Read The Missing of the Somme Online
Authors: Geoff Dyer
p.
55
‘He spoke of . . .’: (Picador, 1993), p. 111.
p.
56
‘a herdsman’, ‘a Shepherd of . . .’ and ‘a cattle-driver’: letters of 31 August and 1 September 1918,
Collected Letters
, pp. 570–71.
p.
56
‘herded from the . . .’: ‘The Sentry’,
Collected Poems
, p. 61.
p.
56
‘when the Other . . .’:
The Great War and Modern Memory
, p. 239.
p.
56
‘happy in a . . .’: entry for 15 February 1917,
Diaries 1915–1918
, p. 132.
p.
58
‘lives or affects . . .’:
Men without Art
, in Julian Symons (ed.),
The Essential Wyndham Lewis
p. 207 (italics in
original).
p.
58
‘The great wars . . .’:
Imagined Communities
, p. 131.
p.
58
‘Being shelled . . .’:
Air with Armed Men
(London Magazine Editions 1972) p. 114.
p.
58
‘One does not . . .’: quoted in Alistair Horne,
The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916
, p. 338.
p.
59
‘The hero became . . .’: Modris Eksteins,
Rites of Spring
, p. 146.
p.
60
‘personally manipulated a . . .’ and ‘personally captured an . . .’:
Wilfred Owen: The Last Year
, p. 174.
p.
60
‘had never seen . . .’:
Goodbye to All That
, p. 226.
p.
60
‘incredibly pitiful wretches . . .’:
Under Fire
, p. 330.
p.
61
‘We’ve been murderers . . .’: ibid., p. 340.
p.
61
‘shame on the . . .’: ibid. p. 257.
p.
61
‘when / Will such . . .’: Edmund Blunden, ‘The Watchers’,
Undertones of War
, p. 280.
p.
61
‘For either side . . .’:
The Letters of Charles Hamilton Sorley
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1919), p. 283.
p.
62
‘no shot was . . .’: quoted in Alan Clark,
The Donkeys
, p. 173.
p.
62
‘a Saxon boy . . .’:
Wet Flanders Plain
p. 18.
p.
62
‘German civilians sang . . .’: Arthur Bryant,
English Saga 1840–1940
(Collins, 1940), p. 292.
p.
63
‘men whom the . . .’: Marc Ferro,
The Great War
, p. 225.
p.
63
‘That was a . . .’: Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz, quoted in Eric J. Leed,
No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War 1
,
p. 213.
p.
63
‘The Dead are . . .’: Bob Bushaway, ‘Name upon Name: The Great War and Remembrance, in Roy Porter (ed.),
Myths of the
English
, p. 155.
p.
63
‘disembodied rage . . .’, et al.: ‘Beware the Unhappy Dead’,
The Complete Poems
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1977), pp.
722–3.
p.
64
‘The Third Reich . . .’: quoted in Marc Ferro,
The Great War
, p. 157.
p.
65
‘the war changed . . .’: Samuel Gissing, quoted in Ronald Blythe,
Akenfield
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 56.
p.
65
‘They are all . . .’: letter to Catherine Carswell, 9 July 1916,
Selected Letters
(Penguin, Harmondsworth,
1950), p. 104.
p.
66
For further information on Private Ingham and other men executed, see Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes,
Shot at Dawn
, pp. 138–40
et passim.
See also Anthony Babington,
For the Sake of Example.
p.
66
‘My father was . . .’: Professor Jane Carter, 9 March 1993.
p.
67
For meticulous analysis of the faked sequences in
The Battle of the Somme
and other films see Roger Smither, ‘“A wonderful idea
of the fighting”’,
Imperial War Museum Review
no. 3, 1988, pp. 4–16.
p.
68
‘every American character . . .’:
Hollywood’s Vietnam
2nd edn (Heinemann, 1989), p. 153.
p.
69
‘masses of men . . .’:
A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture,
p. 125.
p.
71
They are dead and they are going to die: I have adapted Roland Barthes’ caption for Alexander Gardner’s 1865 ‘Portrait of Lewis
Payne’,
Camera Lucida
(Hill & Wang, New York, 1981), p. 95.
p.
71
‘I visualized an . . .’:
The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston
, p. 540.
p.
72
‘The past is . . .’:
Requiem for a Nun
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1960), p. 81.
p.
72
‘seemed more or . . .’: quoted in Denis Winter,
Death’s Men
, p. 176.
p.
72
‘the men appeared . . .’: ibid., p. 187.
p.
72
‘like a sleepwalker . . .’: ibid. p. 189.
p.
72
‘they come as . . .’:
In Parenthesis
, p. 170.
p.
72
‘with strange eyes . . .’ and ‘a rippling murmur . . .’: p. 210.
p.
72n
‘fog-walkers . . .’: ibid., p. 179.
p.
73
‘Now there came . . .’, et al.:
The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston
, p. 362.
p.
74
‘mysterious army of . . .’:
Akenfield
(Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 33.
p.
74
‘men clawed at . . .’: quoted in Leon Wolff,
In Flanders Fields
, p. 124.
p.
75
‘We marched and . . .’: Ivor Gurney, ‘Canadians’,
Collected Poems
, p. 87.
p.
76
‘Men became reminiscent . . .’: quoted in Ann Compton (ed.),
Charles Sargeant Jagger: War and Peace Sculpture
, p. 78.
p.
79
‘I heal . . .’: ibid., p. 15.
p.
81
‘Survivor outrage . . .’ and ‘Many survivors believe . . .’:
The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and
Meaning
, p. 9.
p.
81
‘a sculptural language . . .’: John Berger,
Art and Revolution
(Writers & Readers, 1969), p. 137. For an extended
discussion of Zadkine’s
Monument to Rotterdam
see Berger’s
Permanent Red
, new edn (Writers & Readers, 1979), pp. 116–121.
p.
83n
‘the sculptor who . . .’, et al.: ‘The Shape of Labour’,
Art Monthly
, November 1986, pp. 4–8.
p.
85
‘No man in . . .’: General Harper, quoted in Denis Winter (who goes on to suggest that Harper was exaggerating),
Death’s
Men
, p. 110.
p.
86
‘Leaning on his . . .’: ‘Lullaby of Cape Cod’,
A Part of Speech
(Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980), p.
109.
p.
86
‘The angel does . . .’:
And our Faces
,
My Heart
,
Brief as Photos
(Granta Books, 1992),
p. 19.
p.
90
‘to feel that . . .’: F. Le Gros Clark, quoted in Samuel Hynes,
The Auden Generation
, p. 40.
p.
91
‘terrific power . . .’ and ‘last word in . . .’: quoted in Ann Compton (ed.),
Charles Sargeant Jagger: War and Peace
Sculpture
, pp. 84–5.
p.
91
‘it looked as . . .’ and ‘honourable scars of . . .’: quoted in Peyton Skipwith, ‘Gilbert Ledward R. A. and the
Guards’ Division Memorial’,
Apollo
, January 1988, p. 26.
p.
94
‘. . . a khaki-clad leg . . .’: p. 272.
p.
95
‘after leaving him . . .’: letter of 22 August 1917,
Collected Letters
p. 485.
p.
95
For Owen’s use of Barbusse’s images see Jon Stallworthy,
Wilfred Owen
, pp. 242–3 and p. 256.
p.
95
‘I too saw . . .’: ‘Apologia Pro Poemate Meo’,
Collected Poems
, p. 39.
p.
95
‘GAS! Quick, boys! . . .’: ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, ibid., p. 55.
p.
95
‘Mental Cases’: ibid., p. 69.
p.
96
‘S. I. W’: ibid., p. 74.
p.
96
‘Disabled’: ibid., p. 67.
p.
96
‘Red lips are . . .’: ‘Greater Love’, ibid., p. 41.
p.
96
‘Futility’: ibid., p. 58.
p.
96
‘stuttering rifles’ rapid . . .’: ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, ibid., p. 44.
p.
96
‘spandau’s manic jabber . . .’ and ‘Straggling the road . . .’:
New and Collected Poems
(Robson Books, 1980),
pp. 81–3.
p.
97
‘Referring great success . . .’: quoted by Christopher Ridgway in introduction to Richard Aldington,
Death of a Hero.
p.
97
‘a pastiche of . . .’: quoted in Alex Dancher, ‘“Bunking” and De-bunking’, in Brian Bond
(ed.),
The First World War and British Military History
, p. 49.
p.
97
‘an imaginative leap . . .’ and ‘live in the . . .’:
Strange Meeting
, p. 183.
p.
98
‘Well there, I . . .’: ibid., p. 134.
p.
98
‘I was always . . .’: pp. 143–4.
p.
99
‘often hold their . . .’: Susan Hill, ibid., p. 149.
p.
99
‘seemed unable to . . .’:
Birdsong
, p. 204.
p.
99
‘Those fat pigs . . .’: ibid., p. 235.
p.
100
‘ever-present dreamlike . . .’:
The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling
, p. 49.
p.
100
‘Terrified, I clawed . . .’: ibid., p. 71.
p.
100
‘not as factually . . .’:, p. 145.
p.
101
‘if that wasn’t . . .’:
The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling
, p. 49.
p.
101
‘ears popped and . . .’:
The Wars
, p. 122.
p.
101
‘What you people . . .’: ibid., pp. 46–7.
p.
102
‘The mud. There . . .’: ibid., pp. 71–2.
p.
103
‘a small train . . .’:
Birdsong
, p. 67.
p.
103
‘from Albert out . . .’: ibid., p. 68.
p.
103
‘where the Marne . . .’: ibid., p. 83.
p.
103
‘terrible piling up . . .’: ibid., p. 59.
p.
104
The distinction between remembering and remembering the act of remembering together is derived from James E. Young,
The Texture of
Memory
, p. 7.
p.
105
‘the War itself . . .’:
Lions and Shadows
, p. 296.
p.
105
‘clean and new . . .’:
Wet Flanders Plain
, p. 58.
p.
106
‘Well might the . . .’, et al.: ‘On Passing the New Menin Gate’,
Collected Poems
, p. 188.
p.
107
‘sullen swamp . . .’, et al.: p. 141 (my italics).
p.
107
‘acute, shattering, the . . .’: Armistice Day Supplement, 12 November 1920, p. i.
p.
108
‘soul-shattering, heart-rending . . .’:
Death of a Hero
, p. 34.
p.
108
‘a terrible place . . .’, et al.:
The Challenge of the Dead
, pp. 36–7.
p.
110
‘memorial to all . . .’ and ‘mourns for all . . .’:
Wet Flanders Plain
, pp. 97–8.
p.
111
‘Now the chlorinated . . .’ and ‘the violent cough . . .’: p. 130.
p.
113
‘They sat or . . .’: caption display next to Sargent’s painting in the Imperial War Museum.
p.
113
‘gargling from the . . .’: ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’,
Collected Poems
, p. 55.
p.
113
For more on football, see Modris Eksteins,
Rites of Spring
, pp. 125–6.
p.
115
‘There were many . . .’: p. 144.
p.
115
‘murmuring the name . . .’:
Friends Apart
, p. 91 (italics in original).
p.
115
‘litany of proper . . .’:
The Tiger and the Rose
(Hamish Hamilton, 1971), p. 72.
p.
115
‘Passchendaele, Bapaume, and . . .’: ‘The Great War’,
New and Collected Poems
(Robson Books, 1980), p. 63.
p.
115
‘Cambrai, Bethune, Arras . . .’ and ‘Passchendaele, Verdun, The . . .’: ‘The Guns’, ibid., p. 110.
p.
115
‘all things said . . .’: ‘Crucifix Corner’,
Collected Poems
, p. 80; the other comparison, with Crickley, is in
‘Poem for End’, p. 201.
p.
115
‘the copse was . . .’: ‘Near Vermand’, ibid., p. 132.
p.
116
‘Cotswold her spinnies . . .’: from a different poem, also entitled ‘Near Vermand’, in Michael Hurd,
The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney
, p. 96.
p.
116
‘a shattered wood . . .’: from a letter of June 1916, quoted in ibid., p. 72.
p.
116
‘bad St Julien . . .’ et al.:
Collected Poems
, p. 170.
p.
116
‘Tuesday, 2 October . . .’:
They Called It Passchendaele
, p. 189.
p.
117
‘the names were . . .’: ibid., p. 187.
p.
117
‘
The Oxford Book
. . .’:
Thank God for the Atom Bomb and Other Essays
, p. 101.
p.
117
‘want of imagination . . .’:
The Great War and Modern Memory
, p. 12.
p.
117
‘hopeless absence of . . .’ and ‘entirely characteristic of . . .’: ibid., p. 13 (my italics).
p.
117
‘it is refreshing . . .’: ibid., p. 109.
p.
117
‘a sort of . . .’: ibid., p. 14.
p.
117
‘the military equivalent . . .’: ibid., p. 12.
p.
117
‘sophisticated observer . . .’: ibid., p. 6.
p.
118
‘“What ’appened to . . .”:
The Middle Parts of Fortune
, p. 219.
p.
119
‘It was Christmas . . .’:
Oh What a Lovely War
(Methuen, 1965), p. 50.
p.
119
‘They’re warning us . . .’: ibid., p. 64.