Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Charles Yale Harrison, Penguin, $9.95.
Challenging the notion that war is noble and heroic, Harrison’s Generals Die in Bed highlights the cost of war is more than the body count.
The Canadian writer, who served in the army, writes an anti-war novella and it is a shockingly frank portrayal of the experiences of a group of soldiers in the trenches on the Western Front.
First published in 1927, Harrison elucidates there’s no glory in war. Instead, it’s horrifying, appalling and pointless. The loss of humanity is what confronts the moral compass of the reader.
It’s a soldier’s account of his experiences, and is one of many. It’s said these authors were compelled to write their stories because they were frustrated with hearing romantic myths about the war, and wanted people to know the truth.
Right from the beginning of World War I, there was a profound difference between expectation and reality for the average recruit. Up to 1914, war had been popularly regarded as a testing ground, where a young man could exhibit his courage by charging into battle on his trusty steed, brandishing a gleaming sword. In actual fact, war was different.
In reality, as Robert F. Nielsen states in the introduction, “The origins of the First World War were amazingly complex, but the result would change the world absolutely”.
In sparse but gripping prose, Harrison conveys a sense of the horrors of life in the trenches. Here is where “soldiers fight and die, entombed in mud, surrounded by rats and lice, forced to survive on insufficient rations”.
It brings to life a period of history through the eyes of a 20-year-old narrator, who reminds us that there is neither glamour nor splendor in war.
