While reading the "Tawny Island" section of Testament of Youth, I was particularly struck by the changing attitudes Brittain and Edward had towards the death and suffering at the hands of the war, specifically in Victor's case. At one point, Brittain remarks that the "psychological combats and defeats of the last two years...no longer mattered...for death had made them all unsubstantial, as if they had never been" (258), highlighting death's ability to overpower what came before and dominate the human mind with grief for the lost. However, Edward, in his letter to Brittian regarding Victor's death, says he "cannot say that [he] wished from the bottom of his heart that [Victor] should live" (360), due to the wounds inflicted upon him in war. Edward here regards death as a mercy, an escape from the pain of the war, rather than something to be mourned over and bemoaned. I find it fascinating that Brittian decided to showcase these different viewpoints within two pages of each other, as they both highlight different tragic aspects of the same war. On one hand, an entire generation of men is being massacred in the trenches of the Western Front; on the other hand, those men lucky enough to survive their wounds were forced to live in pain for the rest of their lives, however long they may be. However, Brittian's comment seems to imply that these suffering survivors are forgotten in the face of overwhelming casualties and rendered insubstantial under a mound of corpses (358).