Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

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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.

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. 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] The second volume in Siegfried Sassoon’s beloved trilogy, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, with a new introduction by celebrated historian Paul Fussell Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2012-04-17 14:32:34 Bookplateleaf 0008 Boxid IA129605 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City London Donor

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Sherston is still in the Army and decorated so his superiors proceed cautiously. Sherston's intransigence begins to greatly anger the Colonel however. Eventually Sherston's friend David convinces him not to publish the manifesto

In his first days at the hospital, Sherston ponders his nation’s involvement in the war. “I cannot claim that my thoughts were clear or consistent. I did, however, become definitely critical and inquiring about the War.” (187) His experience at Nutwood Manor reinforces these critical thoughts. Although the resident lord and lady do everything they can to care for their four convalescing officers, “Lady Asterix” complacently believes they should be happy to have done their duty and will be rewarded in the afterlife. Sherston does his best to suppress rude thoughts of disagreement, but the difference in their attitudes becomes increasingly apparent. Lady Asterix happens to be present when Sherston opens a letter informing him that two good friends in his battalion have been killed. When he blurts out the news, the lady serenely says, “But they are safe and happy now.” Siegfried Sassoon is best remembered for his angry and compassionate poems about World War I, which brought him public and critical acclaim. Avoiding the sentimentality and jingoism of many war poets, Sassoon wrote of the horror and brutality of trench warfare and contemptuously satirized generals, politicians, and churchmen for their incompetence and blind support of the war. He was also well known as a novelist and political commentator. In 1957 he was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. 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. Here we have George Sherston in a nutshell: born into privilege and snobbery, yet impressed and intimidated by more vigorous boys and cut off from people of like mind.The life of "George Sherston" set out in this book is very different from the extended adolescence described in the first part of the trilogy; this second part taking in The Great War and the author's gradual conversion from a patriot accepting the "received wisdom" of the day, to an anti-war activist. This book covers the really interesting period of Sassoon’s life. It’s an effective contrast to the events and settings described in Fox Hunting. I get the feeling that it is closer to being directly autobiographical than the first book of the trilogy, too. As a result the twenty-first-century reader, despite being moved by the sentiment, may be bewildered by the context of Sassoon’s tale. Sassoon’s publishers continue to print Spring’s assessment on the cover of the Complete Memoirs. [5] However, Sassoon’s text begs us to to ascertain to what extent it can be considered an ‘autobiography’. 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

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. 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.When the blurb says this book is unsentimental, it means it. Sassoon frequently gets you to start liking a soldier he introduces, before giving you the details of their death at the end of the paragraph. It's like being repeatedly punched in the stomach. To me, it shows his skill at grabbing the reader's attention and emotions in a really short space of time, then twisting them. It's written in a similar vein to his poetry, in many ways. I)t was Dixon who taught me to ride, and my admiration for him was unqualified. And since he was what I afterwards learnt to call ‘a perfect gentleman’s servant’, he never allowed me to forget my position as ‘a little gentleman’: he always knew when to become discreetly respectful. In fact, he ‘knew his place’. [ 7] My guesstimate is that Sassoon wanted the freedom fiction provides. You can fudge facts. Change names, dates, places. Not worry about whether you're getting it "right" or, if speaking about sensitive issues which could implicate other people, you can say—Hey, I made it all up! 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...).

In 1957 Sassoon became a convert to Catholicism, though for some time before his conversion, his spiritual concerns had been the predominant subject of his writing. These later religious poems are usually considered markedly inferior to those written between 1917 and 1920. Yet Sequences(published shortly before his conversion) has been praised by some critics. Derek Stanford, in Books and Bookmen,claimed that “the poems in Sequencesconstitute some of the most impressive religious poetry of this century.”Classic WW I memoir thinly disguised as fiction in which 'George Sherston' is the pseudonym for Sassoon. It begins several months into Sherston's tour of duty in France and covers his combat experiences and changing attitude towards the war.This is still one of the more effective accounts of life in the trenches and ,even eighty-three years after it's initial publication, an effective and visceral read. Highly recommended for those interested in the so-called "Great War" and the experiences of those who fought in it. One of the best in my opinion. After the war, Sassoon became involved in Labour Party politics, lectured on pacifism, and continued to write. His most successful works of this period were his trilogy of autobiographical novels, The Memoirs of George Sherston.In these, he gave a thinly-fictionalized account, with little changed except names, of his wartime experiences, contrasting them with his nostalgic memories of country life before the war and recounting the growth of his pacifist feelings. Some have maintained that Sassoon’s best work is his prose, particularly the first two Sherston novels. Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Manwas described by a critic for the Springfield Republicanas “a novel of wholly fresh and delightful content,” and Robert Littrell of Bookmancalled it “a singular and a strangely beautiful book.”