Fusilier*
MEMOIRS OF AN INFANTRY OFFICER— Siegfried Sassoon — Coward McCann ($2.50).
Two years ago appeared a quiet autobiographical narrative, Memoirs of A Fox-Hunting Man. This book is its sequel. Author Sassoon calls himself "George Sherston," changes the names of regiments and men, but those who read his onetime great & good friend Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That (TIME, Jan. 6), may remember the right ones. Another fine War book, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer is what the name implies. It tries to give no picture of the War as a whole. "Those who expect a universalization of the Great War must look for it elsewhere. Here they will only find an attempt to show its effect upon a somewhat solitary- minded young man ... I am no believer in wild denunciations of the War, I am merely describing my own experiences of it ... my pedestrian tale."
Sherston (Sassoon) served as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Flintshires (Royal Welch Fusiliers), came through the Somme unhurt and with a Military Cross to his credit. He was shot through the chest by a sniper at the Battle of Arras. He won the M. C. by losing his temper. When a man alongside of him was shot, Sassoon charged the German trench singlehanded, bombing as he went. The Germans thought it was an attack, fled, and Sassoon occupied the abandoned trench. After a while, not knowing what else to do, he came back, found his commanding officer furious. A scheduled bombardment had been held up three hours because "patrols" were out. Another time Sassoon was ordered (foolishly, he thought) to send some exhausted, inexperienced men out on patrol. Angry, he gave no orders, patrolled no-man's-land by himself.
Sassoon apparently never lost his nerve, but never felt himself a very competent officer. "My main fear was that I should make a fool of myself. The idea of making a fool of oneself in that murderous mix-up now appears to me rather a ludicrous one; for I see myself merely as a blundering, flustered little beetle; and if someone happens to put his foot on a beetle, it is unjust to accuse the unlucky insect of having made a fool of itself."
At the time of the Battles of Messines (1917) Sassoon was in England recuperating from his wound. He had begun to be fed up with the War, finally decided he ought to do something about it. He wrote a formal statement of his refusal to return to the front (although he was not going to be sent back), "as an act of wilful defiance ot military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it." He sent this statement to his colonel, was immediately ordered to report. To the colonel's great embarrassment, he found Sassoon wanted to be court-martialled, to be a martyr-example. Finally Robert Graves (whom Sassoon calls David Cromlech) got Sassoon to give in by telling him he would never be court-martialled but would be shut up in a lunatic asylum for the duration. It was announced Sassoon had shell shock; he was ordered to a hospital. Graves, his appointed escort, missed the train.