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Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Order Number 9004167 The experience of war: British war novels, 1919—1930 Shelton, Carole Lowery, D.A. Middle Tennessee State University, 1989 Copyright ©1990 by Shelton, Carole Lowery. All rights reserved. UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR BRITISH WAR NOVELS, 1919-1930 Carole Shelton A dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of Middle Tennessee State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Arts August, 1989 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR BRITISH WAR NOVELS, 1919-1930 APPROVED : Graduate Committee Magot Professor Committee Member mittee Member / H/<r, Head of Department of History c ^i'-ZZ:- Dean of the ^a d u a t e School Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR BRITISH WAR NOVELS, 1919-1930 Carole Shelton The war novels written by British citizen-soldiers in the decade following the Great War offer unique opportunities for historians to trace how individuals structured their personal memories of the war experience and how their accounts affected public opinion. Their fictional accounts, however, have generally been dismissed as antiwar propaganda. No study has traced the relationship between the author's personal experiences and his fictionalized portrayal of the war or the impact on public consciousness. This study focuses chronologically on the major war novels as expressions of the individual war experience, examines their impact on the public's perception of the war, and investigates the integration of the war novel into an instructional module. The following information is included for each novel: biographical information, especially concerning the author's war experience; analysis of the novel as an expression of individual experience; examination of individual themes and images; and measurement of public response through book reviews. Instructional usages are developed based on the above analysis. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Carole Shelton The war novels are highly autobiographical reflections of the war's impact on the middle-class citizen-soldier. Fictionalized memoirs, they are realistic, rather than antiwar, expressions of the impact of the war on the individual. Reflecting the daily life of the soldier, both at the front and behind the lines, the novels reveal the routine, the horrors, the comradeship, and the relaxations of the front-line soldier. The novelists, most of whom suffered from shell-shock, treat the immense psychological stress of trench warfare on the individual soldier. Public willingness to consider the novelists' view of war is indicated by favorable reviews and sales figures. Because they are literary documents based on personal experience, their inclusion as source materials in the classroom provides insight into the war and its impact on the individual. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the chairman of the history department. Dr. William T. Windham, and the director of graduate studies in the history department. Dr. Fred Colvin, for their time, help, and encouragement. I would also to thank the members of my committee. Dr. Sarah Howell and Dr. Bob Womack, for donating part of their busy summer to this endeavor. Special thanks are due my dissertation director. Dr. Jerry Brookshire, for his patience, encouragement, and editing expertise, and librarian Mrs. Betty McFall for her energetic and tenacious pursuit of research materials. 11 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................... ii Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION............................................ 1 2. AN ASSAULT ON INJUSTICE: A. P. HERBERT.............. 18 3. THE CLERK AS CITIZEN-SOLDIER: R. H. MOTTRAM........ 49 4. THE FAILED HERO: FORD MADOX FORD..................... 75 5. THE WAR HERO PROTESTS: SIEGFRIED SASSOON........... 102 6. ANGRY YOUNG MAN: RICHARD ALDINGTON................... 132 7. THE PACIFIST AS OBSERVER: H. M. TOMLINSON.......... 151 8. THE OTHER RANKS: FREDERIC MANNING.................... 167 9. A COMMERCIAL VENTURE: HENRY WILLIAMSON.............. 187 10. THE WAR NOVELS: IMPACT AND INTERPRETATION.......... 203 11. WAR NOVELS AND CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION.............. 222 WORKS CONSULTED................................................ 236 111 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein. [And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.] Friedrich Nietzsche Jenseits von Gut und Bose Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Trenches separated by rolls of barbed wire and no- man's-land, soldiers hunched over rifles climbing out of trenches and going over the top, machine guns mowing down lines of advancing men, a desolate wasteland of destroyed towns and bloated horse carcasses— the imagery of World War I has become part of the modern cultural heritage. Historically, the war was a watershed event separating the stratified Victorian world of the nineteenth century from the twentieth-century world of rapid technological advance. Militarily, the war was the first modern war requiring massive numbers of civilian-soldiers and exploiting the fruits of science and industry to increase the destructive power of weaponry, thus providing a foretaste of wars and nuclear weapons to come. The modern man of Kafka and the Existentialists, the individual at the mercy of an irrational world and an all-powerful state, was in the throes of genesis. Already the myth of Sisyphus, resurrected by Albert Camus after World War II, was personified by the British soldier of World War I. Many of the British citizenry entered the war with a burst of enthusiasm and high ideals. With pride in empire and British might, England prepared to engage the barbaric Hun of the propagandists. Stirred by patriotism, lured by 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 the great adventure, and fearing that the war would be over by Christmas, thousands enlisted, believing that courage and bravery would see them through and that they would emerge as heroes. That the war they fought did not resemble the war they anticipated is perhaps no surprise. Nor is it any surprise that the century's first major war, foreshadowing events and trends to come, continues to exercise such fascination on public memory. When Britain declared war on 4 August, the small professional British army numbered 247,432. Supplementing the regular army were the territorials, home guard units which trained in summer camps and whose service was restricted to England. With the announcement of war, volunteers overran recruiting stations, enabling the army to apply high medical standards in the early days of the war. The territorials expanded by creating additional battalions; most of its members agreed to overseas duty. Pals units were formed which allowed