The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston

Sherston Trilogy #1-3

by Siegfried Sassoon

The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston includes "Sherston's Progress" and both "Memoirs,"

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

656 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1937

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

[Cora · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finally finally plowed my way through this book. I have a feeling a lot of people consider this a classic, and I am all about classics, but MAN! I thought it was one of the more boring books I've ever read. I think the main problems for me were these: 1) Siegfried Sassoon seems to have had no interest in women at all (yes, I know he was gay, but he seems to have had no contact with anything female except his aunt, his aunt's servant, and maybe a horse or dog here and there). 2)The first two-thirds of the book were mainly about fox hunting. Really almost every page was about fox hunting. In GREAT DETAIL. 3) What wasn't about fox hunting was about cricket or (in the later sections of the book)golf. Unfortunately I think I was so exhausted and beaten down by the aforementioned first two-thirds of the book, that I wasn't able to fully appreciate the last section, which was about the Great War and his part in it, including his eventual anti-war stance and some time in a hospital with a psychologist because of it. Maybe I should have just read that part. Oh well.

[Paola · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a beautiful book! You really need the complete memoirs to go hand in hand with young Sherston and follow him blossom from a hapless and intellectually indolent youngster to a man grappling with the contradictions of war.
As you would expect from Sassoon the poet, the writing is beautiful, and accompanies you along the progression from the tranquil picture perfect Suffolk village of Butley, where young Sherston is imprinted by fox hunting loving groom, the main male role model as a youngster; to the horrors of war devastated France.
The first volume,Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man is absolutely crucial to "get" Sherston and his background, and as a byproduct get a precious insight in the qualities that make English country life quintessentially English. With the second volume, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer you are catapulted into the war scene, and get in touch with the horrors of the war: not the gory scenes we are now getting used to - Sassoon chisels the ugliness of war in the futility of it, the constant discomfort, drudgery and frustration that bears you down day by day a little more, the battles with no clear plan, the weariness of the mud and the rain and the absence of intellectual stimulation or company, and in the end the rebellion to it all. The final volume, Sherston's Progress marks the full maturity of Sherston the man, from hospital to the war zone again.
Many things struck me which were possibly not intended to have this effect: the engrained class system (Sherston aid is a servant, officers were supposed to come from the higher classes, and so on), the stereoitypical English reserve, the relationship with alcohol, as well as the lack of any female figure of any relevance with the exception of the Aunt in whose house Sherston grew.
A beautiful book, a compelling read.

[Manray9 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sassoon's pseudo-memoir is the standard for the genre of the WWI personal memoir. A view into a different world. Pat Barker's trilogy owes much to Sassoon.

[Marius van Blerck · Rating 5 out of 5]

An atmospheric trip to a more innocent age, followed by the "war to end all wars". Beautifully written, and highly readable - two characteristics that don't always co-exist.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read these memoirs with a volume of Sassoon's War Poems in the other hand and this turned out to be a rewarding experience. The same story is then told in two voices; the biographical, lyrical account alongside the crystallization of moments and sentiments into superlative poetry. You can even, on occasion, identify the specific episodes and characters with the poems that they inspired. Two striking examples being 'The Death Bed' and 'Together'.
It's not really possible to sum these memoirs up in a few words, they contain too much thought provoking material, but all the more so because they ask the kind of questions that are only answered through doing and living rather than through thinking on it's own.

The first of these three volumes is, as others have also stated, a window onto another world; A C19th Century English, pre-war pastoral idyll, with more than a passing similarity to Hardy's fictional 'Wessex'. But, then again, it is more than time that might distance us from that world; Mr Sassoon was born to privilege, a young man of inheritance so, essentially, he didn't have to earn his living. He could afford to stable horses and spend most of his life hunting or playing cricket. A working class man's account then would paint an entirely different, less idyllic picture of this lost England. This story however, is his own and so is written with the evocative literary skill for which the name Siegfried Sassoon became world famous...

The mornings I remember most zestfully were those which took us up on to the chalk downs. To watch the day break from purple to dazzling gold while we trotted up a deep rutted lane; to inhale the early freshness when we were on the sheep-cropped uplands; to stare back at the low country with it's cock crowing farms and mist coiled waterways; thus to be riding out with a sense of spacious discovery - was it not something stolen from the lie-a-bed world and the luckless city workers - even though it ended in nothing more than the killing of a leash of fox cubs?

Sentiments that I myself, with the exception of the fox cubs, share in far from idyllic C21st England.

Next, comes the war service, promotion to Commissioned Office, dead friends, acts of heroism and eventually a bullet through the lung. These memoirs comprise the better two thirds of the book. They are written with humour, often satirical or ironic, and candid discussion as to the 'meaning of it all'- "The Great War" that is. To his credit Mr Sassoon doesn't show the slightest class snobbery, eventually finding heart felt respect, empathy and camaraderie with all sorts of men from all walks of life; especially the ordinary cannon-fodder Tommy alongside whom he served. This lies hand in hand with a deep seated disillusionment found at the same time, not so much with the war itself believe it or not but with 'The Forces that be' and their perpetuation of the conflict. At times he can hardly contain his contempt for his senior C.O's. This eventually inspires a period of politicized pacifism, soul searching and, for want of a better word, existential struggle; a crisis of belonging born of a dichotomy (not to mention endless rounds of golf!). Conscientious objection becomes the only intelligent response to 'The War' yet a return to action the only response that his conscience will allow. His startling, and decidedly post-modern conclusion is that he could best "escape from the war by being in it"!
On the eve of his imminent return to France, he writes...

It is not impossible that on my way back to Clitherhead (a British Army training camp) I compared my contemporary self with the previous Sherstons who had reported for duty there.
First the newly gazetted young officer, who had yet to utter his first word of command - anxious only to become passably efficient for service at the front (How young I had been then - not much more than two years ago!) Next came the survivor of nine months in France (the trenches had taught him a thing or two anyhow) less diffident, and inclined, in a confused way to ask the reason why everyone was doing and dying under such soul destroying conditions. Thirdly, arrived that somewhat incredible mutineer who had made up his mind that if a single human being could help to stop The War by making a fuss, he was that man.

Many survivors were damaged psychologically beyond repair by their trench experiences, Siegfried Sassoon essentially writes out his attempts to come to terms with it and integrate it into "normal" life. Here is a short quote from his stay in military hospital...

In the daytime each mind was a sort of aquarium for the psychopath to study. In day time a man could discuss his psycho-neurotic symptoms with his doctor....But by night, each man was back in his doomed sector of a horror-stricken Front Line, where the panic and stampede of some ghastly experience was re-enacted among the livid faces of the dead. No doctor could save him then, when he became the lonely victim of his dream disasters and delusions.
Shell Shock. How many a brief bombardment had it's long delayed after effect in the minds of these survivors, many of whom had looked at their companions and laughed while inferno did it's best to destroy them. Not then was their evil hour, but now; now, in the sweating suffocation of nightmare, in the 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; it was in this that their humanity had been outraged by those explosives which were sanctioned and glorified by the Churches; it was thus that their self sacrifice was mocked and maltreated - they, who in the name of righteousness had been sent out to maim their fellow man. In the name of civilization these soldiers had been martyred, and it remained for civilization to prove that their martyrdom wasn't a dirty swindle.

His later poetry intimates at the long lasting effects of the war on his own life. Maybe he was seeking catharsis through their writing?

If, like me, you enjoy his poetry, then there is a good chance that you'll also enjoy this. Similarly if you enjoyed 'Goodbye to all that.." you may well find this to be a parallel chapter in the same big story.

[Mackay · Rating 5 out of 5]

The combined volume that includes Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. Read together, the trivial, rather amusing Foxhunting Man foreshadows and underscores the horrors the Infantry Officer was to experience, putting a modern reader as close as one may ever get to the shocks and upheavals a soldier on the Western Front experienced. Sassoon won a Military Medal, and was considered mad for his personal bravery, but perhaps his bravest act was to strike against returning to the Front, because he found it inhuman and futile. Robert Graves, among others, persuaded him to go back. Unlike his friend and protege Wilfred Owen, Sassoon lived through the War. Pat Barker's famed trilogy drew on Sassoon a great deal. This book is well worth hunting up and it's more real than Barker (which I loved).

[Sam Tonge · Rating 4 out of 5]

its a corker

[Matt McKeon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book years ago, but I'm looking up at my shelves and see it, along with my other volumes of Sassoon's poetry, letters and diaries.

Sassoon was a published poet when WWI broke out. He proved to be an aggressive combat leader, wounded, and decorated for bravery under fire. Convinced that the war was a wasteful, bloodsoaked folly, he refused to return to duty, deliberately defying the authorities and throwing his medal into the sea. They banged him up into an institution for shellshocked officers. Furious, he spent the time playing golf, writing violent and sarcastic verse, and making friends with Wilfred Owen.

Ashamed he was sitting in safety while his battalion fought in the trenches, he abandoned his protest, was promoted and after a sojourn in Ireland and Egypt, sent back to France. He was wounded again, but survived to live a long and productive life.

In these Memoirs, written in the late 1920s, he uses a fictional double, an unreflective young man whose main interests are fox hunting, cricket and horses(which were interests of Sassoon). This very English innocent grows up suddenly in the trenches.

Its a great book, I'm not doing it justice, for its humor and humanity.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read. There were some reviews that mentioned that the first of the three books in this trilogy was boring. I admit that at first I tended to agree. However, it was a setup. As I progressed through the Complete Memoirs, I could see that George grew up in about four years of War. He went from a rather shallow individual with little to do except play cricket, hunt fox, and race horses to a person who joined the Army with a gung ho attitude. He won a Military Cross through bravery bordering on recklessness. Then, he began to wonder whether the War was worth it. He was committed to a mental hospital for several months as he struggled with this question. The final book was very enjoyable following George's return to the service and his stints in Ireland, the Middle East and Africa, and finally back to France. I'll keep this book permanently on my shelf.

[Emily Bn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in this trilogy but found the later two especially the last one quite heavy going. Despite that, there are some interesting parts such as Sherston's meeting with Dr Rivers. The charterer of Sherston is so thinly disguised that anybody wanting to know more about Sassoon couldn't go wrong by reading this book.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like it made me deranged but it was for my senior capstone. Writing was nice. Not as good as the original diaries in my opinion.

[Reds_reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three of Sassoon's fictionalised autobiographies are included here : Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Sherston's Progress. The first is mostly set before he is sent to the Western Front, the second from then until he is sent to Slateford Hospital as a patient with shell shock (and this part made me want to read the Regeneration trilogy all over again), the third book covers the period from his arrival at the hospital until the end of the war for Sherston.

All three are immensely readable, describing Sherston's life so clearly - both the everyday facts about his mode of living and his thoughts and motivations - that they are informative as well as engaging. Although this is a fictionalised biography, it feels like an honest description of 'Sherston', he is at times infuriating (especially towards the start of the first book where he comes across as rather privileged and indulged) but this honesty is what makes the character descriptions so rounded and therefore believable. It also shows just how much Sherston matures throughout the book, from the spoilt young man to the decorated officer of WWI, respected by his men.

Probably my only criticism of the book (and it feels like a harsh one) is that the honesty doesn't extend to his relationships. Sassoon had several relationships with men, in these books Sherston has several intense friendships with men but is is never explicitly stated whether these are friendships or romantic relationships. It is understandable given when the memoirs were written that this is not stated, but I did feel it was a shame, at a time when so many men were lost to the war it would have added to our understanding of the man to know whether he had lost friends or lovers.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This edition contains the three of Sassoon's mildly fictionalized memoirs. It is an important collection, especially if you are interested in the literature and the experiences of the First World War. Warning: the first volume, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, largely concerns fox-hunting, which Sassoon loved. Swallow your dislike, because it is a pre-war world that died, and it is the safe, small world in which the callow young man finds a passion that occupies his mind entirely. His descriptions of the English countryside are lovely, and when that lovely imagery is replaced in the next book, Memoirs of an Infantryman, you find that you are looking at reverse worlds, reverse images.

Sassoon's attitude toward himself, from fox hunter to soldier to captain, is dryly self-mocking. In the course of his accounts of his foolhardy bravery and his deep concern for the lives and deaths of other soldiers, you come to enter into a complex experience of a chaotic time (and you wonder whether guardian angels do sometimes exist, because it is astonishing that he survived 1914 to 1918, particularly given some of the things he did).

The book Regeneration, by Pat Barker, draws upon Sassoon's time in a military hospital for shell-shocked soldiers, where he had been sent after he published a protest against the continuation of the war.

[Conrad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our book group read only the middle section "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" and responded with mixed reviews. I don't think that does justice to the book - you need to read the whole trilogy to put it in perspective. Some of the criticism leveled at it was that he dwelt too much on his observations of the countryside instead of focusing on the details of trench warfare. Given that he grew up in, and had a love for the countryside, it made perfect sense to me that he should be aware of his environment. I think he managed to convey enough of the brutality of the war without getting into gory detail. The focus was more on his own personal experience than trying to write a history of the war. I appreciate that he found solace in his books wherever he was (even though he had to smuggle them in to the front lines). I'd have done the same!

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along with Robert Graves, Sassoon wrote the best memoir of World War I that I have read. Sassoon, a British officer, differs from Graves in that his writing seems more detached and more focused on not just the war, but on life in Britain before, during and immediately after. "Sherston" is a fictional name and the book is a clearly an autobiography. I'd read Graves' "Goodbye to All That" first and if you enjoy it, try this next.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have read both Memoirs and am disappointed. Sassoon makes one of histories most interesting and powerful events drier than old crusty bread. The trilogy is saved, if only slightly, by the last book.

[Amir · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no one who has successfully combined the drama and quotidian nature of life to such effect. Following the footsteps of many reviewers before, the past has never been no present and another person's experiences so well expressed as to be my own. Read it. (And weep)

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read all three parts of the Sherston memoirs in 1991 and will re-read this at some point. Good stuff!