Elena’s Reviews > Testament of Youth > Status Update

The world was mad and we were all victims; that was the only way to look at it. These shattered, dying boys and I were paying alike for a situation that none of us had desired or done anything to bring about.

After barely a second's hesitation I took the pale fingers [of an injured German officer's] in mine, thinking how ridiculous it was that I should be holding this man's hand in friendship when perhaps, only a week or two earlier, Edward up at Ypres has been doing his best to kill him.

Waiting, watching, suspense, mourning–will there never be anything else in life. I am so weary of it all–but I bow my head before the storm now, I don't try to fight it any more. I no longer expect things to go well for me; I don't know that I even ask that they shall. All I ask is that I may fulfill my own small weary part in this War in such a way as to be worthy of Them, who die and suffer pain.

I have got used to facing the long empty years ahead of me if I survive the War, but I have always before me the realization of how empty they are and will be, since he will never be there again.

It's absurd to say time makes one forget; I miss him as much as ever I did. One recovers from the shock, just as one gradually would get used to managing with one's left hand if one had lost one's right, but one never gets over the loss, for one is never the same after it.

. . . at all costs I must preserve my self-respect – preserve the self which he loved and I have lost . . . I only wish I could see a little light in all the depths and blackness – only wish I knew what my obvious duty was. Perhaps it is not impossible to regain one's self respect.

"Who is there who has known and seen who can say that Victory is worth the death of even one of these?"

Had a really been a time, I wondered, when I believed that it was?