This is the third volume of Seigfried Sassoon’s trilogy of novelised memoirs. It follows Memoirs of an Infantry Officer which I’d just read. It’s the slimmest of the three books and has only taken me a short time to read. It describes the events from his admittance to Dr River’s shell-shock hospital in July 1917 to his final wounding on the western front in July 1918. He is sent to the hospital, not because of shell-shock, but to keep him quiet after he publishes a letter denouncing the war. Quite a sane position given everything he’d been through. But contact with other anti-war protesters, and a feeling of guilt for all his former friends and colleagues who had died, gradually led him to take the view that it was better to be in the war. He rejoined his regiment which was then based in Ireland. There, for a short time, he was able to lead an idyllic life, fox-hunting with the local Irish gentry. One of the funniest episodes in the entire trilogy featured a very drunken aborted hunting outing with the huntsmaster, “Mister”, and a fellow officer, followed by a formal dinner party that went very badly indeed. It reminded me of some of the episodes in William Hickey’s Georgian Rake. From Ireland he’s sent briefly to Egypt and Palestine He finally returns to France and is given command of a company. They spend a while in training, but then in July 1918, are sent to take over a sector of the front. Sassoon, in almost suicidal bravery patrols no man’s land a couple of times, and is then shot by friendly fire after attacking a German machine gun post. He’s wounded with a graze to his scull, and is evacuated back to England for the third and final time. The book ends with him lying in hospital in London trying to make sense of it all. Sassoon continues to be a wonderful engaging writer, but one gets the impression that he was tired of writing these memoirs by the time he reached the final volume. The first few chapters are plagued by irritating “third wall” monologues, chatting to you, dear reader, and reflecting on his current life 20 years later. For the middle section of the book, the excursion to the Middle East and his return to France, he simply inserts his diary entries; as if he can’t be bothered to narrate it any more. This is a shame because I would have liked some deeper reflections on what must have been an incredible experience for a man who’d previously never been further from England than France and Ireland. Things pick up for the last few chapters; the descriptions of being back at the front and his escapades there are as good as anything from Infantry Officer. Again, like the previous volumes, the soul of the book is the way that he so vividly conveys his confused and troubled state of mind. The emotions of war. He loathes the war, but at the same time only feels honest and useful when he’s immersed in it. It sickens him, but also excites him. One of the telling stories is how he threw caution to the wind, and very irresponsibly as a company commander, insisted on going out on raids and patrols in no-man’s-land, simply because he got a huge adrenaline kick out of it. The trilogy as a whole has to be one of the best descriptions of the life of a young man in the first two decades of the 20th C. and a classic of war literature. i’ve really enjoyed it.