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The Missing of the Somme
'Head bowed, rifle on his back, a soldier is silhouetted against the going down of the sun, looking at the grave of a dead comrade, remembering him. A photograph from the war, is also a photograph of the way the war will be remembered. It is a photograph of the future, of the future's view of the past. We will remember them' Relying more on personal impressions than systematic analysis, Geoff Dyer weaves a network of myth and memory that illuminates our own relation to the past.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Geoff Dyer
135 books916 followersGeoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham, England, in 1958. He was educated at the local Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is the author of four novels: Paris Trance, The Search, The Colour of Memory, and, most recently, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi; a critical study of John Berger, Ways of Telling; five genre-defying titles: But Beautiful (winner of a 1992 Somerset Maugham Prize, short-listed for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize), The Missing of the Somme, Out of Sheer Rage (a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award), Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It (winner of the 2004 W. H. Smith Best Travel Book Award), and The Ongoing Moment (winner of the ICP Infinity Award for Writing on Photography), and Zona (about Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker). His collection of essays, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2012. He is also the editor of John Berger: Selected Essays and co-editor, with Margaret Sartor, of What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney. A new book, Another Great Day at Sea, about life aboard the USS George H W Bush has just been published by Pantheon.
In 2003 he was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship; in 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; in 2006 he received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2009 he was the recipient of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Best Comic Novel and the GQ Writer of the Year Award (for Jeff in Venice Death in Varanasi). His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. His website is geoffdyer.com
In 2003 he was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship; in 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; in 2006 he received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2009 he was the recipient of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Best Comic Novel and the GQ Writer of the Year Award (for Jeff in Venice Death in Varanasi). His books have been translated into twenty-four languages. His website is geoffdyer.com
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February 3, 2019
”Crosses stretch away in lines so long they seem to follow the curvature of the earth. Names are written on both the front and back of each cross. The scale of the cemetery exceeds all imagining. Even the names on the crosses count for nothing. Only the numbers count, the scale of loss. But this is so huge that it is consumed by itself. It shocks, stuns, numbs. Sassoon’s nameless names here become the numberless numbers. You stand aghast while the wind hurtles through your clothes, searing your ears until you find yourself almost vanishing: in the face of this wind, in this expanse of lifelessness, you cannot hold your own: you do not count. There is no room here for the living. The wind, the cold, force you away.”
Notre Dame De Loretta, French cemetery
It starts, really, with an old photo album. One that may be found in a battered trunk in the attic or tucked away in a musty cupboard.
”Dusty, bulging, old: they are all the same, these albums. The same faces, the same photos. Every family was touched by the war and every family has an album like this. Even as we prepare to open it, the act of looking at the album is overlaid by the emotions it will engender. We look at the pictures as if reading a poem about the experience of seeing them. I turn the dark, heavy pages. The dust smell of old photographs.”
Geoff Dyer realizes that he passes by a World War One cenotaph every day; and yet, hadn’t really seen it in decades. It happens with everything that we see frequently. We stop seeing it. The only way we would be shaken out of our apathy is if it were suddenly missing, a hole in our vision that we know something is supposed to be there. When Dyer looks through the old family album and sees the pictures of his grandfather in uniform he really begins to notice the cenotaph for the first time. That afternoon spent thumbing through that album, hearing the crackle of stiff paper as if he were wedging open a creaky door to the past, inspires him to know more about his grandfather’s war. It sends him on a mission travelling around England, France, and Belgium visiting the monuments for the war.
For the first time he really thinks about war, not just The Great War, but all wars.
”After The Great War people had little clear idea of why it had been fought or what had been accomplished except for the loss of millions of lives. This actually made the task of memorializing the war relatively easy.”
”The issue, in short, is not simply the way the war generates memory but the way memory has determined — and continues to determine — the meaning of the war.”
”Men no longer waged war, it has often been said; war was waged on men.”
Dyer appreciates the sculptures, the monuments, the memories that artists tried to immortalize out of metal and rock, but…
”Although many had the talent, no British sculptor — not even Jagger — had the vision, freedom or power to render the war in bronze or stone as (Wilfred) Owen had done in words.”
Jagger’s Royal Artillery Sculpture
Ernest Brooks’s iconic photo of World War One
But really how about more Owen
Is a picture worth a thousand words when the words are such as these?
It is hard not to think of The Great War as a war without color. It is caged in black and white film, and even though we know that blood was red not grey, and that the same blue skies, and the same green grass, and the same brown mud existed then as it does today; it is still difficult to conjure up those images without the color leached away.
The world had had the colour bombed out of it. Sepia, the colour of mud, emerged as the dominant tone of the war. Battle rendered the landscape sepia. ‘The year itself looks sepia and soiled,’ writes Timothy Findley of 1915, ‘muddied like its pictures.’
As a writer it is hard to convey something as horrible as war without reducing the impact with the very adjectives and conceptions that we use to articulate the very nature of the horror. Describing war becomes the equivalent of a slasher film where the gore is not as shocking as it is entertaining.
”War may be horrible, but that should not distract us from acknowledging what a horrible cliché this has become. The coinage has been worn so thin that its value seems only marginally greater than ‘Glory’, ‘Sacrifice’ or ‘Pro Patria’, which ‘horror’ condemns as counterfeit. The phrase ‘horror of war’ has become so automatic a conjunction that it conveys none of the horror it is meant to express.”
Gassed by John Singer Sargent
This is a book full of cerebral reflections about the war. Dyer ties in art and literature, evoking the likes of Sargent, Fitzgerald, Sassoon, Owen, and Isherwood to make his points. He discusses the impact that the ill fated Robert Falcon Scott expedition had on the World War One generation.
“By now the glorious failure personified by Scott had become a British ideal: a vivid example of how ‘to make a virtue of calamity and dress up incompetence as heroism’.”
The commanders exploited and relied on the Scottesque inspired brainwashing that made men believe that dying for their country, even so imprudently as they were asked to in the great war, was heroic. The betrayal of that childlike innocence in such a monstrous fashion was beyond irresponsible, and bordering on criminal.
Dyer makes one final stop at Beaumont-Hamel cemetery and leaves with more hope than despair.
”I have never felt so peaceful. I would be happy never to leave. So strong are these feelings that I wonder if there is not some compensatory quality in nature, some equilibrium — of which the poppy is a manifestation and symbol — which means that where terrible violence has taken place the earth will sometimes generate an equal and opposite sense of peace. In this place where men were slaughtered they came also to love each other, to realize Camus’s great truth: that ‘there are more things to admire in men than to despise’.”
Notre Dame De Loretta, French cemetery
It starts, really, with an old photo album. One that may be found in a battered trunk in the attic or tucked away in a musty cupboard.
”Dusty, bulging, old: they are all the same, these albums. The same faces, the same photos. Every family was touched by the war and every family has an album like this. Even as we prepare to open it, the act of looking at the album is overlaid by the emotions it will engender. We look at the pictures as if reading a poem about the experience of seeing them. I turn the dark, heavy pages. The dust smell of old photographs.”
Geoff Dyer realizes that he passes by a World War One cenotaph every day; and yet, hadn’t really seen it in decades. It happens with everything that we see frequently. We stop seeing it. The only way we would be shaken out of our apathy is if it were suddenly missing, a hole in our vision that we know something is supposed to be there. When Dyer looks through the old family album and sees the pictures of his grandfather in uniform he really begins to notice the cenotaph for the first time. That afternoon spent thumbing through that album, hearing the crackle of stiff paper as if he were wedging open a creaky door to the past, inspires him to know more about his grandfather’s war. It sends him on a mission travelling around England, France, and Belgium visiting the monuments for the war.
For the first time he really thinks about war, not just The Great War, but all wars.
”After The Great War people had little clear idea of why it had been fought or what had been accomplished except for the loss of millions of lives. This actually made the task of memorializing the war relatively easy.”
”The issue, in short, is not simply the way the war generates memory but the way memory has determined — and continues to determine — the meaning of the war.”
”Men no longer waged war, it has often been said; war was waged on men.”
Dyer appreciates the sculptures, the monuments, the memories that artists tried to immortalize out of metal and rock, but…
”Although many had the talent, no British sculptor — not even Jagger — had the vision, freedom or power to render the war in bronze or stone as (Wilfred) Owen had done in words.”
Jagger’s Royal Artillery Sculpture
”Down the close darkening lanes
they sang their way
To the siding-shed …
Ernest Brooks’s iconic photo of World War One
But really how about more Owen
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath
and spray
As men’s are, dead.
Is a picture worth a thousand words when the words are such as these?
”[I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell],
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.”
It is hard not to think of The Great War as a war without color. It is caged in black and white film, and even though we know that blood was red not grey, and that the same blue skies, and the same green grass, and the same brown mud existed then as it does today; it is still difficult to conjure up those images without the color leached away.
The world had had the colour bombed out of it. Sepia, the colour of mud, emerged as the dominant tone of the war. Battle rendered the landscape sepia. ‘The year itself looks sepia and soiled,’ writes Timothy Findley of 1915, ‘muddied like its pictures.’
As a writer it is hard to convey something as horrible as war without reducing the impact with the very adjectives and conceptions that we use to articulate the very nature of the horror. Describing war becomes the equivalent of a slasher film where the gore is not as shocking as it is entertaining.
”War may be horrible, but that should not distract us from acknowledging what a horrible cliché this has become. The coinage has been worn so thin that its value seems only marginally greater than ‘Glory’, ‘Sacrifice’ or ‘Pro Patria’, which ‘horror’ condemns as counterfeit. The phrase ‘horror of war’ has become so automatic a conjunction that it conveys none of the horror it is meant to express.”
Gassed by John Singer Sargent
This is a book full of cerebral reflections about the war. Dyer ties in art and literature, evoking the likes of Sargent, Fitzgerald, Sassoon, Owen, and Isherwood to make his points. He discusses the impact that the ill fated Robert Falcon Scott expedition had on the World War One generation.
“By now the glorious failure personified by Scott had become a British ideal: a vivid example of how ‘to make a virtue of calamity and dress up incompetence as heroism’.”
The commanders exploited and relied on the Scottesque inspired brainwashing that made men believe that dying for their country, even so imprudently as they were asked to in the great war, was heroic. The betrayal of that childlike innocence in such a monstrous fashion was beyond irresponsible, and bordering on criminal.
Dyer makes one final stop at Beaumont-Hamel cemetery and leaves with more hope than despair.
”I have never felt so peaceful. I would be happy never to leave. So strong are these feelings that I wonder if there is not some compensatory quality in nature, some equilibrium — of which the poppy is a manifestation and symbol — which means that where terrible violence has taken place the earth will sometimes generate an equal and opposite sense of peace. In this place where men were slaughtered they came also to love each other, to realize Camus’s great truth: that ‘there are more things to admire in men than to despise’.”
January 9, 2025
The Missing of the Somme is a strange yet compelling work exploring remembrance in regards to The Great War. It reads like part essay in mediation, part travelogue, and I could see some slight resemblances with the writings of W. G. Sebald. There are lots of references to English World-War-One poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, whilst he also touches upon such classic novels like Under Fire and All Quiet on the Western Front, the literary criticism of Paul Fussell, and more recently writers like Pat Barker and Sebastian Faulks, among others. Dyer asserts that our perceptions of WWI are shaped strongly by impressions presented through the literature and public statuary produced within fifteen years of the Armistice. The dominant theme of these cultural works is not victory or glory, but sacrifice as a virtue in itself and its formal remembrance, and he believes this was evident even in works produced at the very beginning of the war. Mixed within his essay style writing is an account of his travels across the Western Front with two pals. As they visit different military cemeteries and monuments Dyer's keen observations are quite brilliantly put to paper, and he always shows a deep respect when it comes to the huge scale loss of life. While I do admire that Dyer tries to say something new about the Great War; or at least in a different way from many others, I'm not too sure I came out at the end thinking this will go down as a book of top importance on the subject of WW1, but it was very well written, with certain parts leaving a profound impression on me.
July 2, 2016
What passing bells?
I have witnessed these changes for myself. At the age of ten, I was taught the structure of a sonnet, not from the works of Shakespeare or Keats, but from the poem by Rupert Brooke quoted above, then considered the epitome of English patriotic modesty. Remembrance Day in November, the red poppies in everyone's lapels, the two-minute silence observed nationwide, these were more than empty rituals. At chapel each day in my boarding school, I sat under the memorial to Rupert Brooke (an alumnus), whose complete sonnet was carved into the marble. Taking weekly communion in the Memorial Chapel, I was surrounded on three sides by the names of the fallen in the Great War (with only one wall for the later conflict). They were contemporaries, and in some cases the friends, of my father, who had gone to France as a lieutenant of eighteen, and returned a twice-decorated hero. But a scarred one, as I would later discover, unwilling to talk at all about his experiences, fleeing from almost every aspect of the England in which he had been raised. On his death, I would discover a letter written by his father in India on the occasion of his first posting, silently questioning the purpose of the War, but prevented from saying so by his position as a servant of Empire.
Then, when I was at college, Benjamin Britten's War Requiem came out, setting the anti-heroic realism of Wilfred Owen against the Latin text. Owen was a poet entirely unknown to me, though I immediately bought his collected works with a college prize; Dyer refers to him now as "the poet everyone knows." Owen is remembered; Brooke is not. Somewhere around the middle of the century, the whole view of the War-once-called-Great had wheeled around almost completely.
Dyer writes a rather messy book, switching between personal narrative and objective analysis, between his own voice and numerous quotations from others, but it is full of magnificent insights. He too has a personal stake, trying to understand the lives of his two grandfathers, each of whom fought on the Somme. But his main focus is on how the War has been memorialized: in the poetry of Brooke, Owen, Blunden, and Sassoon; in the spate of memoirs that followed in the twenties; in official histories; in the sculpted memorials that sprang up all over Europe; in novels of the second and third generation, each trying to understand the inexplicable, to find some humanity in the inhumane, and standing on each others' shoulders to do so. Dyer himself draws heavily on Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, an influence he freely acknowledges. If nothing else, Dyer has written an invaluable reader's guide to war literature, singling out such remarkable books as Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong, and Pat Barker's Regeneration (in which Owen and Sassoon are characters). But he goes further, exploring how the significance of any great subject resides as much in how it is written about as in the historical facts.
The black and white photographs, the personal journey that occupies the latter part of the book, and the deep reflection all foreshadow the work of WG Sebald, whose Austerlitz would anatomize the aftermath of the later war. I wish he could have used the Sebald model to organize the entire book. It must be to deliberately jarring effect that he emphasizes the sophomoric quality of his first of his two trips, made with two rambunctious college friends in a ramshackle car they call the "tank" and viewing the rain-sodden landscape through the barely-working windscreen wipers, which of course they call the "Ypres." But when Dyer returns alone, his reactions are powerful, as here at the German cemetery at Langemark:
If I should die, think only this of me,Why is it that the Great War exerts such power over the European literary imagination, even as we approach the centenary of its outbreak, a power that the Second World War cannot remotely equal? Perhaps because of the sheer scale of the carnage. Perhaps because, in the popular mind, it remains a war without reason, whose causes only historians fully understand. Perhaps because, as novelist Geoff Dyer points out in this extended essay, it was a war that memorialized itself from its inception, to be fought and written about in the future perfect, with an eye to how future generations will see it. And it is a war that seems to have taken a 180-degree turn in public perception over the course of the century, without ever losing its enormity as a memorial to heroism or folly.
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England, England's own.
— Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
— Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
I have witnessed these changes for myself. At the age of ten, I was taught the structure of a sonnet, not from the works of Shakespeare or Keats, but from the poem by Rupert Brooke quoted above, then considered the epitome of English patriotic modesty. Remembrance Day in November, the red poppies in everyone's lapels, the two-minute silence observed nationwide, these were more than empty rituals. At chapel each day in my boarding school, I sat under the memorial to Rupert Brooke (an alumnus), whose complete sonnet was carved into the marble. Taking weekly communion in the Memorial Chapel, I was surrounded on three sides by the names of the fallen in the Great War (with only one wall for the later conflict). They were contemporaries, and in some cases the friends, of my father, who had gone to France as a lieutenant of eighteen, and returned a twice-decorated hero. But a scarred one, as I would later discover, unwilling to talk at all about his experiences, fleeing from almost every aspect of the England in which he had been raised. On his death, I would discover a letter written by his father in India on the occasion of his first posting, silently questioning the purpose of the War, but prevented from saying so by his position as a servant of Empire.
Then, when I was at college, Benjamin Britten's War Requiem came out, setting the anti-heroic realism of Wilfred Owen against the Latin text. Owen was a poet entirely unknown to me, though I immediately bought his collected works with a college prize; Dyer refers to him now as "the poet everyone knows." Owen is remembered; Brooke is not. Somewhere around the middle of the century, the whole view of the War-once-called-Great had wheeled around almost completely.
Dyer writes a rather messy book, switching between personal narrative and objective analysis, between his own voice and numerous quotations from others, but it is full of magnificent insights. He too has a personal stake, trying to understand the lives of his two grandfathers, each of whom fought on the Somme. But his main focus is on how the War has been memorialized: in the poetry of Brooke, Owen, Blunden, and Sassoon; in the spate of memoirs that followed in the twenties; in official histories; in the sculpted memorials that sprang up all over Europe; in novels of the second and third generation, each trying to understand the inexplicable, to find some humanity in the inhumane, and standing on each others' shoulders to do so. Dyer himself draws heavily on Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory, an influence he freely acknowledges. If nothing else, Dyer has written an invaluable reader's guide to war literature, singling out such remarkable books as Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong, and Pat Barker's Regeneration (in which Owen and Sassoon are characters). But he goes further, exploring how the significance of any great subject resides as much in how it is written about as in the historical facts.
The black and white photographs, the personal journey that occupies the latter part of the book, and the deep reflection all foreshadow the work of WG Sebald, whose Austerlitz would anatomize the aftermath of the later war. I wish he could have used the Sebald model to organize the entire book. It must be to deliberately jarring effect that he emphasizes the sophomoric quality of his first of his two trips, made with two rambunctious college friends in a ramshackle car they call the "tank" and viewing the rain-sodden landscape through the barely-working windscreen wipers, which of course they call the "Ypres." But when Dyer returns alone, his reactions are powerful, as here at the German cemetery at Langemark:
At the edge of the Kamaradengrab stand four mourning figures, silhouetted against the zinc sky. Up close these are poorly sculpted figures, but from a distance they impart a sense of utter desolation to the place. It is as if the minute's silence for which they have bowed their heads has been extended for the duration of eternity.He is equally evocative at the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge, treated so memorably by Jane Urquhart in The Stone Carvers (though after Dyer's book, which was first published in 1994). And he is soberly anti-heroic in pointing out that the brooding mausoleum at Thiepval, built without any Christian symbolism, "is a memorial if not to the death, then certainly to the superfluousness of God." My own worship in the memorial chapel is a thing of the past.
April 28, 2024
Geoff Dyer savaşın kendisi yerine savaş fikrinin toplum üzerindeki etkilerini edebiyat (şiir, öykü, roman) ve güzel sanatlar (heykel, resim, fotoğraf, savaş anıtı, anıt mezar, mezar taşları) örnekleri kullanarak anlatıyor.
Odaklandığı savaş ise kendisinin “Büyük Savaş” olarak tanımladığı 1. Dünya Savaşı. Yazar İngiliz olduğundan o pencereden bakarak değerlendirmelerini yapıyor. Savaşın çok kısıtlı bir bölgesindeki Flandre ve Fransa’nın kuzey batısındaki kara savaşını merceğine alıyor. Zaten kitabın özgün adı “The Missing of the Somme”. Bilindiği gibi Somme Muhaberesi I. Dünya Savaşı’nda 1916’da Fransa'da gerçekleşen en büyük çarpışmalarından birisidir. İngilizler tarafından ilk defa tankın kullanıldığı bir muhaberedir.
Yazar savaşın geçtiği yerlerde yapılan mezarlıklardaki ziyaretçi defterlerine yazılanları da ironik bir anlatımla aktarıyor. Özellikle deftere yazılan bir düşünceye verilen cevapların, bazen orada bulunmanın nedenini sorgulatır hale getirdiğini vurguluyor. Ayrıca savaşın dehşet verici olabileceğini ama bizlerin bu kavramı klişe haline getirip bir formalite, kelimelerin aldığı bir şekle dönüştürdüğümüzü düşünüyor.
Yazar savaş meydanlarını, anıtlarını ziyaret ederek algılarını yazıya döküyor. Farklı bir savaş değerlendirme, düşünmeye davet etme kitabı.
Odaklandığı savaş ise kendisinin “Büyük Savaş” olarak tanımladığı 1. Dünya Savaşı. Yazar İngiliz olduğundan o pencereden bakarak değerlendirmelerini yapıyor. Savaşın çok kısıtlı bir bölgesindeki Flandre ve Fransa’nın kuzey batısındaki kara savaşını merceğine alıyor. Zaten kitabın özgün adı “The Missing of the Somme”. Bilindiği gibi Somme Muhaberesi I. Dünya Savaşı’nda 1916’da Fransa'da gerçekleşen en büyük çarpışmalarından birisidir. İngilizler tarafından ilk defa tankın kullanıldığı bir muhaberedir.
Yazar savaşın geçtiği yerlerde yapılan mezarlıklardaki ziyaretçi defterlerine yazılanları da ironik bir anlatımla aktarıyor. Özellikle deftere yazılan bir düşünceye verilen cevapların, bazen orada bulunmanın nedenini sorgulatır hale getirdiğini vurguluyor. Ayrıca savaşın dehşet verici olabileceğini ama bizlerin bu kavramı klişe haline getirip bir formalite, kelimelerin aldığı bir şekle dönüştürdüğümüzü düşünüyor.
Yazar savaş meydanlarını, anıtlarını ziyaret ederek algılarını yazıya döküyor. Farklı bir savaş değerlendirme, düşünmeye davet etme kitabı.
June 5, 2013
Dyer expertly and often evocatively writes about the cult of remembrance surrounding the Great War (the nomenclature he prefers to the First World War - and which feels right to me, too.) In this case, remembrance is largely in a British idiom, although some American (Dos Passos, Hemingway, Fitzgerald) and French (Barbusse, Dorgeles) references appear now and then. Dyer goes beyond literature to consider memorials, visual art, photography, popular song, ceremonies, pilgrimages - a wide range of methods intended to imprint acknowledgment of the war from the generation that experienced it (directly or not) down through ours and beyond. He even integrates accounts of his own excursions to memorial sites in Belgium and France as part of his extended essay - an essay both personal and critical. Most impressive is the depth of his knowledge of Great War literature and culture, a massive language of remembrance that he speaks fluently. More so earlier in the book than later on, when the book's rhythm seemed to change, I was struck by how he makes allusions to themes or phrases in one section that then get examined more directly in the next after a seamless transition that didn't seem a transition, underscoring how closely interwoven these tropes are in the vast body of culture the war produced. Themes included not only the grand ones of death and camaraderie, but also insightfully subtle ones like the prevalence of smoking or the messages left in visitors' books at memorial sites. He also provides an interesting critical section appraising more recent novels retrospectively set amid the Great War. This was a moving and engrossing book for those captivated by the war and the legacy of its remembrance.
It IS a very British book, though; while many Americans do have an interest in what Dyer writes about, he clearly writes for a British audience, and only those Yanks sufficiently versed in the British cultural references he makes might fully appreciate it. I'm not sure what to make of how Dyer integrates his own journey into the book, either - and he admits at one point that he's not sure whether to regard it as a "grim holiday or a rowdy pilgrimage" (p.102); he adopts an ironic tone throughout most of these sections, but then shifts to an elegiac tone upon visiting the memorial to the Somme at Thiepval - a visit cut off from the main account of his trip by an intervening section that reverts to a critical tone and focus characteristic of earlier parts of the (admittedly not very long) book. The book's organization, in fact, at first seemed somewhat random, moving forward through the inertia of relevant tangents; I finally realized that he was ambling implicitly through the chronology of the war, but I was nevertheless left with the questions of where he was going and why. Nor do I really know what purpose Dyer's book actually serves, aside from a personal compulsion to work through the meaning of this cultural mass that he's accumulated from his fascination with "the Great War and its remembrance"; he addresses that question himself twice in the book (pp.85 & 109), but only briefly and vaguely.
This was the first book by Dyer that I've read, but I plan to read more. Aside from the issues that I had with its organization and purpose, it engaged brilliantly with a topic of interest to me and did so with a truly talented writing style.
It IS a very British book, though; while many Americans do have an interest in what Dyer writes about, he clearly writes for a British audience, and only those Yanks sufficiently versed in the British cultural references he makes might fully appreciate it. I'm not sure what to make of how Dyer integrates his own journey into the book, either - and he admits at one point that he's not sure whether to regard it as a "grim holiday or a rowdy pilgrimage" (p.102); he adopts an ironic tone throughout most of these sections, but then shifts to an elegiac tone upon visiting the memorial to the Somme at Thiepval - a visit cut off from the main account of his trip by an intervening section that reverts to a critical tone and focus characteristic of earlier parts of the (admittedly not very long) book. The book's organization, in fact, at first seemed somewhat random, moving forward through the inertia of relevant tangents; I finally realized that he was ambling implicitly through the chronology of the war, but I was nevertheless left with the questions of where he was going and why. Nor do I really know what purpose Dyer's book actually serves, aside from a personal compulsion to work through the meaning of this cultural mass that he's accumulated from his fascination with "the Great War and its remembrance"; he addresses that question himself twice in the book (pp.85 & 109), but only briefly and vaguely.
This was the first book by Dyer that I've read, but I plan to read more. Aside from the issues that I had with its organization and purpose, it engaged brilliantly with a topic of interest to me and did so with a truly talented writing style.
January 30, 2013
This is a rambling read as the author shifts gears from time to time and swings abruptly from the past and into the present. Some of the present is uninteresting, as when the author recounts his friends and the contents of their rental car.
There are, now and then, some touching observations on the cemeteries that he visits in France. Mr. Dyer discusses the writings of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Statues and memorials commemorating the Great War are featured along with some pictures of them. Of interest to Canadians, he also visits the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge. The author reflects on how the meaning of the Great War and Remembrance have changed over the years. They can represent grief, the horror of war and even the nobility of war. For many of the young men it was the culminating experience of their lives – and sadly, for many, it ended their lives.
As mentioned there is a lack of cohesion – it is like reading the author’s stream of consciousness. Amid the admittedly eloquent reflections, we have some rather jaded and even ruthless comments, which along with the diffuse writing, detract from the overall book.
The battle of the Somme and the Thiepval Memorial there are only brought up in the last few pages – so the title of the book is questionable and misleading. A more appropriate title would be something along the lines of “Literary Writing, Statues and Memorials of the Great War”. There is little on the French aspect and memorials of the war.
There are, now and then, some touching observations on the cemeteries that he visits in France. Mr. Dyer discusses the writings of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Statues and memorials commemorating the Great War are featured along with some pictures of them. Of interest to Canadians, he also visits the Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge. The author reflects on how the meaning of the Great War and Remembrance have changed over the years. They can represent grief, the horror of war and even the nobility of war. For many of the young men it was the culminating experience of their lives – and sadly, for many, it ended their lives.
As mentioned there is a lack of cohesion – it is like reading the author’s stream of consciousness. Amid the admittedly eloquent reflections, we have some rather jaded and even ruthless comments, which along with the diffuse writing, detract from the overall book.
The battle of the Somme and the Thiepval Memorial there are only brought up in the last few pages – so the title of the book is questionable and misleading. A more appropriate title would be something along the lines of “Literary Writing, Statues and Memorials of the Great War”. There is little on the French aspect and memorials of the war.
Want to read
July 11, 2012To say I'm still "currently-reading" this would be dishonest. I read exactly half of it before becoming rather distracted by my reading of Roubaud, and now it has been like a month and a half, and Geoff Dyer and this book deserve better than that, because the half I read was wonderful, so I'm setting it aside until later, when I have the will to read it all in one go. Sorry Geoff, you spell your name the right way, I will do you justice another time.
July 1, 2016
An early book by one of my favorite writers, with that characteristic Dyer way of approaching a subject sideways, a little differently than anyone else. It's an exploration of Great War commemoration, from Owen and Sassoon to comparatively unknown memoirists who played off those, to late 20th-century novels like Pat Barker's and Sebastian Faulks's that intentionally (Barker) and unintentionally (Faulks) echoed the memoirists (who were themselves echoing Owen) and even Ondaatje's English Patient ("wrong war, dude" as Dyer's companions would say), to iconic photographs and films and what they could/could not depict, to physical memorials of the war (and an account of reading a visitors' book that made me splutter with laughter since it's a Geoff Dyer story and that's sine qua non). Dyer called this book "reference notes for a World War I novel I have no intention of ever writing." I don't even need that novel.
January 26, 2014
A fine meditation on memorials for the dead of the Great War and how we construct the memories we hope to fix into stone or bronze. Dyer's essay grows out of Paul Fussell's work in "The Great War and Modern Memory" but stands very much on its own. Dyer is less interested in the literary antecedents of Great War literature than in the concrete ways England tried to hold on to a memory of the war and its losses. His account (this would be in the early 1990s, a decade or so before the issues of military graves and memories of losses would once again become something in the public eye) of visits to the cemeteries in Belgium and France that hold British and Empire dead is fine travel writing, and his account of how the great memorials were done in the first years after the war is incisive and haunting. Very much worth reading--- quiet, thoughtful, and never cynical.
June 12, 2011
Perhaps that is what is meant by ‘lonelyness’ — knowing that even at your moments of most exalted emotion, you do not matter (perhaps this is precisely the moment of most exalted emotion) because these things will always be here: the dark trees full of summer leaf, the fading light that has not changed in seventy-five years, the peace that lies perpetually in wait.
There's really no better closer in any book I have ever read - how he manages to take the stinking mess of millions dead, the forgotten fog of war, the grand and unknowable scale of destruction, and then make you feel that it will be alright in the end - that's the brilliance of Dyer.
December 27, 2024
every other page i wanted to tell my friend about what dyer was saying, where he was focused. odd intense and very interesting little book. no secret that i love cemeteries and rituals around the dead. struck by both the preemptive and retroactive ways of conceiving of the war / the scale of death. stuffed with art and literature, deeply considered. made me look at john singer sargent’s painting gassed more closely than i ever have. glad it fell into my lap ahead of its reissue
April 6, 2020
The Great War and Geoff Dwyer made fine companions during the pandemic. The unimaginable horror of that war to end all wars that almost ended civilization and forever marked a line between the past and modern times, is explored as travelogue to memorial sites and through art and poetry that speaks to memory and how slippery it is.
November 11, 2013
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January 4, 2022
"In an effort to give some sense of the scale of the loss, Fabian Ware, head of the Imperial War Graves Commission, pointed out that if the Empire's dead marched four abreast down Whitehall, it would take them three and a half days to pass the Cenotaph" (23).
"This speculative account of sculptures that were not made is really only an attempt to articulate a sense of what is missing from those that *were*: a way of describing them in terms not of stone or bronze but of the time and space which envelop and define them. What is lacking is the sense of a search for a new form, a groping towards new meaning rather than a passive reliance on the accumulated craft of the past" (67).
"And this book? Like the youthful Christopher Isherwood who wanted to write a novel entitled 'A War Memorial,' I wanted to write a book that was not about 'the War itself but the effect of the idea of [the War] on my generation.' Not a novel but an essay in mediation: research notes for the Great War novel I had no intention of writing, the themes of a novel without its substance" (83).
"There had been military disasters before the Battle of the Somme, but these -- the Charge of the Light Brigade, for example -- served only as indictments of individual strategy, not of the larger purpose of which they were a part. For the first time in history the Great War resulted in a sense of the utter waste and futility of war. If the twentieth century has drifted slowly towards an acute sense of waste as a moral and political issue, then the origins of the ecology of compassion (represented by the peace movement, most obviously) are to be found in the once-devastated landscape of the Somme
That is why so much of the meaning of our century is concentrated there. Thiepval is not simply a site of commemoration but of prophecy, of birth as well as of death: a memorial to the future to what the century had in store for those who were left, whom age would weary" (128).
"This speculative account of sculptures that were not made is really only an attempt to articulate a sense of what is missing from those that *were*: a way of describing them in terms not of stone or bronze but of the time and space which envelop and define them. What is lacking is the sense of a search for a new form, a groping towards new meaning rather than a passive reliance on the accumulated craft of the past" (67).
"And this book? Like the youthful Christopher Isherwood who wanted to write a novel entitled 'A War Memorial,' I wanted to write a book that was not about 'the War itself but the effect of the idea of [the War] on my generation.' Not a novel but an essay in mediation: research notes for the Great War novel I had no intention of writing, the themes of a novel without its substance" (83).
"There had been military disasters before the Battle of the Somme, but these -- the Charge of the Light Brigade, for example -- served only as indictments of individual strategy, not of the larger purpose of which they were a part. For the first time in history the Great War resulted in a sense of the utter waste and futility of war. If the twentieth century has drifted slowly towards an acute sense of waste as a moral and political issue, then the origins of the ecology of compassion (represented by the peace movement, most obviously) are to be found in the once-devastated landscape of the Somme
That is why so much of the meaning of our century is concentrated there. Thiepval is not simply a site of commemoration but of prophecy, of birth as well as of death: a memorial to the future to what the century had in store for those who were left, whom age would weary" (128).
Read
April 15, 2021I am in what I expect is a pretty small target audience for Dyer: I read and loved Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory and almost all of the WWI memoirs/novels (Goodbye to All That, Storm of Steel, etc., though I still haven't read the Barbusse yet). And I like visiting historical battlefields: Most recently, a couple of good friends very nicely drove me to the Ardennes to look at Battle of the Bulge stuff; after the pandemic I want to bicycle the Operation Market Garden route from Eindhoven to Arnhem, etc. And I like Dyer's sense of humor and the semi-Berger-style combo of literary criticism and art history that he practices.
March 3, 2021
Another interesting and thoughtful tome from Geoff Dyer. I've read his books on jazz and photography, and he follows the same format here - a gently meandering essay, without chapter breaks, taking in memory, travel, poetry, the landscape, literature and history. I've visited many of the sites mentioned in this book on many occasions leading school trips, but Dyer vividly brought them back to life for me in a year when I can't do my usual visit to the battlefields.
February 14, 2025
A powerful study of the way memorial art of horrific battlefields of the first world war affects (and is affected by) the need for understanding how and why humans insist on repeating the mistakes of the past.
June 30, 2024
A pure ramble. Fantastic as an audiobook, though I would love to have pictures of the sculpture in my lap.
May 22, 2013
The Missing of the Somme is described as "part travelogue, part meditation on remembrance" and this is certainly accurate--I would say that the "meditation on remembrance" occupies most of the first half of the book, and the travelogue aspect really kicks in at the end, mingling together with the discussion on remembrance in a really beautiful way.
Dyer writes about the modes of memory surrounding and built up both by and because of World War I, focusing particularly on the war memorials and artistic and poetic renditions of the Great War. Anyone else's take on this subject could be plodding or leaden; Dyer's prose manages to handle the subject in a substantive, but never oppressive, way. There is a heaviness to what he writes, but he handles it well.
This is a surprisingly quick read, and one that felt earnest and true. There is a quietness to Dyer's book, in which he explores difficulties of the modern condition, but allows them to rest and simply exist, rather than beating them past recognition. This, to my mind, is the greatest success of his work. Vital, too, to his register is the way he presents his exhaustive research: it never feels burdensome.
I'm so pleased I read this, and I'm very thankful that it was suggested and lent to me.
Dyer writes about the modes of memory surrounding and built up both by and because of World War I, focusing particularly on the war memorials and artistic and poetic renditions of the Great War. Anyone else's take on this subject could be plodding or leaden; Dyer's prose manages to handle the subject in a substantive, but never oppressive, way. There is a heaviness to what he writes, but he handles it well.
This is a surprisingly quick read, and one that felt earnest and true. There is a quietness to Dyer's book, in which he explores difficulties of the modern condition, but allows them to rest and simply exist, rather than beating them past recognition. This, to my mind, is the greatest success of his work. Vital, too, to his register is the way he presents his exhaustive research: it never feels burdensome.
I'm so pleased I read this, and I'm very thankful that it was suggested and lent to me.
April 9, 2024
Last year, one of my favourite reads was But Beautiful by Geoff Dyer. At the time, I looked at his bibliography, but nothing leapt out at me. Then I heard him on a book-chat podcast a few months ago, and enjoyed his discussion, including a reference made to a book of his called Broadsword Calling Danny Boy about a favourite film (Where Eagles Dare, an improbable WWII story with the even more improbable cast of Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood). When ordering that book, I also saw this one and was intrigued by the laudatory reviews. With Remembrance Day around the corner, it seemed timely.
This book is excellent. It tells of Dyer's own pilgrimage to the Flanders region and south to the monuments at Vimy and at Thiepval. The journey initially was an exploration of his own grandfather's experience in the Great War, but expands to consider historical details of the war, the immediate establishment of Remembrance Day (or Armistice Day as was) and the many memorials, the poetry and art that emerged during and after the war – especially the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and the sculpturer Charles Sergeant Jagger – and reflections on the experiences of the war. He also explores the concepts of remembrance and monuments as social constructs, the changes to the approach to war and conflict with advances in technology, and the strange confluence of cultural norms of sacrifice and duty and honour that allowed for so much death and destruction and suffering.
Dyer uses the trip to and through France as a loose framework to talk about all the above. His own questions and meditations are insightful and thought-provoking. For example, in discussing the strange phenomenon of the various war cemeteries and monuments being scrupulously maintained in close to pristine condition: “This is strange; cemeteries, after all, are expected to age. In these military cemeteries there is no ageing: everything is kept as new...The cemeteries look now as they did sixty years ago.” (I think this is still true today, another thirty years on). He then notes:
“Then as now the official idiom of Remembrance stressed not so much victory or patriotic triumph as Sacrifice. Sacrifice may have been a euphemism for slaughter but, either way, the significance of victory was overwhelmed by the human cost of achieving it...Even while it was raging, the characteristic attitude of the war was to look forward to the time when it would be remembered.”
While not explored in depth, the issue of how technology changes contributed to the considerable horrors and loss in all the wars of the 20th century makes for interesting reflection. In the 21st century's hyper-connected world, where most first-world people have little to no experience with physical hardship or labour, privation of food and shelter, or extended periods of isolation and separation, and where wars are usually elsewhere and unfamiliar, could true global threats to freedom and democracy be defeated? Where would the multi-millions of cannon fodder come from, and how would society survive that? We can perhaps say that that experience is occurring right now in Ukraine (if we're honest, it's been occurring in non-White regions for decades) so maybe we will learn lessons from that.
One we have seemed not to learn is the danger and long-term ineffectiveness of demonization and isolation of the enemy; that's a practice we seem doomed to repeat. Interestingly, the Great War memorials often elided the distinction between the conquerors and the conquered, instead referring to all “the glorious dead” uniformly and without discrimination or judgement. The approach definitely waned through the century, and now carries through to ongoing and emerging conflicts, where us-vs-them, or even our-enemy's-enemy-is-our-friend (making some pretty terrible partnerships), are more the norm.
The introduction by Wade Davis (part of the 2016 update for the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme) raises further reflection about the far-reaching impact of that war and the next several. It seems romantic (but now inappropriate in modern times) to extol the virtues of honour and duty and country. But, while the modern world points back at those wars as the hard-won victories for freedom, there is a narcissism and nihilism of the current age and society that celebrates those freedoms while rejecting (or worse, belittling) the very characteristics and traits of those who made those sacrifices to achieve those victories. To me, this is food for thought: how much of the past can a society reject or change before accomplishments get lost, before the structure becomes too broken or fragile to function, or before the instability leads to war? Without those quaint virtues that made the sacrifices of the Great War possible, how would a similar threat to freedom be addressed?
Clearly, this book provoked a lot of thought.
The timing of reading this to align with Remembrance Day was planned, but it also coincided with viewing the newest film version of All Quiet on the Western Front, a story I knew previously only by reputation. This latest version is exceptionally compelling, better even than 1917 from a few years ago. While certainly not a pleasant film, it is powerful and important, especially as a reminder of the cost of what the modern world takes for granted.
As the year is winding down and I'm confident of reaching the 2022 book goal, I'll be juggling around the various categories and choosing more wisely/deliberately for the remaining 5 titles.
Fate: I will hang on to this one for a while, as I may revisit it as a source of thought or recommendations for other reading. I'll also expand my future reading list to include more of Dyer (including one that seems made for me: Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It).
This book is excellent. It tells of Dyer's own pilgrimage to the Flanders region and south to the monuments at Vimy and at Thiepval. The journey initially was an exploration of his own grandfather's experience in the Great War, but expands to consider historical details of the war, the immediate establishment of Remembrance Day (or Armistice Day as was) and the many memorials, the poetry and art that emerged during and after the war – especially the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and the sculpturer Charles Sergeant Jagger – and reflections on the experiences of the war. He also explores the concepts of remembrance and monuments as social constructs, the changes to the approach to war and conflict with advances in technology, and the strange confluence of cultural norms of sacrifice and duty and honour that allowed for so much death and destruction and suffering.
Dyer uses the trip to and through France as a loose framework to talk about all the above. His own questions and meditations are insightful and thought-provoking. For example, in discussing the strange phenomenon of the various war cemeteries and monuments being scrupulously maintained in close to pristine condition: “This is strange; cemeteries, after all, are expected to age. In these military cemeteries there is no ageing: everything is kept as new...The cemeteries look now as they did sixty years ago.” (I think this is still true today, another thirty years on). He then notes:
“Then as now the official idiom of Remembrance stressed not so much victory or patriotic triumph as Sacrifice. Sacrifice may have been a euphemism for slaughter but, either way, the significance of victory was overwhelmed by the human cost of achieving it...Even while it was raging, the characteristic attitude of the war was to look forward to the time when it would be remembered.”
While not explored in depth, the issue of how technology changes contributed to the considerable horrors and loss in all the wars of the 20th century makes for interesting reflection. In the 21st century's hyper-connected world, where most first-world people have little to no experience with physical hardship or labour, privation of food and shelter, or extended periods of isolation and separation, and where wars are usually elsewhere and unfamiliar, could true global threats to freedom and democracy be defeated? Where would the multi-millions of cannon fodder come from, and how would society survive that? We can perhaps say that that experience is occurring right now in Ukraine (if we're honest, it's been occurring in non-White regions for decades) so maybe we will learn lessons from that.
One we have seemed not to learn is the danger and long-term ineffectiveness of demonization and isolation of the enemy; that's a practice we seem doomed to repeat. Interestingly, the Great War memorials often elided the distinction between the conquerors and the conquered, instead referring to all “the glorious dead” uniformly and without discrimination or judgement. The approach definitely waned through the century, and now carries through to ongoing and emerging conflicts, where us-vs-them, or even our-enemy's-enemy-is-our-friend (making some pretty terrible partnerships), are more the norm.
The introduction by Wade Davis (part of the 2016 update for the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme) raises further reflection about the far-reaching impact of that war and the next several. It seems romantic (but now inappropriate in modern times) to extol the virtues of honour and duty and country. But, while the modern world points back at those wars as the hard-won victories for freedom, there is a narcissism and nihilism of the current age and society that celebrates those freedoms while rejecting (or worse, belittling) the very characteristics and traits of those who made those sacrifices to achieve those victories. To me, this is food for thought: how much of the past can a society reject or change before accomplishments get lost, before the structure becomes too broken or fragile to function, or before the instability leads to war? Without those quaint virtues that made the sacrifices of the Great War possible, how would a similar threat to freedom be addressed?
Clearly, this book provoked a lot of thought.
The timing of reading this to align with Remembrance Day was planned, but it also coincided with viewing the newest film version of All Quiet on the Western Front, a story I knew previously only by reputation. This latest version is exceptionally compelling, better even than 1917 from a few years ago. While certainly not a pleasant film, it is powerful and important, especially as a reminder of the cost of what the modern world takes for granted.
As the year is winding down and I'm confident of reaching the 2022 book goal, I'll be juggling around the various categories and choosing more wisely/deliberately for the remaining 5 titles.
Fate: I will hang on to this one for a while, as I may revisit it as a source of thought or recommendations for other reading. I'll also expand my future reading list to include more of Dyer (including one that seems made for me: Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It).
January 13, 2011
"During the war the dead were buried haphazardly, often in mass graves. By the time of the great battles of attrition of 1916-1917 mass graves were dug in advance of major offensives. Singing columns of soldiers fell grimly silent as they marched by these gaping pits en route to the front-line trenches." This book is first in my own march past the graves of the Great War, my father's war. It is brilliant and contemporary, awed in aspect and perspective. It helps me to understand the words he never said.
July 6, 2016
A meandering sort of stream of consciousness, but well composed and engaging. I especially liked the critical analysis of the war poetry, and the introduction (for me) to some war artists that I hadn't previously heard of. I thought the strongest parts of the book though were Dyer's personal memories of his trip with friends to the Somme region; thought-provoking and touching at the same time. Would recommend to others who have an interest in this period of history, especially if you have a particular interest in the poetry and arts that surround the topic.
December 2, 2011
Wanted to like this but found it hard reading. Made it through it because it was relatively short. Still trying to figure out what all those who gave it such wonderful reviews got out of it that I missed. I wanted it to be more of a travelog - when the author visited battlefields and memorials, it was interesting and well written. But the literary references and discussions, something I normally enjoy, were tedious and obscure.
March 26, 2012
Continuing my fascination with all things "Great War" this was an interesting read: part touring book, part history. First book about the war that mentioned the horses role and losses.
Reading this has led me to more books about the confict, both memoirs and fictional works. The impact of the war on English culture and how it's memorialized and remembered has gripped me ever since I read Fussell's "The Great War and Modern Memory" about 25 years ago.
More to read, more to read...
Reading this has led me to more books about the confict, both memoirs and fictional works. The impact of the war on English culture and how it's memorialized and remembered has gripped me ever since I read Fussell's "The Great War and Modern Memory" about 25 years ago.
More to read, more to read...
November 5, 2016
Parts of this book are very moving, but it also gets a little dry in others. I read a book like this to cry, damn it. (of course this is my opinion, others seem to disagree) I did appreciate all the references to other books, some of which I own but haven't read. I think the a bit of a problem for me was that it sort of jumped around, there wasn't a smooth narrative, it's part this part that, which is even in its official description. But I will definitely keep it as a reference.
January 20, 2016
All superlatives. A wonderful read that takes on the underpinnings and after-effects of the Great War memorials -- unfortunately, only the British ones. The book was far too short and could have gone much farther than it did in talking about how the war affected, not just Britain, but everyone across Europe and beyond...Like all the best books of its type, it leads you to read many others.
November 19, 2011
History, literary criticism, and travelogue all in one. A vitally important view of a vitally important moment for framing the remainder of the 20th century.
November 30, 2011
I wish I'd known about this book when I directed Journey's End. Dyer is sympathetic, without being sentimental, and the result is an honest account of how we memorialize great tragedy.
September 12, 2017
I found it not my type of history
July 12, 2017
Dyer has taken a fairly original and refreshing angle on the Great War, and although this was first published 23 years ago, it still retains all the fresh and powerful qualities it had back in 94. Dyer explains some of the background and lead up to WWI by alluding to Cpt Scott’s disastrous Antarctic expedition, describing, “A memorial service for one of the most inefficient of polar expeditions, and one of the worst of polar expeditions.” Going onto say that Scott’s failure took its place alongside Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar at St Paul’s as a triumphant expression of the British spirit. “The story of Scott anticipates the larger heroic calamity of the Great War.” Citing a sermon that celebrated “the glory of self-sacrifice, the blessing of failure.”
He explores the effects of various gases on troops, showing us a reproduction of Sargent’s “Gassed” which still haunts a century later. He sums up the use of gas, saying, “The pattern for the century had been set: the warrior of tradition becomes little more than a guinea pig in the warring experiments of factories and laboratories.” He explains the reasons why not much footage or photography emerged from the allied side of the conflict, and after viewing much film, he concludes, “One thing emerges plainly from all this footage: war, for the ordinary soldier, was a continuation of labouring by other means. The battlefield was a vast open-air factory where hours were long, unions not permitted and safety standards routinely flouted.”
Dyer gives us plenty of interesting insight into much of the commemorative work done by the likes of Edwin Lutyens and Charles Sargeant Jagger, whose statues and cenotaphs packed a particular emotional punch, much of their work is reproduced here to enhance the feel and weight of the commentary. He also covers the written side of the conflict, as well as the war poets, he reflects on the biographical and semi-biographical accounts from Remarque and Graves etc, and the more recent fictional additions from Sebastian Faulks and Pat Barker.
This is another fine piece of writing from Dyer, his research and knowledge has translated well into a pleasing mix of art and reflection, all told by a well measured degree of restraint, craft and sensitivity that really builds a well rounded and informed picture.
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