Lisa’ from the Louvre, as a
monster in his cave in the company of his favourite guests: sexual licence, baseness,
cowardice, cruelty, death. Another one played on La Fontaine’s fable of the fox and the
grapes, yet another depicted the Kaiser and his son as shepherds driving a great number of
sheep wearing Pickelhauben towards/into the entrance of the Allies’ Slaughterhouse
Verdun.302
The Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, an ardent (and frequently uncritical) admirer of
Germany – he referred to the Kaiser as “one of the greatest and most remarkable men in
history, the most powerful and most impressive ruler in our time, and besides, one of the
most ingenious and fascinating men”303 – politically a Pan-Germanist who believed that
“the German soldiers carried the fate of their country and of the whole Germanic world at
the points of their bayonets”,304 made a study tour to the Western Front in 1914 to find out
about the war for himself, but especially, to prove, as a neutral observer, that the alleged
German atrocities published by the British press were untrue. Hedin visited the Crown
Prince at Stenay and was amazed to find everything under control instead of the beehive
of nervous activity he had imagined. He became a witness of the Crown Prince decorating
officers and men with Iron Crosses before dinner (himself wearing the Iron Cross of both
second and first class). The three-course dinner struck him as reasonably modest, the
atmosphere was cheerful and youthfully relaxed which even the severe General von
Knobelsdorf found infectious. Hedin was given the impression that the Prince and his
staff were working hard, although he had to admit that most of the work was being done
300
James W. Gerard: My Four Years in Germany (London: 1917), pp. 14–15. In the Preface the author
gave as his motive for writing the book the wish to warn his people that “the military and naval power of the
German Empire was unbroken”.
301
Klaus W. Jonas: Der Kronprinz Wilhelm (Frankfurt: 1962), p. 129.
302
See Eberhard Demm for cartoons.
303
Sven Hedin: Ein Volk in Waffen (Leipzig: 1915), p. 27.
304
Hedin, Introduction, p. 6.
105
by von Knobelsdorf (who was therefore usually late at mealtimes). The author described
how one day the motorcars of the prince and his staff racing along at top speed met a
regiment of infantry, and gave the reaction of the men (the cavalcade had slowed down):
The troops took off their spiked helmets, raised them in the air and cheered as if they were
about to launch a bayonet attack against a French trench, but it was meant for the Commander
of the Fifth Army and heir of the empire. We drove as if through a roaring sea of thunderous
cheers, till we came to the small groups of twos and threes. Finally, there was a lone straggler
on the road; he, too, was shouting with all his might...305
We must remember that it was 1914, but for the Prince the loyalty of his men remained
unchanged to the end.306 In later war books encounters of the Crown Prince with his troops
would read somewhat differently. It is quite obvious from the whole text that Hedin was
not a ‘neutral observer’ and that he had allowed himself to be used for German propaganda.
Fritz von Unruh, acquainted with the Crown Prince from common days as cadets at
Plön, devoted one of his brief biographical sketches to the Hohenzollern heir.307 He portrayed him as a spoilt, impulsive young man in a fast sports car, with anti-Semitic sentiments and eager to solve the political problems of pre-war Germany by starting a military
conflict. This was particularly noticeable when Unruh’s play Prinz Louis Ferdinand was
banned by the Kaiser because of certain dark prophecies and the Crown Prince sent a
congratulatory telegram to the author asking for a meeting. In the ensuing conversation,
the Prince considered himself the only one capable of seeing through the intrigues surrounding his father. A production of the play might wake him from his dreams of peace,
Germany would have to start the war before the others could become too powerful. The
next encounter takes place at the Verdun front when the Prince had an argument with von
Falkenhayn who was not prepared to provide more reserves. The discussion ended with
the Prince’s emphatic threat to take his life. In May Unruh was detailed to collect information about the losses of front line troops around Verdun and he spent a harrowing time
in the inferno of the trenches. He was sent back with the results to Stenay:
I met the commander of our army in the meadows of the Maas, wearing a white litevka
decorated with the Pour le Mérite, waving a tennis racquet, accompanied by his ADC von
Zobeltitz and others, returning from a game of tennis.308
The Prince was deeply shocked when he learned about the losses – 600 000 troops
killed between February and May, companies reduced to a strength of 18 men 309 – and
defended his own frivolous way of life as forced upon him. Before racing back to his villa
with Unruh, followed by his six Australian greyhounds, he rather theatrically demanded
Hedin, p. 65.
In his apologetic memoir, compiled in exile on the Dutch island of Wieringen, he described a similarly
cheerful last encounter with his troops at Seraincourt on October 25, 1918, in: Karl Rosner (ed.): Erinnerungen
des Kronprinzen Wilhelm (Stuttgart/Berlin: 1922), pp. 261–262.
307
Fritz von Unruh: “Sechster Vortrag: Der Kronprinz”, in: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 17, 1979, pp. 375–391.
308
“Der Kronprinz”, p. 384.
309
Although estimates on the total casualties incurred at Verdun vary widely (cf. Horne, p. 327), there is
no doubt that Unruh got his figures wrong – the numbers are far too high.
305
306
106
Unruh’s revolver, announcing his intention of committing suicide as he realized the negative outcome of the campaign (Unruh refused to hand over the weapon). Shortly before
Stenay a thick cloud of dust forced the Prince to brake abruptly – a rifle battalion back
from the battle of the Douaumont. The details of the encounter were in marked contrast to
the one described by Sven Hedin.310 The Crown Prince kept Unruh waiting in a house
while he went to confront the Kaiser with the shocking news and to ask for more reinforcements. His father however, chased him back with a stick. Unruh’s advice was to get
in touch with an American representative as President Wilson had just made an offer of
peace through the intermediary of the Vatican. A day later – it was the evening when
Unruh read part of his Opfergang to an audience at Stenay – the Prince informed him that
he had dispatched one of his staff to Zürich to have secret talks with an agent sent by
Wilson. The evening also revealed for Unruh some of the private life of the Prince. In his
bedroom which he shared with his badly smelling greyhounds he showed Unruh portraits
of his wife and children, at the same time defending his amorous adventures at the front.
After his death, his wife tried to play down his erotic escapades as mere rumours and
anecdotes which an attractive man like her husband was by nature surrounded with.311
Rudolf Binding, writer and poet who at the age of 47 rejoined his old cavalry regiment
as a captain, gave his impression of the Crown Prince and his “martial” activities in his
war diary.312 Binding referred to the Prince at a later stage of the war than Hedin (1914) or
Unruh (1916); it was June 1918 and the rapidly dwindling resources were noticeable
everywhere at the German front. For the passionate horseman Binding this was particularly bitter. (Before the war he was active in races and particularly proud of his victory at
the “English Mile of Lincoln”).313 It meant an end to all riding for him, but not for everybody as he commented sarcastically:
...there is no need to have twelve thoroughbreds, as sleek as eels and bursting with oats,
running around under fine woollen blankets, with smart grooms in uniform, while an artillery
horse gets a ration of two pounds of chopped turnip a day. 314
And there were other stupid actions and incidents of tactless behaviour which made
him angry. Binding admitted that the Prince was popular with his men because he had got
‘an easy, affable way with him, and no sign of embarrassment’, but the shortcomings in
his character were all too obvious. The writer missed ‘some feeling and inclination to
higher values’, criticized the custom of having himself generously decorated with medals
when other distinctions were non-existent, and the patronage exercised at his Staff.
Let us now have a second look at the Crown Prince’s role in the novels discussed (a
certain amount of repetition appears unavoidable in this context). The first example of
Verdun fiction has been Unruh’s Opfergang. The text contains one reference to the Crown
Prince (Chapter I “Advance”) and (unlike the biographical sketch) it is devoid of any
criticism of the Hohenzollern heir: Hillbrand as a witness of the Crown Prince’s entourage passing by. The atmosphere is steeped in holiness as if a religious service was taking
“Der Kronprinz”, p. 386.
Kronprinzessin Cecilie: Erinnerungen an den Deutschen Kronprinzen (Biberach:1952), pp. 117–121.
312
R. Binding: Aus dem Kriege, 1925 (transl. A Fatalist at War, 1929).
313
In his autobiography: Erlebtes Leben (1928), p. 162 (1949 edition).
314
A Fatalist at War, pp. 229–230.
310
311
107
place.315 This passage has the stamp of the earlier draft of the text when Unruh was still
convinced that after the war the Crown Prince would lead the Hohenzollerns and the
whole of Germany to renewed authority and glory.
The next fictional text in line is Wehner’s novel, as the Crown Prince does not appear
in Beumelburg’s Die Gruppe Bosemüller. The reference to the Prince in Sieben vor Verdun
is limited to the Preface (and part of the first chapter) in which the author makes the
Crown Prince the young dynamic symbol of unconditional attack which is appropriate to
the nature of the German soldier, and as such contrasts him with the ambitious old man,
Falkenhayn, a gambler who does not risk the final card, a man of whom Wehner says that
“he decapitated the spirit of attack”.316
In Arnold Zweig’s EvV the Crown Prince appears in a light similar to that of Unruh’s
short biography. Among the troops at Verdun he is, indirectly, always present, for the thin
tinned soup which they are served day in, day out comes under the name of ‘Kronprinzensuppe’ (312), and sometimes they see him in person waving his racquet at regiments going to the front (79). His connection with Sister Kläre is a discreet reflection of
his amorous affairs. Zweig’s description of the Prince’s encounter with soldiers coming
from the front and of their angry reaction shows traces of Unruh’s biographical sketch and
documents an attitude of criticism on the part of the Prince’s men very much in contrast to
Hedin’s uncritical adulation.
8. Literary Echo of Verdun after 1945
Compared to Britain and literary reactions to the Somme battles after 1945, the result in
Germany as regards Verdun was modest. It may be connected with the fact that the physical and moral impact of WWII was still too great to leave much room for the war before,
or that the majority of people simply wanted to forget.317
An early echo came from America, William Faulkner’s novel A Fable, 1954, so did a
later one: William Hermanns: The Holocaust; from a Survivor of Verdun, 1972, (with
drawings by Paul Bacon). Even earlier, another American, John Dos Passos, like Hemingway and Cummings a volunteer with the Red Cross, wrote his novel Three Soldiers, 1921
(German translation 1922), as a result of his Verdun experience:
Verdun stellte für ihn “das sprechende Beispiel für die Unmenschlichkeit zwischen Mensch
und Mensch”, die “intensivste Erscheinungsform” des Ersten Weltkrieges, dar, “all seines
Ruhmes und all seiner Schrecken, seiner Tapferkeit und seiner Sinnlosigkeit”. 318
Unruh: The Way of Sacrifice, pp. 16–17.
“Während die Soldaten, an ihrer Spitze der deutsche Kronprinz, nichts sehnlicher wünschten, als den
Feind an seinem stärksten Punkt auf breiter Front und in Massen anzugreifen, ihn ungestüm zu überrennen
und nach dem Fall von Verdun, die Feindfront nach beiden Seiten aufzurollen, ein Bild, wie es dem riesigen
Willen des Deutschen gerecht wird, engte der Chef nicht nur die Grundlinie des Angriffes ein und strich von
den Sturmkorps soviel ab, daß ihm selbst noch genug verblieb, um überall stark zu sein: er hieb dem Geiste
des Sturmes selbst den Kopf ab.” J. M. Wehner: Sieben vor Verdun, p. 7.
317
In this context it is interesting that in most of the countries involved in WWI the date of November 11,
the Armistice, is marked by some remembrance or even a national holiday. In Germany this date is the
official beginning of the carnival season (at eleven minutes past eleven). Yet another example of the different
historiography written in a defeated country (Verdrängung, repression). In fairness, one should add that there
are days in November on which the Germans do mourn the dead (Totensonntag, Volkstrauertag).
318
Quoted from Werth, p. 268.
315
316
108
There were of course reprints of pre-war Verdun books: Arnold Zweig: Erziehung vor
Verdun, GDR reprint 1959, West German reprint 1974, Paul C. Ettighoffer: Verdun – Das
große Gericht, 3rd edition 1976, reprint 1996, Alfred Hein’s novel: Eine Kompanie
Soldaten: In der Hölle von Verdun, 2nd edition 1978. There was a GDR collection of war
stories edited by Rudolf Chowanetz: Vor Verdun verlor ich Gott: Geschichten von Menschen im Krieg, 1984; the stories were not limited to WWI, though. In the 1980s Ludwig
Harig published a novel on the life of his father whose central experience was Verdun:
Ordnung ist das ganze Leben: Roman meines Vaters,1986, and in the same year a radio
play by the same author was broadcast, Drei Männer im Feld, an episode from his father’s
life: the author’s visit to the Verdun battlefields with his father and the latter’s company
commander. Probably the most recent example of a literary echo came from Heiner Müller,
leading dramatist in the former GDR and one of its critics who died recently, and it sounds
a very distant and intricate one: Germania 3. Gespenster am Toten Mann, 1996. For
Verdun scholars the allusion to one of Ettighoffer’s books on that campaign is fairly obvious,319 less clear is the connection of the title to the body of the text (a play). Before the
first performance as a drama, the text was broadcast as a radio play on December 17,
1996. A helpful ‘abstract’ accompanying this version told the listeners/the audience that
it was an “incomplete series of scenes which on the one hand created a historic connection
from Verdun via Stalingrad to the collapse of the socialist system, which on the other
hand took up directly experiences from the writer’s own biography”.
At the turn of the millennium, the topic of Verdun was re-discovered by historians. In
Germany, Horst Rohde started his edition of military campaigns with the Verdun offensive320, a number of British authors covered the same topic, David Mason, William Martin, Ian Ousby, and Malcolm Brown of the Imperial War Museum who had also written
about the Somme campaign.321 A few years earlier, in 1994, the Michelin Tyre Company
had re-issued their popular battlefield guide of 1919.322 These recent publications demonstrate that there is still some interest in the Great War, in Britain much stronger than in
Germany. This is also shown by the lively discussion about the Somme offensive of 1916
and the continuing stream of publications in Britain concerning that second great campaign on the western front.
319
Paul C. Ettighoffer: Gespenster am Toten Mann (Cologne: 1931); “Mort Homme”, as I pointed out
earlier, was one of the strategic heights in the vicinity of Verdun taken by the Germans and (according to
Horne) successfullly held until August 1917.
320
Horst Rohde (ed.): Verdun 1916 (= “Dokumente zur Militärgeschichte” No. 1) (Braunschweig: 2002).
321
Malcolm Brown: Verdun 1916 (Stroud: 1999), David Mason: Verdun (Moreton-in-Marsh: 2000), William Martin: Verdun 1916: “They Shall Not Pass” (Oxford: 2001), Ian Ousby: The Road to Verdun: France,
Nationalism and the First World War (London: 2002).
322
Michelin Tyre Company Ltd. (ed.): Verdun and the Battles for its Possession (English language edition, 1919; Facsimile edition Easingwold: 1994).
109
II. THE SOMME
1. The Military Operations
On 6 December 1915, at a conference of allied commanders assembled at Chantilly, operations for the following spring were planned with the aim of breaking the stalemate of
the trenches by a massive frontal assault on the German positions. Kitchener’s New Army
was trained and equipped, though not yet experienced, and ready to be put to the test. In
England “Strike Now in the West” began to appear daubed on the walls of factories and
houses. The public firmly supported the generals” determination to make a “Big Push”,
and in January 1916 an unprecedented step was taken when conscription was finally introduced in Britain after Lord Derby’s Scheme had proved less than satisfactory.1 Joffre,
the French Commander, declared that the time had come for Britain to shoulder a greater
part of the burden. Now that Kitchener’s New Army was ready it was agreed that Britain
would provide twenty-five to thirty divisions for the coming offensive, while the French
would field thirty to forty.2 At this point the initiative was taken from the allies by the
German Commander Falkenhayn who decided to finish the war by attacking Verdun.
Because of Verdun plans for the summer offensive were drastically reshaped, and the
French contribution was reduced first to eighteen divisions and then to half a dozen. The
British were pressed to bring the date of the attack forward to help relieve the pressure on
Verdun, the Italians co-operated by mounting a great attack on the Isonzo front against
Germany’s ally, Austria-Hungary, hoping to draw off German troops from the Western
Front. The “Push” was to be made on the whole British front in Picardy, from Hannescamps,
north of the River Ancre, to Maricourt, near the River Somme, where British and French
lines joined.3 The moment for the attack (end of June) seemed favourable: Lloyd George,
the dynamic Minister of Munitions, had been promoted to the War Office, the Battle of
Jutland had ended the threat of the German Fleet, the fighting around Verdun appeared to
be diminishing, and in the East the Russians under General Brusilov were enjoying great
success.
The first attack (which had to be postponed for 48 hours because of heavy rain) was
preceded by seven days” massed artillery fire of a hitherto unknown scale – a million and
a half shells landed on German positions, there was one gun to every yard of the front –
and the roar of the artillery could be heard in England. It was assumed that when the
barrage had finished, not only the German barbed wire entanglements, but also their
trenches would be completely destroyed and that there would be no one left to offer
1
“Voluntary” military service by men not married or exempt because of work of national importance. For
details see Arthur Marvick: The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London: 1978) [1965], pp.
76–78.
2
Figures taken from Richard Thames: The Somme 1916 (London: n. d.)(= Jackdaw N. 111), Broadsheet
No. 1.
3
See Map of the Somme Campaign in Appendix II.
110
resistance. When the whistles blew for the attack on 1 July at 7.30 am, the men (15 divisions) went over the top in close lines and advanced in fighting order – each man carrying
sixty-six pounds of equipment, together with extra bombs, flares, wire and carrier pigeons. The Surreys gained fame by dribbling two footballs for a mile and a quarter across
No-Man’s-Land. Captain Wilfred Nevill who had donated them was killed in this first
attack, but the story was to become legendary. Extensively reported in the papers it caught
the popular imagination. “Touchstone”, poet of the Daily Mail, celebrated it in the heroic
style of Henry Newbolt, The Illustrated London News commissioned their foremost artist
to commemorate it.4 For the British this was a shining example of bravery and sangfroid,
the Germans saw in it propaganda possibilities of a different kind – the chance to show
the world that the British were a race of idiots. They circulated the original drawing with
captions in ten languages, of which the English version read:
An English absurdity: Football play during storm attack. All English newspapers laud the
“heroic deed” of an English major who ordered his men to rush a football and keep it moving
in front of the lines while advancing to a storm attack...5
The Surreys were one of the few units to achieve its objective on that day, and one of
the footballs is preserved in the Museum of the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment at Clandon
House near Guildford, Surrey.6 Incidentally, this football episode was not quite as unique
as the public was made to believe at the time. A year earlier, at another disastrous “Great
Push”, the Battle of Loos in September 1915, the writer Patrick MacGill, stretcher-bearer,
saw men of his regiment, the London Irish, dribble a football towards the German trench
and later found the ball deflated on the German wire.7 The Germans, though badly shaken
by the week-long barrage, rose from their dugouts cut deep into the chalk and opened fire,
making maximum use of their strategically placed machine-guns. By nightfall the attack
had ground to a halt, and most British units, or what remained of them, were back in their
trenches (some, like the Newfoundlanders, the South Wales Borderers, the Durhams, the
Green Howards, ceased to exist), after the greatest defeat for British arms since the Battle
of Hastings. The Imperial War Museum display of The Somme (as part of its WWI exhibition) sums the result up as follows:
On 1 July 1916 at 7.30 nearly a hundred thousand British soldiers were sent over the top on
the first day of the Battle of the Somme. By the end of the day this great army of volunteers
suffered the heaviest losses sustained in a single day by any army in the First World War. The
German defences remained unbroken and few appreciable gains had been made at a cost of
20 000 dead and 40 000 wounded. The battle continued for a further four months but instead of
creating the planned for breakthrough and return to a war of open movement it became a grim
struggle of attrition resulting in over a million British and German casualties before finally
petering out in the mud and snow of November.
A more detailed list of the losses was given by Michael Moynihan:
See Malcolm Brown: Tommy Goes To War (London: 1978), pp. 170–171 for details.
Brown, p. 171.
Cf. The Sunday Times Magazine, section: military museums, July 6, 1980, p. 51.
7
Patrick MacGill: The Great Push (London: 1916), Chapters “Over The Top”, “Across The Open”.
4
5
6
111
In the battle of the Somme, which lasted, officially, from 1 July to 16 November 1916, the
British lost some 420 000 casualties, the French 200 000 and the Germans 450 000. On the first
day alone nearly eight times as many British troops were killed or wounded as in the Battle of
Waterloo.8
Brigadier-General Crozier, creator of the Ulster Division, referred to 1 July as the
“Acid Test” for his troops (who did not succeed in taking Thiepval), and at the end of the
first day had to concede:
The cost? Enormous. I have seventy men left, all told, out of seven hundred. 9
Similarly, the military historian B. H. Liddell Hart recalled the first few days on the
Somme:
Of our battalion of about 800 strong, fewer than 70 men, with 4 officers came back. On
reaching the road, this remnant formed into columns of fours and moved along singing “Pack
up your troubles in your old kit bag” – just as the full battalion had done six days earlier when
setting out for “the great adventure”.10
His colleague A. J. P. Taylor passed the following judgement on the campaign:
Strategically, the battle of the Somme was an unredeemed defeat. It is supposed to have
worn down the spirit of the German army. So no doubt it did, though not to the point of crippling that army as a fighting machine. The German spirit was not the only one to suffer. The
British were worn down also. Idealism perished on the Somme. The enthusiastic volunteers
were enthusiastic no longer. They had lost faith in their cause, in their leaders, in everything
except loyalty to their fighting comrades. The war ceased to have a purpose. It went on for its
own sake, as a contest in endurance...11
And 1 July put an end to what had seemed so grand an idea in 1914 and 1915: the
“Pals” battalion. There were no more such battalions after the Somme. It had been a
marvellous concept that friends from civil life should serve together in the war, but little
thought seemed to have been given to the effect on a local community if its own specially
raised fighting force was annihilated – “local pride turned overnight to local grief”.12 In a
letter by a Private George Morgan that spirit and what followed after it had disappeared,
was expressed very clearly:
...We were all pals, we were happy, very happy together; and they were such good people.
They were fine young men, the cream of the country. That spirit lasted until 1 July 1916. We
had so many casualties that we were all strangers after that. The new men who came were fed
Michael Moynihan (ed.): People at War: 1914–1918 (Newton Abbot: 1988), p. 69.
F. P. Crozier: A Brass Hat In No Man’s Land (London: 1930), p. 110.
10
In G. A. Panichas (ed.): Promise of Greatness (London: 1968), p. 108.
11
A. J. P. Taylor: The First World War: An Illustrated History (Harmondsworth: 1974), p. 140.
12
Brown, p. 193. For an earlier example of a “Pals” battalion’s destruction and the disastrous effect on a
community see the essay by Hilda Spear: “A City at War: Dundee and the Battle of Loos”, in: Stanzel/
Löschnigg (eds.): Intimate Enemies, pp. 149–164.
8
9
112
up, they were conscripts and they didn’t want to come, they didn’t want to fight. Things were
never the same any more.13
In the words of another historian “The Battle of the Somme was to be the blooding and
at the same time the Calvary of Kitchener’s Army.” 14 Kitchener himself did not live to
witness the slaughter; on 5 June he went down with HMS “Hampshire” when she struck a
mine off the Orkneys on her way to Russia. The facile optimism of the British Commander-in-Chief, Haig, who ignored warnings and objections by his own staff before the
attack and insisted on carrying on after the debacle of the first day prompted one of his
German antagonists to observe that the British army consisted of “lions led by donkeys”.15
Among the allied dead of the Somme were a number of war poets, some of them assembled in Brian Gardner’s collection,16 some more (a total of 19, including those from
Gardner) are contained in Anne Powell’s more recent anthology of British soldier-poets.17 For the 80th anniversary of the event she gathered writers of “prose and poetry”
involved in the Somme battles.18 They include W. N. Hodgson, killed on the first day of
battle, Raymond Asquith, son of former Prime Minister Asquith and one of the most
accomplished men of his generation, T. M. Kettle, one of the outstanding Irishmen of his
time, Leslie Coulson, Alan Seeger, an American who became a minor legend as an American Rupert Brooke, E. W. Tennant and a number of less known poets. There is Donald
Hankey, author of the immensely popular collection of war essays A Student in Arms,
H. H. Munro (“Saki”) whose speculative novel had anticipated a German invasion.19 The
poet Robert Graves was wounded and reported dead on the Somme and his obituary
appeared in The Times.20 A. A. Milne fought at what he described as “the bloodbath of the
Somme” and as a consequence became a pacifist; similarly Max Plowman, author (under
the pseudonym “Mark VII”) of A Subaltern on the Somme, was turned towards pacifism
by his war experience. It is not surprising that the Somme battle should figure prominently in a number of fictional war books as well. Gilbert Frankau’s early novel Peter
Jackson – Cigar Merchant (1919) contains a description of the battle from a gun officer’s
point of view (chapter xxviii) including the horrors of Trones Wood (chapter xxix). Peter
survives with acute shell-shock (a phenomenon then hardly recognized), is successfully
treated by his father-in-law. What is surprising, considering that the novel was finished in
manuscript in 1917,21 is the absence of cheap heroics in these chapters, only desperation,
a feeling of Hell (“Compared to this holocaust, Loos was a skirmish” [p. 295]). In R. H.
Mottram’s The Spanish Farm Trilogy (1927) one of the main British characters, Lieutenant Skene, was also wounded on the Somme.22
Brown, p. 193.
Lyn Macdonald: “The Somme Front”, in: M. Roucoux (ed.): English Literature and the Great War
Revisited (Amiens: 1987), p. 145.
15
A. J. P. Taylor ascribed this saying to Ludendorff, pp. 286–287. Cyril Falls attributed it to General
Falkenhayn, cf. War Books (London: 1989), p. 88. He also quoted some titles of books resulting from it: e.g.
P. A. Thompson: Lions led by Donkeys (London: 1927), Alan Clark: The Donkeys (London: 1961).
16
B. Gardner (ed.): Up The Line To Death: The War Poets 1914–1918 (London: 1976).
17
Anne Powell (ed.): A Deep Cry... (Aberporth: 1993).
18
The Fierce Light: The Battle of the Somme July–November 1916 (Aberporth: 1996).
19
Hector Hugh Munro: When William Came: A Story of London under the Hohenzollerns (London:
1913).
20
See Graves: Goodbye To All That (London: 1929), pp. 273–282 for a detailed account.
21
The manuscript was accidentally burnt and was re-written in 1918–1919.
22
R. H. Mottram: Sixty-Four, Ninety-Four, chapter “The Somme”, pp. 371–391.
13
14
113
Contemporary Voices
The Reverend J. M. Stanhope Walker (CoE.), aged 45, had exchanged his quiet Lincolnshire
rectory for voluntary service at the Western Front and had been working at a Casualty
Clearing Station near Corbie, at the junction of the rivers Ancre and Somme, for seven
months when the casualties of the “Big Push” started being brought in. The horror of the
sheer number of wounded and dying, but also the cheerfulness of the men left a permanent impression on him. In diary-type newsletters he kept his family informed of his experience and of the firsthand information gathered from patients, some of it more or less
veiled criticism of the way the campaign had been planned:
3 July. Now I know something of the horrors of war, the staff is redoubled but what of that,
imagine 1,000 badly wounded per diem. The surgeons are beginning to get sleep, because after
working night and day they realize we may be at this for some months, as Verdun. We hear of
great successes but there are of course setbacks and one hears of ramparts of dead English and
Germans...
and on
5 July. It would be interesting to tell you all the tales that wounded officers etc. tell, but that
would not be allowed. All are very cheerful, though we are paying a terrible price. Don’t be
misled by English papers which publish hysterical headlines... 23
One paper which could be relied on as regards sensational if not hysterical headlines
was the News of the World, with over two million copies the paper most likely to be read
at home and by the ordinary soldier in France. The front-page of its Sunday morning
special carried a picture of a British fist knocking at the nose of the Kaiser whose features
outlined the British and French part of the Western Front (the nose indicating the Somme)
with the caption “Somme” Punch and the bold headlines
BRITISH ADVANCE
16 MILES OF GERMAN FRONT TRENCHES STORMED
“THE DAY GOES WELL” FOR OUR HEROIC TROOPS.24
The Times Review of the Year (a supplement to The Times of January 1, 1917) in its
usual, more restrained style, summed up the Somme campaign as follows:
...there is no doubt at all that the leading of the troops and the conduct of all arms and all
ranks in this most prolonged and violent battle were worthy of the ancient reputation of the
British Army... If, from the strategic point of view, less was achieved than some sanguine
spirits hoped, such hopes were not entertained by all, but the practical aims of the operation
were completely achieved...
These battles in the West further established the moral, material, and even the professional
superiority of French and British arms over those of Germany, and gave good hope that when
the contest could be renewed with all the fresh resources at our disposal we should inflict upon
the enemy even heavier losses and chastise him even more severely than before. 25
“Slaughter on the Somme”, in: Michael Moynihan, pp. 72–73 (see footnote 8).
Copy in Jackdaw No. 111: The Somme 1916.
25
Quoted from copy of supplement in “Jackdaw”‚ No. 111: The Somme 1916.
23
24
114
The Times review gave the German losses as 600 000, including 80 000 prisoners,
those at Verdun were estimated at between 600 000 and 700 000 casualties. Read against
the verdicts on the campaign by modern British historians (Taylor, Macdonald, Gilbert)
the review strikes one as full of an optimism not justified by the facts; an official voice
covering up or at least playing down the unpleasant reality of the battlefield. Considering
that the war was still going on anything else would have been unpatriotic and would have
meant playing into the hands of the enemy. In the same year, 1917, Heinemann in London
published, unaltered, the reports written (almost) daily by Philip Gibbs, an experienced
journalist who had made his reputation with an earlier book on the conflict, The Soul of
War, 1915. He became one of the five accredited journalists with the Allied forces and
was generally regarded as the best British war correspondent.26 Gibbs was with the British army at the Somme from the very first day, and The Battles of the Somme was the sum
of his day-by-day experience. In the Introduction he discussed the problems facing a
conscientious war correspondent as regards telling the truth about events witnessed and
defended censorship as exercised by the British Censor:
...it was exercised throughout the battles of the Somme ... with a really broad-minded policy
of allowing the British people to know the facts about their fighting men save those which
would give the enemy a chance of spoiling our plans or hurting us. If there had been no censorship at all it would be impossible for an honourable correspondent to tell some things within
his knowledge – our exact losses in a certain action, failures at this or that point of the line,
tactical blunders which might have been made here or there...
He defended his decision of sometimes not telling the whole truth in order to spare the
feelings of men and women who had sons and husbands still fighting in France:
...I have not told all there is to tell about the agonies of this war, nor given in full realism the
horrors that are inevitable in such fighting. It is perhaps better not to do so, here and now,
although it is a moral cowardice which makes many people shut their eyes to the shambles,
comforting their souls with the phrases about the beauty of sacrifice.27
On 1 July Gibbs wrote of the spirit of the British wounded (he referred only to those
with light injuries):
They were wonderful men, so wonderful in their gaiety and courage that one’s heart melted
at the sight of them. They were all grinning as though they had come from a “jolly” in which
they had been bumped a little. There was a look of pride in their eyes as they came driving
down like wounded knights from a tourney.28
In the final chapter of his book Gibbs gave a German verdict on the Somme campaign
quoting from a report (allegedly) written by General Sixt von Arnim, commander of the
Fourth German Army Corps fighting at the Somme in July, “come into British hands by
the fortune of war”. According to Gibbs, the German commander confessed to the utter
26
Cf. Hugh Cecil: “British Fiction and the First World War: The Post-War Novel of Experience”, in:
Roucoux, p. 162 (cf. footnote 13).
27
Both quotations from Philip Gibbs: The Battles of the Somme (London: 1917), p. 17.
28
Gibbs, p. 34.
115
failure of his war-machine, admitted a complete breakdown of his organization and acknowledged British superiority. Gibbs’ evaluation of this analysis was written on 3 October 1916; read 80 years later one cannot help the impression that the author at that time
was part of the British propaganda machine:
To our soldiers this document is worth a thousand times its weight in gold as a moral tonic,
for everything they hoped had been attained in these battles of the Somme... 29
That Gibbs was in fact more than an intelligent voice of propaganda became evident in
1924, when his book on the war, the post-war years and the future, was published under
the title Ten Years After: A Reminder. Now, unrestrained by external or internal censorship, he was able to tell the whole truth about the Somme campaign, and he did so with
utmost candour and occasional anger (the chapter is suitably headed “The Slaughter on
the Somme”). Of the young men who volunteered in Britain he had nothing but praise, but
what was done to them and with them made him very angry:
The men were the fine flower of their race, in intelligence, physique, training, and spirit. In
time of peace they would have lived to be leaders, administrators, artists, poets, sportsmen,
craftsmen, the “quality” of their nation; the fathers of splendid children. They were in living
splendour the priceless treasure of the British folk – and they were squandered, wasted, and
destroyed...
I saw the glory of those young men and the massacres of their bodies and hopes. At the first
assault ... they were mown down in swathes by German machine-gun fire, and afterwards, in
isolated positions to which they staggered, blown to bits by German gun fire. By desperate
courage they smashed through the outer earthworks of that infernal trench-system; for five
months they fought through that twenty miles, yard by yard; but it was sheer slaughter all the
way, and they were victims of atrocious staff work, incompetent generalship, ruthless disregard
of human life, repeated and dreadful blundering...30
The author (now Sir Philip Gibbs) also paid tribute to the agony and the courage of the
German troops and put their casualties into perspective:
They were stunned by shell fire, tortured by fear beyond human control as they crawled out
of their broken ditches to meet British bayonets. Their heroism was wonderful, as all our men
confessed... But their losses, though enormous, were not as great as the British suffered, not
half as great, I think, because defence was less costly than attack in those conditions...31
Another official contemporary British source was John Buchan, not only writer of such
gripping war novels as Greenmantle (1916) and Mr. Standfast (1918), but also author of
Nelson’s History of the War (in 24 volumes, started during the conflict). In his version of
the offensive (also issued in a cheap – 1 shilling – edition),32 based on his experiences in
the intelligence section of GHQ in France, Buchan summed up the successes of the British troops. After enumerating the material gains, he continued:
Gibbs, p. 331.
Philip Gibbs: Ten Years After: A Reminder (London: 1924), pp. 30–31.
31
Gibbs: Ten Years After, p. 32.
32
John Buchan: The Battle of the Somme: First Phase (London: n. d.). The original version was published in 1916.
29
30
116
They have done more: they have struck a shattering blow at his moral. Today ... he is coming to know what the British learned at Ypres and the French in the Artois – what it feels like to
be bombarded out of existence and to cling to shell holes and the ruins of trenches under a
pitiless fire. It is a new thing in his experience, and it has taken the heart out of men who under
other conditions fought with skill and courage. Further the Allies have dislocated his whole
military machine. Their ceaseless pressure is crippling his Staff work and confusing the
organisation of which he justly boasted. Today Germany is the Allies’ inferior.33
The final paragraph of Buchan’s book was praise of the British dead (very similar in
wording to Gibbs) whose sacrifice he saw as justified and noble. In poetic language he
glossed over the catastrophe, pouring solace into the hearts and minds of relatives and the
nation as a whole:
...To look upon the gallant procession of those who offered their all and had their gift accepted, is to know exultation as well as sorrow... They have become, in the fancy of Henry
Vaughan, the shining spires of that city to which we travel.34
The propagandistic effect of this popular author’s reassuring and consoling words on
the British public (ignorant of the gruesome facts) must have been enormous. Not surprisingly his account was hailed, by a later historian, as “one of the really meritorious propaganda productions of the war”.35 It seemed only logical that in February 1917 Buchan was
appointed head of the Department of Information, albeit only for some months until first
the Ulster Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson, and then Beaverbrook took over the post.36
During the war, the new medium film was made use of for propaganda purposes on
both sides of the conflict. In Britain, The Battle of the Somme was released in 1916. How
far this film can be regarded as propaganda, according to Ferguson, is open to question;
no less than 13 per cent of its seventy-seven minutes’ running time were given over to
shots of the dead and wounded; in the case of the last quarter of the film more than 40 per
cent, and the casualties shown were by no means only Germans. The titles were unflinching, e.g. “British Tommies rescuing a comrade under shell fire. (This man died twenty
minutes after reaching a trench.)”. Yet the film was a huge success, Kine Weekly calling it
“the most wonderful battle picture that has ever been written”. By October 1916 it had
been booked by almost half of the 4 500 cinemas across the country, and it realized around
£ 30 000. On the other hand, there were those who did not enjoy what they saw, e.g. the
Dean of Durham who lamented “an entertainment which wounds the heart and violates
the very sanctities of bereavement”. Both The Times and the Guardian received hosts of
similar, disapproving letters. And many of those who approved of the film did so precisely because it made audiences sob at the horror of the war. When the film was shown in
The Hague, the Red Cross saw it as a perfect opportunity to raise money for their anti-war
league, and in the United States, as Buchan was informed by his man in New York, there
Buchan, p. 105.
Buchan, pp. 108–109.
35
James Duane Squires: British Propaganda at Home and in the United States from 1914 to 1917 (=
Harvard Historical Monographs VI) (Cambridge/Mass.: 1935), p. 35, n. 33. Quoted from S. Sillars: “British
Prose of the First World War: Some Neglected Works”, Notes and Queries,vol. ccxxix (1984), pp. 507–508,
here p. 507.
36
Ferguson, p. 224.
33
34
117
were “so many letters of complaint about the horrors of the Somme film, and the disastrous effects they were having in preventing recruitment and putting people against the
war, that...we called in the films and subjected them to strong censorship”. According to
Ferguson, this fact alone must cast doubt on the myth of Britain’s brilliant war propaganda.37
Here are two British voices of men actively involved in the Somme campaign, the poet
Edmund Blunden and the writer/journalist Henry Major Tomlinson. They both spoke of
the change brought about by the Somme. Blunden saw the new shrapnel helmet as a
symbol of the changed atmosphere at the front:
It is true that steel helmets now became the rule, their ugly useful discomfort supplanting
our old friendly soft caps... The dethronement of the soft cap clearly symbolized the change
that was coming over the war, the induration from a personal crusade into a vast machine of
violence.38
And according to the same author, after the Somme, “in 1917 old expressions such as
‘a bon time’ and ‘tray beans’ were not much heard.”39 A year after the publication of
Undertones of War Blunden returned to the topic in an essay entitled “The Somme Still
Flows” in which he relived his division’s part in the battle. His conclusion:
We had been passed through the furnace and the quicksand. What had happened to this
division was typical of the experience of all divisions, in all the armies. There is no escape from
the answer given on July 1st to the question of the human race. War had been “found out”,
overwhelmingly found out. War is an ancient impostor, but none of his masks and smiles and
gallant trumpets can any longer delude us; he leads the way through the cornfields to the cemetery of all that is best. The best is, indeed, his special prey. What men did in the battle of the
Somme, day after day, and month after month, will never be excelled in honour, unselfishness,
and love; except by those who come after and resolve that their experience shall never again
fall to the lot of human beings.40
Tomlinson, whose war memoir appeared a year later with an epigraph by Blunden,
voiced the frustration and anger of the common soldier at the way the Somme campaign
was allowed to drag on into autumn and winter, at the blundering generals “who did not
know what next to order, except again the thing which had failed”,41 the politicians, the
newspapers:
With the leaves of that autumn fell the bright promise of the war. The dove did not descend
to us precipitously with a laurel crown in its bill. It did not come at all. It was rain that descended... Now, too, the lists of the slain were not published, and for a reason which was worse
than a scarcity of printing paper, and yet we surely knew, without being told, that the shadow of
the battles of the Somme was of a nature that no radiant May morning of a better year could
See Ferguson, pp. 236–237.
Edmund Blunden: Undertones of War (London: 1928), pp. 72–73.
39
Blunden, p. 203.
40
Blunden: The Mind’s Eye: Essays (London: 1934), p. 43.
41
H. M. Tomlinson: All Our Yesterdays (London: 1930), p. 410.
37
38
118
ever lift... We began to surmise that the world we had known, which was fair, had gone the way
of Eden and youth, and that it would not return. It was even said by some men...that God was
dead.42
For the American scholar Paul Fussell the Battle of the Somme was crucial to the
British definition of the First World War:
The innocent army fully attained the knowledge of good and evil at the Somme on July 1,
1916. That moment, one of the most interesting in the whole long history of human disillusion,
can stand as the type of all the ironic actions of the war.43
In his essay “The Battle of the Somme and Vera Brittain”, 44 Alan Bishop, editor of
Vera Brittain’s diaries, showed how a critical consideration of her various responses between 1916 (her fiancé had been killed in December 1915, her brother was wounded on 1
July) and 1935 validated Fussell’s thesis. Her early literary reactions – diary entries, poems, among them the famous “To My Brother” – were honest, but too much given to heroworship and relying on what Fussell called ‘bardic’ clichés (“lead the Last Advance against
the flying foe”). According to Bishop, even in her best-known book, Testament of Youth,
1933, two intentions of which were to warn against war and to honour the courage and
endurance of the “war generation”, “this ambiguity vitiated her new response to the
Somme.”45 In the summer of the same year, shortly before her book was published, she
was on holiday in France visiting the graves of her fiancé and other close friends, also
paying visits to the various Somme memorials. On Thiepval Ridge, at the British Memorial to the Missing of the Somme (73 367 names) Vera Brittain “experienced an epiphany
whose effects were to dominate her later writing, not only on the Somme, but on war...”46
She learned that there were several of these memorials to the missing (35 000 names on
the one in Arras alone). In her second diary she described the impact of the Thiepval
memorial on herself:
...I walked up the wide mown space of grass before the memorial, between flower-beds
planted with violas and red roses, and stood below the immense arch of this brown and white
stone memorial. Everywhere there was a scent of cut grass; and the larks were singing. In front
of one lay the Somme country, miles upon misty miles of undulating verdant harvest land,
rolling in its gentle curves towards the blue-grey horizon beyond which lay the spires of Amiens.
And I thought what a cheating and a camouflage it all is, this combined effort of man and nature
to give once more the impression that war is noble and glorious, just because its aftermath can
be given the appearance of dignity and beauty after fifteen years. I never had before so clear an
impression of the scene of Edward’s Battle on July 1st.47
Finally, two contemporary German voices, both of combatants at the Somme.48 The
first is that of Ernst Jünger whose unit entered the Somme theatre of action in August.
Tomlinson, pp. 410–412.
Paul Fussell: The Great War and Modern Memory (London/New York: 1975), p. 29.
In M. Roucoux, pp. 125–142.
45
Bishop, p. 133.
46
Bishop, p. 136.
47
Brittain: Chronicle of Friendship, pp. 134–135. Quoted in Bishop, p. 137.
48
See also Malcolm Brown (ed.): The Imperial War Museum Book of the Somme (London: 1996), chapter
nine “The German Experience”, pp. 165–180.
42
43
44
119
Even through his martial composure it is possible to imagine the horror of incessant shelling and its effect on the men:
Artillery fire of a hitherto unimagined intensity rolled and thundered on our front. Thousands of twitching flashes turned the western horizon into a sea of flowers. All the while the
wounded came trailing back with white dejected faces, huddled into the ditches by the gun and
ammunition columns that rattled past.49
Jünger himself was wounded and learned in hospital that almost his whole company
had been wiped out, the few survivors taken prisoner by the British:
Not one man got back to Combles to tell the tale of this heroic fight that was fought to the
finish with such bitterness. Even the English army command made honourable mention of the
handful of men who held out to the last near Guillemont.50
Like Blunden and Tomlinson, Jünger commented on the changes brought about by the
Somme battles. He mentioned the destruction of landscape wrought by “all the frightfulness that the mind of man could devise”, the end of chivalry (“Chivalry here took a final
farewell” [110]), a more merciless type of soldier as a result of mechanized warfare:
And it seemed that man, on this landscape he had himself created, became different, more
mysterious and hardy and callous than in any previous battle. The spirit and the tempo of the
fighting altered, and after the battle of the Somme the war had its own peculiar impress that
distinguished it from all other wars. After this battle the German soldier wore the steel helmet,
and in his features there were chiselled the lines of an energy stretched to the utmost pitch, lines
that future generations will perhaps find as fascinating and imposing as those of many heads of
classical or Renaissance times.51
The second voice is that of the writer Paul Zech (whom we have met before at Verdun)
who was on friendly terms with his Austrian colleague Stefan Zweig; his letter from the
Somme (dated 12 July 1916 ) expressed the horror which by far exceeded anything experienced by him before:
...I had not believed that it would be possible to surpass the Hell of Verdun. I suffered
terribly there. Now that it is over, it may be said. But not enough: now we have been sent to the
Somme. And here everything has increased: hate, dehumanisation, horror and blood. A few
more days and my strength will give way. I passed the test in the weeks of March, May and
June. But now everything is going down. The honest fight and the tense watch, hope and faith.
Does God still exist? Yes – : I was buried alive; 30 of my comrades were killed by the shelling
in the same village billets. I survived, am still alive. And yet death is so close nearby as the air
one breathes...52
Ernst Jünger: The Storm of Steel (London: 1930), p. 92.
Jünger, p. 107.
51
Jünger, p. 109. For a typical representative of this new type of soldier see the author’s description of his
guide to Combles, pp. 92–93.
52
Stefan Zweig/Paul Zech: Briefe: 1910–1942 (Rudolstadt: 1987), pp. 83–84.
49
50
120
In an essay published in autumn 1916 Zech described in poetic, frequently expressionist language the gradual approach of his company to the battle-field, the hostile reaction
of the French rural population towards the German troops (He wished to be able to tell
them of the suffering of the German population in East Prussia from the hands of the
Cossacks, as an antidote), the hardening of the soldiers the closer they got to the front.53
2. Alec John Dawson Somme Battle Stories 1916
Captain Dawson’s book54 is supposed to be a record of his conversations with officers
and men wounded at the Somme front and subsequently sent back to “Blighty” for treatment. The setting (with the exception of the final chapter) is the landing stage at Southampton where the hospital ships from France arrive every day. Since no names of individuals or of their regiments are given it is impossible to verify the contents of 240 pages,
divided into twenty chapters. A feature common to all the units was the cheerfulness of
the wounded who couldn’t wait to get back to the front, the firm belief expressed by the
men that British morale was superior to that of the Hun, that God was on Britain’s side in
this struggle between the forces of Good and Evil. In the face of the carnage going on in
France, Dawson managed to remain optimistic:
There is no vestige of any falling off in the general level of high spirits and confidence
among our wounded officers and men from the battle fields of the Somme... (20)
A certain platoon officer is cited by his sergeant as an example of that spirit. With two
machine gun bullets in him, then a third (“not to mention bomb splinters an” the like o’
that”) he carried on gallantly, his objective being an irritating German machine gun position:
My officer was fair runnin’ blood by then. He got so many splinters you see, sir, about the
head an’ face, besides the three bullets he’d got in him. I found him sittin’ on a Boche machine
gun lightin’ a fag, a cigarette, I should say, sir. The Boche machine gunner was there, too; only
he’d never smoke no more cigarettes, nor fire no more machine guns. He was done up pretty
nasty, sir, was that gunner... I tried to make my officer let me help him back for dressin’, but he
wouldn’t have it – not then. He smoked his cigarette, while I put the Platoon on cleaning out
dug-outs in that trench. I don’t mean the mud, you know, sir... (30–31)
The platoon took 47 German prisoners.
My officer took that bunch of prisoners back to our old lines by himself. Got two of the
biggest to carry him at the rear of the squad on two rifles. He had his revolver in one hand and
a Mills bomb in the other. “Cheroo, Sergeant!” he says to me.“Keep the boys a-movin’ till I get
back.” (32)
53
P. Zech: “Im Vorhof der Somme”, in: Vossische Zeitung, No. 568, 5 November 1916, pp. 5–6 (my
pagination).
54
Somme Battle Stories recorded by Capt. A. J. Dawson, illustrated by Capt. Bruce Bairnsfather, published for The Bystander by Hodder & Stoughton (London/Toronto/New York: 1916).
121
In contrast to that the German officers were said to keep out of the front-line:
I think that’s one reason why the Boche is losin’ heart a bit, an’ shows himself pretty ready
to be taken prisoner. His officers do keep most uncommon well out of the way; very different
from ours. An’ I suppose it makes their men feel the game is up. (33)
The Cockney fighter (in the chapter of the same name) expressed – in his “rycy vernacular” – the general optimistic mood:
Fed up? Wot, ahr boys fed up, sir. Not likely! Wy, we’re just beginnin’ to like it. But I bet
Mister Boche is getting a bit fed up. Least, some er them as I saw, they was; right up to the
bloomin’ neck, as ye might say, sir. (88–89)
The chapter “It’s a Great Do” a reference to the Somme battles, contrasted once more
the British to their German counterparts. The British first:
...mostly bandaged for more than one wound; all ragged and blood-stained as to their uniforms, bronzed and weather-worn as to their hands and faces, with the indescribable fightingline look in their eyes; full of laughter and good cheer, and carrying among them a wheelbarrow-load of souvenirs in the shape of Boche helmets, clubs, daggers and the like. (222)
For the Germans it was believed that they would not be able to stick it another winter in
the trenches, that they only fought because they were forced by authority (they were chained
to their machine guns!), but there was no reason for the British to feel sorry for them as
they fought dirty:
Come to that, how does he stick it now? “Tain’t because he likes it. What else can he do?
You saw the machine gun chains. He’s driven to his job like a beast, is the Boche. That’s so. I’d
be sorry for the beggar if he didn’t play so many dirty tricks. Not me, mate. I’ll never be sorry
for the Boche. Seen too much of the blighter. If you’d seen the way he killed my officer, you
wouldn’t waste no bloomin’ sorrow on him. Them as I’ve seen is as full o’ dirty tricks as a
cartload o’ monkeys, or else they’re foamin’ at the mouth like mad dogs. A Boche is no good
till he’s dead, I say. We’ve bin too soft with” em. (223)
The final chapter “On the Way to London” gave the author a chance to assure the
public that the British wounded heroes (and they were all heroes) were well looked after
by a grateful nation:
I was travelling with some of them in one of the smoothly running hospital trains bound for
London. From engine to guard’s van the interior of the long train was immaculate spotless, a
triumph of scientific organisation, of carefully thought out, most admirably and consistently
administered system. The accommodation simply the very best, neither more nor less, that
modern ingenuity can provide for the easy transport of the sick and wounded. For the General
officer and for the private it was all precisely alike; not by reason of haste or emergency or
accident, but because nothing better can be designed, and the authorities hold that the best
cannot be too good for the soldier of whatever rank who is struck down in the performance of
his duty; in the war which for us means the defence of civilisation against the onslaught of the
modern Hun – the mad dog of Europe. (230–231)
122
One cannot help the impression that Dawson’s book is a piece of propaganda fiction
rather than a factual account. One would understand the cheerfulness (thank God, it’s
over, at least for a while!), much less so the wish to return to the front as soon as possible.
The general conviction of victory, the optimism, the demonization of the enemy are in
marked contrast to other British eyewitness accounts such as have been collected by Lyn
Macdonald and others. Dawson’s text is a hymn of praise to the men of the New Army,
but there is no mention here that the Somme was to be its destruction. In the face of
shocking casualties Dawson attempts to spread an air of confidence and optimism at home,
a legitimate aim of propaganda during a war. All men are heroes “wounded in a mentionable place”, to borrow Sassoon’s sarcastic line (from his poem “The Glory of Women”).
On the cover of the book the name of Bruce Bairnsfather appears in bold type together
with the name of the author, and the popularity of this war cartoonist (Fragments from
France/Bullets and Billets) is clearly used for advertisement purposes. At a length of 240
pages there are seven ‘straight’ illustrations (not very many) plus a humorous one opposite the title page (to catch the eye of the potential reader). Dawson’s Somme Battle Stories appear to have been quite a success. At least one may gather that from the fact that he
was able to follow them up with a companion volume, plus another war book paying
homage to the noble French allies (both done again in collaboration with the popular
Bairnsfather).55
After 1916, it would have been difficult to find anyone serving in France to support the
attitudes and beliefs allegedly expressed by British soldiers in Dawson’s text, or in any
other book, be it prose or verse. Gilbert Frankau, in a poem written in October 1917
(which, not amazingly, failed to find a publisher at the time) criticized a fellow-officer
who had brought out a collection of ‘Noble Verse’ now that he was safe at Home. The
long poem (quoted here only in part) was in the form of a letter:
About your book, I’ve read it carefully,
So has Macfadden; (You remember him,
the light-haired chap who joined us after Loos?)
And candidly we don’t think much of it.
My grief but we’re fed up to the back teeth
with war-books, war-verse, all the eye-wash stuff
that seems to please the idiots at home.
You know the kind of thing, or used to know:
“Heroes who laugh while Fritz is strafing them”
(I don’t remember that you found it fun
the day they shelled us out of Blauwpoort Farm!)
You have forgotten, or you couldn’t write
this sort of stuff, all cant, no guts in it,
hardly a single picture true to life.
55
Back to Blighty – Battle Stories recorded by Capt. A. J. Dawson, with illustrations by Bruce Bairnsfather
(London: 1917) and For France (“C’est Pour La France”) – Some English Impressions of the French Front,
with illustrations by Capt. Bruce Bairnsfather (London: 1917).
123
Lord, if I’d half your brains I’d write a book:
None of your sentimental platitudes,
but something real, vital, that should strip
the glamour from this outrage we call war,
showing it naked, hideous, stupid, vile one vast abomination...56
Ten years later, this criticism had become even more widespread. In many ways a
direct reply to Dawson’s Somme tales was A. D. Gristwood’s short novel The Somme,
published in 1927.
3. Alan Patrick Herbert The Secret Battle 1919
Towards the end of the War it was stated with regret in literary circles in Britain that there
was nothing in British war literature that could be compared to works by French authors
such as Barbusse and Duhamel.57 An exception in this context was A. P. Herbert’s novel
The Secret Battle, published in May 1919. When it came out first
it was at that time a little swept aside by the revulsion of the public mind from anything to do
with the awful period just ended. But on re-reading it...it seems to hold its place, and indeed a
permanent place, in war literature.58
Although the first part of the novel seems unrelated to the Somme campaign – the
setting was Gallipoli – it was but a preparation, a first step in the tragedy that had its
climax at the Ancre in November 1916 shortly before the Battle of the Somme ended in
the mud and rain of approaching winter.
A young British infantry officer, Harry Penrose, distinguishes himself first in Gallipoli
and then in France by various acts of bravery. Parallel with the external action runs his
internal struggle (hence the title) against a gradual breakdown of nerves which finally
give way under extreme pressure: He loses his nerve during battle, is court-martialled for
cowardice and sentenced to death. Two men, whose vanity he has offended, are instrumental in his downfall. Recommendations to commute the sentence are rejected by the
higher command who wish to set a warning. Penrose is shot at dawn by his own men.
The structure of the novel
The text is divided into two major blocks of about equal length, chapters I–VI dealing
with events on the Peninsula, followed by an intermezzo (chapter VII), before the scene
shifts to the Somme (chapters VIII–XIII). In the exposition (chapter I), the first-person
narrator gives his reasons for writing down some of the history of Harry Penrose:
Quoted from Lyn Macdonald: “The Somme Front”, pp. 147–148.
Cf. Nation, vol. 22, 1917, p.192 / TLS, June 7, 1917, p. 270 bc.
From the 1928 Introduction by Winston Churchill (Secretary of State for War 1918–1921) reprinted in
The Fountain Library (Methuen, London: 1936), p. v. All quotations are from this edition.
56
57
58
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because I do not think full justice has been done to him, and because there must be many other
young men of his kind who flung themselves into this war at the beginning of it, and have gone
out of it after many sufferings with the unjust and ignorant condemnation of their fellows. (1)
And he justifies in advance what may seem to the reader mere digressions as necessary
for the full understanding of the ‘ruthless progression of Penrose’s tragedy’. An experienced officer, he is on his way to the Peninsula and during the voyage makes the acquaintance of young Penrose, who has joined his battalion, thus being able to provide a character sketch of Harry. An orphan since schooldays, in his second year at Oxford, he enlists
immediately instead of going for a commission like his friends. He has a hard time in the
ranks, mainly Tynesiders, but only the pressure put on by his guardian and relatives makes
him take a commission after six months. ‘He had a curious lack of confidence in his
fitness to be an officer’. The narrator is delighted by his ‘keenness and happy disposition’
(2), he is full of curiosity and has ‘the fearlessness of a child’ (5), is fascinated by every
detail, hideous and heroic, he picks up in Malta from men wounded on Gallipoli.
In short, he was like many another undergraduate officer of those days in his eagerness and
readiness for sacrifice, but far removed from the common type in his romantic, imaginative
outlook towards the war. (7)
The author makes ample use of foreshadowing in his novel, as he does in this chapter:
“Romantic” is the only word, I think, and it is melancholy for me to remember that even
then I said to myself, ‘I wonder how long the romance will last, my son.’ But I could not guess
just how terrible was to be its decay. (7–8)
Since childhood Harry has suffered from a curious distrust of his own capacity in the
face of anything he has to do, his nervousness then takes on the form of silent brooding.
He has a terror of being a failure, doesn’t want to be a ‘sort of regimental dud’ (19). The
panorama of Troy and the memory of all those famous men who fought there inspire him
with new courage:
Somehow, looking at this view, Troy and all that...well, it gave me a kind of inspiration; I
don’t know why. I swear I won’t be a failure, I won’t be the battalion dud – and I’ll have a
damned good try to get a medal of some sort and be like – like Achilles or somebody. (19)
Whereas in France there is a long transition of training-camps and railway lines and
billets, and the soldier moves by easy gradations to the firing-line, on Gallipoli he is
plunged suddenly into the genuine scenes of war and there is no respite:
...the Turk and the Gentile fought with each other all day with rifle and bomb, and in the
evening crept out and stabbed each other in the dark. There was no release from the strain of
watching and listening and taking thought. The Turk was always on higher ground; he knew
every inch of all those valleys and vineyards and scrub-strewn slopes; and he had an uncanny
accuracy of aim. (43)
And there are snipers everywhere and fanatic suicide commandos behind the British
lines prepared to die with their victims. Mid-June brings additional plagues: excessive
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heat, dust, multitudes of flies, dysentery. Food is dull and monotonous, but it is the same
for all, ‘one honourable equality of discomfort’ (23), for this is another difference from
life in France. The narrator describes Harry as the most ingenuous among the officers and
the most devoted to his illusions. At that point, a fellow-officer named Burnett is introduced who will be one of the two men responsible for Harry’s downfall. In contrast to
Harry he is tall, muscular, poses as ‘man of action’, ‘and from the first he affected the
patronizing attitude of the experienced campaigner’ (29). He is an egoist, does not share
his food-parcels (from Fortnum & Masons), but takes more than his share from other
people’s dainties,‘borrows’ Harry’s mess tin, pretends not to know, uses his position as
senior officer to make Harry do the unpleasant nightly work while he has a drink in a dugout, and allows himself to be congratulated by the brigadier the next day for a job well
done. Burnett also pretends not to be affected by the discomforts of camp life:
By degrees, however, as life became more unbearable, the conviction dawned upon us that
he was no less sensible to heat and hunger and thirst than mere ‘temporary’ campaigners, and
rather more ready to utter his complaints. Finally, the weight of evidence became overwhelming, and it was whispered at the end of our first week at Gallipoli that ‘Burnett was bogus’. The
quality of being ‘bogus’ was in those days the last word in military condemnation; and in
Burnett’s case events showed the verdict to be lamentably correct. (29)
A number of unpleasant incidents between Burnett and Harry take place, petty in themselves, but in their cumulative effect very large and distressing. As public angers must be
avoided, they create a pent-up, suppressed condition, become more malignant, almost
like a disease, become part of a complex irritation that is due to the grim living conditions
(to which by now must be added dysentery), and frayed nerves. Because of his previous
scouting experience in the ranks Harry has been made scout officer whose job it is to
locate the positions of enemy snipers who cause heavy casualties. Good shots among the
British are posted as snipers equipped with periscopes and telescopes which proves an
efficient countermeasure. Two incidents are recorded by the narrator as significant. The
first concerns what most men would call a brave act, brave being defined thus:
To my mind, a man is brave only in proportion to his knowledge and his susceptibility to
fear. (59)
Harry is ordered to reconnoitre a Turkish trench whose fire is quite harassing. Is it held
strongly at night, or only occupied by a few snipers? Harry goes out with two scouts, finds
out about the trench, but recklessly goes right up to the parapet to peer into the trench.
When a neighbouring company opens fire (ignorant of the fact that men are out), they
make a quick retreat in which one of the men is hit in both legs. Eventually they manage
to drag the screaming man in, having given him morphine to make him quiet, only to be
informed that he is dead. Anticlimax to the sensation of audacity and recklessness felt
earlier that night. Harry nearly cries when he is told (67–68). The second incident, a
Turkish whizzbang attack which kills six of Harry’s men, leaves him horrified. The two
incidents have a most unhappy cumulative effect on him:
His night’s scouting, in spite of its miserable end, had not perceptibly dimmed his romantic
notions... But the sight of his six poor men, lying black and beastly in that sunlit hole, had
killed the ‘Romance of War’ for him. Henceforth it must be a necessary but disgusting business, to be endured, like a dung-hill. (71)
126
What is more serious: his old distrust of his own competence has been revived, in a
most malignant form. When the Colonel fearing for Harry’s nerves does not let him go out
on patrol during their next ‘tour’ in the line this confirms him in his distrust of himself,
“for it seemed to him that the Colonel, too, must look upon him as a bungler, a waster of
men’s lives” (73).
All this was very bad, and I was much afraid of what the reaction might be. But there was
one bright spot. So far he only distrusted his military capacity; there was no sign of his distrusting his own courage. I prayed that that might not follow. (73)
By now Harry is a sick man, a mere skeleton, one of the many victims of dysentery. On
the Western Front he would have been bundled off to a hospital. There are hospital ships
mooring in the bay, but Harry still refuses to go although he knows he is very ill. He is still
fighting a conflict with himself, doubtful about his courage. When Burnett who wants to
go sick is sent back by the doctor ‘with a flea in his ear and a dose of chlorodyne’ the story
leaks out quickly and there is much comment adverse to Burnett. Harry informs the narrator:
You heard about Burnett? Thank God, nobody can say those things about me! I’m not going
off this Peninsula till I’m pushed off. (94)
The final chapter of this first part of the novel (VI) contains a double climax: victory of
Harry’s mind over his frail body, and a culmination in Burnett’s hate of Harry. The company is in reserve, waiting for an attack against the Turks up on Achi Baba. When the
attack is cancelled, Burnett pretends to be disappointed:
When Egerton told his officers, only Burnett spoke: he said “Damn. As usual. I wanted a go
at the old Turk”: and we knew that it was not true. The rest of us said nothing, for we were
wondering if it were true of ourselves. (102)
For Harry this new situation is difficult; “it was the postponement of a personal test:
the battle inside him still went on, only it went on more bitterly.” (102–103) But there is
another chance for Harry to prove himself. Another attack, with D Company in reserve,
but to provide a digging party (40 men plus one officer) to dig a communication ditch to
the new line when it has been taken. Burnett is detailed for the job, does not like it, reacts
aggressively, then goes, returns quickly on the pretext that “the men won’t stick it” (machine-gun fire from the high ground). As there are hardly any casualties it is obvious that
the danger is not too serious. It is clear: “Burnett had failed. He had let the company
down” (109). While Egerton is considering how to get the job done, Harry bursts in and
volunteers with his platoon. While Harry is out with his men, the narrator spends an hour
with him and is impressed by Harry’s cheerfulness and the way in which he encourages
his men many of whom get wounded. Again the narrator comments on this development:
Curious from what strange springs inspiration comes. For Harry, for the second time, had
been genuinely inspired by the evil example of his enemy. Probably, in the first place, he had
welcomed the chance of doing something at last, of putting his doubts to the test, but I am sure
that what chiefly carried him through that night, weak and exhausted as he was, was the thought,
“Burnett let them down; Burnett let them down; I’m not going to let them down.” Anyhow he
did very well. (110)
127
The next morning Harry is carried down to the beach in a high fever. As he promised
he has stayed till he has been ‘pushed’ off. The narrator has long wanted this to happen, as
he feels Harry “should be spared for greater things”, but has not wanted his career to end
on a note of simple failure – a dull surrender to sickness in a rest-camp. The accident of
the digging party has sent Harry off with a renewed confidence in himself and even a
sense of triumph with regard to Burnett whom the narrator by now refers to as Harry’s
enemy (110), an oblique reference to potential dangers for Harry’s later career from that
source.
The intermezzo chapter (VII) shifts the scene back to Europe, first to England, then to
France, and with the narrator we follow Harry’s recovery, and, after a month’s leave, his
marriage to a Miss Thickness. Officially, wives are not reckoned with in a soldier’s story,
although they do affect a soldier’s life. “Not being the president of a court-martial I did
reckon with it” (112), a first hint of what is to come at the end? Harry is not expected to go
out again, but in May 1916 the narrator (by now himself newly married) is contacted by
Harry, who is fed up with his job as instructor at the Depot in Dorsetshire, with the request
to get him back to his old regiment in France. His wife has not been informed about his
plans. The narrator, adjutant at that time, ‘wangles’ it, and so Harry comes out to France.
The narrator justifies going into so much detail as relevant for the end of the story and
connects it with some more foreshadowing:
...if this record had been in the hands of certain persons the end of the story might have been
different, I do not know. Certainly, it ought to have been different. (114)
Harry rejoins his old company (which Burnett has left “on some detached duty or
other”), but he is a different person now:
There were no more romantic illusions about war, and, I think, no more military ambitions.
Only he was sufficiently rested to be very keen again, and had not yet seen enough of it to be
ordinarily bored. (114)
They spend the summer of 1916 in a ‘peace-time’ sector near the Loretto Heights,
where war has become a kind of ritual, but occasionally are made aware that a different
type of war is raging further south:
But sometimes on a clear night we saw all the southern sky afire from some new madness on
the Somme, and knew that somewhere in France there was real war. (116–117)
With reference to the Somme, the narrator voices his criticism of war-correspondents
who write about regiments eager to join the battle:
The correspondents wrote home that the regiments “condemned so long to the deadening
inactivity of trench warfare were longing only for their turn at the Great Battle.” No doubt they
had authority: though I never met one of those regiments. (117)
Harry is made scout officer again, a job he does well, maintaining the same care, the
same admirable patience over a long period, which is a great strain on the nerves, especially for people with imagination, like Harry. For almost three months he goes out almost
every night. The narrator is impressed with the performance and wonders how he can
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stand it so long, but finally, Harry’s nerves give way: one night he and another scout are
exposed by a flare, German machine-guns and artillery open fire, the result of which is
profound shock in Harry: “I lay there...and simply sweated with funk” (124). When, a few
days later, Harry is sent out to check if an enemy trench has been evacuated, he fails and
realizes how deeply the recent shock has affected him. In his official report to the Colonel
he finds an acceptable excuse for his failure to do the job properly (”I got pretty close to
the wire, but couldn’t find a gap.”), but in the following private talk with the narrator he
admits the real reason behind his action:
...I couldn’ face it... The truth is, that show the other night was too much for me... I found
myself lying in a shell-hole pretending to myself that I was listening, and watching, and so on,
but really absolutely stuck trying to make myself go on...and I couldn’t... I’m finished as a
scout...that’s all.
As the Colonel is a kind, understanding fellow, Harry is relieved from his present job
and is made Lewis gun officer. The narrator sees in this event the first stage leading up to
the final catastrophe.
In Chapter VIII the setting has changed: it is the Somme in autumn, a change welcome
to the men “not in the expectation of liking it, but on the principle of Henry V’s speech on
the eve of St. Crispin. But it was very vile” (130). A great battle is fought – details are not
given, as “it is in the histories” – but a black day for the battalion:
We lost 400 men and 20 officers, more than twice the total British casualties at Omdurman...
Harry and myself survived. (131)
To the narrator’s surprise, Harry, although his ‘scouting’ nerve is gone, is still a very
brave and competent officer in action. Thus, when a working party of his is attacked and
runs away in a stampede, he manages to get the men back and keep them together. And
when, after being in battle for two days, he is sent to Brigade Headquarters with a runner
to fix up a few details about their position and their relief, instead of waiting for his
company to pass by and rejoin them there, he goes back through the barrage to be with the
battalion. His runner, a mere kid, is mortally wounded, and he stays with him until they
are found by his men. The narrator comments on it:
From a military or, indeed, a common-sense point of view, it was a futile performance – the
needless risk of a valuable officer’s life. They do not give decorations for that kind of thing. But
I was glad he had stayed with that young runner. And I only tell you this to show you how
wrong I was, and how much stuff he had in him still. (136)
In this chapter the narrator also discusses a theory held among soldiers, which he calls
the theory of the favourite fear, and we learn about Harry that “the one thing he could not
face at present was crawling lonely in the dark with the thought of that tornado of bullets
in his head” (134).
At this point in the narrative, Colonel Philpott, an old Regular, takes over the battalion
from wounded Colonel Roberts. After Burnett, he will be Harry’s second enemy. He is
one of the ‘Old Duds’, arrogant, lazy, ignorant, not prepared to learn, a failure as a man
and officer. The narrator is his adjutant for 12 months so he gets to know him quite well.
Harry makes himself unpopular with Philpott by mentioning that he is nearly due for
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promotion, which creates an outburst (Philpott spent 15 years as a captain!). As a result
he is detailed for many working-parties, some of them very nasty. On one occasion, an
NCO makes a mess of the rations Harry has handed over to him under great difficulties
(unfortunately without insisting on a receipt), Harry is accused by Philpott and “cursed
for a lazy swine”. The effect on Harry is great bitterness in his heart, which the narrator
calls the beginning of the second stage. Despite the adjutant’s protest, Philpott makes sure
that Harry gets most of the dangerous work, and not surprisingly, by the third week, his
‘nerve’ is gone (“I’ve got complete windup” [151]). And so Philpott has finally broken
his nerve (not yet his spirit). Harry’s frustration about not having his service recognized
and – but this is the narrator’s guess since Harry never mentions it – not having won any
kind of medal or distinction, together with a sense of bitter injustice, leads to black moods
and eventually breaks his spirit. He loses his keenness, his cheerfulness, and his health.
And as the narrator believes “once a man starts on that path, his past history finds him out,
like an old wound.” In Harry’s case this is Gallipoli (“No man who had a bad time in that
place ever ‘got over’ it in body or soul” [155]).
And when France or some other campaign began to work upon them, it was seen that there
was something missing in their resisting power; they broke out with old diseases and old
fears...the legacies of Gallipoli. Harry grew pale, and nervous, and hunted to look at; and he
had a touch of dysentery. But the worst of the poison was in his mind and heart...now this
bitterness was on him, he seemed to have ceased to care what happened or what men thought of
him. He had unreasonable fits of temper; he became distrustful and cynical. (155–156)
The situation is so bad that the narrator hopes Philpott will be killed, but he survives
being a very careful man and “by no means the gallant fire-eater you would have imagined from his treatment of defaulters.” A special group of those are the SIW’s, men who
have been ‘evacuated’ with self-inflicted wounds brought about to escape the misery of it
all. Philpott’s treatment of them is predictably cruel and abusive, which does not come as
a surprise. What is surprising is Harry’s attitude; he is cynical and intolerant; perhaps this
is necessary: an act of instinctive self-defence? The final blow for Harry falls when the
narrator is wounded and sent home to England. Now the last of the Old Crowd is gone,
“the one man who knew the truth of things as between him and Philpott” (159). A short
time later the narrator is informed by a letter from his quartermaster that Harry Penrose
has been wounded, in a way that suggests a wish to be killed (exposure to enemy shelling). A postscript contains the brief message that Burnett has got the Military Cross – for
salvage!
Chapter X describes the meeting of Harry with the narrator in England during their
convalescence. Harry has been offered a job at the War Office as intelligence officer, but
has qualms about accepting it. He is still haunted by the trenches and suffers from nightmares about shells. Finally he rejects the offer although his wife and the narrator want him
to accept.
Chapter XI brings yet another chance for Harry to avoid the dreaded trenches: back in
France, he is offered a job at the Base, but turns it down, prefers going up to the line, and
rejoins his battalion! So does the narrator who, looking out in vain for Harry, learns that
he is under close arrest. The reason why is given somewhat brutally by a young subaltern
just out:
Running away – cowardice in the face of – et cetera – have some more tea? (181–182)
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With the help of some sympathetic fellow-officers the narrator learns what has happened: On Harry’s first night back(!) Philpott sent him out with a carrying-party to the
front line. “It was shell-hole country, no communication trenches or tracks, and since
there had been an attack recently, the Boche artillery was very active on the roads and
back areas. Also there was the usual rotten valley to cross, with the hell of a barrage in it”
(182). Harry had picked up his stuff at the Brigade Dump, but later someone from the line
rang up Brigade to inform them that no party had arrived. When Brigade rang up Philpott,
he sent up the Assistant Adjutant to investigate. “Somewhere in the Arras Road he had
come upon Harry, with most of the party, running down the road – towards the Dump –
away from the line” (182).
The Assistant Adjutant at that time was Burnett! When the narrator gets leave to see
Harry he has been under arrest for six weeks! The latter tells him the details of that fateful
night: After some of his men have disappeared, Harry and the rest decide to go back and
wait until the enemy barrage is over. They run to the HQ dugout for cover, there to be met
by Burnett of all people (who has been sheltering there himself!). Burnett tells Harry to go
on at once; when Harry refuses because of the barrage, Burnett informs Philpott by phone
and asks for instructions. He is told to put Harry under arrest and come back. Harry is
resigned to his fate and admits his failure without searching for extenuating circumstances
(of which the narrator has found quite a number in the meantime); finally, he asks the
narrator to explain it all to his wife and to the people who do not know.
Chapter XII is taken up by the court-martial. Although the narrator is favourably impressed by the military judges, he doubts whether these “blunt, honest” men can do justice to a complex case “where testimony is at all doubtful, where there are cross-currents
and hidden animosities” (194). Other points of his criticism concern the facts that as a
rule witnesses are not cross-examined, and that a Prisoner’s Friend is often regarded with
hostility. The narrator is permitted to give evidence of Harry’s character, and there is a
rumour that Harry will be recommended for mercy.
The final chapter (XIII) sums up the narrator’s (and others’) thoughts about the problem at hand and contains a kind of message. Harry’s distinction between “wind-up” (=
fear), and ‘cold feet’ is taken up again.” “‘Cold feet’ also signifies fear, but, as I understand it, has an added implication in it of base yielding to that fear” (205–206). All officers taking part in the discussion are agreed that the case of Harry Penrose should not have
gone before a court-martial, that courts-martial do not take into account that some days,
owing to circumstances, a man might be windier than on others. The narrator pleads for a
compulsory medical examination of people’s nerves, taking into account a man’s record.
In a footnote we are informed that, much later, “a system of sending ‘war-weary’ soldiers
home for six months at a time was instituted...” (211). We also learn that men (as opposed
to officers) suffer less mentally, for most men are not cursed with an imagination and so
do not worry about what is coming.
So the talk rambled on, and we got no further, only most of us were in troubled agreement
that something – perhaps many things – were wrong about the System, if this young volunteer
after long fighting and suffering, was indeed to be shot like a traitor in the cold dawn. (212)
And shot he is, for Harry gets no mercy, to the horror and amazement of the officers at
the Court-Martial, as higher up in the hierarchy someone disagrees and believes an example must be made of the subaltern pour encourager les autres.
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The thing was done seven mornings later, in a little orchard behind the Casquettes’ farm.
The Padre told me he stood up to them very bravely and quietly. Only he whispered to him,
“For God’s sake make them be quick.” That is the worst torment of the soldier from beginning
to end – the waiting. He was shot by his own men, by men of D Company. (215)
Three months later, the narrator visits Mrs. Penrose and tries to explain things to her.
Now she will be able to live with ‘it’ more easily and she only wishes he could tell everybody. And, according to the narrator, that is all he has tried to do. His book is not meant as
an attack on any person, on the death penalty or on anything else, “though if it makes
people think about these things, so much the better” (215–216). He is not sure if he believes in the death penalty, but he is quite certain “I did not believe in Harry being shot”
(216). His final sentence:
That is the gist of it; that my friend Harry was shot for cowardice and he was one of the
bravest men I ever knew. (216)
The topic of the novel
I agree with Margarete Günther that the importance of the text lies not primarily in the
tragic ending – moving though it is – of Harry Penrose, as it has been brought about by the
intervention of two personal enemies and thus been transferred from the general sphere to
a very individual plane.59 The way in which ‘death’ and ‘dying’ are represented is a far
cry from the romantic and superficial heroism depicted in the majority of war books so
far. The psychological development of the main character under extreme conditions –
what Günther calls “a psychology of fear” – is the central theme of Herbert’s novel. He
sees an important connection between fear and bravery, and the achievement of the novel
is to have demonstrated the relativity of those two terms against an absolute military
standard and the popular notion for which “there are no fine shades – no account of
circumstance and temperament is allowed – and perhaps this is inevitable” (59). This
‘message’ of his, from an early chapter of the text (IV), is reiterated, in a somewhat
expanded form, in the final chapter, where it is part of a discussion among officers after
Harry’s court-martial, and with it Herbert introduces a new concept of heroism into war
literature. A hero is no longer the person who performs a deed nobody else or only a few
would have done in his position, and whose action can be singled out and romantically
transfigured. Even if the public does not accept it, for Herbert a soldier who has been
defeated physically may still be a hero. Penrose has the courage to fight his inward demons set free and reinforced by the terrible events of war. For Günther Penrose’s tragedy
is the physical destruction and ostracism of a man who has successfully fought his “secret
battle”.60
59
M. Günther: Der englische Kriegsroman und das englische Kriegsdrama 1919–1930 (Berlin: 1936),
p. 30.
60
Günther, p. 32. In Aldington’s Death of a Hero she sees the opposite intention at work. Where she sees
tragedy in Herbert’s text, there is tragic irony in Aldington’s novel.
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The main character
Herbert’s ‘hero’, with his keenness and readiness for sacrifice, is a typical representative
of the idealistic, public-school educated, student officer. What sets him apart is “his romantic, imaginative outlook towards the war” (7) (though we know that initial romanticism as regards war was widespread among young volunteers of the first hour), and the
fact that he had enlisted in the ranks instead of going for a commission straightaway.
Sensitive youths like him approved of Britain’s decision to enter the war and followed
Kitchener’s call for volunteers full of enthusiasm. But they were the ones who suffered
terribly under the brutality and often seemingly senselessness of a prolonged front-line
existence. Harry Penrose had many fellow sufferers, both in fiction and non-fiction.61
The reception of the novel
Herbert’s novel appeared in May 1919, less than seven months after the Armistice, and
according to M. S. Greicus “The Secret Battle showed the way for the hundreds of antiwar novels which were to follow in the next fifteen years.”62 Arnold Bennett was full of
praise and rated it among the best novels of the period. He particularly singled out its
“classic restraint and...beauty.”63 Winston Churchill, in his Introduction to the 1928 edition, summed up the character and particular quality of this war novel and prophesied for
it “a permanent place in war literature”:
It was one of those cries of pain wrung from the fighting troops by the prolonged and
measureless torment through which they passed; and like the poems of Siegfried Sassoon should
be read in each generation, so that men and women may rest under no illusion about what war
means. In 1919 it was first and foremost a chronicle valued for the sober truth of its descriptions and its narration of what might happen to a gallant soldier borne down by stresses incredible to those who have not endured them, and caught in the steel teeth of the military machine.
(v–vi)
Like Bennett before him, Churchill perceived classical elements in the novel (“The
author... develops his tale with the measured fatefulness of a Greek tragedy. But here the
pathos is all the greater because there is no element of Nemesis.” [vii]) and, like Bennett,
praised the “restraint with which the author bridles his mercilessly gathered argument”
(viii) which enabled him “to produce the climax in the very lowest key”.
A look at the printing history of the novel shows a slow start despite the positive reviews (second edition: 1924, third edition: 1928), which Churchill had explained in his
Introduction. His optimism as regards the staying-power of the novel seemed justified for
the late 1920s (a new edition each year between 1928 and 1930), the heyday of war
61
E.g. Sassoon’s George Sherston, R. C. Sherriff’s Stanhope (in his play Journey’s End) R. Graves, W.
Flex. See also letters collected by L. Housman, Ph. Witkop, also Donald Hankey: A Student in Arms (London:
1918), a collection of essays dating from 1916, by a very popular exponent of that spirit, killed on the Somme
in October 1916.
62
M. S. Greicus: Prose Writers Of World War I (Harlow: 1973), pp. 12–13.
63
In a critique in the Evening Standard (partly reproduced on front flap of dust cover of the novel, but
without a date).
133
literature both in Britain and Germany. In 1930, Cyril Falls, in his guide to war books,
placed the novel in “the highest class of British war fiction” and awarded it two stars
although he found the story hard to believe:
The tale as he tells it is impossible, or so nearly literally impossible that it might be ranked
as impossible from the artistic point of view. On the other hand, it is improbable that Mr Herbert
intended it for propaganda. As a tragic story, told with deliberate restraint and kept deliberately
to a low note, it is a little masterpiece.64
After 1930 the public interest appears to have dropped (sixth edition in 1932, seventh
edition: 1936). As an explanation for this flagging of popularity Greicus referred to “the
sheer number of well written books with a similar theme”.65
4. Arthur Donald Gristwood The Somme 1927
In his preface to this fictional prose text H. G. Wells stated with satisfaction that the English
student of the future would be able to read “the vigorous informed story Mr. Churchill is
unfolding”66 about the War, but that alone would “have something largely hollow about it”
and therefore needed to be complemented by “the feelings and experiences of the directed
undistinguished multitude, unwilling either to injure or to be injured, caught in the machine”
(10). In Gristwood Wells claimed to have found an author who came close to telling the
truth about death at the front and about the feelings of those who became its victims:
...What they felt as they died hour by hour in the mud, or were choked horribly with gas, or
relinquished their reluctant lives on the stretchers, no witness tells. But here is a book that
almost tells it, and that is why I am writing to claim a place for Mr. Gristwood’s unheroic tale
of The Somme side by side with the high enthusiastic survey of Mr. Winston Churchill... Mr.
Gristwood has had the relentless simplicity to recall things as they were; he was as nearly dead
as he could be without dying and he has smelt the stench of his own corruption. This is the story
of millions of men – of millions... (10–11)
Wells admitted that he himself had fallen under the illusion (prompted by reading the
accounts of generals and statesmen) that
war is a bright eventful going to and fro in London, slightly dangerous but not uncomfortable visits to the front, an occasional stimulating air-raid, vivid news of victory or defeat, which
only makes us brace ourselves up more bravely – to keep the ‘Tommies’ at it... (11)
Gristwood’s text had opened his eyes about the reality of war for the common man, a
book he suggested “every boy with a taste for soldiering should be asked to read and
ponder” (12). Gristwood’s tale67 has an epigraph by Heinrich von Treitschke, exponent of
64
Falls, p. 279. The novel was based on Herbert’s own experience of a fellow-officer’s court-martial. For
details see the Biographical sketch of Alan Patrick.
65
Greicus, p. 14.
66
Most probably a reference to Churchill’s The World Crisis (4 vols.), 1923–1929.
67
With a total length of about a hundred pages it is probably too short to be called a novel. All quotations
from the 1928 edition (second impression).
134
Prussian imperialism: “War is the medicine of God”. In the context of the events described, the use of this motto can only be considered an expression of ironic sarcasm.
What is the text about? A British regiment, the “Loamshires”, is back in trenches near
Combles on the Somme front. Their last attack has been a success, but the general feeling
is one of dejection and apathy. After being exposed to heavy artillery shelling for 24
hours they are relieved and promised a period of rest. This, however, is converted first to
fatigue duty in the forward area, then they are told to prepare for a daylight attack to take
the enemy by surprise. The attack fails, more than half the battalion becoming casualties.
The last two of the five chapters are mainly concerned with one of the wounded, Tom
Everitt, and his journey, in various stages, back to the General Hospital in Rouen. The
time span is about a fortnight, beginning near the end of September; one third of the text
is taken up by the slow and tortuous progress (60 hours) from the front to the hospital.
The omniscient narrator who likes to comment and foreshadow events (e.g. deaths of
characters) makes Everitt his mouthpiece of criticism. And he finds a lot to criticise: the
Somme campaign as a whole, with massive losses in lives against few gains in territory –
starting point for the Loamshires is a place less than a hundred yards from Leuze Wood
which the battalion captured a fortnight before, with the brigade losing more than half its
strength in the action. Criticism of the plan of daylight attack, of what war does to nature
and to men. Officers and their privileged existence are eyed critically:
The smashed entrance of a dug-out sheltered the platoon commander and his batman, revealed intermittently behind a flapping fragment of blanket. The officer, Higgins by name,
confined himself to alternate draughts of brandy and blasphemy: the men outside could avail
themselves only of the latter. Contrary to the accepted theory, they by no means ‘worshipped
him’, and their dealings with him were confined strictly to business transactions. As an officer,
Higgins was a privileged person evading, by virtue of his office, all the hard work and much of
the discomfort. The danger, they admitted, he shared: certainly a man with the confidence and
aplomb requisite to maintain a commission was a fool to do anything but accept one. (41)
A notable exception in this context is Lieutenant Mackie (“A Distinguished Conduct
Medal for once summarized the man who wore it”) whose theatrical gestures and cheer
lifts the spirit of the men:
Only yesterday he had persisted in promenading the line while the shelling was hottest,
scattering chaff on the tremblers in the trench below. Call this unnecessary, foolhardy, Gascon
bravado; yet it was good to see and mightily heartening. It was this same Mackie who later lost
his adjutancy by indulging, under the stimulus of rum, and clad only in pyjamas, in unseemly
gestures on the parapet in the moonlight. But that is another story. (74–75)
There is criticism of individual ‘brasshats’ and their pompous behaviour: the visit by
the Brigadier has the battalion drawn up (full dress) in mass behind the wood, “where a
prying aeroplane might have stirred the enemy’s artillery to serious activity”. At the end
‘Divisional Cards’ were distributed,
for all the world like prizes at a Sunday School Treat, and the shame of the recipients was
only equalled by the ribaldry of the audience. For those cards certified that the holder had
distinguished himself in action at such time and such a place, and even bore the signature of
Olympus. The theory was that by this means a spirit of emulation was aroused, and it was
135
reckoned that three of these cards meant a military medal in the rations. ‘The Tommies are such
children!’ (30–31)
Idealism, patriotism and similar noble feelings are non-existent (“a month in France
makes everybody a cynic”), all the men fervently pray for a ‘Blighty’, a wound that takes
them back to England. More traditional forms of prayer are extremely rare; there is one
man, however, Myers, a pal of Everitt’s, a devout Catholic who reads a chapter from
Thomas a Kempis’ Imitation of Christ every day (also before the attack) very much to the
annoyance of Everitt to whom such an action “savoured of cant”. Everitt makes two discoveries, the first is a human arm in a corner of a trench, the second that it is Sunday, “the
day of rest and gladness, the day of joy and light, the balm of care and sadness, most
beautiful, most bright”, and he cannot help feeling the irony of it:
At home they were squaring bayonets with the Sermon on the Mount, praying for the safety
of loved ones, with roast lamb and green peas as comforting background. For the owner of that
severed arm they were imploring a “happy issue out of all his afflictions”. (47)
When Everitt is hit and hears other wounded men around him moan, pray, and curse he
ponders for a moment on the use of prayer:
The parsons assured him that freethinker and agnostic joined with the most devout believer
in instinctive supplication... But his actual experience was different. With men dead and dying
on every side it was impossible to believe that God cared... The healing solace of prayer as an
instinctive exercise of the soul seemed more than a little at a discount. Everitt wanted help, and
he received none. (59)
The dispensers of religion at the front, the army chaplains, come under attack from
Everitt, as they are not available when they might be needed most:
Not a Chaplain had he seen since he was wounded. This was notoriously out of keeping with
tradition. Every one knew that no-man’s-land during an attack swarmed with Chaplains, administering consolation spiritual and spirituous, and picking up Military Crosses like so many
gooseberries. Everitt’s experience of these men of God must have been exceptional, for he
never saw one of them in front of reserve trenches and associated them chiefly with Concert
Parties and Church Parade. (73)
The Loamshire’s own chaplain is no exception:
A gramophone was the sole social stock in trade of the Loamshire’s Chaplain. He would
deposit this instrument among the men’s bivouac when they were out ‘resting’, and lounge near
it, smiling foolishly while it blared brazen versions of ‘Roses are blooming in Picardy’, and
‘Colonel Bogie’. For the rest, he made an occasional point of asking men “how they were
getting on”, and receiving only colourless and embarrassed answers, retired with obvious relief
to the more civilized shelter of the officers’ mess. There at least he would find whisky and
bridge and the conversation of educated men. (73–74)
Fairly early in the book (chapter II), the author makes it clear that his text has been
written against the facile optimism and perpetual cheerfulness so favoured by earlier war
136
correspondents (such as Dawson) and cartoonists (Bairnsfather the most famous of them,
by his own account, both at home and abroad): 68
It will be said that here is no trace of the ‘jovial Tommy’ of legend, gay, careless, facetious,
facing all his troubles with a grin and daunting the enemy by his light-heartedness. We all know
the typical Tommy of the War Correspondents – those ineffable exponents of cheap optimism
and bad jokes. “‘Alf a mo’, Kaiser”, is the type in a nutshell. A favourite gambit is the tale of
the wounded man who was smoking a Woodbine. Invariably he professes regret at “missing the
fun”, and seeks to convey the impression that bayonet fighting is much like a football match,
and even more gloriously exciting. It was such trash that drugged men’s minds to the reality of
war. Every one actively concerned in it hated it, and the actual business of fighting can never be
made anything but devilish...
The patriots at home urged that “it was necessary to keep up the nation’s spirit; nothing
would have been gained by unnecessary gloom”, but a people that must be doped to perseverance with lies is in an evil case, and the event of these Bairnsfather romances was a gigantic
scheme of falsehood. How bitterly it was resented the nation never knew. (24–25)
This criticism is repeated later in a passage in which the stretcher-bearers with the
wounded Everitt are caught in enemy fire:
...it seemed best to lie motionless. Everitt, for one, was too badly scared to risk the feeblest
remark, and yet he realized what a masterpiece Bairnsfather would have made of the occasion.
(82)
On their way back, they meet men of a relieving battalion ‘going up’ and, contrary to
tradition, Everitt does not give them an optimistic account of conditions ‘up there’:
Certainly he was tired and frayed to distraction, but every reader of optimistic special correspondents knows that the wounded are ‘wonderfully cheerful’. Yet it seemed absurd to paint
Les Boeufs as rather a joke, and perhaps an abortive attack conveys to its survivors on the
whole rather the greyer side of war. (83)
In his Preface, H. G. Wells stated that Gristwood’s story was that of millions of men.
This makes the main character a universal figure, a point expressed by his very name,
Tom Everitt, which consists of a common enough Christian name (cf. “Dick, Tom and
Harry”) and a surname with connotations of “Everyman”. A device applied in war books
several times; the first to use it probably the Frenchman Gabriel Tristan Franconi with Un
tel de L’Armee Francaise in 1918, later examples include Ernst Wiechert’s novel Jedermann (1931), Henry Williamson’s allegorical novel The Patriot’s Progress (1930) and
David Jones’ In Parenthesis (1937), with main characters named John Bullock and John
Ball, both names allusions to the proverbial British, John Bull. A similar case of anonymity is described in Mottram’s war novel, in which a crime (desecration of a wayside shrine)
has been committed by a British soldier who appears to be without any individual features
(Chapter “The Crime at Vanderlynden’s”):
68
Cf. Bruce Bairnsfather: From Mud To Mufti: With Old Bill On All Fronts (London: 1919).
137
They called him “Nobby.” It was his name, but they call every one “Nobby.” His number
was 6494. I saw it on his valise.69
A little later the reader is informed as to the nature of this number:
That’s a joke, of course. It’s the number that the cooks sing out when we hold the last
Sick Parade, before going up the line.70
In Vernon Bartlett’s novel No Man’s Land (1930) universality is achieved by not mentioning the main character’s name at all; after his death between the lines he becomes the
Unknown Soldier buried in Westminster Abbey.71
What kind of person is Tom Everitt? To begin with, he is an educated man serving in
the ranks (like his author), a phenomenon more common in German war literature than in
British (Manning’s Her Privates We is a later example). He is fond of books – his constant
companion in the trenches is a copy of Omar Khayyam’s verse – discusses the merits of
the poet Francis Thomson with his chum Myers (excluding religious aspects), even when
he is wounded he tries to make an epigram of his casualty. He is a pessimist and a physical
coward, wishes for a lucky wound, prefers being dead or a prisoner to the agony prior to
the attack, has a mind incurably argumentative:
It was ludicrously impossible that he should grapple with a German. Perhaps he would
encounter a like-minded foe: he pictured them philosophising together on the ethics of the
situation. (46)
Everitt is frequently cantankerous, given to grousing and swearing and obviously not
at all enthusiastic about being a soldier. On the whole, not a very impressive or likeable
person (he is not meant to be).
Gristwood is good at detailed description. The contrast of nature once peaceful now
ravished by man is convincingly portrayed again and again. The Introduction takes us
back to a bucolic landscape prior to the conflict:
Before the world grew mad, the Somme was a placid stream of Picardy, flowing gently
through a broad and winding valley northwards to the English Channel. It watered a country of
simple rural beauty: for long miles the stream fed lush water-meadows, where willows and
alders and rushes slumbered in the sun, and cornlands and fat orchards supported a race of
canny peasants. Cosy, sleepy-seeming hamlets lay scattered over the land, and among these
ancient towns and villages only Amiens styled herself a City, and admitted the noisy strife of
commerce. For the rest, far from the fever of life, the banks of the stream yielded lairs for
patient fishermen: punts followed the tortuous channels of the river, tall rows of sentinel poplars guarded the highways of the Republic; wide dry downlands swelled between the rivers; life
seemed a matter of sowing and reaping, of harvest home and neighbourly chat over wine and
syrop in the Cafe Delphine. And then came 1914 and the pestilence. (15)
R. H. Mottram: The Spanish Farm Trilogy (London: 1929), pp. 605–606.
Mottram, p. 648.
71
Cf. Holger Klein: “Projections of Everyman: The common Soldier in Franconi, Wiechert and Williamson”,
in: Klein: The First World War in Fiction, pp. 84–100. Jones’ choice of the name of John Ball, according to
René Hague (printer of J.’ books), is also a tribute to a priest executed for his share in the peasant rising of
1381, cf. R. Hague: “David Jones: A Reconnaissance”, Twentieth Century, July 1960, pp. 27–45.
69
70
138
As a contrast, a description of the ravished woods:
Within the region of desolation the rare woods were matchwood only, shattered stumps of
trees, bristles of timber splintered and torn to fantastic shreds and patches. Each wood was a
maze of ruined trenches, obstructed by the fallen riven trunks of trees, dotted with half-obliterated dug-outs, littered with torn fragments of barbed wire. This, indeed, was largely twisted
and broken by shell-fire, but in rusted malignancy it yet remained fiercely hindering. Immediately after their final capture (for commonly they changed hands half a dozen times in a week)
these woodlands of the Somme represented the apotheosis of Mars. There lay the miscellaneous debris of war – men living, dying and dead, friend and foe broken and shattered beyond
imagination, rifles, clothing, cartridges, fragments of men, photographs of Amy and Gretchen,
letters, rations, and the last parcel from home. Shells hurling more trees upon the general ruin,
the dazing concussion of their explosion, the sickly sweet smell of “gas”, the acrid fumes of
“H.E.”, hot sunshine mingling with spouts of flying earth and smoke, the grim portent of bodies buried a week ago and now suffering untimely resurrection, the chatter of machine-guns,
and the shouts and groans of men – such were the woods of the Somme, where once primroses
bloomed and wild rabbits scampered through the bushes. (22–23)
Everitt’s slow progress from the battlefield to the Base in Rouen is described in great
detail: the various stages – on foot (supported by Myers, also a casualty, blinded) – by
stretcher – by horse ambulance – by light train – finally by ambulance train.
According to Günther, in Britain the text was considered foremost an “anti-war tract”
whose events and interpretations are not universal, although H. G. Wells in his Preface
presented it as the story of millions. The text which follows, The Coward, may be interpreted as a psychological excursus on the topic of fear added by Gristwood to reinforce
his point of view.72
The Coward
Published together in one volume with The Somme is Gristwood’s second tale, with 70
pages somewhat shorter than the first. There is also an epigraph, part of Henry’s speech to
his men before Agincourt (Shakespeare: King Henry V, IV, iii):
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
And as in the first story the relationship between text and motto is one of irony, even
cynicism. This is the story of a British infantry soldier who commits the crime of selfmutilation73 in order to escape from war against the advancing Germans in their big Spring
offensive in March 1918. Although he scorches the skin of his left hand (normally a
giveaway), he succeeds because he has an excuse and because all staff at first-aid posts
Cf. M. Günther, p. 96.
Self-mutilation in the British Army: According to “Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War”, 3.882 cases (other ranks) and 12 (officers) were brought to trial, p. 667. Quoted
in M. Günther, p. 39.
72
73
139
and Casualty-Clearing Stations are too busy packing up before the Germans arrive. His way
to the Base in Rouen has certain parallels to that of Tom Everitt. To his great disappointment
he is kept for a long time at a convalescing hospital at Trouville, but eventually sent back to
England. Rejoicing at having escaped the war gradually gives way first to anxiety of being
found out, then to shame of having lost his self-respect in exchange for safety:
I remembered that the others were still there in the line, doing their duty that I might live in
safety! Thus despising myself, I almost grew to envy what I now called their happiness. (186)
And the reward for this cowardly behaviour?
Behold me now with a War Gratuity and a Pension, Gold Stripes and Service Chevrons, the
reputation of a man who has done his bit and the unconsciously ironical gratitude of strangers!
(187)
He often asks himself if it has been worth it, tries to argue with himself that selfpreservation is no crime, that thousands of others have survived the war:
But though I protest until my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, the coward is a coward
still, and nothing can exonerate him... I hoped only to give you a notion of what war may mean
to a weakling. At least I have hidden nothing. What you think of me I shall never know. (188)
These words point to the frame of the story which is provided by Chapters I and X:
Two strangers on a train from London to Exeter talk about the War, which has been over
for some time, and one of them tells this story in the manner of a confession. We learn that
the man, originally a pacifist, had been bullied into soldiering, had joined up only to avoid
ridicule and the degradation of white feathers. The final comment of the listener as the
train reaches Exeter and the stranger disappears abruptly:
I have never seen him since, and indeed I feel sure that it was only to a stranger that he could
have made confession. To all of us, in its season there comes the desire to tear aside the veils of
reticence: it so happened that the time and the occasion were favourable to me. The unknown’s
conduct I dare not judge. His story must speak for itself. (189)
In critical reviews the two stories by Gristwood were usually lumped together, with
one critic implying that the author condoned the behaviour of the coward, as he was not
aware how much self-condemnation was put into the mouth of the man who made his
confession. This critic seemed also unaware that the Preface by H. G. Wells referred to
the first tale only (which, incidentally, in his opinion, was done “with considerable skill”),
so he arrived at strange conclusions:
The strangest part of the book is an introduction by Mr. H. G. Wells recommending it to
boys with a taste for soldiering. It seems more likely to make militarists of them than pacifists,
as Mr. Wells desires; for the average boy is likely to declare that if the loathsome hero of The
Coward is the typical pacifist he himself will be the exact opposite.74
74
Cyril Falls: War Books, p. 276. He expressed similar criticism in his review of Gristwood’s tales in The
Times Literary Supplement; cf. TLS, January 5, 1928, p. 7.
140
That he was not the only one to have a problem with the spirit of the two stories can be
implied from the following review which at least recognized the seriousness of purpose
behind the text:
Gristwood’s The Somme including also The Coward (1927) tells two miserable tales in
which courage, unselfishness and devotion to comrades are all dismissed as foolish and futile.
Though there is something histrionic about the treatment, both stories are undeniably readable
and disturbing. Nor should we doubt the authenticity of the writer’s feelings; Gristwood himself, who served in the ranks during his period in the army was very badly wounded and died
young as a result of his injuries...75
Other reviews vary between profuse praise (“one of the best of the minor literary deposits left by the Great War...”)76 and utter condemnation:
...the book does not ring true. It is a journalistic reconstruction of events rather than an
actual account of them; and it is written in the style which depends for its effect upon the
massing of adjectives... It is full also of a number of rather cheap and disagreeable sneers
directed at officers and padres... In short it is a rather paltry book.77
5. Frederic Manning Her Privates We 1930
In 1929 a limited subscribers’ edition was published anonymously under the title The
Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre, 1916 in two volumes. Publisher was Peter
Davies (a grandson of George Du Maurier and adopted son of James Barrie), there were
only 520 subscribers. The book’s epigraph was a passage from Hamlet (II, 2, 230–35),
part of a conversation between Hamlet and the two courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:
On fortune’s cap we are not the very button.
...Then you live about her waist, or in the
middle of her favours?...’Faith, her privates we.
In January 1930, an expurgated version of the text was published with a new title taken
from the Hamlet-passage quoted above: Her Privates We by “Private 19022”, with a new
title-page motto taken from Shakespeare’s King Henry IV (V, 3, 36–38), part of a soliloquy by Falstaff:
...I have led my ragamuffins where they are peppered;
there’s not three of my hundred and fifty left alive, and
they are for the town’s end, to beg during life.
This edition was dedicated “To Peter Davies who made me write it”.78 L. T. Hergenhan,
in an essay on the book’s author, sheds some light on the process of creation:
75
Hugh Cecil: “British Fiction and the First World War: The Post-War Novel of Experience”, in: Roucoux:
English Literature, p. 174.
76
The Manchester Guardian, December 15, 1927, p. 7, c. 3.
77
The New Statesman, vol. xxx, No. 795, November 12, 1927, p. 146.
78
I have used the 1930 edition. Unless otherwise stated, quotations and pagination refer to this edition.
141
According to a Daily Mirror report (26/2/30) Davies urged Manning for nine years to write
his war book, and eventually lured him to London “and shut him up in his flat, not allowing
him out and keeping his friends from him”.79
Expurgated in this context meant that some of the swearing had been deleted or altered. A year earlier another well-known war novel, Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero,
had suffered the same fate, much to the author’s amazement, as he informs us in a prefatory note:
This novel in print differs in some particulars from the same book in manuscript. To my
astonishment, my publishers informed me that certain words, phrases, sentences, and even
passages, are at present taboo in England. I have recorded nothing which I have not observed in
human life, said nothing I do not believe to be true. I had not the slightest intention of appealing to anyone’s salacious instincts... At my request the publishers are removing what they
believe would be considered objectionable, and are placing asterisks to show where omissions
have been made... In my opinion it is better for the book to appear mutilated than for me to say
what I don’t believe. En attendant mieux, R. A. (p.vii)
Perhaps the most impressive example of expurgation in Aldington’s novel is in a passage
where a bayonet-instructor is described, “a singularly rough diamond from White-chapel’:
This gentleman, offended at the awkward posture of a rather plump recruit doing the “double
knee bend,” had apostrophised the unfortunate man: “ ‘Ere, you, Frost. *** * *** *** **** *
****** *******, *** *** **** * ****** ***** ***** *** ***** *******?”80
David Jones, on the nonsense of bowdlerized editions, speaks for all writers of war
books restricted by existing conventions:
I have been hampered by the convention of not using impious and impolite words, because
the whole shape of our discourse was conditioned by the use of such words. The very repetition
of them made them seem liturgical, certainly deprived them of malice, and occasionally, when
skilfully disposed, and used according to established but flexible tradition, gave a kind of
significance, and even at moments a dignity, to our speech. Sometimes their juxtaposition in a
sentence, and when expressed under poignant circumstances, reached real poetry. Because of
publication, it has been necessary to consider conventional susceptibilities. Some such expressions have nevertheless of necessity become part of the form this writing has taken. Quite
obviously they do not constitute blasphemy in any theological sense, and that is all I would
consider. Private X’s tirade of oaths means no more than “I do not like this Vale of Tears”;
where Flossie’s “O, bother!” would waste a countryside had she an efficacious formula. I say
more: the “Bugger!Bugger!” of a man detailed, has often about it the “Fiat! Fiat!” of the Saints.81
The 1943 edition officially revealed for the first time the author’ identity, although the
pseudonym of “Private 19022” had been quickly penetrated, according to Hergenhan first
by T. E. Lawrence on account of stylistic similarities to Manning’s Scenes and Portraits
L. T. Hergenhan: “Frederic Manning: A Neglected Australian Writer”, Quadrant, VI, No. 4 (1962), p. 7.
Aldington: Death of a Hero (London: 1930), p. 274. An unexpurgated edition was not published until
1965.
81
David Jones: In Parenthesis (London: 1937), Preface, p. xii.
79
80
142
(1909) which Lawrence was well acquainted with.82 The discovery was not too difficult
to make since this was Manning’s regimental number, and Bourne was the name of the
Lincolnshire town in which the author lived after the war. 83 George Parfitt’s interpretation
of the name of Manning’s main character (together with that of the hero of Aldington’s
novel, Winterbourne) appears to me a trifle too far-fetched to be really convincing:
Both Manning’s Bourne and Aldington’s Winterbourne may remind readers of Hamlet’s
definition of death as “The undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns”
(III, 1, 79–80). The names seem appropriate, since both soldiers die and both are “travellers” to
and through war to death. Aldington’s “Winter-” strengthens the negative connotations of the
name.84
Unlike Aldington’s novel or Ford Madox Ford’s “Tietjens” tetralogy which work with
contrasts between home and front and attempt to illustrate the decline in English civilization as a whole, “Her Privates We concentrates firmly on a small, clearly defined area of
frontline life, and is saturated in that life” (Bergonzi): the fate of an English infantry
platoon at the Somme between summer and autumn 1916 ending with the (unnecessary)
death of the main character Bourne during a raid shortly before he is detailed for an
officer’s training course in England. His untimely death is a fate shared with Aldington’s
Winterbourne and Remarque’s Bäumer.85
HPW has been praised for its blend of the particular and the universal, for which above
all the Shakespeare quotations are responsible which serve as mottoes for the individual
chapters, twenty-eight in all. They help to emphasize the continuity of experience between the British troops on the Somme and Henry V’s battered army at Agincourt. 86 The
use of Shakespeare in war books is not new: Gristwood’s tale The Coward had as its
motto lines from Henry’s speech before the Battle of Agincourt (King Henry V), H. M.
Tomlinson used a quote from Macbeth as the title of his All Our Yesterdays, and in David
Jones’ In Parenthesis, Shakespeare figures prominently together with quotes from Welsh
epics, from Malory and other sources. What is unique here is the use of quotations taken
from eight different Shakespeare plays, ranging from a comedy like As You Like It via
histories (mainly King Henry IV and King Henry V ) to tragedies (Hamlet, Othello, Julius
Cesar, Antony & Cleopatra, King Lear).87 These quotations are in various relations to the
chapters for which they serve as mottoes.88 Some are accusations:
title motto of 1930 edition / both directed against
XIII the brass hats
VII punishes the colour-sergeant and with him all back-of-the line lead-swingers
82
Hergenhan: “Some Unpublished Letters from T. E. Lawrence to Frederic Manning”, Southerly, xxiii
(1963) p. 243. See also the obituary notice in The Times (26/2/35).
83
Cf. C. N. Smith: “The Very Plain Song of It: Frederic Manning, Her Privates We”, in: H. Klein (ed.):
The First World War in Fiction, p. 179.
84
George Parfitt: Fiction of the First World War: A Study (London: 1988), p. 140.
85
For the numerous parallels between Manning’s and Remarque’s war novels see Holger Klein: “Dazwischen
Niemandsland: Im Westen Nichts Neues und Her Privates We”, in: O. Kuhn (ed.): Großbritannien und
Deutschland...Festschrift für J. W. P. Bourke (München: 1974), pp. 487–512.
86
For an enlightened comment on Shakespeare’s profound understanding of army life see C. E. Montague:
Disenchantment, Chapter III “At Agincourt and Ypres”, 1922.
87
Cf. Holger Klein: “The Structure of Frederic Manning’s War Novel Her Privates We”, in: Australian
Literary Studies, vol. 6, No. 4, October 1974, pp. 404–417.
88
See Klein’s essay (footnote 88) for key to the source of each chapter-heading.
143
Some playful:
IX evokes the language difficulties of King Henry and Katherine of France
Reference to ironic cruelty of fate:
title itself / relate to the ironic cruelty
XVIII of Bourne’s fate:
being so near to safety he is asked to choose death.
A close look reveals that Bourne’s death has been carefully, compellingly prepared so
that no other ending appears possible. And a glance at the cover of the original edition
shows us the ever-presence of Death as he, in a modern danse macabre, summons a grimfaced infantryman in steel helmet, cape and battle order. There is no doubt that the man is
doomed (just like Bourne and his companions). 89
The time scheme is remarkably compact and supports the unity of movement. The
novel vividly represents the daily routine of the whole military unit but concentrates on
Bourne as its central character, and his individual fate is prophesied and delineated by an
astonishing range of structural elements, some of them overlaying and accentuating the
structure. During the idyllic days at Bruay, Bourne has the encounter with the French girl
– “a personal, intensified manifestation and summit of the movement away from the war”
(Klein). At the same time he decides at last to apply for a commission, a decision that will
eventually lead to death; this is linked to the general movement back towards the war. The
question of Bourne’s commission is first raised in chapter III (47–48) and runs through
the novel as a kind of leitmotif: Although he prefers the anonymous life in the ranks (”I
don’t want a commission” [48]) where he is generally accepted, he is seen there by his
superiors as awkwardly placed as an educated man and a gentleman and repeatedly pressed
to change status. In chapter VIII he is officially advised by Captain Malet, his company
commander, that he cannot continue to ‘shirk his responsibilities’ and is reminded that he
is out of place where he is. In the same conversation we learn that Bourne was asked to
take a commission when he first enlisted but that he turned it down because of having no
experience of men (“not even the kind of experience that a public school boy gets from
being one of a large community” (163).90 At the end of chapter X he has made up his mind
(“Well, I’m going to put in for one.” [224]), in XI rumour of it has reached young Martlow,
his closest chum, bringing about a crisis in their relationship. To his superiors’ surprise
Bourne does not want the application to go forward before the next ‘show’; thus his
commission is connected with the ensuing attack, a point repeated, more acutely, in a
conversation between Bourne and Martlow. In chapter XVI Shem is wounded right at the
start of the action, and a little later Martlow is killed (398). His death has been foreshadowed by an earlier remark made by one of the officers, Mr. Finch: “Seems a bloody shame
89
Cf. A. Rutherford: The Literature of War, p. 104. See Appendix II for a reproduction. For a modern
British poetic version of the Dance of Death see Roger McGough’s poem: ”A Square Dance”, in: The Mersey
Sound – Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten (Harmondsworth: 1983) [1967], pp. 76–77; for a
more archaic German example see the song by Elsa Laura von Wolzogen: “Flandrischer Totentanz” (first
published in 1917), in: Konrad Schilling (ed.): Der Turm – 453 Lieder für Jungen, (Bad Godesberg: 1960)
[1956], song no. 58.
90
For parallels with Manning’s own education and military career see, among others, L. T. Hergenhan’s
essay: “Novelist at War: Frederic Manning’s Her Privates We”, Quadrant (Australia) 66 (1970), pp. 19–29.
Cf. ‘Biographical Sketches’ in Appendix I.
144
to send a kid like that into a show.” (378) Bourne is left behind on his own. His application, endorsed by the Colonel, goes forward. Bourne is made a lance-corporal, and while
he is waiting to be sent off for officer training he is picked by Captain Marsden for the
raid as he is familiar with the terrain (440–441). When Sergeant-Major Tozer intervenes
in his favour (“Lance-corporal Bourne is down for a commission, sir”) Marsden insists
that the experience will be useful to Bourne. Klein suggests that the real reason for
Marsden’s ungenerous behaviour is his wish to avoid the impression of favouritism to a
man of his own class. An earlier encounter between the two had made apparent Marsden’s
uneasiness as an officer with a private who belonged to his sphere of society.
One aspect of the dynamism that moves the story towards its ending is the repetition
with variations of similar situations and events. There is Mr. Clinton with premonitions
about his death (I), in chapter VI Clinton is charged by the adjutant with shirking the front
line and quietly accepts the challenge. He is killed the same night and Bourne’s reaction
to his death is quite extraordinary:
Bourne did not move, he lay absolutely still in his blankets, with an emotion so tense that he
thought something would snap in him. (132)
His own death is presaged by a number of incidents. In the first attack he has a narrow
escape (17) which he is reminded of when going through his kit after the ‘show’:
Before putting on his tunic, after taking it outside to brush rather perfunctorily, he looked at
the pockets which the machine-gun bullet had torn. The pull of his belt had caused them to
project a little, and the bullet had entered one pocket and passed out through the other, after
denting the metal case of his shaving stick, which he had forgotten to put into his pack, but had
pocketed at the last moment. His haversack had been hit too, probably by a spent fragment of a
shell; but the most impressive damage was the dent, with a ragged fissure in it, in his tin-hat.
His pulse quickened slightly as he considered it, for it had been a pretty near thing for him.
(26–27)
The damaged tin-hat is referred to twice later when it is condemned at kit-inspection
(67, 167). During a carrying-party up the line in preparation for an attack, “Death taps
Bourne on the shoulder, as it were, to make him aware of his presence” (Klein):91
Almost as soon as he stood upright, a bullet sang by his head; it was as though something
spat at him out of the darkness. (294–295)
He is surprised at his own reaction:
The zip of the bullet by his head had disconcerted him a little, and yet probably it was only
a stray, and perhaps not so close as he imagined. (296)
There are small external pointers: When mail is distributed he is handed (after a few
small ones) a big parcel by the post-corporal:
91
This phrase brings back to mind the allegorical cover illustration of the 1930 edition referred to earlier
in this chapter (cf. footnote 12).
145
“Bourne, ‘ere, take your bloody wreath,” he cried disgustedly, and the sardonic witticism
brought down the house. (365)
But ‘presentiment grows’ also in Bourne’s mind: “I don’t think that I’m likely to die of
heart”, he says in conversation with Shem (373), and a little later, in the YMCA hut an
inscription over the door catches his eye:
“AND UNDERNEATH ARE THE EVERLASTING ARMS” It struck him with an extraordinary vividness... and once again he knew the feeling of certitude in a peace so profound, that
all the turmoil of the earth was lost in it. (382)
Before the attack “One had a vague feeling that one was going away, without any
notion of returning” (385), but the climax is a nightmare after the ‘show’ in which he
relives the horrors of battle. Although Bourne has rejected any notion of defeat earlier
(“...there was no sense of defeat” [255]), when he has been picked for the raid “fear and
defeat surge up for just one moment” (Klein):
Bourne felt something in him dilate enormously, and then contract to nothing again. (440)
He has accepted the challenge, the inevitable, and has even convinced himself that he
wants to go (442, 445). When he is killed Fortune (in accordance with the motto of that
chapter) has once more proved to be a strumpet. Young Martlow’s death and Bourne’s
grief are foreshadowed by Pritchard’s loss of his bed chum, young Swale. Ironically, it is
Martlow who tries to comfort him (27). After Martlow’s death which leaves Bourne stunned
and apathetic, a change of roles takes place: Weeper Smart now assumes the same solicitude for Bourne which Bourne had felt for the ‘kid’. Weeper Smart’s powerful build and
long arms have been referred to in an earlier chapter together with the hint that “he might
be a useful man in a fight” (368). Likewise the reader has been informed (in connection
with the question of a commission) of Bourne’s physical slightness (162). Thus we are
prepared for the final scene:
He stooped and lifted the other in his huge, ungainly arms, carrying him as tenderly as
though he was a child... (451)
Manning’s sense of economy is seen at work in a number of episodes: The first battle
is given through Bourne’s recollection, that is, indirectly, while the direct description is
reserved for chapters XVI and XVII, with a direct link between the two when Bourne, in
confronting some stragglers, repeats a phrase he remembers the sergeant-major using in
the first ‘show’ (17):
Bourne had a vision of Sergeant-Major Glasspool. “You take your bloody orders from Fritz,”
he shouted... (395)
Bourne’s nightmare (chapter XVII) is not the first, but the first to be described, the
other one having only been mentioned (10), his encounter with the French girl (chapters
IX, X) is preceded by a similar one in chapter IV.
Antithesis, frequently combined with irony, is also a favourite device: Major Blessington
and the adjutant parading their freshly-won medals are contrasted with less fortunate officers:
146
The battalion fell in on the road, at about twenty minutes past nine; and five minutes later
the commanding officer, and the adjutant, rode down the line of men; perhaps less with the
object of making a cursory inspection, than for the purpose of advertising the fact, that they had
both been awarded the Military Cross, for their services on the Somme. “Wonder they” ave the
front to put “em up,” said Martlow, unimpressed. Major Shadwell and Captain Malet had no
distinctions. (177)
This episode also foreshadows the “prancing of the inept brass-hats in XIII” (Klein),
the ‘Olympians’ who literally look down on the rest of mankind:
Presently arrived magnificent people on horseback, glancing superciliously at the less fortunate members of their species whom necessity compelled to walk. (299)
They are in ironic contrast to the new efficient commanding officer of Bourne’s battalion, Colonel Bardon, who is shown on foot with his soldiers. The analogy to chapter IX is
reinforced and the rift between the two kinds of officers is stressed. The contrast is further
strengthened when in the same chapter (XIII), Mr. Sothern pays Martlow ten francs for
the hare he has caught (298–299), Major Blessington on the other hand (at an earlier
occasion) simply confiscates the field-glasses Martlow has found:
“And now the bastard’s wearin’ the bes’ pair slung round is own bloody neck. Wouldn’t
you’ve thought the sow would a give me vingt frong for em anyway?” (68)
Manning as a writer was experienced enough to be aware of the danger of overdoing
such sequences and correspondences and he counter-balanced them cleverly.
Although in war literature the use of symbols arising from the common cultural tradition of the countries fighting each other is widespread, Manning used symbolism sparingly. One possible example: The only café in the novel (of the many the soldiers get to
know) to be called by name is the Café de la Jeunesse in Colincamps. When Bourne’s
platoon enters the village, the café has been hit by a shell (308); on their return, a little
later, it has been damaged severely by shelling which will destroy the village. (”Apparently the whole of Colincamps was going west.” [316]). There is symbolism here, especially in connection with young Martlow, the “kid”, whose reaction to shell-fire is pointed
out in this episode:
“Let’s get out o’ this place,” said Martlow, in a shaken whisper, and, as he spoke, another
came over. They held their breath as it exploded, further away than the first. Bourne was looking at Martlow, and saw that his underlip had fallen and was trembling a little...
“Come on, kid,” said Bourne to Martlow. “You never hear the one that gets you.” (311–312)
However, this symbolism is not expanded, systematized, it is left where it is and might
just conceivably be coincidental. In his poetry Manning is more openly symbolic; there
seems to be a close connection between young Martlow and the dying boy figure in “The
Face”:
THE FACE
Out of the smoke of men’s wrath,
The red mist of anger,
Suddenly,
Then red smear, falling...
I thrust aside the cloud, as it were tangible,
Blinded with a mist of blood.
147
As a wraith of sleep,
A boy’s face, white and tense,
Convulsed with terror and hate,
The lips trembling...
The face cometh again
As a wraith of sleep:
A boy’s face delicate and blonde,
The very mask of God,
Broken.92
An important device both structurally and stylistically (but so far ignored by critics) is
the introduction of the deserter Miller. He serves as a strong contrast to the characters of
the ordinary men, and his inglorious activities crop up again and again, thus providing yet
another link between chapters for the greater part of the novel. He is first mentioned in the
conversation between the Padre and Bourne (chapter VII). There we learn that Lancecorporal Miller “deserted just before the July show” and has now been arrested down at
Rouen (to have got that far is considered a feat in itself). And he was not really caught; a
woman sheltered him until his money ran out and then handed him over to the police. The
Padre is clearly unhappy about this “beastly business”:
I can’t help wishing either that he had got clean away, or that something had happened to
him! (146)
For him as for Bourne the outcome is pretty clear: he will be shot by a firing-squad.
Bourne, on his part, has no sympathy whatsoever for the man with that “degenerate face”:
He had always thought that Miller should have spelt his name Müller, because he had a high
square head like a Hun. (146)
As for the men, they are bitter and summary in their judgment of him:
The fact that he had deserted his commanding-officer...was as nothing compared to the fact
that he had deserted them. They were to go through it while he saved his skin... Shoot the
beggar. (147)
Bourne muses on Miller’s cowardice and the suppressed fear which even brave men
feel before a battle:
The others go into action and if they break down under the test, at least they have tried and
one may feel sympathy for them. (148)
In chapter X we hear of Miller’s forthcoming court-martial (210), a little later that he is
not to be shot as the Padre and his commanding-officer have “worked tooth an” nail to get
him off”. Bourne, while watching the prisoner full of mistrust, reflects on what makes him
hate that man and it is not the face alone, but something all men recognize in themselves:
He had a weak, mean and cunning face; but there was something so abject in his humiliation, that one felt for him the kind of pity which can scarcely tolerate its own object. It might be
I, one felt involuntarily, and the thought made one almost merciless towards the man who
carried with him the contagion of fear. (221–222)
92
Frederic Manning: Eidola (London: 1917), p. 15. Another good example is the Dantean Inferno of
‘Grotesque’ in the same collection, p. 35.
148
The men at that point do not grudge him a reprieve, but they are reserved about him.
Secretly, they might even give him some credit: “A man who had deserted on the Somme,
and had got as far as Rouen, and had eluded the military police for six months, could not
be entirely a fool” (223). Three chapters later, Miller is paraded before the company and
his sentence is read out (to be shot, afterwards commuted to one of penal servitude for
twenty years), the execution of the sentence deferred until the end of the war, which, in
Bourne’s eyes makes the whole thing a farce as then a general amnesty is to be expected,
and he feels disgusted:
Bourne felt a strange emotion rising in him which was not pity, but a revulsion from the
degradation of a man, who was now only an abject outcast. (306)
The general comparison between Miller and the other men made earlier by Bourne is
rendered more specific and thus more poignant in chapter XIV when Bourne contrasts the
deserter with Weeper Smart:
...for no one could have a greater horror and dread of war than Weeper had. It was a continuous misery for him, and yet he endured it. Living with him, one felt instinctively that in any
emergency he would not let one down, that he had in him, curiously enough, an heroic strain.
(355)
This thought, coming just before the impending attack, not only characterizes the two
men, but also serves as an element of foreshadowing. Right before the attack, Miller
escapes again (chapter XV), and this time all men are unanimous in their anger (’they
should ’ave shot the mucker when they ’ad ’im!’). Sergeant-major Tozer, normally not
given to rash action, would kill him in the street if he saw him, “to save ’em any bloody
fuss with a court-martial” (384). In the final chapter, XVIII, we learn that Miller has been
arrested near Calais and been brought back under escort. Now a prisoner in a police tent,
right at the end of a quarry, guarded by three policemen inside and a sentry outside, one
night he manages to escape by climbing down the quarry in the dark, creeping into the
camp and stealing one of the orderlies’ bicycles. “In the morning Miller, the deserter, had
assumed heroic proportions”. Even Tozer grudgingly gives him credit (“That bastard deserves to get off”) for this piece of bravura. And in the afternoon the company moves up
to the front-line trenches (439).
The Main Character: Bourne
Manning uses Bourne, a gentleman ranker, as the centre of consciousness in his novel. He
is part of the company’s activities and at the same time a somewhat remote observer with
a tendency to reflect on past events. An educated man who, in the orderly-room, uses
Horace as a text for typing practice, speaks French tolerably well and employs his linguistic skill not only to charm women or act as postillon d’amour, but also to provide material
comforts for others. He has a connoiseur’s palate (Barsac, Veuve Cliquot, Perrier Jouet
are among his favourite beverages), is capable of drinking a lot of people under the table,
and yet a quiet, unassuming person with a taste for small comforts (hot water for shaving,
a decent meal), the occasional tendency to take it easy, “swing the lead”, but not at his
comrades’ expense. He is a perfect “scrounger” with a generous nature, likes to pay his
149
own way, shares his food-parcels (from a well-known West-End store) with a small circle
of intimates: At one point, an incredulous sergeant in charge of the mail has to hand out 14
letters and parcels (including some books) (365). He is popular with the men and feels
quite comfortable among them, although his taste for wines reservé pour les officiers and
his new boots acquired unofficially (“a type and quality reserved for officers”) point towards a commission. The officers find his position somewhat undignified, some feel uncomfortable with him (as he belongs to their class), but all of them, including the NCO’s
acknowledge his influence, as SM Tozer points out (”you’ve got a pull over us in some
ways” [171]). His talent of getting on well with diverse people is summed up by his pal
Shem:
You see, Bourne, you make friends with everybody, whether he’s a cook, or a shoemaker, or
a sergeant-major, or only Martlow and myself... (311)
The role of detached observer is reinforced by hints that Bourne is not English, is not
even British. During his stint in the orderly-room as a signaller he has a fit of depression
which is not usual for him. He feels an alien among his fellow-soldiers whose “only conscious life was still in England”:
He was not of their county, he was not even of their country, or their religion, and he was
only partially of their race. When they spoke of their remote villages and hamlets, or sleepy
market-towns in which nothing happened except the church clock chiming the hour, he felt like
an alien among them; and in the vague kind of home-sickness which troubled him he did not
seek company, but solitude. (96–97)
Bourne’s foreign-ness (a number of references place him as an Australian) provides
the author with a means of casting , through him, a critical glance at the British and their
rigid, class-conscious military hierarchy during the war. Australian troops were credited
with being fierce fighters, but among the British notorious for their rather lax discipline.
In the very first chapter we hear that “Bourne had long ago come to the conclusion that
there was too much bloody discipline in the British Army” (25). On the topic of swearing
Martlow thinks that Bourne may have learnt a lot of bad language from his pals:
Oh, you all swear like so many Eton boys, replied Bourne indifferently. Have you ever heard
an Aussie swear? (299)
One day they pass an Australian driving a horse-drawn lorry, with a heavy load “whereon
he sprawled, smoking a cigarette with an indolence which Bourne envied”. When shortly
afterwards Bourne has an unpleasant clash with British military bureaucracy – at the local
Expeditionary Force Canteen an arrogant attendant superciliously informs him that they
only serve officers – he is “in a white heat” at this treatment, especially since these canteens have been provided by money collected from the British public. This incident, together with a mention of the Australian driver, elicits some strong comments from Bourne:
You want a few thousand Australians in the British Army... They would put wind up some of
these bloody details who think they own the earth. (350)
and he continues, on a more general line:
150
The whole bloody issue...officers and other ranks. You can’t put eight hundred fighting men
into the line, without having another eight hundred useless parasites behind them pinching the
stores. (351)
Bourne has not been seen so angry before by anyone who knows him. In the words of
young Evans:
They ’oofed him out o’ the canteen, an’ ’e’s gone completely off the ’andle about it. What I
like about ol’ Bourne is, that when ’e does get up the pole, ’e goes abso-bloody-lutely-fanti.
(349–350)
The Enemy
The representation of the enemy differs greatly from that in early war fiction such as Ian
Hay’s, to name but one example. There are no more British heroics at the expense of
dumb, but brutal Germans bent on acts of “frightfulness”. The Germans are referred to as
Fritz, Jerry, or the Hun (p. 308 contains all three epithets), are credited with having an
advanced technology, thus always being well-informed:
They knew that the Hun was prepared, and that they would meet the same Prussians or
Bavarians whose fighting qualities they had tested before on the Somme in July and August...
(342)
That this credit can be overdone is demonstrated by the notice pinned up in the orderly
room which reads:
Mind what you say, the Hun has listening apparatus, and can hear you. (11)
Prussian machine-gunners are remembered as “singularly brave men” (14) and the
ordinary German soldiers are shown as not so keen on being taken prisoner as British
propaganda at home would have them: the raid is only partly successful as the Germans
resist capture and must be killed (342). German artillery is treated with due respect:
If Jerry hadn’t taken all his stuff down to the Somme, we’d be shelled to shit in half-anhour. (99)
This last statement is connected with severe criticism by Bourne of the British in the
face of such an adversary:
They post men with fieldglasses and whistles to give warning of enemy aircraft; the troops
are ordered to show themselves as little as possible in the streets, and to keep close to the
houses, and the police are told to make themselves a nuisance to any thoughtless kid who
forgets – and then, having taken all these precautions, fifty men are paraded in the middle of the
street opposite the orderly-room, as a target, I suppose, and are kept standing there for twenty
minutes or half-an-hour. (99)
When the company is instructed about the next attack (“it is estimated we shall have
one big gun for every hundred square yards of ground we are attacking” [266]) the men
seem impressed, but the officer’s final sentence does not go down well at all:
151
It is not expected that the enemy will offer any very serious resistance at this point... (267)
They know better, they have heard it before, on the Somme. In the fury of battle, men
are killed although they have already surrendered. When Martlow, the kid, is shot, Bourne,
for once mad with rage and sadness, attacks Germans who have their hands up:
Kill the bastards! Kill the bloodying swine! Kill them. (398)
During a discourse among the men (chapter XII) on the cause of the War, the Frontversus-Home syndrome, Weeper Smart gives his verdict of the Germans, which may be
regarded as representative of most ordinary soldiers by 1916. In his opinion the enemy is
very much in the same position as they themselves. When, in the final chapter, Weeper
has brought back dead Bourne’s body, the corpse is propped up against the wall of the
trench – in much the same way as the dead German Bourne saw on returning from the first
attack; the story has come full circle. The tableau underlines Weeper’s words: in the face
of horrible martial events British and Germans have become almost identical:
...an occasional star-shell flooded their path with light. As one fell slowly, Bourne saw a
dead man in field gray propped up in a corner of a traverse; probably he had surrendered,
wounded, and reached the trench only to die there. He looked indifferently at this piece of
wreckage. The gray face was senseless and empty. (7)
...and the sergeant-major looked at the dead body propped against the side of the trench. He
would have to have it moved; it wasn’t a pleasant sight...Bourne was sitting: his head back, his
face plastered with mud, and blood drying thickly about his mouth and chin, while the glazed
eyes stared up at the moon... (453)
HPW and the Critics
When Manning’s war novel appeared in January 1930 it was an immediate success (very
much in contrast to the fate of the unexpurgated version published the previous year).
There were enthusiastic reviews93 and good sales: according to Eric Partridge, by Spring
1930 Mottram’s Spanish Farm Trilogy and Manning’s HPW led the field of English war
novels with sales of over 15 000 copies (the absolute top runner being Remarque’s All
Quiet).94 The critics prophesied the novel a permanent place in literature and they were
right as Holger Klein was able to point out in 1974. He listed five impressions in 1930,
reprints in 1935, 1937, a reset edition in 1943, a new edition in 1964, reprints in 1970, all
by the original publisher, Peter Davies, and in addition a Pan Books edition in 1967.95
(Hergenhan, incidentally, mentioned six editions in the first year.) It is somewhat surprising that a book so highly praised was not immediately, or fairly soon after publication,
translated into German like many of the other successful British novels.96 The first (and
93
11ff.
See Hergenhan: “Frederic Manning: A Neglected Australian Writer”, Qudrant, vol. 6, no. 4, 1962, p.
E. Partridge: “The War Continues”, The Window, vol. 1, no. 2, April 1930, p. 70.
Klein: “The Structure”, p. 405. A new paperback edition, with an introduction by William Boyd, was
published by Serpent’s Tail, London, in 1999.
96
E.g. Mottram’s Spanish Farm Trilogy 1927/tr. 1929, Aldington’s Death of a Hero 1929–1930.
94
95
152
apparently only translation so far) did not appear until 1966.97 One possible explanation
for the long delay could be the political climate in Germany during the final phase of the
Weimar Republic and afterwards, but during the same period British war books not quite
so popular were still rapidly translated.98
Among the first enthusiastic critics were Arnold Bennett, E. M. Forster and T. E.
Lawrence. Bennett referred to HPW as “a quiet and utterly convincing glorification of the
common soldier” (Evening Standard, 23/1/1930), Forster (Daily Telegraph 16/12/30)
saw the novel as much as “a love-story as a war-story”, a view shared by Lawrence (“a
love-poem of a sort”). He felt “ridiculously partial” to the book because he considered his
home to be in the ranks (where he was at the time as “A/C Shaw”) and that it expressed
“lots of the things I wanted to have said”. In a letter to Shaw-Ede (H. S. Ede?) he compared Manning’s book favourably with Aldington’s and Hemingway’s war novels:
...Her Privates We...is so wise and fine and humorous and truthful. I seem, in it, to see at last
the present generation of enlisted men. Its author loved Pater, when he was young, and wrote
very preciously. In this last book he has written hurriedly and nobly, yet with astounding sympathy and liveliness.99
T. E. Lawrence (who was killed in a strange motorcycle accident three months later)
had been on his way to call at Bourne and see Manning when he learned of his death. He
communicated his feelings to Peter Davies:
It seems queer news, for the books are so much more intense than ever he was, and his dying
doesn’t, cannot affect them... I suppose his being not really English, and so generally ill, barred
him from his fellows. Only not in Her Privates We which is hot-blooded and familiar. It is
puzzling. How I wish, for my own sake, that he hadn’t slipped away in this fashion; but how
like him. He was too shy to let anyone tell him how good he was... 100
Manning’s obituary in The Times (26/2/1935) contained, among details of his biography, part of a lengthy review that had appeared five years earlier on publication of his war
novel; fitting words to close the discussion of HPW with:
...probably the best and honestest description of life in the ranks during the Great War that
has yet appeared in English... It is a fine tribute to the British soldier and a notable record for
ages to come... Any similar book on a former war would have taken its place as a classic of its
kind.101
6. David Jones In Parenthesis 1937
In 1937 Faber (encouraged by T. S. Eliot) published what was probably the last major
British fictional contribution to the topic of the Somme battles by a contemporary and
combatant. Its author was David Jones, a modestly successful painter of Welsh origin,
97
F. Manning: Soldat Nr. 19022. Erlebnisse aus dem Jahre 1916 an der Somme- und Ancre-Front,
Transl. Jutta & Theodor Knust (Tübingen: 1966).
98
F. P. Crozier: A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land, 1930/tr. 1930, H. Z. Smith: Not So Quiet, 1930/tr. 1930.
99
Hergenhan: “F. M...”, p. 14. He gives no date or source of the letter.
100
D. Garnett (ed.): Selected Letters of T. E. Lawrence (London: 1941), pp. 372–373.
101
TLS, January 16 (1930), p. 40.
153
and it was his first book. For the young artist the war experience in France had been one
of the determining factors in his life as he wrote in a brief autobiography:
As far as I am able to judge my own case I should say that the particular Waste Land that was
the forward area of the Western Front had a permanent effect on me and has affected my work
in all sorts of ways – so much so that it is impossible now for me to imagine myself without
having that period in the ffosydd in Gallia Belgica.102
The two other “conditioning factors” according to the poet Jeremy Hooker were “his
reception into the Roman Catholic Church in 1921 and his visit to Palestine in 1934”.103
There were several results of the War: a number of sketches, which he later claimed to
have destroyed (he believed‚ these drawings lacked imagination and were of little value”);
fortunately some of them were saved by his nephew and published. 104 A second result
were two nervous breakdowns, one in the early 1930s, symptoms of which were mental
paralysis and acute insomnia which would be with him, on and off, for the rest of his life.
When the writer and critic Julian Bell claimed that “the remainder of the decade was
virtually artistically barren”105 he was referring to the visual artist, for within that decade
Jones’ unique war-book was published (the third result) which had been started in 1928106
and had taken so long to finish. The late 1920s were a good time for writing about the war,
what with the economic and psychological climate, but, according to Jones, such considerations did not enter his mind:
When I began to write In Parenthesis ...I had no idea it would ever be published: I simply
wrote. I tried to make in words something that I wanted to say. It was as simple as that. I said in
the preface to that book (p. x), “this is a shape in words”, and people thought that was a rather
affected thing to say, but I still stick to that. I think that is precisely what I was trying to do.107
Writing as an act of exorcising the ghosts of the past (Graves, Blunden and other war
authors come to mind) which was frequently painful; his mental crisis may well have been
part of that tortuously slow creative process. Jones once described himself as “a visual
artist first and a writer second”.108 The quotation shows that for him there existed no
boundary between these two realms of creative activity: Jones was a visual artist also
when he wrote. His original plan for his book contained drawings: “I had intended to
engrave some illustrations, but have been prevented” (Preface xiii). We are not informed
who or what stopped him. An important part of the visual impact of a book is its print, and
for Jones, the artist, who specialized in lettering, a great deal depended on the skill of the
printer (who would also be able to decipher strange names and words). The book was
hand-set by René Hague who, together with Jones’ mentor Eric Gill, ran a small printing
press. The postscript of the Preface pays tribute to this craftsman and lifelong friend “who
taught me an awful lot through his classical knowledge”.109
102
Harman Grisewood (ed.): Epoch And Artist: Selected Writings by David Jones (London: 1959), chapter “Autobiographical Talk”, p. 28. There is a shortened version in Roland Mathias (ed.): David Jones: Eight
essays on his Work as Writer and Artist (Llandysul, Dyfed: 1976), pp. 9–12.
103
J. Hooker: David Jones: An Exploratory Study of the Writings (London: 1975), p. 9.
104
Anthony Hyne (ed.): David Jones: A Fusilier at the Front (Bridgend: 1995).
105
Julian Bell: “Moon behind clouds: The Wounded Vision of David Jones”, TLS May 5, 1996, p. 10.
106
Referred to in both autobiographical sketches mentioned above.
107
In an interview recorded with Peter Orr, quoted in Mathias, pp. 14–15.
108
Grisewood: “Preface by the Author”, p. 11.
109
Mathias, p. 11.
154
A word about the genre of the book (236 pages in all, including introductions and
notes, some of which Jones considered an integral part of the text)110 might be in order at
this point. The author himself was not much help; he was (deliberately?) non-committal
and referred to it as “the writing”.111 T. S. Eliot was similarly reticent; he spoke of “the
book”.112 Later critics agree on a poetic element in the text, but are in disagreement as to
the form. Thus Martin Löschnigg uses the term “extended experimental poem”, characterized by “use of collage techniques and a resulting polyphonic quality”,113 Bernard
Bergonzi claims that “in everything except external form it is poetry”, but also “the nearest equivalent to an epic that the Great War produced in England”, and in the same text he
praises the “ novelistic realism”114 of Jones’ book. Twenty-one years later, he refers to it
as “the poetic masterpiece of the English literature emerging from the Great War”, and
adds: “It is written in a combination of verse and prose; the prose is poetic in the way that
Ulysses is poetic.”115 In the face of such divergences, David Blamires pleads for some
generosity in the matter of categorizing the text (“The matter of genre can certainly be
overdone”),116 quoting an expert in these matters, T. S. Eliot, who, in a radio talk on David
Jones in 1954, had this to say:
There are two questions which people are given to asking, often in a peremptory tone, about
certain modern works of literature. The first is: “Is this poetry or prose?” – with the implication
that it is neither. The second question is: “What is this book about?” – with the implication that
it is not really about anything.117
Blamires (himself a mediaevalist) believes that “an obsession with genre is characteristic of literary sensibilities nurtured on the classics and more or less preconceived notions on the nature of form” (76), warns us that with modern literature the distinctions are
precarious, “so that nomenclature becomes more self-evidently the matter of convenience
that it really is” (76). Since the novel (a combination of narrative and drama) in his opinion provides “the framework for almost any kind of experimentation”, he offers this definition of Jones’ text:
In length and overall structure it may be said to be a novel, but in its use of language it is
more akin to poetry. (77)
The term “novel” was also used, eight years earlier, by the American critic Earle R.
Swank,118 who discussed the book as an “experimental novel”, the main experimental
features lying in the author’s use of language. Here we have, according to Swank, “the
obvious derangements of syntax and conventional usage” and an attempt by David Jones
Preface, p. xiv. All references are to the 1978 Faber edition of In Parenthesis.
Thus several times in the Preface, and in the Dedication.
112
In his 1961 “Note of Introduction”, pp. vi–viii.
113
In his comparative essay: “Intertextuality, Textuality and the Experience of War: David Jones In Parenthesis and Otto Nebel’s Zuginsfeld”, in: Stanzel/Löschnigg (eds.): Intimate Enemies..., p. 99.
114
All quotes from B. Bergonzi: Heroes’ Twilight, pp. 200, 203, 205.
115
B. Bergonzi: “The First World War: Poetry, Scholarship, Myth”, in: Roucoux (ed.), pp. 16–17.
116
D. Blamires: David Jones: artist and writer (Manchester: 1978), p. 76.
117
Blamires, p. 76.
118
E. R. Swank: “David Michael Jones: In Parenthesis”, in Arthur T. Broes et al (eds.): Lectures on
Modern Novelists, (Pittsburgh:1963), pp. 70ff.
110
111
155
to force the reader “to provide a sonic character to the prose so that the additional signals
of meaning ordinarily so richly present in speech can be restored as a tool of the literary
artist”.119 Since the arguments put forward by Swank and Blamires appear to me convincing, I will also refer to Jones’ “writing” as a novel. At some points in the book the text
calls for being read aloud, and the strong sonic qualities (also discussed by Blamires)
have quite naturally led to an adaptation for radio. This was done by Douglas Cleverdon,
scheduled for Armistice Day 1939, then twice postponed because of the war, finally broadcast in 1946. The Preface was spoken by the author, two distinguished Welsh voices were
those of Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton. 120
The Contents
If the discussion of the question of form has proved divisive, there is no such difficulty as
to the contents. Perhaps the briefest plot summary comes from Diane DeBell:
At its simplest, the narrative consists of a plot that records the fictional movement of No.7
Platoon, of B Company, 55th Battalion, The Royal Welch Fusiliers, from its training base in
England across the Channel and into the trenches. The account builds up in tension to the
attack on Mametz Wood in which most of the Company were killed. The single exception is
Private Ball who is only wounded. 121
René Hague offers a somewhat more detailed version:
The basic theme of In Parenthesis...is simple enough, treated with a classical plunge into
action, and in each section, a classical respect for the unities: the story of how John Ball, a
private in a new-army battalion of a Welsh Regiment (the choice of name, that of the priest
executed for his share in the peasant rising of 1381, stresses the continuity of Welsh and British
tradition), parades with his battalion for overseas embarkation, of the journey to Flanders, the
march up the line, the first day in the strange trench world, their assimilation to the alien
rhythm, their march to the assembly point for the Somme offensive, and the final attack on
Mametz Wood, in which John Ball is wounded and many of his comrades are killed. 122
The Background
Critics are in agreement that Jones’ novel is an important contribution to Modernism,
Bergonzi considers his one of the few works by a native Englishman (or Anglo-Welshman) beside the man from Dublin and the two “deracinated” Americans. One of them, T.
S. Eliot, points out their close kinship:
The work of David Jones has some affinity with that of James Joyce (both men seem to me
to have the Celtic ear for the music of words) and with the later work of Ezra Pound, and with
Swank, pp. 74–75.
For more detail, see A. Hyne, p. 15.
121
Diane DeBell: “Strategies of Survival: David Jones, In Parenthesis, and Robert Graves Goodbye To All
That”, in: H. Klein (ed.): The First World War, pp. 166–167.
122
R. Hague: “David Jones: A Reconnaisance”, Twentieth Century, July 1960, pp. 27–45.
119
120
156
my own. I stress the affinity, as any possible influence seems to me slight and of no importance.
David Jones is a representative of the same literary generation as Joyce and Pound and myself,
if four men born between 1882 and 1895 can be regarded as of the same literary generation.
David Jones is the youngest, and the tardiest to publish. The lives of all of us were altered by
that War, but David Jones is the only one to have fought in it.123
Some critics claim that Jones’ book has been considerably influenced by T. S. Eliot,
they include Bergonzi (”In Parenthesis owes a significant debt to The Waste Land”),124
but above all John H. Johnston who, ignoring a personal letter from David Jones “disavowing conscious imitation”, gives a fairly lengthy account of the parallels between the
two texts and concludes: “their general relationships in the matter of technique can hardly
be denied.”125 Blamires defends the author against overzealous critics:
Critics, when provided with such apparently circumstantial evidence, are apt to dwell on the
matter of influences with peculiar loving care... Critics frequently like to consider themselves
more acute than the poets they write about, but when such highly articulate poets...express
themselves in this way, scholars would do well to be cautious. 126
If T. S. Eliot speaks of “affinity” among members of the same literary generation, he
may be referring to what Jones described in his letter in response to Johnston’s analysis,
“that poets are liable to write in similar ways about similar subjects more as a result of a
common cultural background, because things are in the air, rather than through direct
influence and imitation.”127 If he, however, shares the critics’ belief, then he has played
that down graciously, and in the same Introduction he calls In Parenthesis a “work of
genius” (vii). Jeremy Hooker also defends the author, claiming that any influence “is
largely upon the sense of possibility that he brings to the construction of forms. In this
respect he imitates neither (Joyce, Eliot) but has learnt from both.”128
The title of the novel is best explained in the author’s own words:
This writing is called “In Parenthesis” because I have written it in a kind of space – I don’t
know between quite what – but as you turn aside to do something; and because for us amateur
soldiers (and especially for the writer, who was not only amateur, but grotesquely incompetent,
a knocker-over of piles, a parade’s despair) the war itself was parenthesis – how glad we thought
we were to step outside its brackets at the end of ’18 – and also because our curious type of
existence here is altogether in parenthesis.129
His self-deprecating character sketch points forward to Private Ball who is similarly
talented (no wonder, he is the author’s persona), but this should not be taken too literally,
as Anthony Hyne warns us: “David Jones sometimes painted himself as an incompetent
soldier, but self-deprecation was an integral part of his character.”130 His damning judge-
T. S. Eliot: “A Note of Introduction”, pp. vii–viii.
Bergonzi, p. 200.
J. H. Johnston, p. 327, quoted in Blamires, p. 89.
126
Blamires, pp. 89–90.
127
Blamires, p. 89.
128
Hooker, p. 51.
129
Preface, p. xv.
130
A. Hyne, p. 174.
123
124
125
157
ment of his war-time sketches (referred to on page 160) must be seen in this light. The
final sentence of the above quotation reminds the reader that Jones was a consciously
religious writer (and visual artist) whose Catholicism played some part in the novel.
Like his literary colleagues, David Jones was an eclectic writer “who deals with disparate fragments of cultural deposits, working them into a closely woven tapestry”
(Bergonzi), but for him this interest in Celtic and early English literature, and in Catholic
liturgy was more than a “heap of broken images”, was connected with his origins and his
later commitments. In the preface of a later work,131 Jones described himself as ‘a Londoner, of Welsh and English parentage, of Protestant upbringing, of Catholic subscription’, and this rather unusual collocation of attributes is at the basis of his novel. As he
wrote in the Preface:
My companions in the war were mostly Londoners with an admixture of Welshmen, so that
the mind and folk-life of those two differing racial groups are an essential ingredient to my
theme. Nothing could be more representative. These came from London. Those from Wales.
Together they bore in their bodies the genuine tradition of the Island of Britain, from Bendigeid
Vran to Jingle and Marie Lloyd. These were the children of Doll Tearsheet. Those are before
Caractacus was. Both speak in parables, the wit of both is quick, both are natural poets; yet no
two groups could be more dissimilar... (x)
The elements of a soldier’s life in In Parenthesis are mirrored in a number of martial
works, mainly the Welsh poem Y Goddodin by Aneurin, the Welsh prose tales of the
Mabinogion, Malory and Shakespeare’s Henry V, with Caesar, Chaucer, the Chanson de
Roland and the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins also playing a part. Not all critics
have appreciated this procedure. Andrew Rutherford, in comparing Jones’ novel to
Manning’s, had this to say:
In David Jones’ In Parenthesis the heroic dimension sometimes seems to be imposed on the
troops by his overinsistent analogies with martial legends of the past...132
And D. J. Enright complained that
its style, tapestried and “modernistic” at the same time, is at odds with its subject-matter
(infantry life on the Western Front), and the allusions to ancient Welsh poetry and Celtic myths
with their explanatory but not always justificatory footnotes rob the account of most of its
immediacy.133
A closer look at Jones’ arrangement and the function of these ancient texts referred to
discloses that “immediacy” was not necessarily his primary aim here, although he demonstrated in his novel that he was capable of it at least as much as all those war poets praised
for their realism.134
The Anathemata, 1952.
A. Rutherford: The Literature of War, p. 109.
133
D. J. Enright: “The Literature of The First World War”, in: B. Ford (ed.): The Modern Age (= vol. 7 The
Pelican Guide to English Literature) (Harmondsworth: 1970), p. 169.
134
Cf. Bergonzi’s reaction to Enright’s criticism, Heroes Twilight, p. 212.
131
132
158
Anyone dealing with Jones’ rich and multi-layered text is occasionally confronted with
passages difficult to comprehend (despite the informative notes provided by the author).
Of great assistance in unravelling the many (medieval and modern) allusions and quotations are David Blamires’ book with its chapter on In Parenthesis135 and his essay on the
author’s medieval inspirations.136 Why the predominance of Welsh tradition in the text?
First of all, the author’s preoccupation with his Welsh heritage (though, unlike G. M.
Hopkins, he never learnt to speak the language), but secondly his awareness that there
was a period in history when Welsh was spoken in southern Scotland and parts of northern England. So, in Blamires’ words,
...it is not a perverse delight in what is obscure or irrelevant that leads David Jones to
preface each of the seven parts of his book with quotations from the sixth century poem of the
Gododdin, for this poem above all others symbolizes for him the unity of the Island of Britain
that is at the centre of his historical awareness.137
Aneurin, its author, was poet at the court of the tribe of the Gododdin whose capital
was at Edinburgh. In some hundred stanzas (contained in the unique 13th century manuscript), the poem tells of an expedition of three hundred of the best men against the English at Catraeth (perhaps Catterick in Yorkshire). The battle was fought for a week, and
in the end only one man – the poet – returned to tell the tale:
As the poem muses on the expedition, stanza after stanza mentions a particular hero by
name and celebrates the nobility of his deeds, while at the same time the pathos of the poet’s
solitary survival remains to the fore.138
Very fittingly it is chosen, as, apart from the reasons given above, the poem foreshadows the fate of Private Ball who alone of his company returns alive from battle. Incidentally, the Welsh subtitle of the novel, seinnyessit e gledyf ym penn memeu, (“His sword
rang in mothers’ heads”) for Jones “what seems to be one of the most significant lines”,139
has also been taken from Aneurin’s poem. Bergonzi, full of praise of the way in which
Jones “establishes a comprehensive though eclectic frame for his action”, points to Kipling’s
Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) and its vision of the British past as perhaps the closest parallel
in English literature.140
Structure
The novel consists of seven parts divided into two roughly balancing halves:
I (Parts 1–4) the platoon’s December departure from England, arrival in France,
march to camp, general features of life in the trenches, celebration of Christmas,
Blamires: David Jones: artist and writer, pp. 74–112.
Blamires: “The Medieval Inspirations of David Jones”, in: Mathias (ed.), pp. 73–87.
137
Blamires: David Jones, p. 82. See also In Parenthesis, General Notes, note 4, p. 191.
138
Blamires, p. 83. The MS also contains a slightly different version which names three survivors. See
General Notes, p. 191.
139
General Notes, p. 191.
140
Bergonzi, p. 211.
135
136
159
II (Parts 5–7) (six months later) preparation for the great battle, the death and wounding of most of John Ball’s comrades in battle.
The second half parallels the movement of the first in its progression from the known
to the unknown, from the familiar to the fearsome. The first half is predominantly in
prose, with some verse forms in Part 3, in the second half verse becomes more important,
until, in the final section, it has become the dominant mode of expression. Blamires sees
a correspondence between this development and the growth of David Jones’ own poetic
awareness while working at the book,
...for the first sections are noticeably simpler and more straightforward than the latter ones.
This is, however, as fortunate as it was inevitable, since it means that the book really does work
up to a climax, which is expressed not only in terms of the action depicted, but also in the
verbal technique.141
Besides the epigraphs to each part taken from Y Gododdin which permeates the novel
with the spirit of medieval Wales there are also headings from different sources which
provide a broader framework.
The title to Part 1 – “The many men so beautiful” – comes from The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner (Part IV). It sounds noble and positive, but the very next line in Coleridge’s
poem points forward to death and destruction: “And they all dead did lie”. David Jones’
preoccupation with The Ancient Mariner both in illustrations and critical comments on
the poem, is based on his interest in myth, but above all on the ideas of sacrifice and
atonement, and he alludes to the poem several times. At the very end of Part 7, for example, he describes John Ball’s rifle hanging at his “bowed neck like the Mariner’s white
oblation” (p.184). Thus, by using the quotation in Part 1, Jones, indirectly, points out the
sacrificial aspect of the War and fore shadows the fate of John Ball’s platoon. In this
opening section Jones uses a flowing descriptive prose largely derived from Malory, interspersed with Cockney, the lingua franca of army life. When the battalion marches
through the wet streets to embark for France, Jones manages in his description to convey
a change of attitude on the part of civilians towards the War combined with information
on the time of action:
The band recommenced playing; and at the attention and in excellent step they passed through
the suburbs, the town’s centre, and so towards the docks. The people of that town did not
acclaim them, nor stop about their business – for it was late in the second year. (7)
Part 2 has a Shakespearian heading – “Chambers go off, corporals stay” – from Henry V
(III,1/2), a favourite source of reference for Jones, with its pedantic but courageous Welsh
Captain Fluellen. The title alludes to guns and soldiers before Harfleur, so is a fitting
heading for the settling down of the men to their camp routines in France:
They were given lectures on very wet days in the barn, with its great roof, sprung, upreaching,
humane, and redolent of a vanished order. Lectures on military tactics that would be more or
less commonly understood. Lectures on hygiene by the medical officer, who was popular, who
141
160
Blamires, p. 86.
glossed his technical discourse with every lewdness, whose heroism and humanity reached
towards sanctity. (13)
Bergonzi draws our attention to the image of the barn (“the great vaulted roof reminds us of the roof of a Gothic church, and both typify the pieties of an agrarian order”)
as an expression of Jones’ Catholicism which is always present in his work, and concludes:
...Jones sees man as homo faber, who is closest to God when he is making order out of
chaos, whether in building barns or cathedrals, or devising ecclesiastical ritual or military
manoeuvres. The artefact is always a sign of something beyond itself... As against the bleakness of the positivist Weltanschauung Jones posits not merely a mythic, but a sacramentalist
view of the world.142
The atmosphere of camp routine is shattered, in the last two paragraphs, by the screaming approach and detonation of the first shell, and it is described in minute detail as, being
the first, it brings about a change of consciousness in John Ball (and his hitherto uninitiated comrades):
He looked straight at Sergeant Snell enquiringly – whose eyes changed queerly, who ducked
in under the low entry. John Ball would have followed, but stood fixed and alone in the little
yard – his senses highly alert, his body incapable of movement or response. The exact disposition of small things – the precise shapes of trees, the tilt of a bucket, the movement of a straw,
the disappearing right boot of Sergeant Snell – all minute noises, separate and distinct, in a
stillness charged through with some approaching violence – registered not by the ear nor any
single faculty – an on-rushing pervasion, saturating all existence; with exactitude, logarithmic,
dial-timed, millesimal – of calculated velocity, some mean chemist’s contrivance, a stinking
physicist’s destroying toy. He stood alone on the stones, his mess-tin spilled at his feet. Out of
the vortex, rifling the air it came – bright, brass-shod, Pandoran; with all-filling screaming the
howling crescendo’s up-piling snapt. The universal world, breath held, one half second, a bludgeoned stillness. Then the pent violence released a consummation of all burstings out; all sudden up-rendings and rivings-through – all taking-out of vents – all barrier-breaking – all unmaking. Pernitric begetting – the dissolving and splitting of solid things. In which unearthing
aftermath, John Ball picked up his mess-tin and hurried within; ashen, huddled, waited in the
dismal straw... (24)
Part 3 – “Starlight order” – links up with a book of War reminiscences by a Catholic
army chaplain,143 for which Jones had done some illustrations (1931). The title, March,
Kind Comrade, is taken, like the heading, from Hopkins’ poem The Bugler’s First Communion. On one level, the heading refers to the night march which takes up most of Part 3,
“but the whole context gives us a more explicit religious reference from this particularly
Catholic poem of Hopkins”:144
142
143
14.
144
Bergonzi, p. 204.
Father R. H. J. Steuart, RC Chaplain to a battalion of the Highland Light Infantry, see Hyne (ed.), p.
Blamires, p. 87.
161
Frowning and forefending angel-warder
Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him;
March, kind comrade, abreast him;
Dress his days to a dexterous and starlight order.145
The ritual element in military orders is stressed throughout Jones’ novel. Part 3 provides a good example: the passage when the troops march through the night and are told
to watch out for shell-holes and avoid the trailing field-telephone wire:
The repeated passing back of aidful messages assumes a cadency.
Mind the hole
mind the hole
mind the hole to left
hole right
step over
keep left, left.
One grovelling, precipitated, with his gear tangled, struggles to feet again:
Left be buggered.
Sorry mate – you all right china? lift us yer rifle – an’ don’t take on so Honey – but rather,
mind the wire here
mind the wire
mind the wire
mind the wire
Extricate with some care that taut strand – it may well be you’ll sweat on its unbrokenness.
(36)
Part 4, which concludes the first half of the novel, is the central section of In Parenthesis, with its title – “King Pellam’s Launde” – taken from Malory. Here the theme of the
Waste Land, its description by Malory and the anthropological and ritual analysis by
Jessie L. Weston146 play a dominant part. King Pellam’s lands were laid waste as a result
of the ‘dolerous stroke’ inflicted on him by Balin’s spear. In the figure of the King, as in
the Ancient Mariner, the idea of sacrifice is put forward. These Malorian themes recur in
the final section of the book, thus reinforcing the parallel structure of the novel. In this
context, Jeremy Hooker stresses the importance of the pattern of initiation as a unifying
principle. Not only does it connect the two halves of the book, it is also instrumental in
wedding myth to realism.147 Within this framework of myth and ritual Jones is “capable of
a novelistic realism” as the following passage shows, in which Bergonzi perceives “a
Dickensian vigour” and, at the same time, caused by archaic vocabulary (‘gorgeted’
‘greaved’) “a perspective stretching back to Malory and beyond”:148
A man, seemingly native to the place, a little thick man, swathed with sacking, a limp,
saturated bandolier thrown over one shoulder and with no other accoutrements, gorgeted in
woollen Balaclava, groped out from between two tottering corrugated uprights, his great mous-
W. H. Gardner (ed.): Poems and Prose of G. M. Hopkins, stanza 5, p. 43.
J. L. Weston: From Ritual to Romance, 1920.
J. Hooker, pp. 20–21.
148
Bergonzi, p. 207.
145
146
147
162
taches beaded with condensation under his nose. Thickly greaved with mud so that his boots
and puttees and sandbag tie-ons were become one whole of trickling ochre. His minute pipe
had its smoking bowl turned inversely. He spoke slowly. He told the corporal that this was
where shovels were usually drawn for any fatigue in the supports. He slipped back quickly,
with a certain animal caution, into his hole; to almost immediately poke out his wool-work
head, to ask if anyone had the time of day or could spare him some dark shag or a picture-paper.
Further, should they meet a white dog in the trench her name was Belle, and he would like to
catch any bastard giving this Belle the boot.
John Ball told him the time of day.
No one had any dark shag.
No one had a picture-paper.
They certainly would be kind to the bitch, Belle.
They’d give her half their iron rations – Jesus – they’d let her bite their backsides
without a murmur. He draws-to the sacking curtain over his lair. (91–92)
The heading to Part 5 – “Squat garlands for White Knights” – is the result of a strange
synthesis of allusions to a poem by Hopkins and to Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking
Glass, based on the fact that new shrapnel helmets were issued to all ranks early in 1916.
The poem in question is Tom’s Garland, and we know that its first line “Tom – garlanded
with squat and surly steel” puzzled his friends Robert Bridges and R. W. Dixon so much
that Hopkins had to supply some information: he had adapted the Pauline image of human
society as a body with many members to Tom, the navvy.149 According to Blamires “David
Jones picks up the immediate visual analogy between Tom and the soldier’s new appearance, but the context of the ordered, ideal commonweal of men resonates with it.”150 What
connects this serious poem with L. Carroll’s humorous product is the visual impact, for in
chapter eight he describes the meeting between Alice and a most unusually clad knight:
She thought she had never seen such a strange-looking soldier in all her life. He was dressed
in tin armour, which seemed to fit him very badly, and he had a queer-shaped little deal-box
fastened across his shoulder, upside-down, and with the lid hanging open. Alice looked at it
with great curiosity.151
We are reminded of the involuntarily comic appearance of John Ball on the parade
ground, another indication of the parallelism between the two halves of the novel. The
new steel helmet which was issued on both sides of the front in 1916 and which became
the symbol of a new type of war and warrior,152 gave rise to all sorts of comments, both
verbal and visual, and not all of them favourable. Paul Fussell, one of the commentators
(“Where the British helmet was somehow comic, the German was “serious’”), 153 has collected some of the voices, among them Ford Madox Ford’s Christopher Tietjens who
sees the tin hats as the curse of the army: They create distrust, make a man look like a
ruined gambler “or a fellow who had put on a soap-dish, to amuse the children” (Don
W. H. Gardner (ed.): Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Harmondsworth: 1954), pp. 234ff.
Blamires, p. 88.
151
Lewis Carroll: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass (New York: 1964), p.
205.
152
Cf. Blunden’s comment in my introductory Somme chapter.
153
P. Fussell, p. 78.
149
150
163
Quixote’s barber shaving-bowl comes to mind) and sums up his thoughts on the topic in
this way:
When you saw a Hun sideways he looked something: a serious proposition. Full of ferocity.
A Hun up against a Tommie looked like a Holbein lansknecht (sic!) fighting a music-hall turn.
It made you feel that you were indeed a rag-time army. Rubbed it in! 154
The visual impressions of the new military headgear were also employed in cartoons,
in Britain in a lighter vein, most famously by Bruce Bairnsfather,155 in Germany, as might
be expected, in a more serious way: Fritz Erler’s War Loan Subscription Poster shows a
determined-looking infantry man complete with steel helmet, respirator and a bag of hand
grenades, ready for the victorious attack (‘Help us Win! Subscribe to the War Loan’).156
The sixth section – “Pavilions and Captains of Hundreds” – presents another synthesis
of allusions, this time to Malory and the historical books of the Old Testament. In the
words of Blamires157 “[b]oth...are general references to the omnipresent pavilions pitched
on the scenes of battle in Malory and to the captains of thousands and hundreds so frequently mentioned in the descriptions of Old Testament battles.” This part is a kind of
interlude before the final battle, a moment of brief respite and strange calm that preludes
the storm, with time for a more general view, a look at the setting of the scene, the background. We hear of the batteries opening preparatory fire, of the men discussing the chance
of battle, trying to gloss over their nervousness and even fright:
He said that there was a hell of a stink at Division – so he had heard from the Liaison
Officer’s groom – as to the ruling of this battle – ...this groom’s brother Charlie what was a
proper crawler and had some posh job back there reckoned he heard this torf he forgot his name
came out of ther Gen’ral’s and say as how it was going to be a first clarst bollocks and murthering
of Christen men and reckoned how he’d throw in his mit an’ be no party to this so-called
frontal-attack never for no threat nor entreaty, for now, he says, blubbin’ they reckon, is this
noble fellowship wholly mischiefed.
Fall of it what may fall said this Big-head.
Alas said this staff-captain.
Ah dam said this staff-major.
Alas alas said Colonel Talabolion.
Anyway it was a cert they were for it to do battle with him to-morn in the plain field. There
was some bastard woods as Jerry was sitting tight in and this mob had clickt for the job of
asking him to move on – if you please – an’ thanks very much indeed, signally obliged to yer,
Jerry-boy. Corporal Shallow said he didn’t like the sound of things. He wished them the best
and cushy ones and started back to retrace his steps through the valley of preparation... (138)
John Ball goes to find his two chums to have some conversation and “feel a bit less
windy”. And all the time, a sinister leitmotif, the hollow hammering of the carpenters (”as
though they builded some scaffold for a hanging”) is heard in the background, which
F. M. Ford: Parade’s End (Harmondsworth: 1982), pp. 577–578.
See his cartoon “My Hat” in Fragments from France, vol. III, p. 30.
156
Darracott/Loftus (eds): First World War Posters, p. 25. See Appendix II for poster. Cf. footnote 24 in
Chapter Erziehung vor Verdun.
157
Blamires, p. 88.
154
155
164
“brought him disquiet more than the foreboding gun-fire which gathered intensity with
each half-hour” (138–139). And his reaction is justified. What Jones is only hinting at, is
more fully described (including the shocked reaction of observers) in a number of war
books: the advance supply of coffins and wooden crosses for the many dead to be expected in the impending attack.158
The combination of a deadly serious matter such as war and battle with the lighthearted nonsense of a Lewis Carroll (as in Part 5) may seem incredible to outsiders, but is
quite possible as even the bleakest situation brings out a sense of humour in some men.
Another example involving the same author is Journey’s End, a play with a sad ending.
The following dialogue between two officers takes place in the second act (before a fatal
nocturnal raid):
Trotter: What are you reading?
Osborne (wearily): Oh, just a book.
Trotter: What’s the title?
Osborne (showing him the cover): Ever read it?
Trotter (leaning over and reading the cover): Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – why,
that’s a kid’s book!
Osborne: Yes.
Trotter: You aren’t reading it?
Osborne: Yes.
Trotter: What – a kid’s book?
Osborne: Haven’t you read it?
Trotter (scornfully): No!
Osborne: You ought to. (Reads):
“How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale?
How cheerfully he seems to grin
And neatly spread his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!”
Trotter (after a moment’s thought): I don’t see no point in that.
Osborne (wearily): Exactly. That’s just the point.
Trotter (looking curiously at Osborne): You are a funny chap!159
A similar contrast takes place in Part 7, the most moving, the climactic section of the
book. Its title, “The five unmistakable marks”, is a quotation from Lewis Carroll’s mockheroic nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark. The marks by which the Snark may be
identified are its taste “which is meagre and hollow, but crisp”, its “habit of getting up
158
159
E.g. All Quiet, Chapter VI, p.111, Death of a Hero, Part III, p. 359.
R. C. Sherriff: Journey’s End (London: 1929), pp. 88–89.
165
late”, its “slowness in taking a jest”, its “fondness for bathing-machines”, and its ambition. Blamires offers the following satirical comment:
The profoundly scholarly question of the metaphysical import of these characteristics may
safely be left to the erudition of one more learned than myself, perhaps a German. There seems,
however, to be some small hint of irony in considering the Snark’s habits as comparable with
those of the Germans.160
Before the battle, men and officers on the British side are described in a mixture of true
Malory style and modern slang:
Tunicled functionaries signify and clear-voiced heralds cry
and leg it to a safe distance:
leave fairway for the Paladins, and Roland throws a kiss –
they’ve nabbed his batty for the moppers-up
and Mr. Jenkins takes them over
and don’t bunch on the left
for Christ’s sake.
Riders on pale horses loosed
and vials irreparably broken
an’ Wat price bleeding Glory
Glory
Glory Hallelujah... (160)
Mr. Jenkins, the young subaltern, is killed in the attack, and his death assumes the
stylized, ritual quality of early heroic poetry:
He sinks on one knee
and now on the other,
his upper body tilts in rigid inclination
this way and back;
weighted lanyard runs out to full tether;
swings like a pendulum
and the clock run down.
Lurched over, jerked iron saucer over tilted brow,
clampt unkindly over lip and chin
nor no ventaille to his darkening
and masked face lifts to grope the air
and so disconsolate;
enfeebled fingering at a paltry strapbuckle holds,
holds him blind against the morning. (166)
In the light of flares, during the attack, John Ball sees the corpses of comrades: even
here Lewis Carroll is present:
When they put up a flare, he saw many men’s accoutrements
medleyed and strewn up so down and service jackets bearing
below the shoulder-numerals the peculiar sign of their battalions.
160
166
Blamires, p. 89.
And many of these shields he had seen knights bear beforehand.
And the severed head of “72 Morgan,
its visage grins like the Cheshire cat
and full grimly. (180)
Grim realism goes side by side with references to “sister death” and the Queen of the
Woods claiming the dead, the wood, like all woods, being a traditional focus for the
numinous and part of the mythic dimension in Jones’ book as we have been reminded
earlier in the text: “To groves always men come both to their joys and their undoing”.
Finally, Private Ball is wounded in the legs and tries to crawl to safety, but his rifle is a
great encumbrance. Despite his instructors’ orders and the fact that he feels quite close to
and familiar with it, he eventually abandons the weapon:
It’s difficult with the weight of the rifle.
Leave it – under the oak.
Leave it for a salvage-bloke
let it lie bruised for a monument
dispense the authenticated fragments to the faithful.
It’s the thunder-besom for us
it’s the bright bough borne
it’s the tensioned yew for a Genoese jammed arbalest...
It’s R.S.M. O’Grady says, it’s the soldier’s best friend
if you care for the working parts and let us be “aving those
springs released smartly in Company billets on wet forenoons
and clickerty-click and one up the spout and you men must
really cultivate the habit of treating this weapon with the
very greatest care...
Marry it man! Marry it!
Cherish her, she’s your very own.
Coax it man coax it – it’s delicately and ingeniously made...
You’ve known her hot and cold.
You would choose her from among many.
You know her by her bias, and by her exact error at 300, and
by the deep scar at the small, by the fair flaw in the grain,
above the lower sling-swivel –
but leave it under the oak. (183–184)
The final words of In Parenthesis are a quotation from Chanson de Roland. With
these, once more, Jones tells us, first, that the battle we have just witnessed must be seen
in the heroic perspectives of the past, and second, that the soldier’s front-line experience
is uncommunicable, unique, which sets him apart from other men:
The geste says this and the man who was on the field...and who wrote the book...the man
who does not know this has not understood anything. 161 (187)
And at last, John Ball, the author’s persona, and David Jones seem to have become
one.
161
René Hague’s translation. For original see Notes – Part 7, note 48.
167
The visual element
One of the first things that strikes readers of In Parenthesis is – not surprising in a painter
– the author’s acutely visual imagination, at work from the very beginning. On the first
page we read: “The Orderly Sergeant of ‘B’ is licking the stub end of his lead pencil; it
divides a little his fairish moist moustache.” We are able to visualize the man immediately. A description of waterlogged holes in the darkness (Part 3) dwells at greater length
on the visual impact:
Slime-glisten on the churnings up, fractured earth pilings, heaped on, heaped up waste;
overturned far throwings; tottering perpendiculars lean and sway; more leper-trees pitted,
rownsepyked out of nature, cut off in their sap-rising. Saturate, littered, rusted coilings, metallic rustlings, thin ribbon-metal chafing – rasp low for some tension freed; by rat or wind,
disturbed. Smooth-rippled discs gleamed, where gaping craters, their brimming waters, made
mirror for the sky procession – bear up before the moon incongruous souvenirs. Margarine tins
sail derelict, where little eddies quivered, wind caught, their sharp-jagged twisted lids wrenched
back. (39)
Jones’ visual training as a painter and engraver resulted in this precise descriptive
technique. His craft had also made him familiar with numerous artists and their paintings;
some of them are used in the novel as points of reference in the same way as works of
literature. The principal painters referred to in his text are the Dutch artists Breughel (the
Elder) and Hobbema, the Italians Signorelli and Ucello, the Frenchman Fragonard. Particularly Paolo Ucello’s representation of another famous battle, his Rout of San Romano
in the National Gallery in London, had obviously made a strong impression on Jones:
From where he stood heavily, irksomely at ease, he could see, half-left between 7 and 8 of
the front rank, the profile of Mr. Jenkins and the elegant cut of his war-time rig and his flax
head held front; like San Romano’s foreground squire, unhelmeted; but we don’t have lances
now nor banners nor trumpets. It pains the lips to think of bugles – and did they blow Defaulters on the Uccello horns. (2)
Mr. Jenkins, a young officer in command of Ball’s platoon, is referred to again humourously a little later, when the men are permitted to march easy and smoke: “The Squire
from the Rout of San Romano smokes Melachrino No. 9” (5). I agree with Blamires:
“This is the most exact reference to a picture that there is in In Parenthesis, and how
delightfully apt it is.”162 In the description of the soldiers groping their way through the
dark towards the front (Part 3) Jones alludes to Breughel, most probably to The Parable
of the Blind Men: “The stumbling dark of the blind, that Breughel knew about” (31). In
Part 4 the gentle landscape is “Hobbema-scape” (93) and considered a suitable setting for
the visitors from Whitehall:
They grace the trench like wall-flowers, for an hour; as spirits lightly come from many
mansions, and the avenues, where they sit below the pseudo-Fragonards cross-legged, slacked,
or lie at night under a Baroque cupidon, guiding the campaign (93).
162
168
Blamires, p. 91.
Fragonard and the Baroque create an ironic contrast between the easy, somewhat frivolous existence of the visitors and the hardships of the trenches. The Baroque is taken up
again when aeroplanes are referred to: “...obliquely as Baroque attending angels surprise
you with their airworthiness” (124), and in the final chapter, the men anxiously waiting
for zero, are characterized as “those small cherubs, who trail awkwardly the weapons of
the God in Fine Art works” (156). These various allusions, to which may be added a
further one, namely to the 15th century artist Signorelli and his painting Innocent in the
description of the runner rousing himself from sleep (128), are probably more direct in
their effect than most of the literary references.
Religious ritual
Religious ritual, primarily that of the Catholic Church, but not exclusively so, is another
range of experience in which the events described are also seen. Critics are unanimous
about this fact of “constant alignment of the physical events of the soldiers’ existence
with the ritual observances of Christendom” (Blamires), and so are the majority of readers, but not all of them may be aware of its great extent. The effect is reinforced by the
framework of liturgical references and the liturgical quality of much of the language.
Blamires, Diane DeBell (with her information on Fr. de la Taille’s influence on Jones)163
and Thomas Dillworth’s meticulous listing and explanation of biblical and liturgical
allusions164 are helpful in deciphering these religious signals. John H. Johnston points to
Christian virtues engendered by modern warfare:
Positive, aggressive heroism of the epic character is seldom possible in modern war; a man
may perform valiantly in action, but for every valiant moment there are weeks of inactivity,
boredom, suffering, and fear. Thus the virtues of the modern infantryman are Christian virtues
– patience, endurance, hope, love – rather than the naturalistic virtues of the epic hero.165
And both Blamires and Bergonzi tell us that the concept of soldiers’ sacrifice in a
Christian context existed before Jones, in some of the war poets, Owen in particular, and
was fore shadowed in Ford Madox Ford’s Christian hero Tietjens. Like the allusions to
Malory and Wales the religious references in the novel give a wider relevance to life in
wartime. Jones manages with seemingly casual words and allusions to keep alive throughout
the text “an atmosphere of latent transsubstantiation” (Blamires). Part 1 with its account
of parade and departure is a good example of Jones’ technique. The parade is characterized by a “silence peculiar to parade grounds and to refectories”, “the silence of a high
order” (1), in which Captain Gwyn speaks “the ritual words by virtue of which a regiment
is moved in column of route”, while Corporal Quilter’s job is to “intone” (3). The leaving
of camp is thus described: “the liturgy of a regiment departing has been sung” (4). Within
this ritual the officers take on the aura of the Good Shepherd: “the officer commanding is
calling his Battalion by name – whose own the sheep are” (2), and when the soldiers
See footnote 121 for title of her essay.
Thomas Dillworth: The Liturgical Parenthesis of David Jones (Ipswich: 1979).
165
Quoted in Bergonzi, p. 211.
163
164
169
march on to their port of embarkation with blistered feet (their new boots not yet broken
in), “it is his part to succour the lambs of the flock” (6). The shepherd metaphor reappears
later in the text: “Mr. Jenkins watched them file through, himself following, like westernhill shepherd” (31). The particular liturgical setting for this initial enterprise is Easter, and
we are reminded that in the early Church it was common practice for catechumens to be
baptized on Easter Eve. The action of Part 1 has the character of the ritual of initiation.
When Lance Corporal Aneirin Merddyn Lewis reflects on the event, “he brings in a manner, baptism, and metaphysical order to the bankruptcy of the occasion”(2). The march is
compared with the massacre of the Holy Innocents (6), which is not an element of the
Crucifixion story, but in the Channel crossing the imagery of death and resurrection, baptism and rebirth is used again: they are “shrouded in a dense windy darkness” (8). The
final paragraph contains an analogy to the discoveries of the first Easter morning:
...on the third day, which was a Sunday, sunny and cold, and French women in deep black
were hurrying across flat land – they descended from their grimy, littered, limb restricting,
slatted vehicles, and stretched and shivered at a siding. You feel exposed and apprehensive in
this new world. (9)
Part 3 speaks again of the “ritual of their parading” (27), of how “the liturgy of their
going-up assumed a primitive creativeness, an apostolic actuality, a correspondence with
the object, a flexibility” (28). Both this section and Part 7 are connected by the quotations
from the Good Friday offices preceding details of action in either part. While here the
words are given in English, Part 7 with its ultimate sacrifice of death is marked by the use
of Latin. The passage describing the activities of Christmas morning contains one of the
most successful analogies in the novel. First, the religious significance of time and place
is established with the help of allusions which go beyond the Christian tradition. Jones’
anthropological knowledge (influenced by Frazer and Weston) is very noticeable here.
The time is “the time of Saturnalia” and the wood nearby (Mametz Wood) is a reminder
of the reverence the ancient Germani had for woods and groves, their holy places. 166 It is
also the territory of Odin who hanged himself on the windy tree, of Merlin seeking refuge
in his madness, and of St. Boniface, the “Apostle of the Germans” who is credited with
chopping down a sacred oak in the land of the heathen Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon monk
takes us back to the soldiers “on Christmas Day in the Morning” (68) and the references
are Christian: the hessian coverings around the soldiers’ necks are “tied amices”, and
their duty is described as “serving their harsh novitiate” (70). The climax of this scene is
the distribution of rations and the issue of rum (one spoonful) by the Lance-Corporal, the
analogy to Holy Communion being explicit. As the men gather around him, he, like a
priest, “makes divisions, he ordains” (72):
Dispense salvation
strictly apportion it,
let us taste and see,
let us be renewed,
for Christ’s sake let us be warm.
O have a care – don’t spill the precious
166
170
Cf. Tacitus: Germania, chapter 9.
O don’t jog his hand – ministering;
do take care.
O please – give the poor bugger elbow room. (73)
Even a holy moment like this does not lead to an attempt to impose a spurious devotion
on it. Oaths and soldiers’ slang are not “muted or modified, but on the contrary they are
lifted up into the ritual context.”167
Each one in turn, and humbly, receives his meagre benefit. This Lance-jack sustains them
from his iron spoon; and this is thank-worthy. Some of them croak involuntary as the spirit’s
potency gets the throat at unawares. Each one turns silently, carrying with careful fingers his
own daily bread... (73–74)
The description of battle (Part 7) is similarly rich in religious allusions, but this time to
death and sacrifice rather than to ritual and observances, culminating in the Passion of
Christ. The site of battle is referred to as “the place of a skull” (154), and the soldiers’
waiting for their final orders as the Agony in the Garden. When the battle has started,
those who still have their business to do “do it quickly”, as Jesus told Judas who was
about to betray him (John xiii, 27). There is one difference from the Passion story, there
are “no weeping Maries bringing anointments” (174). Although the theme of the Passion
is predominant, additional topics (mainly from the OT) are introduced: the tactics of
Joshua at the siege of Jericho (Joshua vi, 1ff.) as the soldiers wait for their orders (159),
the deaths of Jonathan and Absalom are mentioned in the list of exemplary heroes (163),
the testing of the Three Holy Children in the fiery furnace (Daniel iii) is used as an appropriate reference in the context (164). Later there is an allusion to the parable of the Good
Samaritan:
But O Dear God and suffering Jesus
why don’t they bring water from a well
rooty and bully for a man on live
and mollifying oil poured in
and hands to bind with gentleness. (173)
The final part of the novel is filled with the “horror and torment of death and wounding”, its bloodiness and suffering nowhere disguised. In this context Blamires sees the
specifically Christian allusions perhaps as “a means whereby the finality of earthly life
may be muted.”168 For men are made “a little lower than the angels” (Ps. viii, 5) (154), and
the saucer hats of the soldiers are like “helmets of salvation” (Ephesians vi, 17) (157).
Exposed to enemy fire soldiers lie as close as possible to mother earth who is transformed
into the Mother of Christ:
Pray her hide you in her deeps
she’s only refuge against
this ferocious pursuer
terribly questing.
167
168
Blamires, p. 104. Cf. also Jones’ Preface, p. xii (refers to swearing).
Blamires, p. 106.
171
Maiden of the digged places
let our cry come unto thee.
Mam, moder, mother of me
Mother of Christ under the tree
reduce our dimensional vulnerability to the minimum – (176–177)
And the well-known lines of consolation from the 23rd Psalm are evoked in the final
pages of the text:
men walk in red white and blue
under the cedars
and by every green tree
and beside comfortable waters. (186)
It is a sign of Jones’ talent as a writer that the religious motifs of In Parenthesis seem
to emerge quite naturally from the primary description of the soldier’s life. Their combination of anthropological (= universal) idea of ritual with particular references to Christian themes makes them an important factor of unity in the novel, perhaps even more so
than the Welsh and Arthurian traditions. As Blamires puts it: “In any case, they must be
seen as an equally important means whereby the discontinuity of experience felt by the
soldiers in the War is, at least partially, overcome.”169 Diane DeBell sees the metaphor of
the Mass as ritual sacrifice at work in the text from the very beginning, with associations
that prefigure the Passion as well as various pagan rites of sacrifice. According to her –
and here she differs from Blamires – Jones was influenced by the writings of the French
Jesuit Fr. M. de la Taille, particularly his Mysterium Fidei, 1919:170
Jones perceives the Catholic Mass to be an affirmation of the joyousness of Redemption
rather than a meditation (principally) upon the continual suffering of Christ. The perspective
rests with Christ as Glorious Victim – not merely as Victim. It is within this emotional perspective that Jones uses the Mass in In Parenthesis...171
Thus, Part 7 not only contains agony and death, but also images of regeneration and
renewal spun by the Queen of the Woods. As she weaves her flowers and garlands for the
fallen soldiers, the deaths are redeemed. In this image we find pagan rituals of spring, the
joy of Christian Easter, and the English tradition of pastoral.
Experimental novel
Apart from the use of historical, literary and religious reference as a kind of “objective
correlative”, Earle R. Swank sees the main experimental features in the author’s use of
language. One of the striking devices, though seeming very natural in its unobtrusiveness,
is the frequent change of tense (from historic present to simple past tense and vice versa)
Blamires, p. 106.
Translated by the Rev. M. C. D’Arcy, S. J. as Mass and the Redemption in 1926.
171
Diane DeBell, p. 170.
169
170
172
in the narrative sections of the text. It is part of the shifting focus of awareness, the changing moods that mark the composition of In Parenthesis. The opening passage of Part 1 is
a good example (1–2). Here alternation of tenses indicates the rapid shifts of viewpoint
from which the episode is seen at one and the same time. What this section also shows is
the deliberate use of elliptic sentences, the lack of finite verbs, providing drama, e.g. in
the scraps of conversation, the bawled-out commands. Occasionally the verbs are suspended, are replaced by a whole series of participial constructions, as in the night march
scene in Part 3:
Sometimes his bobbing shape showed clearly; stiff marionette
jerking on the uneven path; at rare intervals he saw the whole
platoon, with Mr. Jenkins leading.
Wired dolls sideway inclining, up and down nodding, fantastic
troll-steppers in and out the uncertain cool radiance, amazed
crook-back miming, where sudden chemical flare, low-flashed
between the crazy flats, flood-lit their sack-bodies, hung with
rigid properties –
the drop falls,
you can only hear their stumbling off, across the dark proscenium. (37)
I have referred to the visual impact of Jones’ novel. Partly responsible for it is a wide
range of adjectives and adverbs. The artist had a keen eye for changes of light and darkness (noticeable also in his watercolours); here is a good example: the moon shining on
marching men:
The rain stopped.
She drives swift and immaculate out over, free of these obscuring
waters; frets their fringes splendid.
A silver hurrying to silver this waste
silver for bolt-shoulders
silver for butt-heel -irons
silver beams search the interstices, play for breech-blocks underneath the counterfeiting
bower-sway; make-believe a silver scar with drenched tree-wound; silver-trace a festooned
slack; faery-bright a filigree with gooseberries and picket-irons – grace this mauled earth –
transfigure our infirmity –
shine on us.
I want you to play with
and the stars as well... (34–35)
Sometimes the adjectives, apart from being visual, also create a certain mood:
At intervals lights elegantly curved above his lines, but the sheet-rain made little of their
radiance. He heard, his ears incredulous, the nostalgic puffing of a locomotive, far off, across
forbidden fields; and once upon the wind, from over his left shoulder, the nearer clank of
trucks, ration-laden by Mogg’s Hole. (50)
Every reader would agree with Blamires that the book’s greatness lies not in its contents, but in the way the events are experienced. “In this it is the adjective, together with
the simile, the metaphor and the allusion, which creates the exactness and the subtlety of
173
mood.”172 Apart from the visual impact of the language there is a sonic quality referred to
by Swank and others. In his Preface, David Jones describes how he tried to achieve this:
...I frequently rely on a pause at the end of a line to aid the sense and form. A new line,
which the typography would not otherwise demand, is used to indicate some change, inflexion,
or emphasis. I have tried to indicate the sound of certain sentences by giving a bare hint of who
is speaking, of the influences operating to make the particular sound I want in a particular
instance, by perhaps altering a single vowel in one word. I have only used the notes of exclamation, interrogation, etc., when the omission of such signs would completely obscure the sense.
(xi–xii)
Thus the individual voices of the various men in John Ball’s platoon become discernible:
G.S.O.1 – thet’s his ticket – the Little Corporal to a turn
– they’re bringing up his baton – wiv the rations.
wiv knobs on it,
green tabs an’ all.
Rose-marie for re-mem-ber-ance.
Green for Intelligence.
Where’s yer brass-hat.
Flash yer blue-prints.
Hand him his binocular. (78)
Jones is a master of sound also in passages where conversation and dialogue are absent. In the following example, repetition of words and sounds, enriched by alliteration,
are an exact linguistic representation of the soldiers in their trench march, mechanically
following each other:
Half-minds, far away, divergent, own-thought thinking,
tucked away unknown thoughts; feet following file friends,
each his own thought-maze alone treading; intricate, twist
about, own thoughts, all unknown thoughts, to the next so
close following on. (37)
Jones’ delight in language culminates in the combination of recondite expressions,
words of Latin origin, with broad colloquialisms. The Welshman Dai’s boast (79–84)
may stand for many other examples.
The Enemy
Jones’ attitude to the enemy, the Germans, is interesting. They are referred to as Jerry,
squareheads, or simply as “he/they”, and their grey uniforms seem more than a mere
colour, they call up the grey wolf of Nordic literature and are associated with Odin: his
“grey warband”. And they are at least as musical as the British troops as this description
of a Christmas morning in the trenches shows:
172
174
Blamires, p. 110.
Come from outlandish places,
from beyond the world,
from the Hercynian they were at breakfast and were cold as he, they too made
And one played on an accordion:
Es ist ein’ Ros’ entsprungen
Aus einer Wurzel zart.
Since Boniface once walked in Odin’s wood.
Two men in the traverse mouth-organ’d;
four men took up that song. (67)
One reason why the Germans had at all survived the week-long incessant barrage preceding the British attack on 1 July were the dugouts cut deep into the chalk, “that bewilderment of white-worked fosse and gallery, artful traverse, and well-planned shelter, that
had been his Front System” (149), an achievement thoroughly admired and envied by
Jones and his pals in the infantry, as it not only afforded maximum protection but also a
degree of comfort unknown to them. They look at their antagonists with somewhat different eyes now:
The late occupants seem respectable enough by their appointments and certainly one up on the
kind of life you’ve had any experience of for some while. Everything well done and convenient
electric light fittings. Cosy, too, and nothing gimcrack and everything of the best. You hope they
haven’t left any infernal and exactly-timed machines for you before they legged it. (148)
Admiration is somewhat mixed here with a slight worry, an implication that the enemy
might not behave in a “gentlemanly” manner. Even when he sees Germans surrendering
(walking like sleepwalkers from fatigue), Jones is impressed by their smart salute to the
British officer, a scene which conjures up in him memories of the enemy’s clever attack a
short while before (170). Occasionally, there is a touch of irony in Jones’ comments about
the Germans; they are not perfect after all. Thus when the destruction of a house by a
British “heavy” is forecast “Ober-Leutnant Müller will be blamed for failing to locate a
British battery” (96). And the author imagines how
...all the old women in Bavaria are busy with their novenas, you bet your life, and don’t
sleep lest the watch should fail, nor weave for the wire might trip his darling feet and the dead
Karl might not come home. (149)
Like Frederic Manning (and others before him), Jones also sees the Germans as victims forced to endure the same hardships. The final part of his dedication leaves no doubt
about that:
AND TO THE ENEMY
FRONT-FIGHTERS WHO SHARED OUR
PAINS AGAINST WHOM WE FOUND
OURSELVES BY MISADVENTURE
Even during the Second World War Jones believed the warring nations were morally
equivalent (expressed for example in his picture “Epiphany 1941: Britannia and Germania
175
embracing”), a belief held since his Somme days when he was wounded in the same
salient as Adolf Hitler. A letter written by Jones to a Catholic friend in 1938 while reading
Mein Kampf clearly demonstrates the fondness he had developed for the Führer’s ideas:
...I do like a lot of what he says. I back him still against all this curish leftish money thing,
even though I’m a miserable specimen and dependent upon it.173
A few years later he admitted how wrong he had been, “but his choice of blinkers
suggests that it was not unreasonable to relegate Jones and his intellectual milieu, to the
sidelines of British culture.”174 Bell is possibly alluding here to another British war author, the writer Henry Williamson (justly famous for his excellent nature books) to whom
Jones shows close resemblance in his sympathy for German fascism. Like Jones, Williamson was a victim of the Somme. “Indeed, his whole life from the Somme onwards was
one long wound”, as a colleague and neighbour wrote. And he continued: “His life had
been a repeated walk through that nightmare. He was not killed on that battlefield, but he
was certainly maimed, crippled and wounded on it.”175 Williamson’s sympathy for “the
ex-corporal from Germany with the truest eyes I have seen in any man” goes back to that
famous Christmas Truce of 1914 when his volunteer battalion fraternized with the volunteer Linz battalion in which Hitler served. For the author this meeting with men who were
supposed to be his enemies had the quality of an epiphany; it radically changed his attitude to the war, which from then on he believed to be a crime. Later he would write that
“the friendliness of the Germans was the most radiant memory of my post-war life...”176
Reception
Critics and common readers agree with Blamires that in many ways In Parenthesis is not
an easy book, but rewarding because it can be read on many levels and every time one
may make new discoveries. In Blamires’ words: “It is a work that communicates even
before it is understood.”177 Or as T. S. Eliot put it in his Note of Introduction:
For that thrill of excitement from our first reading of a work of creative literature which we
do not understand is itself the beginning of understanding, and if In Parenthesis does not excite
us before we have understood it, no commentary will reveal to us its secret. And the second
step is to get used to the book, to live with it and make it familiar to us. Understanding begins
in the sensibility... (viii)
T. S. Eliot, perhaps the first to realize the literary potential of the text, was not alone in
his praise. Herbert Read, poet, critic, and himself writer of war books, singled it out as
one of the rare species which “takes the war as its subject matter and out of it creates a
work of art”, and hailed the author as “A Malory of the Trenches”.178 The novel was
Cf. Julian Bell, p. 10.
Bell, p. 10.
175
Ronald Duncan: Introduction, in: Brocard Sewell (ed.): Henry Williamson: The Man, The Writings (A
Symposium) (Padstow: 1980), p. xiii.
176
From an essay by Williamson on his political beliefs: “An Affirmation”, Sewell (ed.), p. 157.
177
Blamires, p. 112.
178
H. Read: “A Malory of the Trenches”, London Mercury 36 (July 1937), pp. 304–305.
173
174
176
awarded the prestigious Hawthornden Prize for 1938 (a famous predecessor was Mottram’s
The Spanish Farm in 1924), there were reprints and new editions right up to the 1980s,
but its late appearance and its very nature – “one of the most linguistically and culturally
obscure”179 – prevented it from becoming a huge public and publishing success, although
critics after the Second World War (most of them, anyway) were as impressed as their
pre-war colleagues: Blamires, Bergonzi, Diane DeBell, who judged the book “with the
possible exception of Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy Parade’s End, the best English writing from the Great War”.180 Cyril Falls, in the enlarged 1989 edition, was not too enthusiastic, but careful, confining himself to echoing some of T. S. Eliot’s phrase: “Not to
everyone’s liking; as one critic said: ‘It needs to be lived with to be fully appreciated.’”181
I have already mentioned negative criticism, by D. J. Enright and Andrew Rutherford;
they were joined, at least in part, by Paul Fussell who named his paragraph on the novel
“The honorable miscarriage of In Parenthesis”, but at the end felt bound to concede that
“for all these defects, In Parenthesis remains in many ways a masterpiece impervious to
criticism.”182
7. Aftermath
In the course of the Somme campaign, the Germans were forced to make a gradual retreat.183 In anticipation of the Allied offensive proposed for Spring 1917 (of which they
had advance information) they responded, in February 1917, with a further, deliberate
withdrawal of troops to save manpower by straightening (and thus shortening) the line
and getting rid of salients and kinks which were difficult to defend, leaving behind an area
in which everything that might be of use to the Allies had been systematically destroyed.
In what Martin Gilbert describes as “a brilliant defensive move”184 troops were reassembled in the fortified Hindenburg Line, known to Germans also as Siegfried Line. 185
From a British point of view the territorial gains were modest, frustratingly so, supporting
the notion that the War would go on for ever. This mood was aptly expressed by a British
officer in Mottram’s war novel, Dormer who made some calculations as to the speed of
the British advance at the Somme:
He roughed out the area between the “front” of that date and the Rhine, supposing for the
sake of argument that we went no farther, and divided this by the area gained, on an average, at
the Somme, Vimy and Messines. The result he multiplied by the time taken to prepare and fight
those offensives, averaged again. The result he got was that, allowing for no setbacks, and
providing the pace could be maintained, we should arrive at the Rhine in one hundred and
eighty years.186
DeBell, p. 163.
DeBell, p. 163.
C. Falls/R. J. Wyatt: War Books (London: 1989), p. 305.
182
Fussell, p. 154.
183
See ‘Somme’ map in Appendix II for details of German front-line.
184
Martin Gilbert: The First World War, p. 308.
185
Cf. the music-hall ditty “We’ll hang up our washing on the Siegfried Line”.
186
R. H. Mottram: The Spanish Farm Trilogy (London: 1929), pp. 689–690. My italics.
179
180
181
177
According to British popular myth the abandoned German dug-outs, cut deep into the
ground and frequently quite comfortable, saw a new type of population as Edmund Blunden
tells us:
...Then, said the Expeditionary Force, with the peculiar imagination denied to belong to this
race nowadays, there are strange things afoot on the old Somme. All the deserters are down in
those dug-outs, even Chinese and Russians; they come out to loot their food and water, and
they murder skilfully; they have taken women with them; they are a community of demons.
This prodigious notion (on which Mr. Godfrey Elton founded a short novel) ought never to be
questioned. It was in the spirit of the War, and of that bony old region the Somme, with its
prehistoric caverns and unnatural impression of antiquity. However, I have questioned it, and
cannot find that any of these wolvish men ever fought one another murderously for a woman
with curving lip in a deep dug-out.187
There were other visions as well, relating to the post-war period. The German Rudolf
Binding, when revisiting Beaucourt in 1918, was struck by the desolate, raped landscape
and proposed to keep it in its state as a warning for future generations:
...I can still find no word nor image to express the awfulness of that waste. There is nothing
like it on earth, nor can be. A desert is always a desert; but a desert which tells you all the time that
it used not to be a desert is appalling. That is the tale which is told by the dumb, black stumps of
the shattered trees which still stick up where there used to be villages... This area ought to remain
as it is. No road, no well, no settlement ought to be made here, and every ruler, leading statesmen
(sic!), or president of a republic ought to be brought to see it, instead of swearing an oath on the
Constitution, henceforth and for ever. Then there would be no more wars.188
This was a high-minded, if somewhat unrealistic idea, not taking into account human
nature. More realistic, as later developments proved, was David Jones who encouraged
Private Ball to drop his rifle and “leave it for a Cook’s tourist to the Devastated Areas”
(186). As early as 1917 Jones and his pals had discussed “the possibilities of tourist
activities if peace ever came” (224) and he remembered quite well wondering if unexploded
shells would go up under a holiday-maker, and how people would stand to have their
picture taken on the parapets of his trench. He considered this an act of trespassing and
remembered feeling quite angry about it “as you do if you think of strangers ever occupying a house you live in, and which has, for you, particular associations” (224). Henry M.
Tomlinson ended his war account with a post-war visit by two combatants to their former
theatre of action where they noticed, to their great annoyance, tourists in a light-hearted
mood, led by a guide, collecting battlefield souvenirs. The reaction of anger was even
more fundamental than in Jones:
I was disturbed. “You see, Jim? There’s High Wood. There’s the Butte. And you see what it
all means to them. They allowed it to come, and they kept it going, and now the bitter end is a
souvenir for them. It is not easy to forgive them.”189
187
Introduction, Great Stories of the War (London: 1930), p. iv. This story is also told in a novel by
Donald Boyd: Salute of Guns (London: 1930), see also Paul Fussell, Chapter “Myth, Ritual, and Romance”,
p. 123.
188
R. Binding: A Fatalist at War (London: 1929), pp. 216–217.
189
H. M. Tomlinson: All Our Yesterdays (London: 1930), p. 538.
178
The most sarcastic and scathing comment in this context, written in 1918, came from
the poet Philip Johnstone:
High Wood
Ladies and gentlemen, this is High Wood,
Called by the French, Bois des Fourneaux,
The famous spot which in Nineteen-Sixteen,
July, August and September was the scene
Of long and bitterly contested strife,
By reason of its High commanding site.
Observe the effect of shell-fire in the trees
Standing and fallen; here is wire; this trench
For months inhabited, twelve times changed hands;
(They soon fall in), used later as a grave.
It has been said on good authority
That in the fighting for this patch of wood
Were killed somewhere above eight thousand men,
Of whom the greater part were buried here,
This mound on which you stand being...
Madam, please,
You are requested kindly not to touch
Or take away the Company’s property
As souvenirs; you’ll find we have on sale
A large variety, all guaranteed.
As I was saying, all is as it was,
This is an unknown British officer,
The tunic having lately rotted off.
Please follow me – this way...
the path, sir, please,
The ground which was secured at great expense
The Company keeps absolutely untouched,
And in that dug-out (genuine) we provide
Refreshments at a reasonable rate.
You are requested not to leave about
Paper, or ginger-beer bottles, or orange-peel,
There are waste-paper baskets at the gate.190
The Somme campaign marked a decisive change in the nature of war and, as a consequence, in the way the soldiers felt about it. David Jones describes how it affected the
character of infantry life after July 1916:
From then onward things hardened into a more relentless, mechanical affair, took on a more
sinister aspect. The wholesale slaughter of the later years, the conscripted levies filling the gaps
in every file of four, knocked the bottom out of the intimate, continuing, domestic life of small
contingents of men...
190
In: Brian Gardner (ed.): Up the Line to Death: The War Poets 1914–1918 (London: 1976), p. 157.
179
In the earlier months there was a certain attractive amateurishness, and elbow-room for
idiosyncrasy that connected one with a less exacting past. The period of the individual rifleman, of the “old sweat” of the Boer campaign, the “Bairnsfather” war, seemed to terminate with
the Somme battle. (ix)
The Germans, equally shaken by the experience, added a new word to their military
vocabulary: Materialschlacht, and shrapnel helmet and Stahlhelm became the symbols of
the new, depersonalised type of war. The Kitchener Army of volunteers was almost annihilated, to be replaced by drafts of men with little enthusiasm left as the war seemed to
drag on. What David Jones and Philip Johnstone had anticipated in their satirical texts
and Tomlinson had described full of bitterness, was soon to become reality: battlefield
tourism. In 1919, a series of Illustrated Guides to the Battlefields (1914–1918) appeared
on the market, printed in England.191
Summing Up of Somme Fiction
As we have seen, the fictional output on the topic of the Somme battles written by contemporaries (as a rule also combatants) spans more than twenty years and varies greatly
as regards literary quality and ideological point of view. Dawson’s stories of 1916 (strictly
speaking non-fiction) are an example of war-time propaganda literature designed to boost
morale at home and cover up the enormity of British losses. The tales frequently seem so
far removed from what men really experienced that they may be referred to as fiction. A.
P. Herbert’s novel shares both the unreflecting enthusiasm of early public-school officers
with an analysis of the gradual destruction of the human psyche under duress and a questioning of traditional notions of heroism. It became thus one of the very early psychological war novels. Gristwood’s short fictional text (1927) was written at a time when disenchantment with the War began to be voiced forcefully in Britain. 192 The disillusionment
that started at the Somme is very noticeable in this text, positive aspects seem non-existent. The two outstanding novels on the topic took longest to gestate. They mark the
zenith and the end of contemporary preoccupation with the Somme. Manning’s novel
appeared at the height of WWI literary production (1930) and contains all the ingredients
of a classic. David Jones’ masterpiece shares a number of traits with Manning’s text, but
is even wider in historic scope and more experimental in language.
The memory of the Somme has been kept alive in British war fiction after 1945 right
up to the present time. Henry Williamson’s The Golden Virgin, 1957, was followed by
John Harris’ novel Covenant with Death, 1961; ten years later Susan Hill’s Strange Meeting was published. J. L. Carr’s novel A Month in the Country (1980) set in the Yorkshire
countryside in 1920, deals with the mental recovery of two young men, victims of the
War, one badly shell-shocked at the Somme. Sebastian Faulks’ more recent novel Birdsong
(1993) has at its centre the start of the Somme campaign. Seventy years after that momentous event, Faber published a play by the Irish dramatist Frank McGuinness which con-
Cf. Fussell, p. 69.
C. E. Montague’s earlier critical essays on the War, entitled Disenchantment, were given a reprint by
Chatto & Windus in their very popular Phoenix Library in 1928.
191
192
180
centrates entirely on that topic: Observe The Sons Of Ulster Marching Towards The
Somme.193 The play follows the experience of eight volunteers in the Ulster Division, the
climax being July 1 which was also the actual anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in
1690. Keith Jeffery interprets the close connection between the two events:
The Somme, where the Ulster Division suffered heavy casualties has, like the Boyne, come
to have a sacred place in the Loyalist Protestant mind. It marks the Union sealed with blood. It
stands for the ultimate test of Ulster’s loyalty; a blood-sacrifice to match any made by Irish
nationalists.194
Perhaps the most recent fictional text to deal with the topic is Pat Barker’s latest novel
Another World, 1998, in which the central character Geordie, 101 years old, a proud
Somme veteran, is still haunted by ghosts of the trenches and the horrors surrounding his
brother’s death. A year later, the film company Somme Productions released what may be
the latest visual contribution to the topic: The Trench. Author of the screenplay/director
was William Boyd whose First World War novel An Ice-Cream War, 1982, had described
the British campaign in East Africa and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Trench
shows men of a British infantry unit at a small sector of the front on the eve of 1st July
1916 and their fate on the following day when they go over the top at zero hour. Despite
optimistic speeches made by their superiors the men are subdued; they do not believe in
an easy victory, and the end of that fateful day proves them right.
In contrast to many British units the French allies were more successful at the Somme,
but paid a high price for it. According to some French historians, this French contribution
has been “un peu oubliée”. Two prominent French authors have set out to correct this
neglect. Pierre Miquel pays tribute to the French poilus who fought and died at the Somme
(he speaks of 200 000 dead).195 Like his colleague, Alain Denizot pays tribute to the
forgotten French fighters of the Somme.196 According to him, there were about 500 French
dead and 500 wounded per day, a total of 136 000 dead in four months compared to 179
000 at Verdun. He sees the Battle of the Somme overshadowed by other important ones:
“...dans notre memoire, la Somme est un peu oubliée. Il fallait rappeler ce que fut cette
bataille trop souvent occultée par Verdun, la Marne et le Chemin des Dames” 197
193
First performed in Dublin, at the Peacock Theatre, in February 1985; first English performance at the
Hampstead Theatre in July 1986.
194
Excerpt from a review by Keith Jeffery, The Times Literary Supplement printed (without a date) on
backcover of the play. Correspondence with both the publishers of TLS and Faber to trace the exact source of
the quotation was without success.
195
Pierre Miquel: Les Oubliés de la Somme (Juillet–Novembre 1916), Paris: 2001.
196
Alain Denizot: La Bataille de la Somme (Juillet–Novembre 1916), Paris: 2002.
197
Quote from the back cover of Denizot’s book.
181
CONCLUSION
In its Introduction, this dissertation has demonstrated that the First World War influenced,
was even part of, the literature of Modernism and that, after more than eighty years, with
only a few war veterans still alive (if any at all)1 lively interest in the subject still exists
both in Britain and Germany (although differing in intensity). And this will continue if we
share the optimism of Cyril Falls who made the discovery “that between 1906 and 1921
there were published over one hundred books on the Napoleonic Wars...so, a hundred
years hence, men will be delving into our records of the late War”. 2
In the first part of the dissertation I have given a comprehensive survey of the most
important fictional prose works/novels dealing exclusively with the topic of Verdun,3
including detailed analyses/critical evaluations of the individual texts. If my research has
been correct, this is the first time such a major literary study on the topic of Verdun has
been undertaken, which is somewhat surprising since valuable work on certain aspects of
the topic (Verdun as an important myth/nationalist novels on Verdun, Unruh’s Opfergang,
Zweig’s Verdun novel) had already been done in the 1970s and 80s.4
As I predicted in the Introduction, the literary merit of the books discussed varies
greatly. Fritz von Unruh’s Opfergang , the first major literary prose work on the subject,
has deservedly received much critical (and sometimes uncritical) attention and I have
shown (by analysing structure, characterization, imagery, language) that this text is a powerful exponent of German Expressionism. I have also demonstrated why it falls short of
being a masterpiece: Due to incomplete revision of the text by the author there are inconsistencies which make the pacifist message not as unambiguous and unequivocal as Unruh
might have wished, and the rather negative and sometimes even defamatory description
of the enemy contributes to that effect. (It was very generous of the French to overlook
this fact when they invited Unruh, the first German after the War, to address the PEN Club
in Paris in 1924.) And, as my critical analysis has also shown, Opfergang contains certain
doubtful stylistic elements (mostly associated with visions); in some of these passages the
author comes dangerously close to kitsch.5
Unruh’s text is followed by two novels from the pens of nationalist writers (Beumelburg/
Wehner) which represent the völkisch literature predominant from 1930 onwards to the
1
The deaths of some of the better known combatants remind us of this fact: the British poet Geoffrey
Dearmer in 1996, the German writer Ernst Jünger in 1998, both at the age of 103.
2
Cyril Falls: War Books (1989) Introduction, p. ix.
3
Therefore an important text (from an ideological, not a literary point of view) like Schauwecker’s Aufbruch
der Nation (Tr. The Furnace) has not been included.
4
E.g. Geissler (1964), Denkler/Prümm (1976), Gollbach (1978), Kasang (1980), Müller (1986), Midgley
(1987), Hüppauf (1988).
5
A point made also by at least one contemporary critic, Rudolf Binding in 1921 (Cf. footnote 61 in
Opfergang Chapter).
182
end of the Third Reich. They were both written as literary responses to Remarque and his
hated bestseller, which did not prevent their authors from resorting to the same devices
used by him as they promised commercial success. I have shown in detail why their literary value is doubtful (poor characterization, certain unbelievable details, mixed metaphors, too much personification, many clichés, a primitive type of humour etc.) but as
they contained the right ideology they were praised by the literary establishment of the
National Socialist period despite their obvious weaknesses (which were sometimes even
admitted). Thus Beumelburg’s novel (and its sequel) was recommended by the librarians
of the Bibliotheksschule and given the support of the party distributing machinery which
guaranteed popularity and commercial success; a shortened version of the novel became
a set text for schools,6 which added to the financial profit. The book was useful for the NS
rulers, as it allowed adolescent readers identification with the young hero, Siewers, and
prepared them, and future generations of young people, for unquestioning loyal service
and, if necessary, sacrifice for the Fatherland.
Wehner’s novel, with its unbelievable construction of the seven friends meeting all the
time (a weakness acknowledged by leading NS critics), with its arrogant imperialism and
racialism, its defamation of the French and their coloured troops was declared “the most
successful attempt of recreating the events at Verdun, surpassing Unruh, Schauwecker
and Beumelburg” (Pongs), another critic even hailed it as “the most perfect literary work
about the front line soldier” (Linden).7 I have shown that the very same people criticized
Unruh and denounced Zweig’s texts as decadent worthless literature and their author as
Asphaltliterat and wurzellosen Intellektuellen, a writer who was not embedded in the
community of the people. The Expressionist Movement was condemned summarily, and
Zweig, the Jewish humanist and pacifist became a threefold target. In the Biographical
Sketches (Appendix I) the result of so much critical attention by the National Socialists,
the attempt of the authors Unruh and Zweig to fight back with their own weapons, is
described.
My analysis of Arnold Zweig’s Erziehung vor Verdun, the last German text discussed,
proves that it is an impressive example of New Realism (Neue Sachlichkeit) and “the
most successful attempt of recreating the events at Verdun”. With less pathos and more
clearly than Unruh Zweig sent out his message of pacifism, humanism and international
brotherhood. And in contrast to Beumelburg and Wehner, Zweig was a talented writer
who used his considerable skill to inform and entertain the reader at the same time (the
old humanist tradition). I have worked out certain aspects which appeared relevant for a
critical discussion of the novel:
– Against the background of Zweig’s familiarity with psychoanalysis his novel cannot
be simply read as traditionalist, although it may seem so at first glance,
– The socialist component (socialism as the progressive force in the novel) is not as
strong as some (socialist) critics would have it,
– Anti-Semitism as one of the realities in the German army,
– The role/function of the novel in the context of the Grischa cycle.
6
7
Werner Beumelburg: Mit 17 vor Verdun (1931).
For details see the Biographical sketch of J. K. Wehner in Appendix I.
183
Like Unruh’s text Zweig’s also presents the problem of translation (there are no English versions of either the Beumelburg or the Wehner novel). My critical look at both
translations discovered some positive aspects, but also some of the weaknesses (e.g. ignorance of certain types of language [army slang, colloquial speech]). I have learned to
appreciate the difficulties the translator of a German Expressionist text must have had and
how he overcame them. In the case of both texts I have made suggestions to improve the
translations. The fact that some of the translated passages of Zweig’s novel were not to be
found in the German (GDR) edition showed me that changes must have been made in the
original at a later stage (most probably by the editor and mostly for ideological reasons).8
In a short chapter after Unruh’s text I have collected examples of Verdun literature in
Germany between 1919 and 1945. The left-wing liberal weekly magazine Die Weltbühne
became an important forum for the discussion about the war (the 1924 editions commemorated the beginning of hostilities with numerous critical articles). The number of literary
texts increased towards the end of the 1920s and in the final illiberal phase of the Weimar
Republic the tenor which had been mainly pacifist now became militantly nationalist (this
applies mainly to the war novel). But on the radio, as late as 1932, liberal authors such as
Hans Chlumberg and Edlef Köppen were able to broadcast their plays (Köppen lost his post
the following year). On the whole my survey has shown that the take-over by representatives of right-wing, nationalist literature happened well before 1933.
At the beginning and at the end of the Verdun series there are texts with a pacifist
message “framing” two nationalist novels by völkisch authors. But my closer comparative
look at the four texts has revealed similarities and a continuity which one would not have
suspected at the start: There is the continuity of interpretation of the war: From Unruh to
Wehner (and other nationalist writers of the 30s, including Ernst Jünger) war is seen as an
elemental, mythical force outside the control of man. Zweig is the notable exception here.
But even he makes his character Bertin share this belief at the beginning of the novel,
before his education takes place and he ceases to be a starry-eyed Parcifal. Zweig’s novel
is the only one in the Verdun context which reveals war as a man-made activity in which
men are exploited by other men and which unmasks patriotic slogans as humbug, as a
device to camouflage the real material interests of those in power. This attitude, partly
influenced by his reading of Barbusse, is also noticeable in the other novels of his war
cycle, perhaps most prominently in Die Zeit ist reif, which gives insights into the preparations for war, the collusion between the military powers and the representatives of industry in Germany.
For Unruh, sacrifice in war was only justified if it brought about a changed society
without privileged classes, a new type of man, der neue Mensch being one of the visions
of Expressionism. For the nationalist writers the catastrophe of Verdun was either seen as
a necessary prerequisite to building the new Nation (cf. Schauwecker), or war was deemed
necessary to create out of the comradeship of the trenches the greater national communion (Beumelburg). Wehner interpreted Verdun as a defeat brought about by the Dolchstoß
of deliberating old age (Falkenhayn) into the back of young vigorous, victorious troops.
As regards the German attitude towards the enemy I have found that writers from
Unruh to Wehner were in agreement that the French soldiers were no match for their own
8
A fact also criticized by H. A. Walter at the first Zweig Symposium in Cambridge; see footnote 222 in
the Zweig chapter (1.6.).
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troops as fighters. As I have shown, Unruh’s rather negative characterization of the enemy was part of the original draft of his text and it is surprising that he did not alter these
passages in the revised version of Opfergang. There is continuity in the field of language/
imagery (use of quasi-religious metaphors, animal metaphors) which partly includes Zweig
(cf. the description of the older Kroysing).
I have also shown the continuity in the use of certain characters and motifs. It appears
that a certain amount of borrowing has taken place within the Verdun novels (and from
outside). Thus, some of Wehner’s seven men display characteristic features which we
have first met in Unruh’s novel: they have visions, are able to forecast the future, make
prophetic speeches. Wehner also attempts to give his book a certain archaic quality by
echoing famous tragic works of ancient Greece. Beumelburg, as I have shown, imitates
Remarque’s Bäumer-Katczinsky formula, with the untimely death of one of the protagonists. In his second draft of the novel, Zweig introduces Leutnant Kroysing (one of the
“teachers” of Bertin as regards the realities of war) who shares some character traits with
Beumelburg’s Leutnant, a successful attempt to appeal to ex-servicemen of every persuasion. The same applies for his rather negative description of the Base (cf. Beumelburg);
most war veterans would agree with him. In my opinion Zweig has also borrowed from
Unruh: I have shown that his description of the Crown Prince’s encounter with troops
before Verdun is very likely to have been modelled on Unruh’s report of the incident (not
in the novel, but in his biographical sketch of the Hohenzollern heir). By a slight change
Zweig gives the incident the desired poignancy (the hand of the talented writer is noticeable here!).
At the beginning of the Verdun section I have given a detailed description of the military background based on both British and German historical sources (Liddle Hart, A. J.
P. Taylor, Horne, Gilbert, Beumelburg [Reichsarchiv documents], Weerth), and some
contemporary voices from both sides of the conflict to testify to the very special quality of
this campaign. I have shown that Verdun, the grimmest and longest battle of the War (”the
battlefield with the highest density of dead per square yard that has probably ever been
known”)9 was instrumental (together with the Somme) in shaping the face of the First
World War for the majority of people, had a profound influence on the national psyches
of France and Germany, as most of the troops from both countries had been involved in
the fighting there at one stage. Verdun became synonym for Hell, the other soubriquet,
“The Mill of the Meuse” not much less horrifying.
With the help of the historical sources referred to above I was able to point out that
before Verdun Germany had a reasonable chance of winning the War but that in the course
of ten months this chance dwindled away because on several occasions during the offensive advantages were not made use of. Falkenhayn’s plan of limiting the attack (not to
include the left bank of the Meuse) and trying to engage the French in a drawn-out battle
of attrition (“bleed the French white”) instead of providing more reserves and making an
energetic push at an opportune moment proved disastrous for German troops. The units
were kept in the line until “they were literally ground to powder” then topped up with new
drafts fresh from the depot, whereas the French Noria system introduced a quick rotation
of troops before they were decimated. It is true that the blood-letting devitalised a whole
generation in France, the “Men of Fifty” (Jean Dutourd) of 1940 who handed over France
9
Horn, p. 13
185
to the Germans, but in the end Verdun became a sacred national legend, a myth, another
shining example of French gloire. And the French poilu, moulded by Verdun like his
German counterpart, was able “to carry a sense of pride away in his memory” (Jacques
Meyer).
For the Germans Verdun also became a myth, but a traumatic one, borne out of the
realisation that heroism and suffering on an unprecedented scale had not led to victory but
to defeat and eventually to national humiliation. For the troops involved it was obvious
that poor leadership (Falkenhayn) was responsible for this catastrophe (comparable to
Stalingrad). The influence of Verdun on the minds of the Wehrmacht leaders was immense; many of them had been actively involved in the battle as junior officers (von
Manstein, Paulus, Guderian, von Brauchitsch, Keitel, von Kluge and others); there must
have been a strong desire among these men to settle the score, to get their revenge. The
Panzer columns of Guderian and Manstein were a direct result of their 1916 experience.
The French, on the other hand, still believed in fortifications and created their Maginot
Line – with little success.
I have shown that right wing writers and politicians before 1933 and even more so after
the National Socialists came to power created their own version of the Verdun myth. In
his Reichsarchiv treatment of the campaign, Beumelburg had admitted the German defeat; later, fictional accounts either interpreted that defeat as a prerequisite to the creation
of the Nation, a furnace that melted the formerly heterogenous individuals into a homogenous whole (the new Nation [Schauwecker]) (with the implication that weaker elements
were destroyed in the process [Hoffmann]) or simply ignored it by limiting the scope of
the narrative (Beumelburg’s GB), by interpreting war as a mythical elemental force that
knew neither victory nor defeat; they became almost irrelevant (cf. Hüppauf’s essay on
Verdun) and created the new stoic type of warrior so favoured by Ernst Jünger and the
National Socialists. This interpretation made the question of responsibility superfluous
and thus avoided direct criticism of the military commanders.
In our context I have been able to show that the interpretation of war as an elemental
force goes right back to Unruh, but that his text and those by Beumelburg and Wehner,
while applying this idea, also contain criticism of the Higher Command. Unruh exposed
the savage ruthlessness of the Commander-in-Chief who took sacrifices of 400 000 men
for granted, was not willing to provide reserves and publicly reprimanded one of his
generals (Final Chapter: “The Way of Sacrifice”), Beumelburg’s criticism was more muted;
he implied that the men at the front knew best and associated the Staff with arrogance and
ignorance. Wehner, who partly based his novel on the sources of the Reichsarchiv, contrasted dynamic, victorious troops at Verdun with the careful tactician Falkenhayn whose
decisions were described as the Dolchstoß into the back of his fighting men. Wehner’s
novel created the impression that the victoriously advancing army was ordered to retreat
and thus robbed of victory. He (deliberately?) ignored the fact that (because of the Somme
offensive) the French had more advantages and gradually regained territory previously
lost. Zweig’s novel shared some of the criticism of the Higher Command (expressed by
Lieutenant Kroysing, e.g. his account of the “heroic storming” of the Douaumont, in reality a farce / by Lebehde and Pahl) but here it was embedded in his criticism of society as
a whole. Zweig used an essay on Verdun to criticize the military leaders who only believed in material, masses, and calculated brutality and who ruthlessly sacrificed their
own troops. (“Why is the left bank of the Maas not occupied, thus exposing the Germans
to murderous enfilades as they advance?”) He retold the horrible details of the fighting,
186
expressed his admiration of the courageous French and his sympathy for the common
German soldier who endured super-human hardships.10
As my list of publication shows, after WWII Verdun as a (traumatic) myth appeared to
have lost much of its impact in Germany. There was some interest (and still is) in the
topic, even a certain revival, but nothing on the scale of British comments on the Somme
campaign. In my opinion there may be a number of reasons for this development (perhaps
not all equally relevant):
– The rapid German victory over France in 1940 ( Blitzkrieg) could be interpreted in
the national psyche as a successful revenge for 1916.
– More recent military and human catastrophes have occupied German minds since
then (Stalingrad, the destruction of NS Germany, the Allied occupation, the refugee
experience, the Holocaust).
– The fact that the topic was so popular in NS Germany has led to a certain post-war
reticence to touch on the subject.
– France and Germany are no longer considered Erbfeinde (hereditary enemies) but
friendly allies. Against the background of this changed political climate a discussion of Verdun might be considered by many people not politically correct.
– The majority of German Verdun veterans is probably dead by now, so there are
hardly any Zeitzeugen (witnesses) for historians left.
As regards Britain and the Somme, my dissertation first introduced facts about the
military background, especially the first phase of the offensive. With the help of statistical
material I was able to demonstrate why this offensive had the quality of developing into a
national trauma: The result of the first day alone, despite a week-long barrage by British
artillery intended to flatten the German wire and break their defences, was disastrous: the
greatest defeat for British arms since the Battle of Hastings, 20 000 dead and 40 000
wounded, almost eight times as many as in the Battle of Waterloo. Most regiments were
severely decimated, some ceased to exist. It also meant a serious shortage of commanding
officers the effect of which would be felt in the future (cf. the fate of Liddell Hart’s battalion). 1 July was the end of Kitchener’s Army, that first British attempt to respond to the
military exigency with volunteers after the small regular army (the B.E.F., the British
Expeditionary Force) had been all but wiped out by numerically superior German forces
by 1914 and required replacing. Now, for the first time in British history, conscripted
troops were used to fill the ranks of the volunteer battalions. Now, for the first time, no
longer did an expeditionary force do the job (as it had done more or less successfully in
various colonial theatres of war), the whole nation was personally and materially involved
in the war effort.
I have shown that this fact, combined with the nature of the offensive (high losses, not
much real material progress) changed the face of the war which now presented a picture
very much like that of Verdun. The new shrapnel helmet introduced in the same year
added to the grim atmosphere. The British historian A. J. P. Taylor declared the battle of
the Somme “an unredeemed defeat” (140). Not all British historians would agree with
this verdict, though, particularly those belonging to the “revisionist school” which among
10
Cf. the Zweig chapter (1.6.), footnote 289.
187
others includes John Terraine, Charles Carrington, Niall Ferguson, Gordon Corrigan. For
Terraine and his allies the real battle of the Somme started on 2nd July, lasted for 140
days, and was a success. According to Terraine, the most important legacy of the Somme
was a “mountain of mythology” which he condemns:
For eight decades the myths of the Somme have worked their mischief,
nourished and multiplied by the media in all their manifestations and by
politicians of all parties. The very word “Somme” became a synonym for
the supposedly mindless repetition of totally unimaginative and hideously
costly attacks which were widely believed to have been the sole significant
characteristic of the conduct of the British Somme offensive.11
For Terraine Somme mythology played a big part in the “Disenchantment” of the 1920s
and 1930s and led to a “national recoil” from all forms of military preparations between
the wars. Both Terraine and Carrington quote German sources to support their claims of a
German defeat on the battlefields of the Somme. According to Carrington it was
...in the weeks of continuous close fighting along the Pozières – High Wood Ridge,
throughout the whole of July and August…that the heart was torn out of the
German Army so that they never fought so well again. 12
The documents and the contemporary witnesses I have quoted demonstrate that like
the German Verdun attack, the British offensive suffered from problems of leadership
(“brave helpless soldiers, blundering obstinate generals”, [Taylor]) which resulted in the
complacent German comment of “lions led by donkeys”. It is true, that the German army
was shocked, even badly shaken by the offensive, but not crippled as a fighting machine.
Most of the deep dugouts had not been destroyed by the artillery, even some of the wire
not broken, and after seven days the British advancing (some even dribbling a football!)
were mown down by strategically placed machine guns.
Two German combatants whom I have cited testify to the horrors of the Somme for the
defenders, Ernst Jünger and Paul Zech. For Jünger it was this scenario, the Materialschlacht,
which brought forth a new type of soldier, stoic, impassive, beyond fear or any other
emotions.
How then did British prose literature respond to the shocking reality? I have found out
that during the war most fictional prose texts hid or at least veiled the truth (e.g. Ian Hay,
Buchan with his gripping Richard Hannay tales) in contrast to the more outspoken poetry
of particularly Sassoon, Owen, Rosenberg. As a prose example of war time propaganda I
have introduced Captain Dawson’s Somme Battle Stories which relied strongly on the
popularity of his illustrator, the famous Bairnsfather. The stories professed to be true
accounts but in the face of factual evidence this is hard to believe today. The German
enemy (who frequently was reported to fight “dirty”) was shown up as no match to the
superior (in morale and courage) British troops. This was very much the same way the
French were portrayed in some of the German war novels discussed above.
John Terraine: Foreword to Gerald Gliddon’s Legacy of the Somme (Stroud: 1996), p. v.
Quoted by Terraine: foreword, p.vii. See also Charles Carrington: Soldier from the Wars Returning,
1965, p. 120, and Niall Ferguson: The Pity of War (London: 1998). The latest contribution to the subject by
a revisionist comes from Gordon Corrigan: Mud, Blood and Poppycock, 2003.
11
12
188
I have analysed in detail Herbert’s text dating 1919, a surprisingly early example of a
psychological war novel which anticipated some of those to appear ten years later. I have
shown that the writing of it was motivated by a real incident, and I have followed up the
fate of those men executed up to the present time. This has involved me in correspondence with a Member of Parliament who (like Herbert before him) tries to find late justice
for these victims. There are signs in Britain (and in France) that public opinion may have
changed enough to make success possible.
With Gristwood’s tale of the late 1920s I have given an example of the disillusionment
in war literature of that period. It is revealing that both Herbert and Gristwood hardly
referred to the enemy, they were preoccupied mainly with the mental and physical state of
their protagonist and his reaction to events and people around him. Gristwood’s text contains scathing comments on the Bairnsfather type of humour.
As regards literary quality, the finest texts on the topic of the Somme were published
rather late, Manning’s in 1930, Jones even later, in 1937. Like Gristwood before him (in
the tale The Coward) Manning put the present war into the context of British military
involvement in France since the days of Agincourt by using quotations from Shakespeare.
Jones took this method one step further by widening the historic scope, demonstrating
that the War was also part of the Matter of Britain. Both Manning and Jones expressed
their respect of the German enemy with whom they shared much suffering, and were
generous with the recognition of his particular talents.
My analysis of the novels makes clear that, while Herbert described the mental strain
of the Somme campaign on a psyche already stressed by previous experiences (Gallipoli),
Manning and Jones in particular expressed the melancholy which came with the change
of war, when new conscripts filled up the empty ranks, men without enthusiasm. As Jones
graphically described in his Preface, the Somme meant the end of amateur idealists, the
end of the Bairnsfather war as he called it. The troops did not share the optimism of the
Higher Command but rather felt the catastrophic nature of the war; the myth of the Somme
as a “monstrous shambles” was born.13 Both writers were clearly on the side of the common soldier and passed critical comments (via their protagonists) on the Staff, the “Olympians” who now and again graciously deigned to descend to the lesser mortals.
Compared to the impact which Verdun had on Germany (a national trauma) the effect
of the Somme campaign on the British mind appears to have been, initially, more moderate and to have developed only gradually into a traumatic myth. The question why it took
so long was discussed at the Somme Symposium held at Amiens in 1986, but “no answers
were on offer that seemed in any way conclusive”.14 I will venture some suggestions:
– The British learned about this disastrous campaign during the war by a press which
(like everywhere else in the warring countries of Europe) was strictly censored. By
introducing two respected British sources, the journalist/war correspondent Philip
Gibbs and the writer/historian John Buchan I have been able to demonstrate how
successfully most of the truth was kept from the public in 1916.
– The fact that Britain won the war must have also played a part in not finding out the
reality too early. Unlike the Germans at Verdun, the British were not forced to retreat, they slowly gained ground, but at what a price!
13
14
Cf. the title of an early war book: A. R. Dugmore: When the Somme Ran Red (1918).
Eric Thudgill, in: Roucoux (ed.), p. 189.
189
– Another contributing factor must have been the fact that there were other military
disasters for the British before (Loos, Gallipoli, Kut/Mesopotamia in 1915) and
after (Passchendaele in 1917, the Spring Retreat in 1918).
– The public, if they got to know about the facts, must have learned to accept them as
the price a nation has to pay for victory.
– Soldiers returning from the war were reluctant to talk about the horrors; coming to
terms with them took some time.
Through the experience of Vera Brittain, writer and pacifist who lost brother, fiancé
and two close friends in the war (her correspondence with them is a moving testimony)15
I have demonstrated that finding the truth was a slow process and involved a strong will.
A new edition of Vera Brittain’s war diaries complements the collection of her war letters,
permitting the reader to re-live in detail her traumatic experience.16
I have shown that some war book authors (not only British) were to a certain extent
traumatized so that it was only after about ten years had passed that they were able to put
it in writing. David Jones is a case in point. Two major nervous breakdowns, one in the
1930s, accompanied by mental paralysis and insomnia (the latter was with him most of
his life) and eventually the release, writing as a therapeutic exercise. Other good examples are the poets Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden who went up to Oxford in
October 1919. On their mental state at the time Graves wrote:
Edmund had war-shock as badly as myself, and we would talk each other into an almost
hysterical state about the trenches. We agreed that we would not be right until we got all that
talk on to paper. He was first with Undertones of War, published in 1928.17
It was not until the late 1920s that the voices of disillusionment were listened to by the
majority of people, and discussion began about the truth about the War, Graves’ book
being one of the texts which triggered off the public debate (comparable to the effect of
Remarque’s novel in Germany).
I have proved that the memory of the Somme is still very much alive in Britain as
shown by a large number of reprints of pre-war texts and new publications, specialized
historical accounts and anthologies commemorating anniversaries of the Somme battles, 18
and some fine novels and plays.19 The tenor of certain post-war (WWII) titles in my
opinion is an indication that the traumatic character of the Somme experience has been
generally accepted by now:
– John Harris: Covenant with Death (1961), The Somme: Death of a Generation (1966).
– Terry Norman: The Hell They Called High Wood: The Somme 1916 (1984).
– Michael Chappell: The Somme 1916: Crucible of a British Army (1995).
Alan Bishop/Mark Bostridge (eds.): Letters from a Lost Generation (London: 1998).
Alan Bishop (ed.): Chronicle of Youth – Great War Diary 1913 – 1917 (London: 2000).
17
R. Graves: Good-Bye To All That: An Autobiography (London: 1929), pp. 358–359.
18
Cf. book titles by Harris, Brown, Powell, McGuinness, Charlton, Lewis in “List of additional Somme
titles” in Appendix III.
19
See Appendix III.
15
16
190
The popularity of the subject may be due to a strong British interest in the Great War in
general (much more developed than in Germany as I have shown), – even the Merseyside
poet Roger McGough tried his hand at a WWI poem in the 1960s – but there is also a
more specific reason (bound up with the traumatic nature of the experience) as the novelist and WWI expert Pat Barker has pointed out:
The Somme is like the Holocaust. It revealed things we cannot come to terms with and
cannot forget. It never becomes the past.20
This statement may be complemented by an essay written 80 years after the traumatic
event, in which the author, Valentine Cunningham (a Fellow in English Literature at Corpus Christi, Oxford) summed up the legacy of the Somme for our time. For him 1 July
“was, arguably, the day on which Britain’s century really began. Nothing, of course could
ever be quite the same again after the truths about the Somme had been absorbed.”
But though what occurred on that first day on the Somme and on the terrible days that
followed was momentous in and of itself, the greater importance of the Somme is, I think, as a
parable of modern Britishness, and most particularly, modern Englishness. The Somme was a
tragedy as terrifying and as pitiful as all great tragedies should be, but it is as allegory, a kind of
programme, a moving prophetic vision, of how life in Britain would be after the Great War was
over, that it has even greater moment.
The author then mentioned grief, anger, mania and melancholic illness as part of the
heritage:
But it was melancholia that was perhaps the profoundest heritage of the War – and melancholia, as characterised by Freud, is the great disabler of change and action. It involves painful
dejection, general inertia, self-reproach, with expectations of things always getting worse. Which
is a bleak menu for what we can think of as a post-First World War English selfhood. If any of
those symptoms still apply to us – and of course they do – the events of 80 years ago are deeply
responsible.21
Finally, a last look across national boundaries. The dissertation has shown that the
most valuable contributions (from an aesthetic and literary point of view) to the topic
took longest to gestate (Zweig 1935, Jones 1937) and arrived on the market rather late.
Because of that and because of the fact that for Zweig the domestic market was closed (we
remember that he was published by Querido in Amsterdam) the financial gain was probably not as great as the novels would have deserved. In Jones’ case the nature of the book,
as I have demonstrated in detail, prevented it from becoming a popular success. Even the
other fine British contribution, Manning’s novel, arriving at the right time, despite its
obvious qualities which I have pointed out, could not match the success of Remarque’s
bestseller (from a literary point of view inferior) both at home and in Britain. Surprisingly, for all the brisk translatory activity of the period, no German version of the novel
In Peter Parker: “The war that never becomes the past”, TLS, September 8, 1995, pp. 4–5, here p. 4.
Valentine Cunningham: “Slaughter of our innocence”, The Observer Review, Sunday 30 (June 1996),
all three quotations: p. 4.
20
21
191
appeared until the 1960s. After 1933 Remarque, Zweig, Glaeser, and other war book
authors were banned in NS Germany and their books committed to the flames at synchronised autos-da-fé all over the Reich.22 Now there was no longer any competition for the
völkisch type of war novel, of which I have analysed two representatives in detail. Both
Beumelburg and Wehner, supported by the party machine, became popular writers with
impressive sales figures. As I have shown they owed their success not to aesthetic/literary
merit but to the correct ideology which corresponded to the NS Zeitgeist.
I have demonstrated that in both countries during the War prose literature on our topic
was predominantly in the service of propaganda. I was able to point out that this was also
true for Unruh and reveal the chauvinistic character of the author’s first draft made in
1916. The pacifist prose text of 1919 whose qualities I have discussed in detail is a worthy companion to Herbert’s psychological novel. In language and style they are miles
apart but both mark a certain literary quality of war fiction at an early stage after the War.
Gristwood’s tale is not too impressive as a work of literature, but it represents the disillusionment felt and expressed by many war authors of that period.
The attitude to the enemy changed, as I have shown, from hatred and defamation in
early texts (this goes mainly for the German side) to respect, sympathy, and even admiration in the latest novels. We may consider David Jones’ (and Henry Williamson’s) sympathy for the Führer and their infatuation with German fascism somewhat naive, but as I
have shown these sentiments were the result of first-hand experience of the enemy in the
trenches opposite and of shared suffering. Let me close with a statement from Manning ’s
fine war novel, a sentence which expresses the tragic situation of the ordinary soldier at
the Somme (but it could have been at any front). The words are put in the mouth of
Weeper Smart, a man seemingly not cut out for heroic deeds ( but who surprised them all
in the end):
“A tell thee”, said Weeper, “positively, there are thousand o’ poor beggars, over there in the
German lines, as don’t know, no more’n we do ourselves, what it’s all about.” (168)
22
192
Cf. J. Wulf, Chapter “Verbrennung ‘undeutschen‘ Schrifttums”, pp. 44–67.
APPENDIX I (BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES)
193
194
Fritz von Unruh
Fritz von Unruh, son of a Prussian officer in the Guards and member of an ancient aristocratic family, was born in 1885. Despite his artistic talent he was destined to follow family
tradition, and at twelve was sent to the military college at Plön where he was chosen as a
companion for Prince Oskar of Prussia. Life there was hard for the sensitive boy; education consisted of deadening drill and being bullied by his fellow cadets. A later autobiography tells the grim details.1 An earlier “inmate” had been Ludendorff who, according to
Unruh, was a typical product of the Plön spirit:
Ludendorff was educated at the same military college as myself. I believe in room 78! In
Plön where I spent eleven years of my life in Prison. That is why I know the sources of his
power. We were trained for war. 2
As a lieutenant in the Kaiser-Franz-Garde-Grenadier-Regiment in Berlin he wrote his
first epic and dramatic texts, some of which were published under the pseudonym “Fritz
Ernst”. When his drama Offiziere was about to be put on stage his commanding officer
forced him to decide between a military career or a life as a writer. The Empress herself
(who before had tried to transfer the cadet to a college of art) intervened again in favour
of the budding author but in vain. In summer 1911 Unruh resigned his commission, in late
autumn his play was performed in Berlin under the famous Max Reinhardt and created a
sensation. When two years later another play, Prinz Louis Ferdinand, was published which
dealt with the collapse of Prussia under Napoleon but foreshadowed a similar catastrophe
under Wilhelm II, the Emperor banned it from all Prussian theatres.
Despite his critical attitude towards Prussia’s military tradition, Unruh immediately
volunteered when war broke out and joined the Hanau Uhlans, the Lützowsche Jäger of
Napoleonic War fame. He compared his situation then to that of a former alcoholic who
has relapsed for sentimental reasons.3 Unruh’s uhlans were the first Germans to cross the
Belgian border, full of high spirits, dreaming of victory and a glorious parade through the
Arc de Triomphe in Paris (he came close enough to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance).
In his monograph of Unruh, Kronacher attributes to the writer a critical attitude – “Even
during the advance on Paris of an apparently invincible army he did not succumb to the
general exuberance of victory” 4 – which, as his poems of that period clearly show, he did
not possess at the time before his accident. 5
F. v. Unruh: Der Sohn des Generals, 1957.
F. v. Unruh: Flügel der Nike, p. 48.
3
In his autobiographical sketch “Quo Vadis” (1931), in Sämtliche Werke, vol. 7, p. 127.
4
A. Kronacher: Fritz von Unruh, p. 15.
5
Cf. the last lines of his famous “Reiterlied”: “Wir Lützower steh’n auf dem Plan / Und hau’n die Welt
zusammen”.
1
2
195
The awakening from the intoxication came when during a patrol Unruh was shot from
his horse, left lying as dead and robbed of all his clothes and belongings. When he regained consciousness he realized that he had been lying on the corpse of a French chasseur.
For the first time he had been close to death, had experienced real fright and horror. And
now the strong wish to live:
“To be or not to be” – it had never reached the cells of my consciousness. But now – when
I, believed to be dead, returned to the regiment, the decision between to be or not to be was no
longer a question – to be, I had suddenly realized that in the boundless space of utter desolation, – to be, with that higher motto I returned. To be! – I felt it like religion... With new eyes I
saw the dead in the field now... To be – suddenly every flower gave me the message... For the
first time I understood the glances of women...6
The impressions of the Battle of the Marne, which abruptly ended romantic patrols and
any notion of a quick and easy victory, resulted in the dramatic poem Vor der Entscheidung
(Facing the Decision), mostly written on horseback. The text was banned from publication, but a pirate edition was secretly printed. For this work Unruh was awarded the Swiss
Bodmer Prize in 1917, having before received the privately sponsored German Kleist
Prize for his play Prinz Louis Ferdinand in 1915.
During the fighting at Verdun Unruh was assistant adjutant of the XVIII. Army Corps
and one of his tasks was to keep a record of German casualties. He was also asked to write
an account of the Battle of Verdun which would raise morale both at home and at the
front. The result was the novel Opfergang. In a biographical sketch Der Kronprinz7 Unruh
describes how he was asked by the Prince to read a chapter from his text to the members
of his staff after Unruh had informed him about the enormous German losses at Verdun.8
While Unruh was reading the Chapter “Storm” the audience stole away, and in the end he
was alone with the Crown Prince. Back in his billetts he found an order issued by General
von Knobelsdorf to report to the battalion heading for Fort Douaumont the next morning.
As this was a death sentence, Unruh informed the Crown Prince who overruled his chiefof-staff and tore up the order.
In 1917 Unruh’s third major text to deal with the War was completed, Ein Geschlecht
(A Generation), first part of a dramatic trilogy, which, like its predecessors was banned by
the Supreme Army Command. The theme of the play is the general brutalisation caused
by war and the vision of a better world to come, demonstrated through an anonymous
family. According to Kronacher the manuscript mainly written at the front is spattered
with blood, and each page contains as a footnote a short prayer as the writer was not sure
if he would still be alive when the page should be turned.9 The play with its powerful
language and rich imagery was highly acclaimed by contemporary critics despite shocking details (a son is shot for cowardice, another for rape, there is incest between brother
and sister), which prompted one critical reviewer, Julius Bab, to refer to it as “a product
“Quo Vadis”, p. 129f.
Sämtliche Werke, vol. 17, pp. 375–391.
8
Unruh’s casualty lists amounted to more than 600 000 dead between February and May 1916, a figure
that appears far too high compared to official post-war counts. Horne speaks of a total of over 700 000
casualties for both French and Germans, a figure which includes wounded and missing. Contemporary German lists admitted to over 100 000 in dead and missing alone. C.f. Horne, p. 327.
9
“The Crown Prince”, p. 382.
6
7
196
blown up out of all intellectual and artistic bounds”.10 The author was granted one performance before an invited audience in Frankfurt in June 1918, later in the year the Vienna
Burgtheater put it on stage with triumphant success. During a nine-months hospital spell
in Zurich to convalesce from inflammation of nerves (a result of the war) Unruh completed the second part, Platz (“Plaza”), whose première in June 1920 was an even greater
success than the previous play.11 The final part of the trilogy, Dietrich, completed in 1936,
was not published until 1957.
In the post-war years Unruh was an outstanding cultural and political force in the young
republic. The first German to be officially invited to France, he met French writers and
intellectuals, among them many war veterans like himself. His translator, Jacques BenoistMéchin, became a close friend.12 In Germany, Unruh was awarded major literary prizes, 13
in Frankfurt, he was given a historic tower by the River Main, the Rententurm, as residence for life by a grateful town council. But he did not retire into the “ivory tower”, he
took an active part in public life making speeches in which he warned the nation, particularly the young generation, about the dangers of a new militarism. Together with prominent left-wing liberals he even founded a political party, the “Republican Party of Germany”. His aim was to unite German intellectuals in an Eiserne Front des Geistes against
the so-called Harzburger Front of right-wing groups led by the press magnate Hugenberg.
The climax of his political activities was his warning speech to an audience of 20 000 in
the Berlin Sportpalast on January 18 (the day of the signing of the Versailles Treaty)
1932, successfully competing with Hitler himself who spoke in Berlin the same day. But
the general echo to his appeal was disappointing; the tide had already turned. When two
months later Unruh’s play Zero was shown in Frankfurt, prophesying Germany’s ruin if
the present political line was continued, it created a scandal; the Nazi-dominated town
council took away the Rententurm, his flat there was plundered by the mob, his life threatened and he was forced to leave the country. A year later, in his exile in Italy, he watched
in the cinema how his books were burnt by the new masters of Germany. When Mussolini’s
fascists attacked his house, he fled to France. It was the start of a long and painful exodus
with internment in France, Gestapo persecution in Spain, finally safety in the USA with
the help of an “emergency visa”. Albert Einstein proved a tireless friend in those troubled
times. Unruh was under police surveillance as an “enemy alien” until 1952. The Unruhs
(he had married in 1939) eventually settled in Atlantic City where he kept writing but also
started a second career as a painter.
There was a short visit to Germany in 1948 (Frankfurt Goethe Prize), a second spell of
three years between 1952 (when he became an American citizen) and 1955, before he
returned to the USA, disillusioned with the reactionary political climate in Germany. Only
after a hurricane had destroyed their house in Atlantic City in 1962 did the Unruhs come
10
11
483.
Kindlers Literaturlexikon, 1974, vol. 9, p. 3901.
Unruh’s editor, H. M. Elster, mentions an incredible 130 curtain calls! In: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 7, p.
12
In the late 1920s, their ways parted when Benoist-Méchin became a sympathizer, later a collaborateur
with the Nazi regime. According to Elster, Unruh had a strange encounter with his former friend in Bordeaux
in 1940: Unruh was in a transport of civilian internees on their way to the concentration camp of Libourne/
Dordogne, B.-M. a senior officer in uniform who did not take any notice of him. Sämtliche Werke 7, Annotations, p. 448.
13
Grillparzer Prize in 1920, “Preis des jungen Deutschland” in 1921, Schiller Prize in 1926.
197
back to settle permanently in the family residence Hof Oranien in Diez, where Unruh died
on 28 November 1970.
In his development from Prussian aristocrat and royalist steeped in military tradition to
democratic militant pacifist (“soldier of peace”) Unruh bears striking resemblance to
Ludwig Renn, author of a successful pacifist war novel in the style of the Neue Sachlichkeit
(“New Realism”) during the final phase of the Weimar Republic.14 Renn’s real name was
Arnold Friedrich Vieth von Golßenau, an aristocrat who had served in an exclusive regiment together with two sons of the King of Saxony. During the War he saw active service
at the western front as a captain. To demonstrate his dissociation from the old feudal
society and their values he had adopted his writer’s pseudonym also for everyday life.
Josef Magnus Wehner
J. M. Wehner, born on 14 November 1891, was the first of seven children born to a
teacher in a Rhön village. After attending a classics-orientated grammar school in Fulda,
he read languages (classic and modern), philosophy and art history at the universities of
Jena and Munich. When the war broke out he volunteered, took part in campaigns in Italy,
Serbia and France as a private, was severely wounded at Verdun. In the 1920s he was a
journalist working for a Munich newspaper, later a literary and theatre critic.
In 1933 his career as a writer took off; he was able to go free-lance. In the same year he
was elected (like Beumelburg) into the reorganised Preußische Akademie der Künste. In
his autobiography published in 193415 he pointed out the influence of his rural background, an amalgamation of heathen and Christian traditions, together with a strong belief in God and fate as omnipotent rulers of history. All his works were affected by these
traditions. In the same text he also described himself as a fanatic enemy of the Weimar
Republic fighting for the “national revival” of Germany through lectures and radio broadcasts. In 1929 Wehner was awarded the Munich Literature Prize presented by Thomas
Mann.
His Verdun novel, written as a militant reply to Remarque’s pacifist bestseller, made
the author known in nationalist circles. In 1932 the organisation of German students
Deutsche Studentenschaft asked Wehner to write an address to be read out in all German
universities on the “Day of Langemarck” (10.7.).16 In this oration Wehner reiterated his
metaphysical and mystic idea of the Empire. As a writer he saw as his function “to carve
out the character of the nation”,17 “to be seer and prophet of a people”.18 In 1936 his novel
about the Serbia campaign of 1915–16 , Stadt und Feste Belgerad, was published. During
the Second World War Wehner was an active supporter of the war, making die-hard
speeches and writing articles justifying the war. The message of the Germans as the Chosen
14
Ludwig Renn: Krieg (Frankfurt: 1929), translated by Willa and Edwin Muir: War (London: 1929 ) and
its sequel: Nachkrieg [After the War] (Vienna/Berlin: 1930).
15
Mein Leben (Berlin: 1934).
16
On that day, in 1932, German students took over responsibility for the German war cemetery in
Langemarck (See footnote 61 in the Opfergang chapter). For the text see J. M. Wehner: “Langemarck”, in:
Reden deutscher Dichter an die Jugend (Munich: 1936), pp. 13–18.
17
Mein Leben, p. 77. Quoted from Gollbach, Annotations, p. 22.
18
J. M. Wehner: “Der Dichter und sein Volk: Kleine Reise im Goethejahr”, in: H. Kindermann (ed.): Des
deutschen Dichters Sendung in der Gegenwart (Leipzig: 1933), p. 23, in: Gollbach, Annotations, p. 22.
198
People and instructors of the world, familiar from his Verdun novel, was repeated here:
“As long as the Empire stands the German has felt responsible for the order in the
world.”19
In post-war Germany, Wehner wrote more novels, and a number of mystery plays some
of which were performed successfully. But on the whole he was a forgotten writer who, in
an interview conducted by a younger colleague in the early 1970s, quite naively tried to
dissociate himself from National Socialism. He even claimed that Sieben vor Verdun was
banned by the National Socialists as defeatist because he had described the tragedy at
Verdun in such detail.20 Wehner died in December 1973.
Werner Beumelburg
Werner Beumelburg, born on 19 February 1899 in Traben-Trarbach/Mosel as son of a
Protestant minister, was seventeen when he joined up as a volunteer after his Notabitur
(emergency leaving examination). He took part in the Verdun offensive (very much like
young Siewers) and in other major battles at the western front. At the end of the war he
returned home as a Leutnant decorated with the Iron Cross (of both Second and First
Class).
He studied political science in Cologne, from 1921 onwards he worked as an editor
with a number of newspapers (the first was the Deutsche Soldatenzeitung); in 1926 he
went freelance. Between 1923 and 1934 his accounts of battles at the western front, his
history of the war and the post-war years were published and became immediate successes.21 His war novels were equally successful.
Starting in 1932 Beumelburg published a number of historical novels which dealt with
the national idea of the Reich in German history since the Middle Ages (including such
protagonists as Emperor Barbarossa, Frederick the Great, Bismarck) and which, officially promoted by the authorities after 1933, were widely read. Besides, he published
topical non-fictional texts supporting and justifying National Socialism, some of which
appeared within the series Schriften an die Nation of which he was chief editor.
Naturally there were honours connected with such fruitful literary production. In 1933,
the author was elected into the reorganised Preußische Akademie der Künste (he became
its secretary), he was the first to be awarded the Große Literaturpreis der Reichshauptstadt
Berlin in 1936, and a year later he received the Kunstpreis der Westmark (again a first!).
Beumelburg took part in the Second World War as an air-force major on Göring’s
Staff. After 1945 he lived in Würzburg where he died on 9 March 1963. To the end, the
topic of war (WWII) took a central place in his work.
In a biographical account published in 193522 Beumelburg named the war as the central experience for the development of his personality and as the basis of realization of a
future community of the people after the example of the comradeship at the front. For the
19
J. M. Wehner: “Kämpfen, Opfern, Arbeiten!”, in: Der Schulungsbrief: Das zentrale Monatsblatt der
NSDAP, vol. 2, (1942) (issue 4/5/6). Quoted from Gollbach, Annotations, p. 22.
20
Angelika Mechtel: “Josef Magnus Wehner”, in: Angelika Mechtel (ed.): Alte Schriftsteller in der
Bundesrepublik (Munich: 1972), pp. 119–125.
21
For details of titles and publication figures see “Critical Evaluation”, in: chapter Gruppe Bosemüller.
22
W. Beumelburg: “Schaffensweg”, in: Blätter für Bücherfreunde 35, vol. 5, 1935, pp. 2–4
199
author the image of the future German was defined as a freely disposable instrument in
the service of the community whose requests, considered natural, required no justification:
This person will be young and heroic... He/she will be loyal and useful for any action to
which the Fatherland and the community commit him/her.23
In this context Beumelburg considered the task of a poet/writer “to form this person
and make him widely visible as the carrier of a new philosophy of life.” 24 He modestly
described his own function as “encouraging and furthering this process, which re-animates a nation to new life and new faith, through our work.”25
Arnold Zweig
On 10 November 1887 Arnold Zweig was born in Glogau/Silesia into the Jewish family
of Adolf Zweig, who made a good living as a supplier to the Prussian garrison in town.
When Jews lost their contracts (in the wake of anti-Semitic pogroms in Poland and Russia) the Zweig business was ruined and the family was forced to move to Kattowitz, where
the father returned to his former trade, that of a saddler (1896). Thus as an adolescent
Arnold experienced discrimination and later, at university in Breslau (1907), his petty
bourgeois background alienated him from the majority of his fellow students. The range
of his studies was enormous, German, English, French, Philosophy, Art, Psychology, and
in keeping with German academic tradition, he changed universities several times (Breslau,
Munich, Berlin, Rostock, Göttingen). At school and later at university he was supported
by wealthy Jewish sponsors. There were first literary attempts as a student; his novel
Novellen um Claudia (1912), a combination of stories about art and love among young
people attracted public attention and was a success. In the same year he read Martin
Buber and became acquainted with the life of Jews in Eastern Europe.
When war was declared in August 1914, Zweig enthusiastically joined in the general
outburst of patriotic sentiment.26 It meant the end of isolation and of search for identity.
He would have liked to volunteer immediately, but because of his age (27) and his poor
eyesight was put on the waiting list as a Reservist. He used the time of waiting to ‘do his
bit’ for the Fatherland with his pen writing a number of short war stories most of which
appeared in the now fervently nationalist Simplicissimus. His most notorious, Die Bestie,
was based on Zweig’s blind trust in the truth of the German reports on Belgian atrocities.
The reader learns about a Belgian farmer who cut the throats of three trusting sleeping
German soldiers and his execution for the deed the following day.27 Although written in a
“Schaffensweg”, p. 4.
Ibid., p. 4.
25
Ibid., p. 4.
26
In a letter Zweig declared that he was deeply impressed how this nation had changed from a people of
“ichsüchtiger Krämer und patriotisch-politischer Phrasendrescher” into “ein großes, tüchtiges deutsches Volk”
and he continued, “[d]er fette Bürger, unser Antagonist lernt plötzlich wieder sich einzuordnen, opfern, echt
fühlen, er verliert seine moralische Häßlichkeit, er wird schön!” He admitted that he had been overwhelmed
by the unifying force of the “Kulturgemeinschaft”, in: Jost Hermand: Arnold Zweig, p. 25.
27
Published in: Die Schaubühne, 17 December 1914.
23
24
200
chauvinist vein, the story was rejected by the military censor because of its forced brutality which was considered an imposition on an idealistic reading public, and the volume
containing the story was confiscated. In later years Zweig was ashamed of this text and
wrote a counter-text based on a conversion from wilhelminisch into pazifistisch.28 His
nationalist mood continued in 1915, with praises of Germany’s cultural mission, positive
comments on Max Scheler’s chauvinist text Der Genius des Krieges und der deutsche
Krieg (1915), because it characterized war as an enormous Steigerungsform des Lebens,
as an awakening to the fight against the englische Krämergeist.29
When Zweig was finally called up in April 1915, he was made an Armierer (sapper),
an unarmed soldier (like Bertin). To avoid permanent garrison drill he volunteered for
Flanders, a posting followed by southern Hungary and Serbia. In spring 1916 he was sent
to Verdun where he spent the worst thirteen months of his life which nearly killed him.
Verdun opened his eyes with regard to the realities of war. He experienced merciless
suppression by arrogant officers and sometimes even more arrogant NCOs. The only
positive event was his marriage to his cousin Beatrice (whose well-to-do parents could no
longer oppose the union with the poor Vaterlandsverteidiger). A change for the better
occurred in June 1917 when, with the help of some friends, Zweig was transferred to the
press department of the general staff at the eastern front (Ober-Ost), first in Bialystok,
then in Kovno. There, Zweig saw for the first time the military machinations at the top
(Verdun having provided the same at the lowest level), and he was once more in an intellectual milieu conducive to creative writing. The result, among other works, was the Grischa
cycle. Now he also got to know war literature banned by the censor (mostly printed in
neutral Switzerland) and was particularly impressed by Barbusse’s Le Feu.30 The period
in the East was marked by hopes in the success of the Russian Revolution, and Zionism (a
result of knowing Buber and having made contact with the eastern Jews).
The economic/political post-war situation ruined both their parents’ existence, took
away his family home in Silesia. Until 1926 Zweig and his wife “lived” in 14 different
furnished rooms and flats until they managed to settle down in Berlin. A burst blood
vessel caused by hard physical work at the Macedonia front in 1916 had by now ruined
his left eye, the right one following in 1930. He was blind for more than a year, and to the
end of his life would require the services of a secretary to whom he could dictate his texts.
Despite these hardships the Weimar Republic years were good years for the writer. Grischa
had made him world famous, as a journalist he was active in favour of the Republic, he
had undergone psychoanalysis and had made friends with Sigmund Freud.
The National Socialist takeover of January 1933 and its consequences forced the Zweigs
into emigration, first to Sanary-sur-Mer in the south of France, then to Haifa in Palestine.
Almost all of their belongings, including irreplaceable manuscripts, their library had been
confiscated by the Gestapo.31 The exile lasted fifteen years, a period filled with economic
problems, cultural frustrations, psychic depressions requiring analytical treatment.
28
The story Westlandsaga [A Chronicle] 1952, originally written in Haifa with the title Der Wendepunkt.
Cf. Hermand, p. 123.
29
In: Die Schaubühne, 1915, p. 368.
30
Cf. Zweig’s essay: “Ein Buch, das Epoche machte”, in: A. Z.: Essays, vol. 2, pp. 336–339.
31
Cf. in the same volume his essays: “Versuch einer Gegenrechnung”, pp. 104–109 and “Gestern, heute,
morgen”, pp. 148–174.
201
In 1948, officially invited by Johannes Becher, President of the Kulturbund zur
demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands, the Zweigs returned to Germany, to the GDR,
where they spent the rest of their lives. Zweig’s life in Berlin (East) was rich in work and
honours; he was awarded most of the prizes the young republic had to offer. There was an
honorary doctorate from Leipzig University on his 65th birthday, then, on his second trip
to the Soviet Union, the Lenin-Friedenspreis. In 1967, for his 80th birthday, the Aufbau
Verlag had completed the edition of his works in 16 volumes. When he died a year later,
on 26 November, he was buried on the Dorotheenstädtische Friedhof, close to the graves
of Brecht, Becher, Eisler and Heinrich Mann.
In post-war West Germany, due to the Cold War, Zweig was ignored for a long time.
From the middle of the 1970s literary critics (re-)discovered the great socialist humanist
and disciple of Freud behind the monument (Staatsklassiker). S. Fischer’s edition of his
works to coincide with his 100th birthday marked the decisive change of attitude, an
event shared by West German television with special features and re-runs of films on his
novels made in the GDR.
Alan Patrick Herbert
Alan Patrick Herbert (1890–1971) is not chiefly known as the author of a war novel. For
many years a contributor to Punch, he is described by Margaret Drabble as “a writer of
great versatility and humour”,32 dealing with subjects as diverse as absurdities in court
procedures (Misleading Cases in the Common Law, 1929), a collection of ballads (1949),
his experiences as MP for Oxford University from 1935–50 (Independent Member, 1950).
Herbert was a campaigner for a number of causes, such as reform in the divorce laws,
reform in English spelling, improvements in authors’ rights, changes in the obscenity
laws, and water-buses on the Thames. A revue and his best-known novel (The Water
Gipsies,1930) reflect his affection for the Thames. Herbert was knighted in 1945; an
autobiography was published in 1970 (My Life and Times).
Herbert’s war novel was based on real events. Churchill was familiar with this (Introd.:
“The tale is founded on fact”, p. vi), Greicus very likely not; at least he did not make any
reference to it. During the last phase of the Somme campaign, in November 1916, the
British staged a minor local offensive in the Beaumont Hamel area to gain some strategic
advantages against the Germans before winter would set in in earnest and stop all movement. The army had been reinforced by battalions of the Royal Naval Division, which
“considered itself a cut above mere soldiers with their kow-towing khaki discipline.”33
Lieutenant Alan Herbert and Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Dyett served in different battalions
of the RND, but both took part in the successful but costly attack on Beaucourt on 13
November, in which both battalions were cut up badly. In her book on the Somme battles,
Anne Powell informs us on what happened to Edwin Dyett during that day, and how it
32
M. Drabble (ed.): The Oxford Companion to English Literature (Oxford: 1985), p. 454, which was my
main source of biographical information.
33
Lyn Macdonald: Somme (Harmondsworth: 1993), p. 321. A graphic account of the strained relationship between naval officers/men and army command, and of the atrocious external conditions. She quotes a
‘filthy’ poem written by A. P. Herbert about the commanding general and his fussing about clean trenches,
which was sung with relish, not only by the sailors, but by the whole army (p. 322).
202
came about that he was charged with desertion and court-martialled.34 In the 1980s Anthony Babington had already written an account of the trial.35 Edwin Dyett was shot at
dawn on 5 January 1917. Herbert was deeply concerned with the injustice of Dyett’s
court-martial and conviction. The Secret Battle was his answer. A second text, a poem,
Beaucourt Revisited, commemorates the many dead comrades, victims of one of the last
actions of the Somme campaign.36 Although Herbert claimed (in the final paragraph) that
his novel was not an attack on anybody or anything, it is of course a grim indictment, “a
polemic on the evils of the First War”.37 He had served both in Gallipoli and France, and
his novel was a successful attempt to show the horrendous conditions first on the Peninsula, then at the Somme, the unfairness of courts-martial (inadequate presentation for the
defence, bias towards the prosecution), the lack of compassion shown to men with shattered nerves. The latter was a point of complaint raised in a number of war books, in
particular the inability/unwillingness of army medical staff to accept phenomena such as
neurasthenia, shell-shock, and their tendency to label such cases as ‘leadswingers’. 38 The
publication of pacifist war literature in 1929 (Remarque, Aldington, Graves, to single out
the best known) led to a heated public debate in Britain and Germany, the so-called ‘warbooks controversy’. In the words of M. Greicus.
The arguments which followed established the opposing principle involved in response to
war books. Pacifist was set against militarist; the proponent of the survival of the individual
will found himself in opposition to the defender of collective spirit.39
The most outspoken of the “militant” camp was Douglas Jerrold, journalist and author
of military histories, who in 1930 accused A. P. Herbert – among others – of perverting
the truth in favour of a biased portrayal of the “actuality of war”, claiming that these
alleged cases were in fact well-nigh impossible.40 In this context, Margarete Günther offers the information, based on official British statistics, that during the War only two
officers were executed for desertion (none for cowardice).41 By 1930, probably as a consequence of the debate which brought ever new horrible details of the War to public
attention, combined with a more enlightened school of medicine, Parliament had introduced legislation banning the death sentence for offences for which Edwin Dyett and his
comrades had been shot.
How many lives are we talking about? According to the historian Martin Gilbert the
names of those executed were not known until 1989 when the transcripts of the trials
Anne Powell (ed.): The Fierce Light (Aberporth: 1996), pp. 258–259.
Anthony Babington: For the Sake of Example (London 1983).
36
Powell, p. 260.
37
Greicus, p. 13.
38
Cf. S. Sassoon: Sherston’s Progress, the chapter ‘Rivers’. It is also a major topic in Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy.
39
Greicus, p. 15.
40
Douglas Jerrold: The Lie About The War: A Note On Some Contemporary War Books (London: 1930),
p. 29ff. For an opposing view, by the most vehement of the novelists involved, see Henry Williamson: “Reality in War Literature”, in: The Linhay on the Downs (London: 1934), pp. 224–262. (It was originally written
in 1928.) See also B. H. Liddell Hart: The Real War: 1914–1918 (1930), S. K.Winter: The Realistic War
Novel (1930) for other titles typical of that debate.
41
M. Günther, p. 30. Cf. Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War,
1914–1920. His Majesty’s Stationary Office (1922), p. 649ff.
34
35
203
which had been classified for 75 years were made public. He claims that “more than 312
British soldiers were shot for desertion or cowardice between 1914 and 1918”42 referring
to the publication of a full account of British executions in the same year. 43 According to
the British newspaper The Independent:
...between 1914 and 1920, more than 3 000 British soldiers were sentenced to death by
courts-martial “for desertion, cowardice, striking an officer, disobedience, falling asleep on
duty or casting away arms...only 11 percent of the sentences were carried out... 44
The paper gave the number of dead as 307, without breaking this figure down into
officers and men. A day later, The Times responded with a sympathetic article on the same
topic in which Sub-lieutenant Edwin Dyett was mentioned as one of the dead.45
There is a late, but perhaps comforting epilogue to the sad fates of these men. As the
transcripts amply document the unfairness of the courts-martial and suggest that some of
the men were underage when tried – which meant their execution was not only inhuman,
but also in contravention of the 1879 British Army Act – a campaign for a general pardon
which would at last remove lifelong shame from the families concerned, has been under
way for a number of years headed by Andrew MacKinlay, Labour MP for Thurrock. In
1993 the Conservative Government turned down an appeal and in 1996 repelled an amendment to the Armed Forces Bill moved by Mr MacKinlay. Twelve months later he tabled a
Commons motion (hence the press coverage) arguing “that the vast majority of the 307
executed were as patriotic and brave as their million other compatriots who perished in
the conflict...”46 This time the auspices seemed more favourable; the motion was expected
to get widespread support by MPs right across the House. A. P. Herbert MP, who had
shown the way with The Secret Battle 78 years earlier, would have been proud of his
colleagues. Inquiries at the House of Commons, however, have not confirmed those optimistic expectations. So far, the Bill has not been successful. 47 The campaign will go on,
and one day, Mr. MacKinlay hopes (and with him many others), “good sense will prevail
and these men will be given a pardon”.48 Perhaps it may be taken as a first acknowledgment by the authorities of changed public opinion that a Memorial Service was allowed to
be held at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on 7 November 1998 for families of soldiers tried
and shot for cowardice.49
In 1995, Leonard Sellers’ detailed story of Dyett’s court-martial and subsequent execution was published which supported the claims made by the Scottish MP.50 Sellers dedicated his book to the memory of Edwin Dyett and all the victims of executions during the
First World War: the condemned, their families, and those charged with their execution.
M. Gilbert: The Routledge Atlas of the First World War, p. 162.
Julian Putkowski & Julian Sykes: Shot at Dawn (Barnsley: 1989).
The Independent, 27 May 1997, p. 5. See also p. 1, and 28 May, p. 1.
45
The Times, 28 May 1997, p. 9, see also leading article, p. 21.
46
The Independent, 27 May 1997, p. 1.
47
Information received from Mr MacKinlay in a letter dated 21 January 1999.
48
Quoted from his letter.
49
At the same time, in France, Prime Minister Jospin rehabilitated the 49 French soldiers executed for
their part in the mutiny of April 1917, Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung No. 258, 7–8 November 1998.
50
Leonard Sellers: For God’s Sake Shoot Straight: The story of the Court Martial and Execution of
Temporary Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Leopold Arthur Dyett, Nelson Battalion, 63rd (RN) Division during the
First World War (London: 1995).
42
43
44
204
Julian Putkowski, co-author of Shot At Dawn, provided some statistical information
for Mr. MacKinlay’s campaign on the situation in the French and German armies. For
Germany the number of death sentences carried out during World War I must appear
surprisingly low (48, of a total of 150 death sentences, which include the crime of “murder”) considering the reputation of the German Army for militarism. 51
Arthur Donald Gristwood
Compared with many other war authors Gristwood remains a shadowy figure. Not even
one photograph of him seems to exist. According to the writer Hugh Cecil (our only
source of information):
All we know of his personality was that he had strong literary interests, a well-developed
sense of style and a mordant wit; he was also what was then called a “neurasthenic”, a victim of
nervous trouble, reserved, self-lacerating and misanthropic.52
He was born on 17 May 1893 in Catford, south London, son of a commercial traveller
for a City firm, attended local schools until the age of sixteen, then started work in the
accounting department of the Liverpool and London Globe Insurance Company, a job he
held for fifteen years and which he increasingly disliked.
He probably volunteered in 1915, more under social pressure than out of patriotism.
From the will he left we learn that he served in a Territorial unit, the same that the writer
Henry Williamson had enrolled in before the war. It was made up of men who in peacetime had worked in the City of London. Throughout his time in the battalion Gristwood
served in the ranks, as Rifleman 30264. As an “other rank” his army records have not
been preserved, so it is impossible to trace his army career precisely. A letter written by
his father indicates that the son was twice severely wounded. According to Cecil, it is
highly unlikely that Gristwood took part in the 1916 Somme battle as his unit was not in
the line at that time. He was able to describe the area in his book because the battalion
went straight there after landing in France in January 1917. In the same year the battalion
took some hard knocks and was broken up in 1918. Gristwood’s morale must have been at
rock bottom then.
After recovering from his injuries Gristwood returned to his insurance company, but
led the life of a semi-invalid, and after a nervous breakdown in 1926 he handed in his
resignation, went to Locarno in Northern Italy where his mental and physical health seemed
to improve. He was determined to work with literature now. With the assistance of H. G.
Wells (who had been at school with Gristwood’s father) Donald was launched on a literary career. Within three months he completed The Somme, and together with The Coward, a text he had written earlier, offered it as a book. Wells, despite doubts about certain
passages, wrote an encouraging introduction and found a publisher. The embittered tone
of the book prevented it from being a great work of war literature though. It only sold
51
Figures based on M. Van Crefeld: Fighting Power (London: 1983), whose source is Volkmann: Soziale
Heeresmißstände als Mitursache des deutschen Zusammenbruchs (Berlin: 1929), p. 63.
52
Hugh Cecil: The Flower of Battle – British Fiction Writers of the First World War (London: 1995),
chapter 4: “The Raw Nerve, A. D. Gristwood 1893–1933”, pp. 74–90, here p. 74.
205
around 2 100 copies, there was a reprint in 1918. Gristwood’s royalties amounted to little
more than £50.
Gristwood was not enthusiastic about many of the war books appearing in print at the
time. He singled out only two, both written by Germans, as being exceptional: Arnold
Zweig’s The Case of Sergeant Grischa and Fritz von Unruh’s Way of Sacrifice. What
appealed to him about both books, according to Cecil:
...was their rebelliousness and refusal to compromise, which he felt most appropriate to
expressing the horrific impact of war.53
Encouraged by his moderate success, Gristwood persevered with his writing, but by
1932 his health had deteriorated alarmingly. On 21 April 1933 he ended his life by swallowing an overdose of Veronal. He was 39.
Frederic Manning
Frederic Manning, an Australian expatriate who lived in England, suffered from asthma
all his life and because of that was unable to go to school, so save for a six months spell at
Sydney Grammar School, was mainly “educated” by Arthur Galton (a friend of Matthew
Arnold) with whom he went to London. Peter Davies’ description,
...an intellectual of intellectuals – poet, classical scholar, and author of the exquisite Scenes
and Portraits – delicate in health and fastidious to the point of foppishness...54
hardly corresponds to the Australian stereotype, and Manning had no longing for his
native land. During one of two return visits to Australia he wrote, in 1934, he could
...leave Australia with very few regrets: it has nothing to recommend it except its climate,
and its skies, which are an effect of its climate...55
yet at the same time his work – and this is particularly true of HPW – derived some of
its individuality and power from what Hergenhan calls his “Australianism”.56 The precise
influence of Manning’s nationality on the genesis of HPW may be impossible to gauge but
we believe with Hergenhan “there are sufficient indications inside the novel and out that
it was at least a contributing factor”.57 We have already looked at the internal indicators,
let us now turn to the external ones. Mainly with the help of a series of letters (most of
them unpublished), which Manning wrote to the artist William Rothenstein (who had
drawn his portrait)58 while serving in the British Army, Hergenhan manages to throw
some light on the personal experience and attitudes which determined the particular diCecil, p. 86.
In his Introduction to the 1943 edition of HPW in which the anonymity of the author was lifted.
55
In an unpublished part of a letter to T. E. Lawrence, quoted in Hergenhan: “Novelist at War...”, p. 19.
56
Hergenhan: “Some Unpublished Letters from T. E. Lawrence to Frederic Manning”, Southerly, xxiii
(1963), pp. 242–252, here p. 242.
57
Hergenhan: “Novelist at War”, p. 19.
58
See Hergenhan’s essay (footnote 63) for drawing.
53
54
206
rection and pervading qualities of Manning’s novel. The author was disinclined (like
Bourne) to take a commission, and his letter echoes Bourne’s self-doubts:
I joined the King’s Shropshire, the finest rgt. in the British Army, at the beginning of October. I did not think I had sufficient experience of men to apply for a commission. However, I
have done so well, that first our Company Officer,...and then the adjutant, sent and asked me if
I were willing to apply for a commission... I get on very well with the NCOs, and men; but it is
a very hard life, full of dirt and discomfort, and the huts in which we lie are crowded and never
quiet. Just a few extras an officer gets, hot water, food on a plate, and quiet, will be very
welcome... (14/11/1915)
For a gentleman of “fastidious tastes and habits” (Rothenstein) supported by private
means and writing reviews for the Spectator as sole work-a-day occupation, this initial
recoil from the ranks was to be expected. He applied for a commission and was very
critical of the fact that “so many incompetent and undesirable people got their commission through the old OTC system, or simply through personal influence” (7/5/1916). He
did not complete his officer’s training (for reasons the letters do not explain) and went to
France shortly afterwards as “Private 19022”. His later letters (and Bourne’s similar attitudes) suggest that he did not regret his decision.
A letter written at Christmas 1915 shows us Manning with the reputation of a teetotaller (a matter of self-protection) which may come as a surprise because Bourne in the
novel is very fond of wine and remembered by the NCOs for outdoing them in a drinking
bout before embarking for France. Bourne’s fondness and admiration of the ordinary
men, combined with his talent of withdrawing into himself, has parallels in Manning:
Even out of the line our life is miserable, and one to which no man should be condemned...I
think the heroism of these men is in proportion to their humiliations; the severest form of
monastic discipline is a less surrender. For myself I can, with an effort, I admit, escape from my
immediate surroundings into mine own mind... (10/11/1916)
According to one of his letters (2/1/1917) Manning’s Somme experience started before Guillemont, in the second week of August, and he ended on the Ancre in the middle
of November. Manning did not return to France after that; he was sent to barracks in
Templemore, Co. Tipperary, where the British Army was given the job of restraining
uprisings by Irish Nationalists. We learn that by that time he was a junior officer, disenchanted with his new milieu and his brother-officers (“who have neither an intelligent
idea nor coherent speech”), he was particularly disgusted with “schoolboy chatter about
loose women, from the lips of grown men” and expressed a strong dislike of their class
consciousness (“I’m so tired of the phrase ‘an officer and a gentleman’ ... the two things
are incompatible”.) A visit from George Russell (“A. E.”, sent by Rothenstein) was praised,
under these circumstances, as a precious gift but made his situation as “one dwelling
among aliens” painfully clear. In the end, Manning resigned his commission, the reasons
given by him being a combination of ill-health and personality-clashes. (A year earlier he
had been declared unfit for service for a month because he suffered from what he called
“delayed shell-shock”). Research on Manning done by Jonathan Marwil reveals, however, that both the abrupt termination of his officer’s training course and his later discharge from the army in Ireland were due to extensive alcohol abuse. When he left the
army he was an alcoholic in need of help. Fortunately he was given some assistance by
207
sympathetic influential people who realized his potential as a person and a writer. With
hindsight, many of his letters written from France and Ireland are shown as attempts at
covering up, or detracting from, his alcohol problem which stayed with him for the rest of
his life.59
In a letter written, much later, to A. V. Moore, he suggested that Her Privates We was
written to celebrate the ranks rather than to record his own experiences:
My own experience was only that of the average, and I always feel that it was scarcely worth
making into a book. But I had, and still have, a great sympathy with the other men. I thought the
majority of war-books libelled them and I tried to praise them in the only possible way, by
sincere record which would show how their splendid qualities lifted them above all defects –
even their own nature.60
Or to express it in the words of his publisher Peter Davies:
Her Privates We is also a profoundly democratic book. It is significant that so high a tribute
should be paid by a man intellectually mature, acutely observant and deeply critical, to the
sound sense, morale and philosophy of that section of the populace which, in peace as in war,
has most of civilization’s dirty work to do.61
Despite the glorious reviews by eminent literary figures and friends, and despite his
genius for friendship referred to by Kaeppel,62 because of ill health (partly brought about
by chain-smoking and heavy drinking) he was rarely in London and as a consequence
little known to his literary contemporaries. When he died in February 1935, after a sudden attack of pneumonia, the only writer present at the internment, according to Rothenstein,
was T. S. Eliot.63
David Jones
When war broke out, David Jones was a student at the Camberwell School of Arts in
London in his fourth year and like many young men, he was worried about his professional future. “Here history came to my aid and I found myself doing squad-drill with the
Royal Welch Fusiliers on the esplanade at Llandudno”, he later commented his decision
to volunteer.64 For in January 1915 he enlisted in the 15th (London Welsh) Battalion of
that famous regiment which, in the course of the War, would be associated with numerous
writers and poets.65 From Jones’ nephew we learn that two previous attempts at enlisting
59
Jonathan Marwil: Frederic Manning – An Unfinished Life (Durham N. C.: 1988) cf. chapter 5: “War”,
pp. 157–193. See also William Boyd’s Introduction to a recent paperback edition of Her Privates We, by
Serpent’s Tail (London: 1999).
60
Written 24/3/1930, quoted in Hergenhan: “Novelist at War”, p. 25.
61
From the Introduction to the 1943 edition.
62
C. Kaeppel: “Frederic Manning: Soldier, Scholar, Artist”, Australian Quarterly 26, (June 1935), pp.
47–50, here p. 47.
63
Hergenhan: “F. M.: A Neglected Australian Writer”, p. 7.
64
Chapter “Autobiographical Talk” in Epoch and Artist, p. 28.
65
Ford Madox Ford, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Bill Adams, Frank Richards, the Welsh poet Ellis
Humphrey Evans .
208
had failed, reasons being “an insufficient chest expansion complete ignorance of anything
to do with the horse”, and that only after a letter from his father to his Welsh compatriot
Lloyd George, who wanted to raise a Welsh army, was his wish granted. 66 In December
his Battalion embarked for France and eventually moved to the front-line, took part in the
preparations for the Somme offensive. On 11 July Jones was shot in the left leg in the
attack on Mametz Wood. The time span so far is the period covered in In Parenthesis, and
Private Ball’s fate is more or less his own. Invalided home he returned to France in October 1916, took part in action in Flanders. In February 1918, suffering a severe bout of
trench fever, he was invalided home for the second time. Following convalescence he was
posted to Ireland where he was demobilized in 1919. His war experience would influence
him for the rest of his life. His second major literary work, Anathemata, 1952, a poetic
text dealing with the Matter of Britain, among other things its Christianization, and later
fragmentary texts published as The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments just before Jones’
death in 1974, bespeak his lifelong obsession with the War: the characters presented may
be Roman soldiers but as Blamires observes “the day-to-day routine and the language
used to describe it, are those of a British soldier of the First World War. Duckboards,
bivvies, chitties, and the like mingle with the technical terms of Latin military vocabulary...”67
David Jones converted to Catholicism in 1921 and spent several years in the religious
art community of Eric Gill who had a profound influence on him. Much of Jones’ later life
was of a semi-monastic nature. After WWII his art as a painter, wood-engraver, creator of
lettering was increasingly acknowledged by exhibitions and awards. The radio adaptation
of In Parenthesis was broadcast four times by the BBC following a first performance on
11 November, 1946. Jones died on 28 October, 1974, at a nursing home in Harrow, having spent his later years mainly in shabby hotels paid for by friends. On Armistice Day
1985, the Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes (who, incidentally, had also given the Memorial
Address for Henry Williamson in 1977) unveiled a memorial to sixteen Great War poets
in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, David Jones among those commemorated.
66
67
Anthony Hyne, Preface, p. 11.
Blamires, p. 153.
209
210
APPENDIX II (CARTOONS / MAPS / PICTURES / POEMS)
211
212
In: Martin Gilbert: The Routledge Atlas of the First World War, p. 53
213
In: Martin Gilbert: The Routledge Atlas of the First World War, p. 56
214
In: Mr. Punch’s History of the Great War, p. 89
215
In: E. Demm: Der Erste Weltkrieg in der internationalen Karikatur, p. 162
216
In: Darracott/Loftus: First World War Posters, p. 25
217
F. Manning: Her Privates We – front cover of the 1930 edition
218
APPENDIX III (LIST OF VERDUN / SOMME TITLES)
219
220
Titles of books already listed in the bibliography are not included here. In some cases it
was not possible to give full bibliographic information. The list, which contains both
fiction and non-fiction, makes no claim to being complete.
Texts on the topic of Verdun
Baer, C. H. (ed.):
Die Schlacht vor Verdun.
In: Der Völkerkrieg: Eine Chronik der Ereignisse
seit dem 1. Juli 1914, Volume 14 (Stuttgart: 1917).
Beumelburg, Werner: Mit 17 vor Verdun (1931).
Brandis, Cordt von:
Die Stürmer vom Douaumont (Berlin: 1934).
Brown, Malcolm:
Verdun 1916 (Stroud: 1999).
Chlumberg, Hans:
Wunder von Verdun (1931) (play).
Chowanetz, Rudolf: Vor Verdun verlor ich Gott: Geschichten von Menschen
im Krieg (Berlin: 1984) (war fiction, not limited to Verdun).
Ettighoffer, Paul C.: Traum am Douaumont (radio play).
Harig, Ludwig:
Drei Männer im Feld (1986) (radio play).
Hein, Alfred:
Eine Kompanie Soldaten: In der Hölle von Verdun
(Minden: 1930) (reprint 1978).
Hereus, Fritz:
“Der Kampf um Verdun. Vernichtung oder Ausblutung?”
In: Wehrpolitik und Landesverteidigung, No. 9 (Wochenbeilage zum Völkischen Beobachter) February 1934.
Hermanns, William: The Holocaust: From a Survivor of Verdun (with drawings
by Paul Bacon) (New York: 1972).
Kabisch, Ernst:
Verdun – Wende des Krieges (Berlin: 1935).
Kästner, Erich:
Verdun – viele Jahre später (poem)
In: Die Weltbühne 27 (1931), p. 320.
221
Klüfer, Kurt von:
Seelenkräfte im Kampf um Douaumont. II./I.–R. 24,
Seine Nachbarn und Gegner am 25. Februar 1916
(Berlin: 1938).
Köppen, Edlef:
Wir standen vor Verdun (1931) (radio play).
Koch, Heinrich:
Verdun 1916 (Verden: 1971).
Laukisch, Fritz:
Verdun (play).
Maaß, Edgar:
Verdun (1936) (novel).
Martin, William:
Verdun 1916: “They shall not pass”
(= Campaign series No. 93) (Oxford: 2001).
Mason, David:
Verdun (Moreton-in-Marsh: 2000).
Michelin Tyre Co. Ltd. (ed.): Verdun and the Battles for its Possession
(English language edition 1919, facsimile edition
Easingwold: 1994).
Möller, Eberhard:
Möller, Eberhard:
Douaumont oder die Rückkehr des Soldaten Odysseus (1929) (play).
Douaumont (1932) (radio play).
Ousby, Ian:
The Road to Verdun: France, Nationalism
and the First World War (London: 2002).
Purnell (ed.):
Verdun and the Somme
(No. 21 of Purnell’s History of the 20th Century).
Radtke, Eugen:
Douaumont, wie es wirklich war (Berlin: 1934).
Rohde, Horst (ed.):
Verdun 1916 (= Dokumente zur Militargeschichte Nr. 1)
(Braunschweig: 2002).
Salewski, Michael:
“Verdun und die Folgen. Eine militär- und geistesgeschichtliche
Betrachtung”. Wehrwissenschaftliche Rundschau 3 (1976).
Schoenfeld, Hans:
Maas-Mühle (1937) (novel).
Wendt, Hermann:
Verdun 1916. Die Angriffe Falkenhayns im Maasgebiet
mit Richtung auf Verdun als strategisches Problem (Berlin: 1931).
Zech, Paul:
“Verdun” (poem), Die Schaubühne, 12 (1916), pp. 102–103.
Ziegler, Wilhelm:
Verdun (Hamburg: 1936).
Ziese-Beringer, H.
Der einsame Feldherr: Die Wahrheit über Verdun, 2 vols.
(Berlin: 1934).
222
Texts on the topic of the Somme
Aitken, Alexander:
Gallipoli to the Somme: Recollections of a New Zealand
Infantryman (London: 1963).
Beach, Thomas W.:
Brittain, Harry:
With the British on the Somme (London: 1917) (war corresp.).
To Verdun from the Somme: An Anglo-American Glimpse
of the Great Advance (London: 1917).
Carrington, C.:
Somme Memories (London: 1928).
Cave, Nigel (ed.):
Battleground Europe (18 detailed vols. dealing with the
Somme battleground from 1916 to 1918).
Chappell, Michael:
The Somme 1916: Crucible of a British Army (London: 1995).
Charlton, Peter:
Australians on the Somme – Pozières 1916 (1986).
Crozier, F. P.:
The Men I Killed (Michael Joseph: 1937).
Denizot, Alain:
La Bataille de la Somme (Juillet - Novembre 1916)
(Paris: 2002).
Dugmore, A. R.:
When the Somme Ran Red (New York: 1918).
Dyer, Geoff:
The Missing of the Somme (London: 1994).
Edmunds, G. B.:
Somme memories: memoirs of an Australian artillery driver,
1916 – 1919 (1955).
Eyre, G.:
Somme Harvest: Memories of a PBI in the Summer of 1916
(1938).
Farrar-Hockley, A.:
The Somme (1954).
Franziß, Franz:
Wir von der Somme (Freiburg: 1936).
Gardner, Brian:
The Big Push: A Portrait of the Battle of the Somme (1961).
Gladden, E. N.:
The Somme 1916: A Personal Account (1974).
Gibbs, Philip:
The Germans on the Somme (Darling: 1917).
Giles, John:
The Somme Then and Now (1977).
Girard, G.:
La Bataille de la Somme (Paris: 1937).
Gliddon, Gerald:
When the Barrage Lifts: A Topographical History (1987).
Gliddon, Gerald:
Legacy of the Somme: The Battle in Fact, Film and Fiction
(Alan Sutton: 1996).
223
Griffiths, Llewellyn: Up to Mametz (London: 1931; Norwich: 1988).
Guerney, Ivor:
Severn and Somme (London: 1917) (poems).
Haig, Sir Douglas:
Sir Douglas Haig’s Great Push: The Battle of the Somme
(London: 1916).
Harris, John:
Covenant with Death (1961) (novel).
Harris, John:
The Somme: Death of a Generation (1966).
Hart, Peter:
Somme Success: Aerial Warfare on the Somme 1916
(Pen & Sword Paperbacks).
Hay, Ian:
Carrying On: After the First Hundred Thousand
(Edinburgh/London: 1917) (fiction).
Major & Mrs Holt:
Battlefiled Guide to the Somme (Leo Cooper: 1995).
Hughes, C.:
Mametz: Lloyd George’s “Welsh Army” at the Battle of the Somme
(1982).
Kabisch, E.:
Somme 1916 (Berlin: 1937).
Lawson, J. A.:
Memories of Delville Wood (Cape Town: 1918).
Lewis, G. H.:
Wings over the Somme, 1916 – 1918 (1976).
Liddle, Peter H.:
The 1916 Battle of the Somme: A Reappraisal (London: 1992).
Liveing, Edward:
Attack: An Infantry Subaltern’s Impressions of July 1st 1916
(London: 1918).
Macdonagh, M.:
“The Irish at the Front” : The Irish on the Somme (1917).
Martin, Christopher: The Battle of the Somme (1973).
Masefield, John:
The Old Front Line: Or the beginning of the Battle of the Somme
(London: 1917).
Masefield, John:
The Battle of the Somme (London: 1919; Bath: 1968).
McCarthy, Chris:
The Somme: The Day-By-Day Account (1993).
Michelin Guide:
The Somme, Volume I: The First Battle of the Somme (1916–1917).
Michelin Guide:
The Somme, Volume II: The Second Battle of the Somme (1918)
(both published in 1919, recently republished in facsimile editions).
Middlebrook, Martin & Mary: The Somme Battlefields: A Comprehensive Guide from Crecy
to the Two World Wars (1991).
224
Nobbs, Gilbert:
Englishman, Kamrad! Right of the British Line (London: 1918).
Norman, Terry:
The Hell They Called High Wood: The Somme 1916 (London: 1984).
Palmer, F.:
With the New Army on the Somme: My second year of the War (1917).
Plowman, Max (= Mark VII): A Subaltern on the Somme (London: 1927).
Purnell (ed.):
Verdun and the Somme (No. 21 of Purnell’s History of the 20th Century).
Quigley, Hugh:
Passchendaele and the Somme (London: 1928) (diary).
Reed, Paul:
Walking the Somme (Pen & Sword Paperbacks: 1997).
Robinson, H. P.:
The Turning Point: The Battle of the Somme (London: 1917).
Rogerson, Sidney:
Twelve Days: The Somme November 1916 (London: 1930);
Norwich: 1988).
Sassoon, Siegfried:
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (London: 1930) (fiction).
Stedman, Michael:
Advance to Victory 1918: Somme (Pen & Sword Paperbacks).
Stephenson, A. G. (ed.): The Somme and the Butte de Warlencourt (1990).
Tilsley, W. V.:
Other Ranks (London: 1931) (novel).
Turner, E. S.:
Gallant Gentlemen (Michael Joseph: 1956).
Uys, Ian:
Delville Wood (Johannesburg: 1983).
Westlake, Roy:
British Battalions on the Somme. 1916 (1994).
Williams, H. N.:
Haig’s Great Push (Hutchinson: 1917).
Williamson, Henry:
The Golden Virgin (London: 1957) (novel).
Zöberlein, Hans:
Der Schrapnellbaum (1940) (novel).
225
226
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(As the Footnotes contain the sources of all books/essays cited, those considered to be of
minor relevance for the topic are not listed in the Bibliography.)
Primary Sources:
Aldington, Richard: Death of a Hero (London: 1930) [1929]).
Anz, Thomas and Joseph Vogel (eds.): Die Dichter und der Krieg:
Deutsche Lyrik 1914–1918 (Munich: 1982).
Bab, Julius (ed.): Der Deutsche Krieg im Deutschen Gedicht:
Vol. I: “Aufbruch und Anfang” (Berlin: 1914).
Bairnsfather, Bruce: Fragments from France, vol. III (London: n.d.).
Barbusse, Henri: Under Fire (London: 1929) [1917]).
Barbusse: Briefe von der Front: An seine Frau 1914–1917 (Frankfurt: 1974).
Beumelburg, Werner: Die Gruppe Bosemüller (Oldenburg i. O.: 1930).
Beumelburg: “Schaffensweg”, in: Blätter für Bücherfreunde 35, vol. 5 (1935), pp. 2–4.
Binding, Rudolf: Aus dem Kriege (Frankfurt: 1929) [1925]).
Binding: A Fatalist at War, transl. Ian F. D. Morrow (London: 1929).
Binding: Erlebtes Leben (Darmstadt: 1960) (1928).
Binding: Dies war das Maß: Die gesammelten Kriegsdichtungen und Tagebücher
(Potsdam: 1940) [1939]).
Blunden, Edmund: Undertones of War (London: 1928).
Blunden: The Mind’s Eye: Essays (London: 1934).
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A. O. FRANK: The Philosophy of Virginia Woolf
PETÕCZ ÉVA: A nyelvi hiány fogalmának szövegtani értelmezése
ANDREA IMREI: Oniromancia – Análisis de símbolos en los cuentos de Julio Cortázar
Á. I. FARKAS: Will’s Son and Jake’s Peer – Anthony Burgess’s Joycean Negotiations
DÓRA FAIX: Horacio Quiroga como autor implícito
FEKETÉNÉ SZAKOS ÉVA: A felnõttek tanulása és oktatása – új felfogásban
CZETTER IBOLYA: Márai Sándor naplóinak nyelvi világa a retorikai alakzatok
tükrében
GABRIELLA MENCZEL: Incipit y subtexto en los cuentos de Julio Cortázar y Abelardo
Castillo
LÁSZLÓ VASAS: Ahondar deleitando: Lecturas del Lazarillo de Tormes
JUDIT NÉNYEI: Thought Outdanced – The Motif of Dancing in Yeats and Joyce
TÖRÖK TAMÁS: Zoboralja földrajzi nevei a történeti térképek tükrében
ÁGNES CSELIK: El secreto del prisma – La ciudad ausente de Ricardo Piglia
JENEY ÉVA: A metafora és az elbeszélés bölcselete – Paul Ricoeur irodalomelmélete
MARÍA GERSE: Niveles narrativos en Todo verdor perecerá de Eduardo Mallea
DÓRA JANZER CSIKÓS: “Four Mighty Ones Are in Every Man”
ZSUZSANNA CSIKÓS: El problema del doble en Cambio de piel de Carlos Fuentes
DR. RICHARD J. LANE: Functions of the Derrida Archive: Philosophical Receptions
HANSÁGI ÁGNES: Klasszikus–Korszak–Kánon
ÉVA PÉTERI: Victorian Approaches to Religion as Reflected in the Art of the PreRaphaelites
JUHÁSZ LAJOS: A közgazdasági feltételek és az agrárvállalkozások beruházási
lehetõségei
KATALIN G. KÁLLAY: Going Home Through Seven Paths to Nowhere: Reading Short
Stories by Hawthorne, Poe, Melville and James
ZOLTÁN SIMON: The Double-Edged Sword: The Technological Sublime in American
Novels between 1900 and 1940
F. Lassú ZSUZSA: Barátok és barátnõk – együtt és egymás ellen
RACSMÁNY MIHÁLY: A munkamemória szerepe a megismerésben
WENSZKY NÓRA: Secondary Stress in English Words
BORS EDIT: Az idõ poétikája az önéletírásban
NÁBRÁDY MÁRIA: Az érzelmek a tranakcióanalitikus szemszögébõl
JUDIT KISS-GULYÁS: The Acquisition of English Restrictive relative Clauses by
Hungarian Learners of English
235
29. PÁTROVICS PÉTER: Az aspektus története és tipológiája
30. NÉMETH MIKLÓS: Nyelvjárás, beszélt nyelv és spontán sztenderdizációs törekvések a
XVIII. századi szegedi irnoki nyelvváltozatban
31. KATALIN MÓNOS: Learner Strategies of Hungarian Secondary Grammar School
Students
32. KENESEI ZSÓFIA: A kapcsolati marketing jelentõsége a kereskedelmi banki
tevékenységben
236