In July of 1916 the British had attacked on the Somme before they were fully ready, in part to relieve pressure on their French allies. In June of 1918, the Austrians were once more goaded out of quiescence in order to support the desperate efforts of their German allies on the Western front by attacking in Northern Italy. In the early morning hours of today, a century back, the Austrians launched a new battle on the Asiago Plateau. By mid-morning, Edward Brittain was dead.
A private under his command will write the most direct and informative letter to his sister Vera, who has now lost every young man she has ever loved:
I was out on Trench Duty with Capt. Brittain about 3 a.m. on the morning of the 15th June when we were caught in a terrific Barrage ; we managed to get back to our Headquarters safely. About 8 a.m. the enemy launched a very heavy attack and penetrated the left flank of our Company and began to consolidate. Seeing that the position was getting critical Captain Brittain with a little help from the French led a party of men over driving the enemy out again. Shortly after the trench was regained Capt. Brittain who was keeping a sharp look out on the enemy was shot through the Head by an enemy sniper, he only lived a few minutes.[1]
But his family will learn nothing of this for days–Italy is much further away from England (especially in a logistical sense) than France, and in the confusion of battle notification telegrams are often long delayed.
And they will never learn the complete truth about what happened. Vera, in Testament of Youth, will write one version of her experiences over the coming days, in which she expresses her growing frustration at her sense that Edward’s commanding officer, Col. C.E. Hudson, is suppressing information about Edward’s last hours. She is no fool, but perhaps she was still more naive than she might have thought–still more of a provincial young lady and less of a worldly woman, despite all of the loss and suffering and hard work on the wards. Perhaps she just didn’t see what her brother was hiding, or that he could be so foolish and risk so much.
The possibility of misconduct is very far from her mind. So why the air of mystery? Was her brother killed in classic heroic fashion–shot down while out in front of his men, as another letter will describe it? If so, he deserved a decoration, yet only that young Col. got the V.C.
But another report “claimed that Edward had insisted on going ahead of the rest of his company, and that his body has only been discovered hours later, after the fighting was over, with a bullet through his head.” That would be a different story, then–and a story that might fit with facts that she was not to learn until after she wrote Testament of Youth.
After Brittain had voiced her doubts in the book–she did not use Hudson’s name, but it would not have been difficult to discover the young colonel who won the V.C. in that battle–Hudson at last told Vera Brittain more of the truth: her brother had only just been told that he was likely to be prosecuted for an illegal sexual affair with a man under his command. He was a brave officer, but he did not die a hero. He died under a cloud, and he may well have meant to die before that cloud broke.
All this we know only because of Mark Bostridge’s research into Col. Hudson’s long-maintained reticence about Edward’s actions just before his death–although Edward’s homosexuality is broadly hinted at in one of Vera’s later novels, as she worked through what she learned.
As for today, a century back, Bostridge suggests that we might confidently share Hudson’s judgment about Edward Brittain’s intentions:
Edward was the only officer killed on 15 June. After the battle, Hudson had reached the terrible conclusion that, faced in all likelihood with the prospect of a court martial when they came out the line, imprisonment and the subsequent disgrace that would ensure, Edward had either shot himself or deliberately courted death by presenting himself as an easy target for a sniper’s bullet.[2]
But we still can’t ever know his intentions. We just know that Edward Brittain’s last days would have been filled with the knowledge that, even if he survived the battle, he would likely be disgraced and ruined. He may or may not have been suicidal, but he was certainly miserable and alone.
There is so much pain around Brittain’s death–what it did to his parents, what it did to his sister, the fact that he may have done it to himself–that we might forget what should be an obvious major theme to the tragedy. Edward Brittain was once so very lucky in his friends. He and Roland and Victor were the Three Musketeers, and the boy he admired most was going to marry his beloved sister; and then in training camp he found comradeship (and possibly love) with Geoffrey Thurlow. But now they are all dead: Victor Richardson for a year, Geoffrey Thurlow for fourteen months, and Roland Leighton for not quite thirty months.
Wilfred Owen never found a close friend in the Manchesters. But he found Sassoon in the unlikeliest of places, and Sassoon brought him to the attention of Robbie Ross, and Ross introduced him to Charles Scott Moncrieff, who brought, well, more of that “comradeship, (and possibly love).”
But Scott Moncrieff is also able to provide some more tangible literary support, which is no small thing for someone with Owen’s recent ambitions. The Nation published two more of Owen’s poems today, a century back–Futility and Hospital Barge–a lucky stroke probably due in some part to Moncrieff’s influence as a rising young critic.[3] But that’s not all Moncrieff is doing for the young poet he so much admires (and whose poetry, too, he thinks rather well of).
Owen wrote to his mother today, with various bits of news, including this:
I had magnificently resolved not to unpack my books or papers while in camp; when lo! an urgent request from the Sitwells in London for more of my poems for their 1918 Anthology which is coming out immediately. This is on the strength of The Deranged, which S. Moncrieff showed them the other day. I know not what to do. For one thing I want to see the Sitwells’ etc. works before I decide to co-appear in a book![4]
Well, then, Wilfred has arrived. This uncertainty, though, is probably a mere pose for mother–he is not likely to turn down an offer from a certified Friend of Siegfried who is also an influential figure in literary circles, and a Guardsman, and a future baronet, never mind the Sitwells’ alleged disdain for the traditional beauties of poetry, a school to which Owen is still half-loyal…
And what about Siegfried Sassoon? He, almost alone of all the old crowds, is still in France, and seemingly thinking little of literature. He is still in the rear, still readying his men for their first real experience of the Western Front, still very busy. He and Owen are far apart now… but Sassoon hasn’t forgotten literature–he is writing assiduously in his diary–and to his friend and protegé, who will soon receive several letters.
The Royal Welch train hard, but, alone at night, Sassoon reads and writes, largely (but not entirely) for himself:
The messenger there aroused, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.
That would be Sassoon quoting Whitman at his most incantatory, from “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” But Sassoon doesn’t just quote, he analyzes–and why am I still surprised that he is so good at being wryly amusing? His whole persona is about splitting and juxtaposing, after all…
Result of Reading Whitman
To O.C. A. Coy. Ref. Return of Books and Pamphlets at present in possession of Companies. This.should have been passed on by you at 6 p.m. last night instead of which it was not passed until 11,45 this morning…
I am beginning to realise the difficulties of combining the functions of soldier and poet.
Ha! But an officer, of course, can keep his “Books and Pamphlets.” Moreover, he has a servant to tote them along. Sassoon enlarges on the theme:
When I was out here as a platoon-commander I spent half my time in day-dreams. I avoided responsibilities. But since I’ve been with this battalion responsibility has been pushed on to me, and I’ve taken soldiering very seriously…
For several weeks I hardly thought of anything but the Company. Now that their training is coming to an end I’ve been easing off a bit; have allowed myself to enjoy books.The result is that I immediately lose my grip on soldiering, and begin to find everything intolerable except my interest in the humanity of the men. One cannot be a good soldier and a good poet at the same time…
Life will be easier and simpler when we get into the line again. There one alternates between intense concentration on the business in hand and extreme exhaustion… there is no time for emotion, no place for beauty. Only grimness and cruelty and remorse…
So perhaps he shouldn’t write… but he does. We might have assumed that a diary is, in the first instance, private, and not intended for the eyes of others… but Sassoon is clearly writing with other readers in mind. (This next bit, in other words, is not entirely in jest.)
I wish you to understand that I have never been more healthy, physically, than I am to-day. But under all that mask of animal satisfaction the mind rebels…
I don’t write this for self-advertisement, or in self-pity; nor am I a pompous prig. I am merely recording what thousands of sensitive gifted people are enduring in the name of ‘patriotism’. And O how I long for music. That is what I need most of all.[5]
Edward Brittain was a musician. A talented young violinist and composer…