Officers and Gentlemen

This is the second book in Waugh's "Sword of Honor" trilogy about the exploits of Guy Crouchback, an officer in the British Army during World War Two. As was the first in the trio, Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen is a sometimes gentle, sometimes scathing satire on war and the British class system as well. Crouchback is pleasant, well-meaning, capable and intelligent, if somewhat inept socially. Around him swirls a system that seems to get on quite despite itself. While some of Crouchback's fellow officers match him in quality, many are incompetent, fraudulent, cowardly or all three. Assignments are muddled, missions are planned, revised, then canceled with no explanations forthcoming to the men waiting to embark upon troop ships to show more carry them out. Amidst all this, Crouchback waits vainly to get into the war. When his group finally goes, it's to a calamitous campaign in Crete, and things get only worse.

Waugh's great sense of humor, and language, keep the narrative running briskly and enjoyably. But the full sense of satire and fun that runs through the first book are here joined by something darker, a keen sadness, even a sense of despair. Writing and rereading this, it occurs to me that this book reminds me in that respect of Catch 22, if you could imagine that book with humor less broad and written by an Englishman.

I guess it's a little hard to tell by reading this that I actually enjoyed Officers and Gentlemen a lot. The reader comes to care about Guy and many of his friends, and almost all of the characters, except the very worst of the lot, are treated by Waugh with an affectionate kindness. I don't know how Waugh intended these books, but as anti-war and anti-bureaucracy dark comedies, they are effecting and memorable. show less

Officers and Gentlemen is the second volume in Evelyn Waugh’s trilogy, drawn from his experiences as a junior officer in World War Two. In addition to the protagonist, Guy Crouchback, there are other characters carried over from the first volume, such as his ex-wife Virginia, his friend (and the second of Virginia’s series of husbands), Tommy Blackhouse, and a strange character named Trimmer, whose manifest incompetence results in ever-higher promotions.
In this book, Guy is detached from the Halberdiers and assigned to Hookforce, a regiment of commandos named after their ostensible commander, Ben Ritchie Hooke, another carryover from the first volume. However, he is mostly absent from the plot of this book.
In the first half of this show more novel, Guy and the rest of the commandos are on the windswept Hebridean Isle of Mugg for training, a shambolic affair that leaves them ill-prepared for what they face when finally thrown into action, in the second half of the book, as last-minute reinforcements on Crete. Their assignment, as last arrivals, is to cover the retreat of the rest of the Allied forces, remain behind, and surrender to the Germans, a fate Guy escapes in a humiliating way.
The satirical portrayal of incompetence established in the first book, Men at Arms, continues here, but the mood, especially in the second part, is darker. Meanwhile, unrelated incidents in Guy’s inglorious military career are being noted (unbeknownst to Guy) by a paranoid counterintelligence officer at a desk in London who concludes that these form a pattern. This is sure to play a role in the final volume, Unconditional Surrender, which I look forward to reading. show less

No. This is an account, heavy on dialogue with much specialized chit-chat among WW2 British officers, of their being sent from England to support the Allies on Crete, which was being evacuated by the Allies even as these officers arrived in the theater. There is precious little in the way of combat, and that little borders on absurdity (which is all fair enough as broadly representative of so much of war for so many). The dialogue is so littered with military lingo and abbreviations and banalities as surely to be of interest only to Brits who went through a similar experience about the same time. Or maybe to someone who has no idea whatever of the military and hungers for a sense of it; but there are much better sources. You have been show more warned.
Try Brideshead Revisited instead, five stars. show less

Part 2 of Sword of Honour.

In many ways this is very similar to the previous book about Guy Crouchback of the Halberdiers: soldiers being resigned to the comic ineptitude of their commanders and all sorts of intriguing characters.

However, this volume has more about the tactics and experience of war, so that I did slightly lose track in places (despite all the historical footnotes) and less outright comedy, less of life back home, less Catholic angst (less Catholicism altogether) etc.

The loucheness in Alexandria was good, and accidental heroics of blowing up a railway in occupied France because they failed to find the Channel Island they were looking for were fun, but overall, I enjoyed it less.

Let's hope part 3 reverts to form.

My show more (brief) reviews of the other two in the trilogy:
1 Men at Arms
and
3 Unconditional Surrender show less

La trilogie de Guy Crouchback, dont Hommes en armes constitue le premier volet, est unaniment considérée comme l'une des meilleures œuvres inspirées par la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Aussi bien l'auteur de Diablerie et du Cher disparu a-t-il mis beaucoup de lui-même dans son personnage principal qu'il nous fait suivre depuis sa lune de miel avec l'armée jusqu'à la perte de ses illusions. Guy Crouchback, homme de la tradition, comme Waugh, apprend à accepter les valeurs nouvelles de son temps, à se confronter à la vérité du monde. Anthony Burgess, inscrivant la trilogie dans son panthéon du roman au XXe siècle, a pu écrire : « C'est plus que toute l'histoire de l'Europe en lutte racontée avec une verve, un humour et une show more acuité impitoyables. show less

Lieutenant Crouchback, Second Battalion Royal Halberdiers Brigade has returned from service in Dakar under orders to report to Hazardous Offensive Operations Headquarters in London for special duties and is temporarily attached for training purposes to X Commando, Isle of Mugg. He is to report to Colonel Blackhouse. " 'Tommy Blackhouse?' 'Friend of yours?' 'Yes. He married my wife.' ...' Glad he's a friend of yours.' Guy saluted, turned about and departed only very slightly disconcerted. This was the classic pattern of army life as he had learned it, the vacuum, the spasm, the precipitation, and with it all the peculiar, impersonal, barely human geniality."
Officers and Gentlemen is not as humorous as Men At Arms. It is closer to the truth.

488. Officers and Gentlemen, by Evelyn Waugh (read 29 Dec 1955) I did not comment on this book while reading it, and now of course it is superseded by the final version, which I read in November 1983.