Private Peaceful

Adapted from the book jacket: Private Thomas Peaceful has lied about his age and left his family behind to follow his older brother, Charlie, to France to fight in the First World War. Now, Tommo has one almost unendurable night, alone, fighting sleep, to reflect on his life. As the minutes slowly tick by, his memories are full of his childhood in the English countryside. His father, mother, brothers, and first love, Molly, come vividly alive in his mind. But every moment Tommo spends thinking about his life means another moment closer to something he cannot bear to think about – a time when the war and its horrific consequences will change his life forever.

My Reactions
This is a gut-wrenching tale of brotherhood, loyalty, duty, love, show more courage and forgiveness. I loved the close bond between the brothers, both Tommo and Charlie, but also their brain-damaged brother Big Joe. I applauded their mother’s moral courage in the face of adversity. I felt uncomfortable with the actions of the Colonel, but recognized the British class system at work in the early 20th century. (Thank you, Downton Abbey.) This is not the first book about World War I that I have read, so I was familiar with the horrors of trench warfare and the brutal realities of a long siege, but I still cringed with fear and anxiety as I read about these young men (hardly older than boys) and what they faced. My heart about broke for Tommo and Charlie; I certainly didn’t see that end coming.

I was very glad that Morpurgo added a Postscript and Author’s Note explaining some of the realities of this period in history and how the governments of Britain, New Zealand, Australia and the United States had such different responses to the soldiers who suffered psychological trauma on the battlefields.

This is the third novel I’ve read by Morpurgo, after War Horse (also set in WWI), and An Elephant in the Garden (Dresden, during WW2). My reaction to the former was lukewarm, but I loved the latter. Private Peaceful is closer to “elephant” than “horse.” show less

I spent two hours last night reading a lovely and incredibly painful story about two brothers, Tommy and Charlie Peaceful, who spend a rough but exciting childhood on an estate in England in the early 1900s. Charlie, three years older than "Tommo," is the leader and protector of the two -- and this doesn't change when they join the war in France in 1916. Morpurgo brings to vivid life the horrors of that trench war in Ypres, with the rats, the lice, and the constant rain - and the awful mud. The war is a senseless meatgrinder. Men - boys - are slaughtered as casually as ammunition is spent.

And Thommo has an awful secret. And he's helplessly in love with Molly, Charlie's wife. So things cannot end well - and they don't.

Although PRIVATE PEACEFUL is categorized as a novel for young adults (YA), I found it much more than that. Because I'm an Old Adult (OA), and found the story absolutely captivating from start to finish. It brought to mind, of course, Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (Enriched Classics (Pocket)) and its young hero, Henry Fleming, who, like Morpurgo's Tommo Peaceful, wanted desperately to prove he wasn't a coward. Going to war to prove one's manhood has long been a theme in literature. A more recent novel of the Second World War, Nick Arvin's Articles of War, is even closer in theme to Morpurgo's book. Arvin's novel owes much to William Bradford Huie's non-fiction classic, The Execution of Private Slovik.

Morpurgo was, I suspect, show more very careful to avoid usage of the kind of casual obscenity that is endemic to the speech of rank and file military men. In so doing he was able to preserve his status as a writer of YA books. His descriptions of young (16) Tommo Peaceful and what he is thinking as he endures military training and then his various baptisms of fire in the horrors of WWI trench warfare are simply dead-on. You ache for this boy, who quickly, out of necessity, becomes a man. And the love felt between the Peaceful brothers - also brothers-in-arms - quickly becomes a unifying element of the story, from their childhood onward.

Simply put, PRIVATE PEACEFUL is just superb story-telling for any audience, YA or OA. Now I have to find a copy of Morpurgo's companion piece, War Horse. show less

One of the most tragic events of the 20th century was the senseless slaughter and sacrifice of many young men on the battlefields of the Somme,Verdun and Passchendaele. The iconic 1914 recruitment poster of Lord Kitchener, wearing a cap of a British Field Marshall, stares and points at the viewer pleading to their sense of allegiance and responsibility by declaring..."Your country needs you" The specially constituted "pals battalions" resulted in friends, neighbours and colleagues enlisting together at local recruiting drives with the promise that they could serve alongside each other. However many of these battalions sustained heavy causalities and this had a significant impact on their communities at home.

In the small Devon town of show more Hatherleigh lives young Tommo Peaceful with his brother Charlie and the girl they both adore, Molly. This is family life, village life, captured in the idyllic Devon countryside before the encroachment and black clouds of world war 1 destroys the dreams and aspirations of so many in pointless sacrifice ensuring that life would never be the same again....."We'd lie amongst the grass and buttercups of the water meadows and look up at the clouds scudding across the sky, at the wind-whipped crows chasing a mewing buzzard"....Tommo and Charlie are gripped in the romantic notion of helping to eradicate the threat of the Hun who were attempting to grow their military might and realize their imperialistic ambitions. So the two brothers and close friends from the village march blindly off to war where the initial patriotic enthusiasm dies tragically amidst pointless butchering when the reality of war is revealed...."I could no longer pretend to myself that I believed in a merciful god nor in a heaven, not anymore, not after I had seen what men could do to one another. I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth and it was man-made, not God-made"......."the terror that is engulfing me and invading me, destroying any last glimmer of courage and composure I may have left. All I have left now is my fear"....

Michael Morpurgo expertly portrays the senseless slaughter and sacrifice of world war 1 to a young impressionable adult audience. This is achieved by comparing the beauty and peacefulness of the English countryside with the shell ravaged mud filled trenches of France....this was the raw reality of war. Private Peaceful is a sombre novel to be read by young and old. It's simplistic language is very effective in creating an image of a time when the romantic notion of war quickly became a vision of hell and where the loss of millions was seen as an acceptable price for the march of imperialism and the misguided ambitions of WW1 military leaders. Highly Recommended. show less

Tommo Peaceful, a British soldier in WWI, thinks back through his life so far (he's now seventeen) as he serves his sentry duty one night in the trenches: the death of his father when he was very young, life with his mother and two brothers, Big Joe and Charlie, and the girl next door (Molly), with whom both he and Charlie are in love. Through it all, Charlie has been his best friend and closest ally in all things. Tommo even followed him off to war so that they'd remain together. But Charlie's not with him on this long night's vigil, and dawn will bring an unbearable event that will change all their lives.
Morpurgo is an excellent storyteller, which is evident in how he balances Tommo's remembrances with his awful night of dreading show more what's coming at dawn, and also in how well he paces the revelation of exactly what Private Peaceful is dreading so much. So I do recognize that this is a masterfully told story, but in the end, it's just too sad for me. War stories are difficult for me, and this one is so personal and deeply touching. I'm glad I've read it, but I'm not sure how glad I am with how long it will likely stay with me. show less

I read this as a required reading for a class.
This is one of the few books I had to read for school that stuck in my head, years later.
The journey that Thomas goes on is so riveting that I still think about it often.
The way everything is described makes it feel as though you are joining him on the battlefield and you've got mud on your boots.
It grows dark, as a story about war is bound to, but there is also a thread of hope throughout that keeps it from being utterly dark and full of despair.
Such a good story! I would recommend it to anyone who wants a story about war that isn't entirely grim and dark.
There is still lightheartedness and hope to be found.

"They've gone now, and I'm alone at last. I have the whole night ahead of me, and I won't waste a single moment of it. I shan't sleep it away. I won't dream it away either. I mustn't, because every moment of it will be far too precious.

I want to try to remember everything, just as it was, just as it happened. I've had nearly eighteen years of yesterdays and tomorrows, and tonight I must remember as many of them as I can. I want tonight to be long, as long as my life, not filled with fleeting dreams that rush me on towards dawn.

Tonight, more than any other night of my life, I want to feel alive."

Thus begins young Tommo Peaceful's narration of his short life story, which he tells us in several segments throughout the night. It isn't show more quite clear what dawn will bring, but we know he's racing against the clock—actually, not a clock, but a watch that his beloved older brother Charlie has given him. As Thomas Peaceful recounts their childhood growing up in wretched poverty after the loss of their father, in a small town run by a cruel and egomaniac Colonel, but with the joy of a special friendship with a girl who is close to both brothers, with the relative freedom allowed in a rural setting, we are made all too aware that Tommo is writing his tale while he is in the midst or World War I, which he and Charlie have so far spent fighting in Yprès amid the gruel trench warfare that senselessly took countless lives. Another short but powerful novel by Murporgo, who's [War Horse] I recently read, this one has been nominated for and won a slew of awards, and they are well deserved. Haunting. show less