In his introduction to Her Privates We William Boyd[1] states, “it is “the finest novel in my opinion, to have come out of the First World War”, whereas I would not entirely agree with this view, the novel certainly stands among the finest. Finest in the sense that it neither romanticizes or glorifies, offering instead a valuable insight into the squalor, boredom, routine, hierarchy and uncertainty that serves violent, savage conflict.
Many passages stand out from this book but at the moment two in particular come to mind. In the first, private Bourne, the central character, is in a conversational exchange with Sergeant Tozer whose point of view Bourne appreciated, “because he understood the implication his words were intended to convey, even when he seemed to wander from the point. Life was a hazard enveloped in mystery, and war quickened the sense of both in men: the soldier also, as well as the saint, might write his tractate de contemptu mundi, and differ from him only in the angle and spirit from which he surveyed the same bleak reality.”
The second comes towards the end of the book in the midst of a shattering assault, “In this emotional crisis, where the limit of endurance was reached, all the degrees which separate opposed states of feeling vanished, and their extremities were indistinguishable from each other. One could not separate the desire from the dread which restrained it; the strength of one’s hope strove to equal the despair which oppressed it; one’s determination could only be measured by the terrors and difficulties which it overcame. All the mean, peddling standards of ordinary life vanished in the collision of these warring opposites. Between them one could only attempt to maintain an equilibrium which every instant disturbed and made unstable.”
Her Privates We was first published in 1929 under the title Middle Parts of Fortune, both titles are taken from Hamlet (Act II, scene 2), when Hamlet takes part in some baudy banter with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The uncensored version of the book available for some decades makes the novel more vital, real and immediate.
The author Frederic Manning[2] was born in Sydney Australia in 1882. He enlisted in 1915 and served with the Shropshire light infantry. His insightful well writen novel is worthy of its place along side Erich Maria Remarque’s classic, All Quiet on the Western Front.[3]
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