Memoirs of an Infantry Officer

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You would think the dull sitting around would make this a turgid languid book that is hard to get through. However, Sassoon is a master of he written word & the book keeps the reader interested throughout & you pop out the other end much surprised when you realise the long dead moments & short action sequences. Cf. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, pp. 74–8 & Diaries 1915–1918, pp. 824. Sassoon made only some minor changes, the most interesting of which is that whenever the diaries mention “Huns” this is replaced in the book by “Germans”.

Sherston’s trilogy Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, supposedly written in the first person by ‘George Sherston’ and first published in 1930, forms the second of a trilogy of books which eventually appeared within one volume under the overarching title The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston. [ 3]

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Though Raine gives some pertinent examples, he apparently takes Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man to be a volume of straight autobiography, completely disregarding its finer points. Also, one cannot help feeling that his critical judgment has been impaired by his dislike of the world of the fox-hunter, and his sympathy for the infantry officer’s stand against the war. Nowadays, many potential readers of Sassoon’s evocation of a pre-1914 rural idyll are put off by its title: Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. A hunter of foxes? The book must be full of ignorant bullies and gruesome death! No Thank You. The quotation marks here, insistently cordoning off the clichés from Sassoon’s late-1920s prose, suggest that the author has subsequently grown sceptical of these class assumptions. The little toff who had taken domestic help and private tutors for granted grew up into a world which sent these supposedly social inferiors in their thousands to be slaughtered in a war. The adult Sassoon has been forced to change his world view.

In his first days at the hospital, Sherston ponders his nation’s involvement in the war. “I cannot claim that my thoughts were clear or consistent. I did, however, become definitely critical and inquiring about the War.” (187) His experience at Nutwood Manor reinforces these critical thoughts. Although the resident lord and lady do everything they can to care for their four convalescing officers, “Lady Asterix” complacently believes they should be happy to have done their duty and will be rewarded in the afterlife. Sherston does his best to suppress rude thoughts of disagreement, but the difference in their attitudes becomes increasingly apparent. Lady Asterix happens to be present when Sherston opens a letter informing him that two good friends in his battalion have been killed. When he blurts out the news, the lady serenely says, “But they are safe and happy now.” There is another interesting comment by another of George’s superior officers: ”It was absolutely impossible, he asserted, for the War to end until it ended---well, until it ended as it ought to end.” Nonsensical on one hand, but perfectly honest on the other. He is as committed to the war ending “naturally” with a winner and a loser as Sassoon is for the war to end because it is absolute insanity to continue. In light of this, it might help us if we were to should acquaint ourselves some pertinent aspects of Sassoon’s earlier book, together with a discussion on the relationship between the writer’s own life experiences and those of his protagonist, George.Sassoon was writing for a generation that was still trying to adjust to the aftermath of the ‘Great War’, a generation that thought it knew about military strategy and hardware, even if only through popular pro-war publications and gossip. Consequently, our author takes much of his reader’s factual knowledge for granted: his intention is to lead us into the heart of one soldier’s experience. A gunner had just been along here with a German helmet in his hand. Said Fricourt is full of dead; he saw one officer lying across a smashed machine-gun with his head bashed in---’a fine looking chap,’ he said, with some emotion, which rather surprised me.” Sassoon has been criticised by some reviewers for pulling his punches and not being as realistic as people like Graves and others. I wonder whether I was reading the same book. Here are a couple of examples; Here we have George Sherston in a nutshell: born into privilege and snobbery, yet impressed and intimidated by more vigorous boys and cut off from people of like mind.