Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

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In 1936, while reviewing the third of the trilogy, Sherston’s Progress, writer Howard Spring described the three books as ‘the most satisfying piece of autobiography to be published in our time. All the equipment of a novelist is Sassoon’s. But what novel could equal in fascination this true story?’ [4] Published anonymously) Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (novel), Faber, 1930, (published under name Seigfried Sassoon) Coward-McCann, 1930, reprinted with illustrations by Barnett Freedman, Faber, 1966, Collier, 1969. More troublingly, perhaps, the relationship between Siegfried Sassoon and his character--the protagonist of the title, George Sherston--presents a central critical issue.

Times Literary Supplement, July 11, 1918; June 3, 1926; November 1, 1947; September 18, 1948; January 4, 1957; December 7, 1973. As this is a thinly veiled autobiography, it's easy to spot the people he's referring to. Cromlech is obviously Robert Graves, a man who Sassoon has really mixed feelings about. Having read Graves' Goodbye to All That, it's a stark contrast of opinion- Graves thought Sassoon was wonderful, while Sassoon says some rather harsh things about Cromlech/Graves.Now and again she took me to a children’s party given by one of the gentry: at such functions I was awkward and uncomfortable, and something usually happened which increased my sense of inferiority to the other children, who were better at everything than I was and made no attempt to assist me out of my shyness. I had no friends of my own age. I was strictly forbidden to ‘associate’ with the village boys. And even the sons of the neighbouring farmers were considered ‘unsuitable’– though I was too shy and nervous to speak to them. [ 6] Brian Finney, The Inner I. British Literary Autobiography of the Twentieth Century (London, 1985), p. 172. By the way, the Goodreads’ description of this novel is highly misleading. It is a war memoir, not some dry bit of ranting, and even by the end it is the politicians rather than the generals who are being criticised. urn:lcp:memoirsofinfantr00sieg:epub:5166dbc8-fcb4-444d-ab18-e9f0e61c8359 Extramarc University of Toronto Foldoutcount 0 Identifier memoirsofinfantr00sieg Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t6155sj6z Isbn 0571064108 Lccn 66069663 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.17 Openlibrary OL7855539M Openlibrary_edition Sassoon’s critical biography of Victorian novelist and poet George Meredithfound a similarly positive reception. In this volume, he recounted numerous anecdotes about Meredith, portraying him vividly as a person as well as an author: “The reader lays the book down with the feeling that a great author has become one of his close neighbors,” wrote G.F. Whicher in the New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review.The critical portions of the book were also praised, though some found the writing careless. But the New Yorkercritic noted Sassoon’s “fresh and lively literary criticism,” and the reviewer for the Times Literary Supplementdeclared that “Mr. Sassoon gives us a poet’s estimate, considered with intensity of insight, skilfully shaped as biography, and written with certainty of style.”

Exploring to the right I found young Fernby, whose demeanour was a contrast to the apathetic trio in the sand-bagged strong-point. Fernby had only been out from England for a few weeks but he appeared quite at home in his new surroundings. His face showed that he was exulting in the fact that he didn't feel afraid. He told me that no one knew what had happened on our right; the Royal Irish were believed to have failed. Dunning had been the first to leave our trench; had shouted 'Cheerio' and been killed at once." I can't stop thinking about this line, nor the fact that "Dunning" was a real person named Thomas Conning. (seated in front: http://www.sjp.org.uk/uploads/1/6/5/7...). Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer emerged as one of the key texts of World War One, admired not merely as the personal record of one of the survivors of the conflict in the trenches but as a prose work of masterly style and subtlety.

by Siegfried Sassoon

You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’. [ 1]

The quotation marks here, insistently cordoning off the clichés from Sassoon’s late-1920s prose, suggest that the author has subsequently grown sceptical of these class assumptions. The little toff who had taken domestic help and private tutors for granted grew up into a world which sent these supposedly social inferiors in their thousands to be slaughtered in a war. The adult Sassoon has been forced to change his world view.

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Cf. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, pp. 74–8 & Diaries 1915–1918, pp. 824. Sassoon made only some minor changes, the most interesting of which is that whenever the diaries mention “Huns” this is replaced in the book by “Germans”. It speaks volumes that Sassoon ends the chapter there with no further comment and he clearly did go on to ask the “silly questions”. As I stepped over one of the Germans an impulse made me lift him up from the miserable ditch. Propped against the bank, his blond face was undisfigured, except by the mud which I wiped from his eyes and mouth with my coat sleeve. He'd evidently been killed while digging, for his tunic was knotted loosely about his shoulders. He didn't look to be more than 18. Hoisting him a little higher, I thought what a gentle face he had, and remembered that this was the first time I'd ever touched one of our enemies with my hands. Perhaps I had some dim sense of the futility which had put an end to this good-looking youth. Anyway I hadn't expected the battle of the Somme to be quite like this.”

Sassoon has been criticised by some reviewers for pulling his punches and not being as realistic as people like Graves and others. I wonder whether I was reading the same book. Here are a couple of examples; At the end of Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, we left George Sherston in the trenches, and for the bulk of this book that is where he remains. He is losing friends and acquaintances at a rapid clip. As Siegfried Sassoon sifts through his memories, while preparing to write this trilogy of the “fictionalized” version of his war experiences, I can’t even imagine the number of ghosts he must have stirred up. Faces blurred by time, and memories muddled by just the infinite number of men who passed through the scope of his war experiences. He remembers the nonchalance portrayed by many of these young men that never quite reaches their eyes as they try to maintain a stiff upper lip in the face of complete unthinkable carnage. George Sherston/Siegfried Sassoon has stirred up a fine mess, and now I am off to book three, Sherston’s Progress, the final volume in the trilogy, to find out if this protest makes the proper waves or if it is squashed before it can gain enough momentum to make a difference.

Sassoon is very good at describing the ordinary life of a platoon, most of which was very boring and uncomfortable. The actual action was interspersed between these periods of boredom. Sassoon does not preach or bully he just tells the tale and explains how he underwent change. One example is his anger when he sees people in London eating at expensive restaurants and hotels and remembers what he and the troops have been eating for the last months. This episode of a soldier/sportsman’s introduction to the realm of global politics ends up being quite humorous. Sherston wants to hit Lloyd George on the nose, and to “stop strangers in the street and ask them whether they realized that we ought to state our War Aims.” (209) Throughout the following period, Sherston is constantly bedeviled by incongruous doubts—not about his purpose, but about the annoying details. He is advised to meet leading pacifist “Thornton Tyrell” (Bertrand Russell). Should he first read the works of that famous philosopher and mathematician? He does eventually obtain one of Tyrell’s works, starts underlining what seem to be the important passages, consults the dictionary, scratches his head, and ends up casting it aside as a hopeless enterprise—the book is too “full of ideas.”