What I found most interesting about Brittain’s account was the contradiction that both she and Roland experience during their first experiences with wartime death. Roland “did not quite know how [he] felt” when the first of his men is killed. He expected to have some amount of strong, distinct emotion—likely anger at a foreign enemy—but his reaction is one of pity for the soldier and a “sudden feeling of impotence.”  The first death that Brittain witnesses leaves her in a similar state. I think that the complete resignation that they both face these first experiences with is a remarkable testament to the effect that the war has already had on their attitudes towards death.

The casual, and almost clinical, attitudes that they have towards dying is really stunning at times. Edward, not even on the battlefields yet, “expressed a haunting premonition that he himself would not survive to see the coming of peace”, but was rather blasé about it. Roland was often depicted in a similar state of mind. Brittain, who had once been “filled with horror and fear” at the idea of dying, now only dreads a lingering death.