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.