“When I was a girl …. I imagined that life was individual, one’s own affair; that the events happening in the world outside were important enought in their own way, but were personally quite irrelevant.”

First of all, I’ll cover what I appreciated.

This book was one person’s experience during World War I, a person who decided to engage with this “beast” of a war, in spite of her disagreement with it, and instead of sticking her head in the ground and attempting to avoid the horrors and atrocities of it all. One must admire her for that. The death of her fiance and brother and friends is something that few of us can really understand, the grief of the loss of so many loved ones and the guilt of being the one left behind. I can certainly sympathize with her experience.

WWI Nurse and Patient outside stationary hospital Rouen
~ source Wikimedia Commons

Now for the parts that irritated and grated and made it difficult for me to trudge through this unnecessarily thick volume.

Brittain comes across as self-righteous and judgemental throughout most of the book. If she had developed these aspects of her character after the war, because of her experiences in it, it might have been something that I could have overlooked. But from page one, even when she was relating events of her childhood, she sounded deprecating towards her parents, disgusted with the culture of her times and highly irritated with most of the people around her. Very few people seemed to behave the way Brittain wanted them to and when they didn’t, they were judged, judged, judged.Brittain also seemed to know better about everything than anyone else. Again, I could understand if she was writing the book fresh from the horrors and disappointments that she experienced, but she’s writing decades later when one would expect her to develop some maturity and humility in her outlook. But, nope.

Waiting to see the Queen
~ source Wikimedia Commons

Interestingly, I have been reading C.S. Lewis’s collected letters and coincidentally was reading about his experience in WWI at the same time as I was reading about Brittain’s. What two completely different outlooks! Lewis (who could have been exempt from the war because of his age and his nationality, but chose to participate out of a duty) does his job and tries to make the best of it. He doesn’t gloss over atrocities (his sergeant was blown up and killed right beside him, and he makes reference to his sympathy for a man who is a widower and lost both of his sons in the war) but Lewis lives in the “now” and is grateful for what he has. Yet he also states what he thinks is wrong with the political framework with regards to the war. Lewis comes across much more matter-of-fact and less condemnatory in a self-satisfied way that is apparent in Brittain’s tone. (Note: Lewis was not a Christian at this time)

My major dissatisfaction with Brittain is that her life experiences didn’t appear to change her as a person, to make her grow in character or engender sympathy towards anyone but herself. Her tone of disapproving superciliousness echoed throughout all 600+ pages, making this reader weary of the effort and honestly, detracting from some of the more valid and insightful points that Brittain did offer.

Vera Brittain
~ source Wikimedia Commons

An interesting and somewhat enlightening read with insights into WWI, but otherwise an unexpected disappointment.