In later passages of her memoir and the middle years of the war, Vera seems to distance herself from the disillusionment of her early war years. While Brittain continues to characterize her younger self’s relationship to the war as extremely bitter and angry, we see a slight shift in young Vera’s opinions towards the meaning of the war. In the early stages of the war and her service as a V.A.D., Brittain explains her grunt work as being initially redeemed by “a sacred glamour” —a belief she then renounces. Brittain writes, “The temptation to exploit our young wartime enthusiasm must have been immense—and was not fiercely resisted by the military authorities” (210). In this instance, Brittain reveals her disillusionment towards the glory, glamour, honor of war; instead, she remarks on the way the nation and military exploited her youthful ignorance towards war.

Despite the disillusionment of these early pages, Vera oddly returns to glory rhetoric in her later memories of the war. Young Vera writes of Roland in her notebook, “He to me is the embodiment of the ideal of heroism—that ‘Heroism in the Abstract’—for which he lived and died, and for which I will strive to live, and if need be, die also” (264). While early-war Vera or middle-aged Brittain would likely disagree with this glorification of war and “heroism,” Vera in the middle of the war returns to its ideal. After the death of Roland, it is as if she wants to make his service and sacrifice mean something.

Her early war years, often spent in anger at the fruitlessness of the war, seem to revolve around the fear of losing Roland. Once the unthinkable—and yet inevitable—has happened and Roland has been killed in war, she momentarily forgets the full force of her disillusionment. Possibly in an attempt to understand and come to terms with her fiancé’s death, she allows herself to believe in the ideals he adhered to at the beginning of the war. Brittain explains her sadness that Roland never achieved war glory in its specific sense—for example, that he was never awarded the Military Cross he so desired, which Edward surprisingly received. Brittain writes, “He had gone unadorned to his grave without taking part in a single important action, while the friend who had been a mere peace-loving musician wore the coveted decoration” (287). Because Roland died without achieving any specific sort of glory, young Vera soothes herself by momentarily surrendering to the glory of war. In these middle years, she believes in the idea that any soldier who fights and dies in war is worthy of glory, lived an honorable life, and died for a supreme purpose.  By believing in Roland’s “Heroism in the Abstract” (264), Vera attempts to honor her fiancé.