World War I

In "When the Vision Dies...," Vera Brittain the memoirist states that she "did not then know that if the living are to be of any use in this world, they must always break faith with the dead" (247).  In other words, the living must turn their loss into something productive.  I think this recognition of her naivety is interesting in this particular part of the text, as this is after Roland has passed, but before Geoffrey, Victor, and finally Edward would die in the War.  In this moment, she has only partially learned the extent to which this would have to be true.  Brittain the V.A.D. nurse does not yet know that the War would rob her of not just her lover or as she herself describes as "all [her] future" (190).  It would also rob her of her greatest friends and brother, "all [her] past" (190).  I was reminded of this towards the end of our reading as we see Vera begin to shift back to academic pursuit as a way of living up to these men's lost potential.  In a way, I see this operating as a sort of religion for Vera or a way of understanding the world that can encompass the totality of the War while at the same time make room for hope through remembrance of those she lost, and I think would inevitably lead her towards adopting a pacifist stance.  In "Survivors Not Wanted," she concludes that she "discovered that human nature does change, does learn to hate oppression, to deprecate the spirit of revenge, to be revolted by acts of cruelty..." (Brittain 473).  It is prophetic in a way that she would be so heartened by history and then immediately condemnatory fo the Treaty of Versailles which so obviously failed to recognize the humanity of those forced to agree to its terms.  Her critique of treaties is just as biting as any other she has served up throughout the memoir, and I wonder at her not being more cynical as Testament of Youth is published during the interwar years.

A couple of lines in Testament of Youth caught my attention this week for a possible paper topic at semester’s end. In “This Loneliest Hour” section, Vera realizes nothing can ever completely console her or give her closure regarding Edward’s death. During one of her lowest, bleakest times, she mentions how “sympathetic friends wrote earnestly to me of the experimental compensations of Spiritualism” (445). We might have briefly discussed this in the past, but the use of séances and mediums in the hope of finding some indication, however elusive of a future reunion ‘beyond the sun’ (445) seems to have been an emerging trend as a direct result of the war.

Who were these wives, mothers and sisters who sought communication with the dead, and how effective did they find this method of reuniting with their loved ones? Everyone has their own opinion on this sort of thing, but it’s clear Vera’s generation developed a kind of obsession with the dead. Very few were left unaffected by the war and had their own experience with the death of a family member or friend. Everyone dealt with loss differently, and for many women desperate to reconnect with their soldiers, a séance or medium made sense.

Although Vera writes how she didn’t take her friends’ advice in seeking that kind of spirituality because it “held no comfort for me,” she recalls how on a walk one summer morning after Edward’s death she felt his presence beside her. I’d like to learn more about how Vera’s generation formed their views of spirituality based on the catastrophic amount of death that surrounded them. Religion and spirituality, of course, weren’t new concepts at that time, but the rush of aching hearts and mad minds drove women to new heights in talking to soldiers who’d gone to the afterlife.

I’ve come to admire Vera Brittain so much in reading Testament of Youth. Maybe she didn’t attempt a spiritual meeting with Roland or Edward because of her strength to “become the complete automaton, working mechanically and no longer even pretending to be animated by ideals” (450). She gave up her feelings and became cold and numb, living with no confidence or security because “the dead were dead and would never return” (463).

In the reading for this week, I was especially struck by how Brittain deals with the grief of Roland's death and her brother Edward's death. What struck me so much was the difference in style right after these events happen. After Roland's death, Brittain's style suddenly changes. Instead of writing in the past tense as she has been, she writes in the present tense: “I am back on night duty”; “I am buying some small accessories for my uniform in a big Victoria Street store”; “It is Wednesday, and I am walking up the Brixton Road” (Brittain 240). These strategies make the time dilate, and they make the reader feel like time is going very slowly, but in actuality each paragraph or two is a full day. This technique was very effective because it shows how the time one experiences after a loved one's death feels so strange, and that you are going through the motions of life without fully feeling them. Brittain shows this very well here through her techniques and focus on the small things like walking, buying stuff for her uniform, or when she is working. 

However, to contrast that with Edward's death, nothing in her style changes after her brother dies. She is obviously distraught and upset, but it does not actually effect the style of her writing in the same way Roland's does. I am interested in this because after Edward dies, she explains that she is a machine: “My only hope now was to become a complete automaton, working mechanically and no longer even pretending to be animated by ideals” (450); “Having become, at last, the complete automaton, moving like a sleep-walker thought the calm atmosphere of Millbank, I was no longer capable of either enthusiasm or fear” (458). She also states that Roland's death was different because, since it was at the beginning of the war, they had more consolation letters sent to respond to and thus were forced to face death more often. Both of these ideas seem to me to show more of the style that she used when describing the days after Roland’s death, and yet they are not employed here. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

     In the course of reading sections of Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, I found myself concentrating on passages in which the author seems to be responding to the shifting value of life. There is a continuous consideration of this value as the chapters pass, and as the death toll mounts both in Brittain’s personal sphere and in the world at large, the value of life becomes almost indistinguishable.

      The letters between Brittain and Roland give us our first glimpse into the fear, the feeling of value being lost. In Brittain’s fist month at 1st London General, she describes a “quarrel” that she has with Roland, which is quite insignificant except for the consideration it evokes. Brittain reminisces, “The War, I began to feel, was dividing us as I had so long feared that it would, making real values seem unreal, and causing the qualities which mattered most to appear unimportant” (215). The author worries that this division will bring about an inability to recognize value, especially the value of their own love for each other. And we might applaud Brittain, for it took more than just the loss of Roland to bring about this inability, but the loss of Roland, Geoffrey, Victor, and Edward.

     As these close personal friends, fiancé, and in Edward’s case beloved brother march solemnly towards death, the author continually presents us with passages that consider the value of life, as if Brittain means to remind herself before she forgets for good. One especially interesting passage includes a poem titled “The Soul of a Nation” by Sir Owen Seaman. The poem offers us an interesting juxtaposition between the perception of important “Themes” of conversation which were popular before the war, and what seems important in 1918, nearly four years in. What is profound about the poem is the enduring sense of nationalistic optimism, even as Seaman recognizes the War as an environment,

“Where those we love, whose courage laughs at fear,

Amid the storm of steel around the raining,

Go to their death for all we hold most dear.”

Brittain responds to the poem directly following its final stanza with the claim, “Sir Owen had been mistaken” (431). This harsh rebuke of Seaman’s nationalistic optimism shows Brittain’s process of understanding that Roland did not die for “all we hold most dear.” In fact, he died for nothing, for some trench wire, and therefore how can his life be assigned value? What was it actually worth?

      It is interesting to contrast Sir Owen Seaman’s poem with a verse that Brittain includes some thirty pages later by Sir Walter Raleigh. The major plot point which occurs in the interval is none other than the death of her brother Edward, and observe the change in tone:

“Even such is Time, that takes in trust

 Our youth, our joys, our all we have

And pays us but with earth and dust.”

It is hard to imagine a more fitting context for this verse (446). Here again we see this idea of value, as Raleigh determines that Time rewards with a payment of “earth and dust.” There is no optimism, not even a drop. Time takes everything, and does not pretend to uphold any greater cause while doing so. Such is the war, that takes lives, ideals, relationships, hopes, justifications, and any sense of worth and grinds it up into a smooth paste.

     As the armistice is announced, Brittain describes a surreal scene in which a taxi strikes an elderly woman, “who in listening, like myself, to the wild noise of a world slowly released from nightmare, had failed to observe its approach” (461). In this scene Brittain metaphorically presents the armistice as an end in which nothing has ended, in which senseless death continues to take life with no offer of compensation or justification. This consideration of the value of life, though not the last, perhaps represents the most radical position that Brittain poses. The woman lives and dies in the space of two short paragraphs, and just as fleeting as her life is any sense of the value that it may or may not have held. In this scene we see the division which the author has feared come to its full realization, confirmed in the final words of the chapter, “the dead were dead and would never return” (463) These are striking words, and this is a subject that I certainly hope to return to throughout the semester. 

Something I found particularly compelling in this section of Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth is the central role of the written word and the comfort it can provide. The importance of language is clearly shown through the written correspondence between Vera and Roland. Over time, they are able to convey what is seemingly impossible to explain. Roland gives personal insight into his day-to-day experience of war, while Vera tells him about her experience as a VAD nurse. They are able to remain very much themselves through their letters, providing each other with something to look forward to.

The couple's closeness through their letters contrasts with Vera's somewhat distant relationship with those around her and her daily responsibilities. There is a distracting quality to her work. It gives her something to do between what gives her life meaning: the letters.

"When a fortnight passed in which no letter came from Roland at all, I was glad to have attached myself so securely to the hospital" (173).

The positions held by Vera and Roland require them to act in particular ways in order to simply get through each day. Therefore, speaking frankly with those around them is not an option. This is why her diary also serves as a sense of comfort.

Along with personal letters, the written word is used throughout in the form of poetry. Both Vera and Roland include and reference works of poetry they find particularly relevant. It seems that words on a page allow for something uniquely poignant in a time of violence and tragedy. Poems written about war try to make sense of the nonsensical, something that everyday speech often cannot achieve.

In this week’s assigned readings of Testament of Youth, I noticed a distinct parallelism between Vera and Roland’s circumstances. Roland fighting in the war and Vera working in a hospital both witnessed firsthand what she refers to as “wholesale murder” (175) of a generation. As Vera and her brother read The Times History of the War after that first year, she mentions the millions listed as dead and wounded. “It is quite impossible to understand,” she writes “how we can be such strong individualists, so insistent on the rights and claims of every human soul, and yet at the same time countenance this wholesale murder, which if it were applied to animals or birds or indeed anything except men would fill us with a sickness and repulsion greater than we could endure” (175).

To say that war changes a person is definitely an understatement, but I’d be interested to discuss in class if World War I was maybe the first war to affect not only soldiers but also the rest of a country’s population to such an extreme level. Yes, I acknowledge the Civil War also impacted nurses, family and friends—war touches everyone in some way—but the sheer volume of death and wave of prolonged sadness that swept through those countries involved in WWI was unprecedented.

Vera’s observation more than a century ago still rings true today—no matter how sophisticated, modernized or advanced the society of a country may be, war has this undeniable ability to turn humans into ruthless barbarians who wouldn’t treat animals they way they do their fellow mankind. Forget trying to live as a “strong individualist.” War turns us all crazy and we lose sight of humanity. Even though Vera declares early in her nursing career “war knows no power” (173), she quickly realizes no one can escape the effects of such a tragedy. Soldiers, nurses, family, everybody must “force all the warmth out of themselves” (211) to do their jobs and survive.

When reading this particular section of Testament of Youth, I was impressed with Vera Brittain's honesty and her ability to articulate specific sentiments surrounding the war that many would feel uncomfortable recognizing. For example, she writes the following in a proto-"Dear John" letter to her finacé:

"One cannot be angry with people at the front - a fact which I sometimes think they take advantage of - and so when I read ' We go back into the trenches tomorrow ' I literally dare not write you the kind of letter you perhaps deserve, for thinking that the world might end for you on that discordant note." (217)

She's clearly upset at the beginning of the letter, snarkily remarking that "apparently one has to be greateful nowadays for being allowed to know [her fiancé] is alive" (217). Then, in the passage above, Brittain recognizes that she's upset at her fiancé's lack of communication, yet she points out that she feels inclined to withold her anger because he's on the front line of war. The most suprising part of it all is Brittain's accusal of Roland and other soldiers for taking advantage of the fact that people on the home front feel guilty for holding them accountable from afar. Brittain's analysis points out the War's effect on a relationship between two people, showing how it does not allow either party to communicate freely or honestly. Whether or not she has a valid reason for being angry with her fiancé, I assume that many readers, including myself, have suffered this same sense of guilt for being angry despite feeling justified in it. This passage humanizes and personalizes Brittain's experience with the war by presenting this universally relatable emotion - even for those who have not experiened war in such close proximity.

Since Dolores O’Riordian died recently, I’ve been re-fascinated with The Cranberries. While reading Testament of Youth, the song “Zombie” was playing through my mind for a couple reasons. For one, they specifically mention 1916 because of the Easter Rising (they’re Irish)  of WWI: “It's the same old thing / Since nineteen-sixteen / In your head, in your head, they're still fightin' / With their tanks, and their bombs / And their bombs, and their guns / In your head, in your head, they are dyin'” ("Zombie" The Cranberries). The other reason I thought of them is because of the fight that Brittain and Roland have near the end of the "Learning Versus Life" in Testament of Youth when Roland asks, “Do I seem very much a phantom in the void to you?” And tells her that “I must. You seem to me rather like a character in a book or someone whom one has dreamt of and never seen. I suppose there exists such a place as Lowestoft, and that there was once a person called Vera Brittain who came down there with me” (216). This caught my eye because of the effect the war is having on the two of them. They can’t see each other very often, can only communicate by letter, and because of that, have essentially become “zombies” to one another. By this I mean that each one is doing someone for the war, on their own, and so, as The Cranberries say, it is happening “in your head.” Neither one can be with one another, and as Brittain says herself, “the War kills other things besides physical life” (218) to which she is referring to Roland’s individuality being changed.

There is, from the moment they get engaged, a strangeness between them that, from the way Brittain describes her feelings, seems to stem from the constant presence of death surrounding them. While she tells him that she thinks he will not die, and he agrees, she also explicitly tells him that if he dies, she would immediately marry someone else so that the outside world would believed she'd moved on so she could mourn on her own (185-6). So, while she tells him she does not think of his death, it is obvious that she does, understandably so. The Cranberries song interested me so much while reading this because it sums up what they are both feeling and not feeling. It explains that in their heads these things are happening to one another but they can’t truly explain what that means to each other in real life. Readers see this when Brittain is leaving on the train and she looks out the window after boarding and he is walking away without looking at her (189). He tells her later in a letter that this is because he could not stand having to say goodbye again because his grief would overwhelm him (190). Both of them during times together have such a hard time expressing themselves, and it seems to be because of the looming idea of death that The Cranberries sing about in "Zombie."

I was struck most this week by Kern's piece on the July Crisis. I was fascinated by the desire of some contries (namely Germany and to a lesser degree Austria-Hungary) to go to war. The fact that numerous officials planned when to send their ultimatums dependent upon the Poincaré's (the French Foreign Minister) schedule in order to ensure that he would not be in Russia (and thus unable to confer face-to-face) at the time(262). The secret additional unltimatum that Germany planned to force on France in the case of their agreement also seems demonstrate a desire to ensure that there could not be a peaceful solution (273). I suppose this reveals a major difference in my cultural context, but it seems to me that since WWI, most countries have tried to avoid war at almost any cost. Maybe this is because people are now aware of the human carnage that modern warfare entails, a concern which seems to have eluded many military and political leaders before the war.

I was also convinced by Kern's argument that technology seems to have been a primary factor for the war in more ways than one. I can understand the way in which the telegraph would result in a breakdown of diplomatic practices, but I was more surprised by the way in which the leaders seemingly refused to talk with their proposed eneimes on the telephone, opting instead for telegraphs. The medium of telephone, hearing the voice of your counterpart and being able to respond in real time would seems like it would facilitate greater, more presonal communications. But instead participants seem to have felt that telgraphs and state beurocracy seem to have stripped them of their personal agency.

Henry Poulaille's short story "The Mad Train," which appears in Transition magazine, No. 2, focuses on a train that is on its way to Paris.  The train's brakes have failed, so the engineer and the man feeding the coal into the engine continue to feed the fires so that the train can go as far as it can.  They are switched to a specific track, on which they are allowed to keep going until they either wreck or run out of fuel.  The engineer and the other man are constantly fearing that the track will not be kept clear and that the train will wreck.  Luckily, they finally run out of fuel and are stranded four hours from Paris. 

Poulaille's style of writing lends itself to surrealism in that it captures the aspects of a dream.  The beginning of the short story functions very much like an Imagist poem.  There is a heavy focus on description of the train itself, and what riding this speeding train is like.  Oftentimes, the train itself is given animal qualites as the engineer and the other man feed it coal and discuss how hungry it is.  At first the story has no real characters, as only the train and its trip is described.  This heavy description creates a dreamlike quality as everything is based off images. 

Also, the story doesn't have much of a plot.  It tells a simple story that focuses very little on the human characters themselves.  Throughout most of the story, we hear about the engineer and the other worker from an outside perspective, and we really only hear their dialogue.  Once in a while, we get a description of the people riding the train, but it isn't until the last page that we really hear much about them.  In these last couple of pages, we get a glimpse of the unconscious as being portrayed in the story.  At the end of the story, the passengers get off the train to find out what is going on, and the engineer tells them that the brakes have quit working and that they have ran out of fuel.  The passengers speculate on how long it will take for the railroad workers to come help them.  One of the passengers, who is a soldier specifically, states that he hopes they show up soon, but in his "business there are plenty of delays" (50).  While this is only a single line of dialogue, it functions much like the unconscious showing up within the story.  The train, much like the world during WWI, is tettering on the edge of destruction, but the war finally runs out of fuel.  The soldier (who helps us to see the connection to the war) is used to delays, so he is already skeptical and is doubtful about them reaching Paris on time.  While we are never specifically told that the train represents a world in the midst of a global war, there is that small connection that makes it seem like a dream that needs to be interpreted as such.