Sherston's Progress

Sherston Trilogy #3

by Siegfried Sassoon, Paul Fussell (Introduction)

The third volume in Siegfried Sassoon’s beloved trilogy, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, with a new introduction by celebrated historian Paul Fussell
 
A highly decorated English soldier and an acclaimed poet and novelist, Siegfried Sassoon won fame for his trilogy of fictionalized autobiographies that wonderfully capture the vanishing idylls of Edwardian England and the brutal realities of war.
            Having been deemed mentally ill for his anti-war sentiments and sent for treatment, George Sherston comes under the care of neurologist Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, who allows Sherston to sort through his attitudes toward the fighting (events that have also been semi-fictionalized by Pat Barker for her bestselling and critically acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy). After six months in the hospital, Sherston leaves to rejoin his regiment. He is soon dispatched to Ireland, where he attempts to reclaim some of the idyllic fox-hunting days of his youth, then to Palestine. He finally ends up at the Western Front in France, where he is shot in the head while on a reconnaissance mission and invalided back home. As the capstone of Sassoon's masterful Sherston trilogy, Sherston's Progress—whose evocation of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is not at all accidental—literally brings home the unforgettable journey of George Sherston from aristocratic childhood through war hero and anti-war martyr, all the way to wounded veteran trying to move on from the Great War.

Genres: Fiction, World War I, Classics, War, Historical Fiction, 20th Century, British Literature

169 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC was born into a wealthy banking family, the middle of 3 brothers. His Anglican mother and Jewish father separated when he was five. He had little subsequent contact with ‘Pappy’, who died of TB 4 years later. He presented his mother with his first ‘volume’ at 11. Sassoon spent his youth hunting, cricketing, reading, and writing. He was home-schooled until the age of 14 because of ill health. At school he was academically mediocre and teased for being un-athletic, unusually old, and Jewish. He attended Clare College, Cambridge, but left without taking his degree. In 1911, Sassoon read ‘The Intermediate Sex’ by Edward Carpenter, a book about homosexuality which was a revelation for Sassoon. In 1913 he wrote ‘The Daffodil Murderer,’ a parody of a John Masefield poem and his only pre-war success. A patriotic man, he enlisted on 3rd August, the day before Britain entered the war, as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry. After a riding accident which put him out of action, in May 1915 he joined the Royal Welch Fusiliers as a second lieutenant. At the training depot he met David Thomas, with whom he fell in love.
In November, Sassoon received word that his brother Hamo had died at Gallipoli. On 17th November he was shipped to France with David Thomas. He was assigned to C Company, First Battalion. It was here that he met Robert Graves, described in his diary as ‘a young poet in Third Battalion and very much disliked.’ He took part in working parties, but no combat. He later became transport officer and so managed to stay out of the front lines. After time on leave, on the 18th May 1916 he received word that David Thomas had died of a bullet to the throat. Both Graves and Sassoon were distraught, and in Siegfried’s case it inspired ‘the lust to kill.’ He abandoned transport duties and went out on patrols whenever possible, desperate to kill as many Germans as he could, earning him the nickname ‘Mad Jack.’ In April he was recommended for the Military Cross for his action in bringing in the dead and wounded after a raid. He received his medal on the day before the Somme. For the first days of the Somme, he was in reserve opposite Fricourt, watching the slaughter from a ridge. Fricourt was successfully taken, and on the 4th July the First Battalion moved up to the front line to attack Mametz Wood. It was here that he famously took a trench single handed. Unfortunately, Siegfried did nothing to consolidate the trench; he simply sat down and read a book, later returning to a berating from Graves. It was in 1917, convalescing in 'Blighty' from a wound, that he decided to make a stand against the war. Encouraged by pacifist friends, he ignored his orders to return to duty and issued a declaration against the war. The army refused to court martial him, sending him instead to Craiglockhart, an institution for soldiers driven mad by the war. Here he met and influenced Wilfred Owen. In 1918 he briefly returned to active service, in Palestine and then France again, but after being wounded by friendly fire he ended the war convalescing. He reached the rank of captain. After the war he made a predictably unhappy marriage and had a son, George. He continued to write, but is best remembered as a war poet.

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”When I’m alone in the tent I feel a bit heavy-hearted about the news from France, which gets more ominous every day though no one else seems to be worrying much. I read War and Peace of an evening; a grand and consoling book---a huge panorama of life and suffering humankind which makes the present troubles easier to endure and the loneliness of death a little thing. I keep my books in a Turkish bomb-box which my servant found for me. It just holds them nicely and the transport officer will be told that it contains ‘messing utensils’. I should be in the soup without something to read!”



This is the third volume in the Siegfried Sassoon trilogy, and we find George Sherston, our uncertain hero, convalescing at a mental hospital in Edinburgh. He protested the war in volume two and the military can not make this problem go away by simply accusing him of cowardice because George is a legitimate war hero. A court-martial would be disastrous for everyone involved, including those at the very top levels of government. Really, if truth be known, they want him to...disappear.

Out of sight. Out of mind.

Thus, he finds himself tucked away very neatly in the Slateford War Hospital which is based on the famous Craiglockhart War Hospital.

He is supposed to remain here until the end of the war, but Sherston finds that he can only play so many rounds of golf. I’ve hung around with Sherston/Sassoon for three books now so I know what is going on with his mind. He truly believed that his protest is not only the responsible thing to do, but that something will come of it. That it will lend the anti-war movement some much needed energy and allow those people who have reached similar conclusions about the war to feel brave enough to join him.

Now, marginalizing him and shipping him off to Scotland to make it harder for people to contact him, even for his mail to reach him, is a smart move for those who want to keep a lid on what could rightly be seen as a legitimate protest from an irreproachable, decorated officer. The bonus, that the powers that be could not anticipate, is that the longer Sherston sits and mulls about the situation the more uneasy he will begin to feel about his decisions. Sherston is not a shirker.

He volunteers to go back to France.

”Save his own soul he has no star.”

Sherston, who is really Sassoon, has a relationship with books that speaks very deeply to me. There are readers, and then there are slightly deranged readers, like myself, who can’t go more than a few hours without reading a book before they start to become twitchy. ”Sitting here I glance over my right shoulder at the little row of books, red and green and blue, which stand waiting for my hand, offering their accumulated riches. I think of the years that may be in store for me, and all the pages I may turn.” It is difficult for me to accept that there are a finite number of pages that I will ever get the chance to read. If I were in Sherston’s position, with the possibility of a rum jar, or a flying pig, or a hissing Jennie landing in the same coordinates as my precious self, I would be even more nervous about the probability of reaching my proper predestined number of pages.

He has only to lift his gaze from the pages of his book. What he sees through blinking, unfocused eyes will pull him back from a Tobias Smollett, a Charles Lamb, or a Anthony Trollope universe and land him in the very real, very stark terrain of a world at war.

”The landscape is the deadly conventional Armageddon type. Low green-grey ridges fringed with a few isolated trees, half smashed; a broken wall here and there---straggling dull-grey silhouettes which were once French villages. Then there are open spaces broken only by ruined wire-tangles, old trenches, and the dismal remains of an occasional rest camp of huts. The June grass waves, poppies flame, shrapnel bursts in black puffs, an aeroplane drones, larks sing, and someone comes along the trench clinking a petrol tin. And this is about all one sees as one stumps along the communication-trenches, dry and crumbling and chalky, with a dead mole lying about here and there.”

I’ve been over the top with George Sherston and crawled through the muck of No Man’s Land with him. I’ve jumped for the same cubby hole, trying to make myself as small as possible, as the Big Berthas churned the earth into geysers. I’ve danced around the potato mashers. I’ve hunkered down as I walked the trenches to avoid that last Goodnight Kiss from a German sniper. I’ve enjoyed most of all talking books with George in the evening when a burst of gunfire in the night is merely a mild divergence from the halcyon halls of literature.

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[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third of Sassoon’s wartime trilogy. It takes the reader from Sassoon’s admission to Craiglockhart for shell shock to the end of the war. After Craiglockhart Sassoon spends some time recuperating in Ireland before being posted to Palestine. From there he is sent back to France, to the trenches. His war ends in July 1918 when he is shot in the head returning from patrol by an overzealous member of his own side.
I felt that this was somewhat weaker than the other two parts of the trilogy. Sassoon feels lost and taken along with events in this volume. He spends time with Dr Rivers talking about his protest and ends up deciding to return to the front line. He still feels the same about the war, but it is as though he is drawn back despite himself and Sassoon periodically examines his motives and seems as puzzled as the reader in explaining them.
The use of the word Progress in the title is obviously reminiscent of Bunyan and Pilgrim’s Progress, although I think in this case the Celestial City which is longed for is in the past; an England of cricket and country pursuits which has gone forever (and probably never really existed). This makes the destination in this novel rather hazy and there is an aimlessness about it. The war has taken over Sassoon and he can conceive of doing nothing else. Once in France Sassoon reverts to his previous recklessness and seems to court death on a number of occasions. I felt that towards the end of the book that Sassoon’s mental health really was rather fragile at this time; hardly a surprise given his experiences. I think this is a good illustration of the way the machine of war ground down those who were caught up in it, no matter how much they fought it.

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This third volume of Sassoon’s semi-auto-biographical yet ostensibly fictional memoirs of the Great War opens with George Sherston committed to a military mental hospital for ‘shell-shock’ due to his recently published statement against the war. Here he meets Dr. Rivers, the psychologist who is to have a lasting impact on his life, and ultimately spends much of his time golfing, reading, reliving his peace-time life by taking part in some local hunts, and talking about his “mental state” with the good doctor. Interestingly the result of Sherston’s treatment is to cause him to, if not repudiate his earlier statement against the war, at least to revise it and instil in him a deep desire to return to the front, for he “would rather be killed than survive as one who had ‘wangled’ his way through by saying that the War ought to stop.” I’m not sure how I feel about this since it was Sherston’s (and by extension Sassoon’s) rejection of the insanity of the war on behalf of other soldiers that made him such a unique ‘war hero’ and now his apparent about-turn leaves me a bit ambivalent.

Aside from the obvious opportunities for leisure that Sherston takes advantage of as part of his recuperation, his time at the hospital also gives him a chance to see other walking wounded whose mental scars are much deeper than his own. He comes to see the real cost and horror of war and he is not oblivious to the high price involved despite his renewed enthusiasm to return to the fighting. Sherston realizes that it may often be worse to be a survivor than a casualty of the guns & bombs as he witnesses men

many of whom had looked at their companions and laughed while inferno did its best to destroy them. Not then was their evil hour, but now; now, in the sweating suffocation of nightmare, in paralysis of limbs, in the stammering of dislocated speech. Worst of all, in the disintegration of those qualities through which they had been so gallant and selfless and uncomplaining—this, in the finer types of men, was the unspeakable tragedy of shell-shock

Sherston’s own version of shell-shock seems to be most intimately related to a deep nostalgia for, and desire to return to, the Front Line from which at the time he had so greatly wished to escape. He does admit, however, that his rebellious side has not been fully ‘cured’ and he is aware (at least in retrospect) of his own ambivalent attitude to the war itself:

That was how active service used to hoodwink us. Wonderful moments in the War, we called them, and told people at home that after all we wouldn't have missed it for worlds. But it was only one's youngness, really, and the fact of being in a foreign country with a fresh mind. Not because of the War, but in spite of it, we felt such zest and fulfilment, and remembered it later on with nostalgic regret, forgetting the miseries and grumblings, and how we longed for it to come to an end. Nevertheless, there I was, a living antithesis to the gloomier entries in my diary, and a physical retraction of my last year's protest against the "political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men were being sacrificed".

Thus Sherston continues to be aware of the continual failings of the war machine at the same time that he voluntarily returns to it.

After being discharged from the hospital Sherston returns to the war, though his first posting (much to his dismay) is to Palestine, not the Western Front. Here he becomes enamoured of the beauty of nature and begins to throw himself into his work as an officer with the aim of making the lives of his men easier, taking on a decidedly paternal role. Ultimately this limbo-like war experience cannot last, and his Brigade is sent to France where fresh troops are needed to fight against recent German advances. Once back in familiar territory Sherston seems almost nostalgic to be back “home” on the front line he so vividly remembered, though he does tend to sublimate both his fear of death and his feelings of inadequacy as an officer by rash acts of valour (his self-avowed moments of “knight-errantry”) when he heads out alone into No-Man’s Land. He freely admits to himself that these are prompted more by fear and ennui than by any sense of bravery. Aside from the ability to lose himself in the ‘excitement’ of action Sherston’s other greatest comfort is his ability, and opportunity, to find refuge in books. He looks at the mostly uneducated soldiers under his command with pity, for they have nothing to turn to except for the small cafes set-up by the military where they spend nearly all of their pay in order to drink away their worries. The War is not only wiping out a generation, but leaving survivors who are the victims of shell-shock and alcoholism.

As with all of the other volumes in this series of memoirs, _Sherston’s Progess_ ends rather abruptly, though it does come full circle to the beginning of the volume: hit by friendly fire Sherston is sent back home for the last time, there to once again meet up with Dr. Rivers. The war is still on-going, though we are told it will end in a matter of months, and Sherston is left contemplating both what he will do with his life from this point forward and reminiscing on what the war has made him into. All in all this series of books was an intriguing look into the life of a soldier during the first ‘Great War’ that shaped the 20th century and into the mind of a sensitive and artistic individual forced into a world of horrors and death in the name of the “greater good”.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final book in the George Sherston trilogy, which had been on my TBR list for ages.

The first two books of Sassoon’s “fictionalised autobiography” were published in 1928 and 1930, but he waited another 6 years before releasing “Sherston’s Progress” and it does have something of the feel of an afterthought. The book is shorter than the other two in the series and, in my opinion, is not as good.

The book comprises 4 distinct sections. Picking up from Sherston/Sassoon’s public anti-war declaration in 1917, covered at the end of “Memoirs of an Infantry Officer,” it opens with Sherston being diagnosed with shell-shock (clearly he must have been mentally unsound to have opposed something as eminently sensible as the First World War) and being sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, a facility for shell-shocked officers (in the book Sherston calls it “Slateford War Hospital”, after a nearby village, which is today a suburb of Edinburgh).

Sherston/Sassoon is in introspective mood in this section. He has a pleasant enough time at Craiglockhart, reading and playing golf. Whilst he maintains his anti-war stance, he is overcome by a feeling of guilt that his anti-war protest is convenient and comfortable, and if he is not making an effective protest then he is just “trench-dodging.” He comments that “he would rather be killed than survive as one who had ‘wangled’ his way through” - a neat summary of the social pressures of the era. The upshot is that he re-joins his unit, expecting to be sent to France. He is instead sent to Ireland as “the Irish were being troublesome”.

Most of the Ireland section of the book is taken up with descriptions of Sherston riding with the Limerick Hounds. Sassoon switches into whimsical mode whenever he describes fox-hunting, and this section follows that pattern. Eventually, in February 1918, he is posted to the Palestine theatre of operations, which we read about in the form of his reproduced diary from the period, again adding to the feeling that this book is rather cobbled together.

Sherston spends only a month in Palestine. His unit is transferred to France as part of the effort to resist the German Spring offensive of 1918, and Sassoon rounds off the book with his memories and impressions of this period. I liked the last chapter.

“Sherston’s Progress” is a decent enough read, but I’m not sure I would recommend it as a standalone book. I think it would be best to buy the Sherston books as a compilation. I’m glad I finished the trilogy though.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe I should’ve waited to read this until I read the first two volumes of the trilogy. But Sassoon’s voice grabs you and draws you in, and, though he’s nothing like me (hunting? horses? golf?), I was glad to finish the war with him. This might be the ultimate book about the conflict between the 19th century view of war and that of the 20th. Sassoon holds both views in his head at the same time, and the confusion he expresses so clearly is this book’s best feature. I’m glad he survived to write about it, and so is he, mostly.

This edition is lovely, BTW.

[Steve]

The shortest, and weakest, of the trilogy left me frustrated. George Sherston is discharged from Slateford War Hospital, the institution that manages victims of shell-shock, the one he entered at the end of the last volume rather than face a court-martial. He eagerly resumes active duty with a tinge of repentance. He’s sent to Ireland, then Egypt and Palestine, then back to France, arriving in February 1918. He returns to the front lines, not far from where he previously served. It’s not long, though, before he’s wounded again, friendly fire this time. With a shot to the skull, George’s military involvement in the war ends.

Enter my frustration, for just as he earlier surrendered his opposition to the war, suddenly at ease with battlefield death encouraged for reasons insufficient, duplicitous, or nonexistent, Mr. Sassoon now surrenders his interest in producing a durable work of art. I had a notion the publisher insisted on pushing this haphazard effort through regardless of its condition, and that the author then offered no objection to an unpolished publication – or maybe it was the other way around? As for his volte-face to a compliant stance on the war, at least he admits to his deficiencies – his inconsistencies and self-contradictions.

If there’s a character to admire, that is W. H. R. Rivers, his real name, a psychiatrist of eminence previously unknown to me who met an early death in 1922. He imparted a lasting impact on George, his name recurring throughout these pages. I might need to invest some time in the future studying this Rivers because he appears to have lived a most interesting life. I further wonder if Dr. Rivers would agree with George’s concluding words “that it is only from the inmost silences of the heart that we know the world for what it is, and ourselves for what the world has made us.”

[Dillwynia Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the shortest of the three books, but is the one with the most action in it.

This covers the period almost to the end of the war (July 1918) and deals with Sherston going to the mental hospital and meeting Rivers, his return to the War, travelling to Palestine & then the Western Front again and getting wounded for the 3rd time.

There are moments of wonderful humour such as The Mister, the gentleman he meets in Limerick and goes hunting with. There is beauty when Sherston describes the wildlife in the Levant and there is the frustration of being caught up in the war machine again.

So much is covered in such a short book. Rivers, who was instrumental in showing that battle fatigue and shellshock were actual mental ailments and needed to be cured as much as rehabilitating men with missing limb, is the one character not fictionalised in this trilogy. Over time, Sherston feels a fraud in sitting out the war in a mental hospital & decides to rejoin.

Although the Ireland episodes are humourous, we still see that there is another war happening here with the Uprising and the unrest in the country; it might not be as fired as in the cities, however, the working poor are fed up. Only the Anglo-Irish wealthy are indifferent - but then they are not suffering hardships (as shown when Sherston sends weekly parcels of butter to his aunt).

The undertone of homosexuality is still ever present. Ignoring the hero-worship of Rivers, we get a strong feeling that there is more than friendship towards the Doctor in the Levant, or Howells (even if it is unrequited love). The descriptions of their beauty are just a little too much - even for a 1930s reader.

Sherston (aka Sassoon) shows what a talented man he was in managing troops. He becomes commander of a Company and although he is coy, it is obvious the troops at all levels down like him and admire him. The reckless spirit returns once he is at the Front. There is also the frustration when, at one point he recalls that only two years ago he had lost friends on the very hill they are now defending. All those lives lost in pushing in the offensive have been for nought.

The book ends with Sherston obviously being truly mentally ill now. He is constantly in a fever pitch to return to the Front & fight; he is not able to relax or calm down in any way. For me the let down was not another 50 pages of his return to sanity. Instead we get a few lines claiming that this biography is the last step in his road to dull mental health.

What a powerful trilogy that hasn't lost any of its spark or dissension or wanton waste and poor judgements. It is a good series to read now during the centenary - particularly when we are given the jingoism and rhetoric from governments and media, from poorly informed influential people.

[Gary Land · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final volume of Sassoon's trilogy finds Sherston, rather than being court-martialed, sent to a mental hospital where he finds a sympathizing ear in Dr. Rivers. Gradually he works his way through his anti-war feelings, though he does not abandon them, to the point that he requests a return to the front. He is sent to Egypt and from there back to France where he leads a unit until he is wounded by friendly fire and returns to England. Throughout he ruminates on his contradictory emotions and thoughts, seeing the war as a useless enterprise thrust upon powerless people but at the same time finding that being with the troops provides the only meaning in his life. By the end of the book it is clear that his old days of fox hunting and cricket are long gone but the future is unclear. For those wanting to understand the effect of WWI on the individuals caught up in its destruction, Sassoon's trilogy is highly recommended.

[buzz watts · Rating 4 out of 5]

more like buzz’s progress getting thru this trilogy! bloody hell! this one has much to comment on so i give it 4 stars instead of the 3 i think the circle-jerky narrative deserves

[Maarten Mathijssen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last book of Sassoon's trilogy, including the episode at Craiglockhart, subject of Pat barker's wonderful book Regeneration. Without details of the horror of the war itself Sassoon confronts us with that aspect all the time, the casual at random telling of what happens with the characters (usually death) is shocking. The psychological analyze of the protagonist is very convincing. The end of the book, actually the last page gives us a little hope.

[Rue Baldry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although a lot of what he writes about is horrific, I do just find it rather pleasant to spend time in Sassoon’s company. He says in this book that his purpose in writing it was to show the development of his own character from young man to the time he was writing. I think he succeeds.

I only knocked off a star because the structure of this last part of the trilogy isn’t great. I think that’s because by this point it has become more autobiographical than novel, and memoirs are more shaped by untidy life than honed arcs. Dr W H R Rivers is even given his real name, though his hospital, Craiglockhart, becomes Slateford and Sassoon remains Sherston. Wilfred Owen, however, doesn’t get mentioned at all, which seems unfortunate for him as you just know that if Owen had survived to write an autobiographical fiction of events then Sassoon would have featured quite centrally.

There are long chunks taken from Sassoon’s war time diaries and notebooks. He has dropped a lot of the artifice of Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man. This has positive and negative results. It ends up being rather episodic, moving about the globe, containing some fox hunting and some trench warfare among other things.

It includes the period of Sassoon’s life which is the subject of Pat Barker’s Regeneration series, interestingly.

Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man ended novelistically bleakly with the contrast of the war to the idyll described in most of the book, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer ends heroically. This book is more realistically mixed in tone, an interesting study of a young man lost in a chaotic world, unsure how to feel.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the final volume of Siegfried Sassoon's "Memoirs of George Sherston." It covers a lot of ground, but sadly is the shortest of the three books. Having spoken out against the Great War at the end of "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer," George is sent to a hospital for shellshock victims in Scotland. There he meets Rivers, a doctor, who helps him reconsider his concerns and lets him play a lot of golf. George then returns to his unit by way of Ireland, and ends up in Palestine. Finally, he ends up leading his unit back on the Western Front.

The book covers all of this action in 140 pages, which seems a little rushed. Sassoon's descriptions of his time in Scotland (including playing golf) is entertaining, as his description of some of the characters in Ireland. His trip to Palestine through France is described in some well-written journal entries before returning to prose for the return to the Western Front. Overall, the book is extremely well-written and a joy to read with excellent descriptions of characters and incidents without being over-written.

Overall, I join the many folks who recommend the George Sherston series as description of how the Great War transformed Edwardian England and how England's youth lost their innocence, became disenchanted, and finally integrated themselves into the British war machine.

[Paul Downs · Rating 5 out of 5]

The end of the trilogy (although Goodreads, for some reason, doesn't show #2 on my "read" list. Takeaways:
• Sassoon is unmatched at describing a place and atmosphere in efficient prose.
• The war was a devastating slaughter.
• In writing memoir, it's OK to make some things up, just to fill in the blanks. (There's no other explanation for Sassoon's astonishing memory of events that happened years previous to the writing.)

If you haven't read Sassoon, the poems are the easiest and quickest entry point. The first book of the trilogy is somewhat trying, but necessary to make sense of the whole experience.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final installment is more autobiographical than the previous ones, which gave some effort to creating a fictional story and helping to shape the purpose of the narrative.
Here though, Sassoon relates much of his own un-masked musings and internal thoughts about the impact of war on soldiers, in particular the psychological damage and the loss of early manhood and opportunities of normal life.
Overall, this is a very good trilogy, well worth reading for the insights, observations and human consequences of the great war.

[Mark McKenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

More "war action" than '...Infantry man' and a better read overall I'd say. It strikes me as odd that George (Siegfried) went back to the trenches but I suppose he had a point to prove and after all, there was still a war going on. I've enjoyed this trilogy which concludes my reading of WW1 literature (until I discover more) but I have to say, nothing will ever top Jünger's 'Storm of Steel'. I have been left with an overall impression of WW1 though, it was all gas masks, mud and epidemics.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Final part of trilogy. More inward-looking.

Read all three parts of Sassoon within a couple weeks and in close proximity with Edmund Blunden's Undertones of War. Did not find a copy of Graves's Goodbye to All That memoir until a year later.

Now own a complete copy of The Memoirs of George Sherston and a copy of Graves, but need to find Blunden to have "The Big Three." Remarkable stuff from a remarkable time!

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for research. This is, much like the other two volumes of this beautiful trilogy, Sassoon meditating on the Great War with a wry wit and a touch of humanism. The long diary section was a little anticlimactic and felt like padding, especially given how amazing the first two "Memoirs" are. But this is still a man coming to peace with his dualities, trying to square his pacifism and his wartime duties. One can see why Pat Barker was so inspired.

[John Cannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I lost my zeal for reading for three weeks and this book brought me back to the printed page. Sassoon's personality is expressed very well by his writing. Reading this book is like reading a letter from a friend. His observations while hospitalized, golfing, fox hunting, drinking, reading, and touring Israel are all entertaining. This book will make you want to read another by Sassoon.

[Liz Goodacre · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely important final memoir by the enigmatic Sassoon. Torn between his disgust, dismay and fury at the pointlessness of the war, and the need to believe he played his part and did not abandon his men. Beautifully written, eloquent, part travelogue that rises above the grim reality of life in the trenches. A privilege to read this.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meditations of a sensitive man, and an insight into long lost times. Sassoon comes across as refreshingly honest in places and slightly egotistical at other points, but it is a fine line to tread in this sort of memoir. The four chapters are very distinct but sit well within the book. I would like to read the other two books in this trilogy now. 3.8 stars.

[D Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Third book in the trilogy, all very good.

[Dave Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The slightest of the George Sherston books, I thought, but still very good and worth reading for completeness's sake.

[Chiefdonkey Bradey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guiding the poet's steps through hell, the gentle Rivers

[Simon Freeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

The other side of Sassoon, indulgent and entitled

[Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW

[Spinksy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Third in Sassòons first war trilogy.Very readable story about Sherston (Sassoon) and his disenchantment with the war as it was coming to its conclusion

[Arianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars (rounded up)

[Duncan Holmes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nothing like as good as the other two volumes of his autobiographical trilogy

[Chris Saltmarsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite as compelling as the prior edition of the trilogy, but entertaining and nuanced nonetheless

[Paul Womack · Rating 4 out of 5]

#3 of the Trilogy. Most emotionally revealing of the 3.