Trechos de Goodbye To All That (1929), de Robert Graves.
I find it most inconvenient to be born into the age of the internal-combustion engine and the electric dynamo and to have no sympathy with them: a bycicle, a Primus stove, and a army rifle mark the bounds of my mechanical capacity.
- - -
Marching on cobble roads is difficult, so when a staff-officer came by in a Rolls-Royce and cursed us for bad march-discipline, I felt like throwing something at him. Trench soldiers hate the staff and the staff know it.
- - -
The few old hands who went through the last show infect the new men with pessimism; they don't believe in the War, they don't believe in the staff. But at least they would follow their officers anywhere, because the officers happen to be a decent lot. They look forward to a battle because that gives them more chances of a cushy one in the legs or arms than trench warfare. In trench warfare the proportion of head wounds is much greater.
- - -
My remaining trench service with the Second Battalion that autumn proved uneventful; I found no excitement in patrolling, no horror in the continual experience of death.
- - -
[A peasant] gave me a vegetarian pamphlet entitled Comment Vivre Cent Ans. (We already knew of the coming Somme offensive, so this seemed a good joke.)
- - -
I used to get big bunches of Canadians to drill: four or five hundred at a time. Spokesmen stepped forward and asked what sense there was in sloping an ordering arms, and fixing and unfixing bayonets. They said they had come across to fight, and not to guard Buckingham Palace.
- - -
Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisioners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut if out.
- - -
The troops, while ready to believe in the Kaiser as a comic personal devil, knew the German soldier to be, on the whole, more devout than themselves. In the instructors' mess, we spoke freely of God and Gott as opposed tribal deities.
- - -
Jovial Father Gleeson of the Munsters, when all the officers were killed or wounded at the first battle of Ypres, had stripped off his black badges and, taking command of the survivors, held the line.
- - -
Our great trial was the German canister. A two-gallon drum with a cylinder inside containing about two pounds of an explosive called ammonal that looked like salmon paste, smelled like marzipan and, when it went off, sounded like the Day of Judgement.
- - -
Not wanting to face a religious argument, I decided to humour my parents; if they believed that God stood squarely behind the British Expeditionary Force, it would be unkind to dissent.
I smelt no rat, beyond a slight suspicion that they were anxious to show me off in church wearing my battle-stained officer's uniform.
- - -
Lloyd George was up in the air on one of his "glory of the Welsh hills" speeches. The power of his rhetoric amazed me. The substance of the speech might be commonplace, iddle and false, but I had to fight hard against abandoning myself with the rest of his audience.
- - -
The militia majors, for the most part country gentlemen with estates in Wales and no thoughts in peacetime beyond hunting, shooting, fishing, and the control of their tenantry.
- - -
The number of dead horses and mules shocked me; human corpses were all very well, but it seemed wrong for animals to be dragged into the war like this.
- - -
I was still superstitious about looting or collecting souvernirs. "These greatcoats are only a loan," I told myself.
- - -
Being now off duty, I fell asleep in the trench without waiting for the bombardment to stop. It would be no worse getting killed asleep than awake.
- - -
Divisions could be always be trusted to sending a warning about verdigris or vermorel-sprayers, or the keeping of pets in trenches, or being polite to our allies, or some other triviality, exactly when an attack was in progress.
- - -
My copy of Nietzsche's poems, by the way, had contributed to the suspicions of my spying activities. Nietzsche, execrated in the newspapers as the philosopher of German militarism, was more properly interpreted as a William le Queux mistery-man - the sinister figure behind the Kaiser.
- - -
The Drapeau Blanc [a brothel] saved the life of scores by incapaciting them for future trench service. Base venereal hospitals were always crowded.
- - -
The drafts were now, for the most part, either forcibly enlisted men or wounded men returning; and at this dead season of the year could hardly be expected to feel enthusiastic on their arrival in France.
- - -
We used to boast that our transport animals were the best in France, and our transport men the best horse-thieves.
- - -
We could no longer see the War as one between trade-rivals: its continuance seemed merely a sacrifice of the idealistic young generation to the stupidy and self-protective alarm of the elder.
- - -
Though the quality of the officers had deteriorated from the regimental point of view, their greater efficiency in action amply compensated for their deficiency in manners.
- - -
Our final selection was made by watching the candidates play games, principally rugger and soccer. Those who played rough but not dirty, and had quick reactions, were the sort needed.
- - -
They saw the War as a dispensation of God for restoring France to Catholicism, and told me that the Freemason element in the French Army, represented by General "Papa" Joffre, had now been discredited, and that the present Supreme Command, Foch's, was predominantly Catholic, - an augury, they claimed, of Allied victory.
- - -
Yet in the very next sentence he [Siegfried Sassoon] wrote how mad it made him to think of the countless good men being slaughtered that summer, and all for nothing. The bloody politicians and ditto generals with their cursed incompetent blundering and callous ideas would go on until they tired of it or had got as much kudos as they wanted.
- - -
"... going cheerfully like British soldiers to fight the common foe... some of you perhaps may fall... upholding the magnificent traditions of the Royal Welch Fusiliers..." The draft cheered vigorously; rather too vigorously, I felt - perhaps even ironicaly?
- - -
The embarassments of our wedding-night (Nancy and I being both virgins) were somewhat eased by an air-raid: Zeppelin bombs dropping not far off set the hotel in an uproar.
- - -
The first Spanish influenza epidemic began, and Nancy's mother caught it, but did not want to miss Tony's leave and going to the London theatres with him. So when the doctor came, she took quantities of aspirin, reduced her temperature, and pretended to be all right. But she knew that the ghosts in the mirrors knew the truth. She died in London on July 13th, a few days later.
- - -
The situation must have seemed very strange to the three line-battalion second-lieutenants captured at Mons in 1914, now promoted captains by the death of most of their contemporaries and set free by the terms of the Armistice.
- - -
Whatever hopes we had nursed of an anti-Governamental rising by ex-service men soon faded. Once back in England, they were content with a roof over their heads, civilian food, beer that was at least better than French beer, and enough blankets at night.
- - -
The Treaty of Versailles shocked me; it seemed destined to cause another war some day, yet nobody cared.
- - -
We found the University remarkably quiet. The returned soldiers did not feel tempted to rag about, break windows, get drunk, or have tussles with the police and races with the Proctors' "bulldogs", as in the old days.
- - -
Edmund Blunden, who also had leave to live on Boar's Hill because of gassed lungs, was taking the same course. The War still continued for both of us and we translated everything into trench-warfare terms.
- - -
Pro-German feelings had been increasing. With the War over and the German armies beaten, we could give the German soldier credit for being the most efficient fighting-man in Europe.
- - -
Some undergratuates even insisted tha we had been fighting on the wrong side: our natural enemies were the French.
- - -
My own compulsion-neuroses make it easy for me to notice them in others.
- - -
I also suggested that the men who had died, destroyed as it were by the fall of the Tower of Siloam, were not particularly virtous or particularly wicked, but just average soldiers, and that the survivors should thank God they were alive, and do their best to avoid wars in the future.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFuIx2HN20o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Messines_(1917)
- - -
Marching on cobble roads is difficult, so when a staff-officer came by in a Rolls-Royce and cursed us for bad march-discipline, I felt like throwing something at him. Trench soldiers hate the staff and the staff know it.
- - -
The few old hands who went through the last show infect the new men with pessimism; they don't believe in the War, they don't believe in the staff. But at least they would follow their officers anywhere, because the officers happen to be a decent lot. They look forward to a battle because that gives them more chances of a cushy one in the legs or arms than trench warfare. In trench warfare the proportion of head wounds is much greater.
- - -
My remaining trench service with the Second Battalion that autumn proved uneventful; I found no excitement in patrolling, no horror in the continual experience of death.
- - -
[A peasant] gave me a vegetarian pamphlet entitled Comment Vivre Cent Ans. (We already knew of the coming Somme offensive, so this seemed a good joke.)
- - -
I used to get big bunches of Canadians to drill: four or five hundred at a time. Spokesmen stepped forward and asked what sense there was in sloping an ordering arms, and fixing and unfixing bayonets. They said they had come across to fight, and not to guard Buckingham Palace.
- - -
Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisioners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut if out.
- - -
The troops, while ready to believe in the Kaiser as a comic personal devil, knew the German soldier to be, on the whole, more devout than themselves. In the instructors' mess, we spoke freely of God and Gott as opposed tribal deities.
- - -
Jovial Father Gleeson of the Munsters, when all the officers were killed or wounded at the first battle of Ypres, had stripped off his black badges and, taking command of the survivors, held the line.
- - -
Our great trial was the German canister. A two-gallon drum with a cylinder inside containing about two pounds of an explosive called ammonal that looked like salmon paste, smelled like marzipan and, when it went off, sounded like the Day of Judgement.
- - -
Not wanting to face a religious argument, I decided to humour my parents; if they believed that God stood squarely behind the British Expeditionary Force, it would be unkind to dissent.
I smelt no rat, beyond a slight suspicion that they were anxious to show me off in church wearing my battle-stained officer's uniform.
- - -
Lloyd George was up in the air on one of his "glory of the Welsh hills" speeches. The power of his rhetoric amazed me. The substance of the speech might be commonplace, iddle and false, but I had to fight hard against abandoning myself with the rest of his audience.
- - -
The militia majors, for the most part country gentlemen with estates in Wales and no thoughts in peacetime beyond hunting, shooting, fishing, and the control of their tenantry.
- - -
The number of dead horses and mules shocked me; human corpses were all very well, but it seemed wrong for animals to be dragged into the war like this.
- - -
I was still superstitious about looting or collecting souvernirs. "These greatcoats are only a loan," I told myself.
- - -
Being now off duty, I fell asleep in the trench without waiting for the bombardment to stop. It would be no worse getting killed asleep than awake.
- - -
Divisions could be always be trusted to sending a warning about verdigris or vermorel-sprayers, or the keeping of pets in trenches, or being polite to our allies, or some other triviality, exactly when an attack was in progress.
- - -
My copy of Nietzsche's poems, by the way, had contributed to the suspicions of my spying activities. Nietzsche, execrated in the newspapers as the philosopher of German militarism, was more properly interpreted as a William le Queux mistery-man - the sinister figure behind the Kaiser.
- - -
The Drapeau Blanc [a brothel] saved the life of scores by incapaciting them for future trench service. Base venereal hospitals were always crowded.
- - -
The drafts were now, for the most part, either forcibly enlisted men or wounded men returning; and at this dead season of the year could hardly be expected to feel enthusiastic on their arrival in France.
- - -
We used to boast that our transport animals were the best in France, and our transport men the best horse-thieves.
- - -
We could no longer see the War as one between trade-rivals: its continuance seemed merely a sacrifice of the idealistic young generation to the stupidy and self-protective alarm of the elder.
- - -
Though the quality of the officers had deteriorated from the regimental point of view, their greater efficiency in action amply compensated for their deficiency in manners.
- - -
Our final selection was made by watching the candidates play games, principally rugger and soccer. Those who played rough but not dirty, and had quick reactions, were the sort needed.
- - -
They saw the War as a dispensation of God for restoring France to Catholicism, and told me that the Freemason element in the French Army, represented by General "Papa" Joffre, had now been discredited, and that the present Supreme Command, Foch's, was predominantly Catholic, - an augury, they claimed, of Allied victory.
- - -
Yet in the very next sentence he [Siegfried Sassoon] wrote how mad it made him to think of the countless good men being slaughtered that summer, and all for nothing. The bloody politicians and ditto generals with their cursed incompetent blundering and callous ideas would go on until they tired of it or had got as much kudos as they wanted.
- - -
"... going cheerfully like British soldiers to fight the common foe... some of you perhaps may fall... upholding the magnificent traditions of the Royal Welch Fusiliers..." The draft cheered vigorously; rather too vigorously, I felt - perhaps even ironicaly?
- - -
The embarassments of our wedding-night (Nancy and I being both virgins) were somewhat eased by an air-raid: Zeppelin bombs dropping not far off set the hotel in an uproar.
- - -
The first Spanish influenza epidemic began, and Nancy's mother caught it, but did not want to miss Tony's leave and going to the London theatres with him. So when the doctor came, she took quantities of aspirin, reduced her temperature, and pretended to be all right. But she knew that the ghosts in the mirrors knew the truth. She died in London on July 13th, a few days later.
- - -
The situation must have seemed very strange to the three line-battalion second-lieutenants captured at Mons in 1914, now promoted captains by the death of most of their contemporaries and set free by the terms of the Armistice.
- - -
Whatever hopes we had nursed of an anti-Governamental rising by ex-service men soon faded. Once back in England, they were content with a roof over their heads, civilian food, beer that was at least better than French beer, and enough blankets at night.
- - -
The Treaty of Versailles shocked me; it seemed destined to cause another war some day, yet nobody cared.
- - -
We found the University remarkably quiet. The returned soldiers did not feel tempted to rag about, break windows, get drunk, or have tussles with the police and races with the Proctors' "bulldogs", as in the old days.
- - -
Edmund Blunden, who also had leave to live on Boar's Hill because of gassed lungs, was taking the same course. The War still continued for both of us and we translated everything into trench-warfare terms.
- - -
Pro-German feelings had been increasing. With the War over and the German armies beaten, we could give the German soldier credit for being the most efficient fighting-man in Europe.
- - -
Some undergratuates even insisted tha we had been fighting on the wrong side: our natural enemies were the French.
- - -
My own compulsion-neuroses make it easy for me to notice them in others.
- - -
I also suggested that the men who had died, destroyed as it were by the fall of the Tower of Siloam, were not particularly virtous or particularly wicked, but just average soldiers, and that the survivors should thank God they were alive, and do their best to avoid wars in the future.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFuIx2HN20o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Messines_(1917)
