Throughout Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, Brittain fixates on prophecy—the idea that one can, somewhat spiritually, know the future. Roland, facing the front and the prospect of death, tries to predict and make guesses at whether or not he will survive the war (178). Young Vera too assigns prophetic meaning to her dreams (168) or lines of poetry read at just the right moment (153). Roland and Vera do not make their predictions lightly, however. Brittain characterizes their visions of the future as premonitions carrying supernatural importance. Roland and Vera appear as if they’ve been let in on some cosmic secret, or at least, wish desperately to believe that they have been included in that special knowledge. In believing in the power of prophecy, Roland and Vera reveal how the war has intruded into their lives not only physically, emotionally, and mentally, but spiritually as well. In indulging in these prophetic wishes, Vera and her fiancé admit that the war holds spiritual power over their lives.
    
War operates in Brittain’s memoir as an unkind and uncaring cosmic force, almost like a god who destroys the lives of his followers without thought or consideration. By focusing on prophecy as a possible way of knowing, Brittain reveals a desire to spiritually matter to the unforgiving god of war. Thus, prophecy acts as a way to enter into conversation with “War” and leave the conversation unscathed. Young Vera tells Roland of a prophetic experience, “Half waking one morning, I seemed to hear an inner voice saying quite audibly: ‘Why do you worry about him? You know he will be all right.’” Roland responds to this story with optimism, “All along I have felt I shan’t be killed. In fact, I almost say I know it. I quite think I shall be wounded, but that is all” (178). Roland believes he has seen behind the curtain and has been given supernatural knowledge as to his future; this knowledge brings him comfort and power, even though the message—with its footnote that the war will leave him wounded—is not entirely happy.

Elsewhere, we see young Vera also believing in her ability to know the future by hanging onto the importance of a dream. She writes, “another shadowy individual came up to the table and said: ‘He is dead; he has died of wounds in France.’ Somehow I realized the people in the room were speaking of Roland...I managed to ask my informant: ‘How do you know?’ ‘It’s written down...the name is here’...‘Donald Neale.’” Vera awakens to this dream and tells herself “in a kind of ecstasy” that it “wasn’t [Roland’s] name” (168). She wants desperately to believe in the supernatural importance of this “prophetic” dream and clings to its message as truth. Here and elsewhere, prophecy emerges as a way to put oneself on the same playing field as the unkind, unknown “god” of war.  Prophecy operates, ultimately, as a connection to hope and a way to believe that the war will not leave total destitution in its wake.