Siegfried Sassoon went to the wars and tried to give an honest account of it. He was not in favour of the experience for normal humans and he gave a very influential account of his experience. A number of people thought it was a betrayal of the images they were fed by the establishment of the time....eminently readable. ( )

The second volume of Sassoon's fictionalized memoir covers a good bit of his military service during the First World War and concludes with his decision to write his famous soldier's statement, and the issuance of his statement and the initial reactions to it. Much easier and more engaging for me than the first volume, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, but the earlier book is necessary to appreciate the way Sasson's altar ego develops over the course of this volume. ( )

Sassoon's novel tells the story of his alter ego, George Sherston, during World War 1. It sparsely charts his progress from being a patriotic, newly commissioned Second Lieutenant, through trench warfare - including the Battle of the Somme - to disillusionment, an officer overwhelmed with the futility of the human sacrifice he and his men are forced to take part in. As anyone who knows something of Sassoon's own story might imagine, while recovering from injuries in the UK, Sherston begins to protest against the war, presenting the army with a challenge: how should they deal with him? Sassoon's novel is a powerful indictment of leadership during the Great War, presumably even more striking when it was first published in 1930, given the deferential culture of the age. ( )

This book follows directly from "Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man" and follows George Sherston ( alias for Sassoon) as he heads to France to fight in the Great War. His battlefield experiences are compassionately documented and although his situation is slightly improved by the fact he is an officer and seems to escape the battlefield for interludes in England, he has much empathy for the hardships of the regular soldier and eventually questions the validity and futility of such a waste of life.
An easy to read memoir which will now see me off to read "Sherston's Progress" ( )

"...This is a stunning novel. I love the English gentleman element of it. You’ve got this well-educated man who really doesn’t mind killing Germans but what he doesn’t understand is the reason why he’s killing them. As the war continued he began to realise that it was for political reasons – the military industrial complex. There was too much power play – the Allies couldn’t stop because they need the Germans completely on their knees so everyone got the divvy-up of land and power.



At one point, he describes being back on leave on a Sunday evening and there’s less ambient noise than we have now so he could hear the artillery fire in northern France. And he’s sitting in the Ritz and can’t understand why people won’t drink the Hock, just because it’s German. It’s cheap so he drinks it. He gets the Military Cross but chucks it back and he makes a speech saying he is willing to go back and fight but wants to know what he’s fighting for. It’s a fictional account but it’s obviously him and his life – understated in that way...." (reviewed by Andy McNab in FiveBooks).



The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/andy-mcnab-on-anti-terror-politics-war ( )