The Missing of the Somme

NOTES

Place of publication is London unless otherwise indicated. Full sources are given in the Notes only when the source is not obvious from the text or the Bibliography. Multi-part quotes may extend across more than one page, but the Notes reference is for the first part only.

p. 3 ‘On every mantelpiece. .’: Yvan Goll, ‘Requiem for the Dead of Europe’, in Jon Silkin (ed.), The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry, p. 244.

p. 3 ‘Memory has a. .’: John Updike, Memories of the Ford Administration (Hamish Hamilton, 1993) p. 9.

p. 4 ‘in his ghastly. .’: Wilfred Owen, ‘Disabled’, Collected Poems, p. 67.

p. 7 ‘the turning-point in. .’: Men without Art, extract reprinted in Julian Symons (ed.), The Essential Wyndham Lewis, p. 211.

p. 8 For an extended discussion of pre-1914 as a period of latent war see Daniel Pick, War Machine (1993), pp. 192–5.

p. 8 ‘breaking down even. .’: A. J. P. Taylor, Europe: Grandeur and Decline (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1991), p. 185.

p. 8 ‘maintain towards his. .’: ‘The Idea of History’, in Fritz Stern (ed.), The Varieties of History, 2nd edn (Macmillan, 1970), p. 292.

p. 11 ‘prepared his exit. .’ and ‘We are setting. .’: Scott and Amundsen: The Race to the South Pole, revised edn (Pan, 1983), p. 508.

p. 11 ‘has shown that. .’: ibid., p. 523.

p. 11 ‘We are showing. .’: ibid., p. 508.

p. 11 ‘Of their suffering. .’: Thomas Williamson, quoted by Huntford, ibid., pp. 520–21.

p. 12 ‘if Scott fails. .’: ibid., p. 394.

p. 12 ‘the grotesque futility. .’: ibid., p. 527.

p. 12 ‘heroism for heroism’s sake. .’ and ‘for one of. .’: ibid., p. 523.

p. 12 ‘the glory of. .’ and ‘to make a. .’: ibid., p. 524.

p. 13 ‘countrymen an example. .’: Agnes Egerton-Castle, ‘The Precursor’, The Treasure, January 1916, pp. 71–2, quoted by Huntford, ibid., p. 528.

p. 13n ‘a special effort. .’ and ‘An Exhibition of. .’: Annual Report of the Church Crafts League, quoted by Catherine Moriarty, ‘Christian Iconography and First World War Memorials’, in the Imperial War Museum Review, no. 6, p. 67.

p. 13n ‘to secure combined. .’: Quoted by Bob Bushaway, ‘Name upon Name: The Great War and Remembrance’, in Roy Porter (ed.), Myths of the English, p. 144.

p. 14 ‘simplicity of statement. .’: A. C. Benson, quoted by Bushaway, ibid., p. 146.

p. 15 ‘The graveyards, haphazard. .’: Clayre Percy and Jane Ridley (eds.), The Letters of Edwin Lutyens to his Wife Emily (Collins, 1985), p. 350.

p. 16 For a history of the War Graves Commission see Philip Longworth, The Unending Vigil, Constable, 1967.

p. 17 ‘the image of. .’: Fallen Soldiers, p. 39. For a fuller account of changing attitudes to death and cemetery design etc., see ibid., pp. 39–45.

p. 18 Statistics for burials in the Somme are from Martin and Mary Middlebrook, The Somme Battlefields, pp. 9–10.

p. 20 p. 20 ‘“The future!”. .’: Under Fire, pp. 256–7.

p. 20n ‘What kind of. .’: quoted by Alistair Horne in The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, p. 341.

p. 21 ‘“It’ll be. .’ and ‘sorrowfully, like a. .’: pp. 327–8.

p. 21 ‘What passing-bells for. .’: ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, Collected Poems, p. 44.

p. 21 ‘“We shall forget. .’: Under Fire, p. 328.

p. 22 ‘Remembering, we forget’: ‘To One Who was With Me in the War’, Collected Poems 1908–1956, p. 187.

p. 22 ‘We’re forgetting-machines. .’: Under Fire, p. 328.

p. 22 ‘How the future. .’: The Owen manuscript is reproduced by Dominic Hibberd in Wilfred Owen: The Last Year, p. 123.

p. 23 ‘no dividends from. .’: Collected Poems 1908–1956, p. 71.

p. 23 ‘Have you forgotten. .’, ‘Look down, and. .’ and ‘Do you remember. .’: ibid., pp. 118–19.

p. 24 ‘Make them forget’: ibid., p. 201.

p. 24 ‘gather[ed] to itself. .’: The Challenge of the Dead, p. 173.

p. 24 ‘some tribute to. .’: quoted by David Cannadine, ‘Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’, in Joachim Whalley (ed.) Mirrors of Mortality, p. 220. I have also drawn on Cannadine’s essay more generally in this section.

p. 24 ‘by the human. .’: quoted by Cannadine, ibid., p. 221.

p. 25 ‘the great awful. .’: The Times, 12 November 1919, p. 15.

p. 26n ‘In the tarpaper. .’: USA (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966), pp. 722–3. I am grateful to Nick Humphrey for putting me on to this passage.

p. 27 ‘the man who. .’: Ronald Blythe, The Age of Illusion, new edn (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983), p. 9. Blythe’s first chapter contains a detailed and evocative account of how the idea of burying an unknown soldier came about.

p. 27 ‘In silence, broken. .’, et al.: Armistice Day Supplement, The Times, 12 November 1920, pp. i — iii.

p. 28 ‘All this was. .’: quoted in David Cannadine, ‘Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’, in Joachim Whalley (ed.), Mirrors of Mortality, p. 224.

p. 28 Fabian Ware: quoted in Cannadine, ibid., p. 197.

p. 30 The draft of Owen’s ‘Apologia Pro Poemate Meo’ is reproduced in Dominic Hibberd, Wilfred Owen: The Last Year, p. 74.

p. 30 ‘was a silence. .’: ‘The Untellable’, New Society, 11 May 1978, p. 317.

p. 31 ‘the very pulse. .’: Armistice Day Supplement, 12 November 1920, p. i.

p. 31 For fuller accounts of the evolution of the various rituals of Remembrance see the works listed in the Select Bibliography by Bob Bushaway, David Cannadine, George Mosse and Richard Garrett.

p. 32n ‘treated as part. .’: Fallen Soldiers, p. 49. For a thorough discussion of changing attitudes to the war dead see ibid., pp. 3–50.

p. 34 ‘Horrible beastliness of. .’: from Owen’s draft list of contents for his proposed book of poems, reproduced by Dominic Hibberd, Wilfred Owen: The Last Year, p. 123.

p. 35 ‘grimly appalling. .’ and ‘the very depths. .’: Images of Wartime, p. 50.

p. 35 ‘The main purpose. .’: The Body in Pain, p. 63. I am grateful to Valentine Cunningham for bringing this book to my attention.

p. 35 ‘before the Great. .’: The Old Lie, p. 137.

p. 36 ‘begloried sonnets’ and ‘second-hand phrases’: Collected Works, p. 237.

p. 36 ‘part of the. .’: The Art of Ted Hughes, 2nd edn (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978), p. 30.

p. 38 ‘how great a. .’: from Blunden’s Memoir of Owen, reproduced in Wilfred Owen, Collected Poems, p. 147 (my italics).

p. 38 ‘even the men. .’: ‘My Country Right or Left’, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, vol. 1, pp. 589–90.

p. 38 ‘we young writers. .’, et al.: Lions and Shadows, pp. 74–6.

p. 39 ‘became conscious of. .’ and ‘was that it. .’: George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, vol. 1, pp. 589–90.

p. 39 ‘came home deepest. .’: from introduction in Wilfred Owen, Collected Poems, p. 12.

p. 39 ‘easy acceptance of. .’: Edward Mendelson (ed.), The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings 1927–1939 (Faber, 1977), p. 212.

p. 39 ‘the propagandist lie. .’: quoted in Samuel Hynes. The Auden Generation, p. 249.

p. 39 ‘produced envy rather. .’ and ‘Even in our. .’: Friends Apart, p. 91.

p. 40 ‘An Unveiling’: Collected Poems, p. 204.

p. 41 ‘a real Cenotaph’: quoted by Christopher Ridgeway in introduction to Richard Aldington, Death of a Hero.

p. 41 ‘a memorial in. .’: Death of a Hero, p. 8.

p. 41 ‘What passing-bells for. .’: Collected Poems, p. 44.

p. 42 ‘the official record. .’ and ‘vetted so as. .’: Haig’s Command, p. 4. For counter-charges concerning Winter’s own manipulation of his material see John Hussey, ‘The Case Against Haig: Mr Denis Winter’s Evidence’, Stand To: The Journal of the Western Front Association (winter 1992), pp. 15–17.

p. 42 ‘passive suffering. .’: from introduction to Oxford Book of Modern Verse (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1936), p. xxxiv.

p. 43 ‘records of [Owen’s]. .’: facsimile edition reprinted by the Imperial War Museum 1990, p. v.

p. 43 ‘almost a spirit. .’: ‘The Real Wilfred’, Required Writing, p. 230.

p. 43 ‘existed for some. .’: ibid., p. 228.

p. 43 ‘the pall of. .’: David Cannadine, ‘Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’, in Joachim Whalley (ed.), Mirrors of Mortality, p. 233.

p. 44 For more on spiritualism in the 1920s see David Cannadine, ibid., pp. 227–31.

p. 44 ‘prophecies in reverse. .’: Camera Lucida (Hill & Wang, New York, 1981), p. 87.

p. 44 ‘I began to. .’: ‘To Please a Shadow’, Less than One (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1987), p. 370.

p. 44 ‘W. O. seems. .’: letter to Robert Conquest, 9 January 1975, in Anthony Thwaite (ed.) Selected Letters (Faber, 1992), p. 519.

p. 44 ‘Grey monotony lending. .’: P. J. Kavanagh (ed.), Collected Poems, p. 36.

p. 44 ‘I again work. .’: Felix Klee (ed.) Diaries 1898–1918 (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1964), p. 380.

p. 45 ‘great sunk silences’: Isaac Rosenberg, ‘Dead Man’s Dump’, Collected Works, p. 111.

p. 45 ‘Those Harmsworth books. .’: Collected Poems (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1983), p. 40.

p. 45 ‘sepia November. .’: New and Collected Poems (Robson Books, 1980), p. 63.

p. 45 ‘in black and. .’: The Post-Modernist Always Rings Twice (Fourth Estate, 1992), p. 79.

p. 45 ‘Having seen all. .’: Wilfred Owen, ‘Insensibility’, Collected Poems, p. 37.

p. 45 ‘the choice of. .’: ‘Vlamertinghe: Passing the Château, July, 1917’, Undertones of War, p. 256.

p. 45 ‘The year itself. .’: The Wars, p. 11.

p. 46 ‘long uneven lines. .’: Collected Poems (Faber, 1988), p. 128.

p. 46 ‘The Send-Off’: Collected Poems, p. 46.

p. 47 ‘Agony stares from. .’: Edmund Blunden, ‘The Zonnebeke Road’, Undertones of War, p. 250.

p. 47 For a fuller account of restrictions on photographers see Jane Carmichael, First World War Photographers, pp. 11–21.

p. 48 ‘In the account. .’: the German Field Marshal was Paul Von Hindenberg, quoted in Peter Vansittart, Voices from the Great War, p. 145.

p. 48 ‘lay three or. .’: Peter Vansittart (ed.), Letters from the Front (Constable, 1984), p. 209.

p. 49 ‘Where do they. .’: quoted in Jon Glover and Jon Silkin (eds.), The Penguin Book of First World War Prose, p. 63.

p. 50 ‘of the very. .’ and ‘an incomprehensible look. .’: Collected Letters, p. 521.

p. 50 Owen quoting Tagore: Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen, p. 267.

p. 50 ‘As under a. .’: ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, Collected Poems, p. 55.

p. 50 ‘indirectly by watching. .’: letter to Susan Owen, 4 (or 5) October 1918, Collected Letters, p. 580.

p. 50 ‘I saw their. .’: ‘The Show’, Collected Poems, p. 50.

p. 51 ‘O Love, your. .’: ‘Greater Love’ ibid., p. 41.

p. 51 ‘“O sir, my. .’: ‘The Sentry’, ibid., p. 61.

p. 51 ‘If in some. .’: ibid., p. 55.

p. 51 ‘not concerned with. .’: ‘Preface’, Collected Poems, p. 31.

p. 51 ‘not interested in. .’: quoted in Richard Whelan, Robert Capa: A Biography, p. 176.

p. 52 ‘were swarming with. .’: ibid., p. 235.

p. 55 ‘Tenderness: something on. .’: from Henri Barbusse’s War Diary, in Jon Glover and Jon Silkin (eds.), The Penguin Book of First World War Prose, p. 195.

p. 55 ‘I tell you. .’, ‘could not cry. .’, et al.: Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, pp. 46–7.

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.

p. 119 ‘those poor wounded. .’ and ‘sounds like a. .’: ibid., pp. 88–9.

p. 119 ‘SECOND SOLDIER: What’s. .’: ibid., p. 46.

p. 120 ‘And when they. .’: ibid., p. 107.

p. 121 ‘it is really. .’: The Great War and Modern Memory, p. 241.

p. 121 ‘the symbolism of. .’: The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, p. 325.

p. 121 ‘Aye, all’s reet. .’: quoted in They Called It Passchendaele, p. 201.

p. 122 ‘The salient was. .’ and ‘just a complete. .’: ibid., p. 186.

p. 122 ‘To our dismay. .’: Wet Flanders Plain, p. 99.

p. 123 ‘the flesh of. .’: Watermark (Hamish Hamilton, 1992), p. 56; see also his poem ‘Nature Morte’, A Part of Speech (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980), p. 45.

p. 125 ‘concentrated essence of. .’: Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, quoted in John Keegan, The Face of Battle, p. 232.

p. 127 ‘a merciless sea. .’, et al.: Short Stories, vol. 2, edited by Andrew Rutherford (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 213.

p. 128 ‘Madame, please, / You. .’: Brian Gardner (ed.), Up the Line to Death, p. 157.

p. 129 ‘the booming mecca. .’: They Called It Passchendaele, p. 3.

p. 129 ‘earth gobs and. .’, et al.: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night, pp. 125–6.

p. 129 ‘half-ironic phrase. .’: ibid., p. 199.

p. 129 ‘A refuge for. .’: ibid., p. 25.

p. 129 ‘the war is. .’: ibid., p. 30.

p. 129 ‘was like all. .’: ibid., p. 40.

p. 130 ‘I do not. .’: letter to Henry Dan Piper, quoted in Matthew J. Bruccoli, Some Kind of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, revised edn, (Cardinal, 1991), p. xix.

p. 130 ‘After all, life. .’: letter to Mrs Richard Taylor, 10 June 1917, Andrew Turnbull (ed.), The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Penguin, 1968), p. 434.

p. 130 ‘shell-shocks who. .’: Tender is the Night, p. 23.

p. 130 ‘a skull recently. .’: ibid., p. 50.

p. 130 ‘Suddenly there was. .’: ibid., p. 61.

p. 131 ‘Dick turned the. .’ and ‘See that little. .’: ibid., pp. 124–5.

p. 134n For more on the Michael Foot/Cenotaph controversy see Patrick Wright’s essay ‘A Blue Plaque for the Labour Movement?’, in On Living in an Old Country, Verso, 1985.

p. 136 ‘when events are. .’: The Texture of Memory, p. 263.

p. 138 ‘The thousands of. .’: Philip Larkin, ‘MCMXIV’, Collected Poems (Faber, 1988), p. 128.

p. 141 ‘the great everlasting. .’: quoted in Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring, p. 133.

p. 141 ‘had no pity. .’: from introduction in Wilfred Owen, Collected Poems, pp. 18–19.

p. 142 ‘“I’ve lost my. .’: quoted in Denis Winter, Death’s Men, p. 257.

p. 143 ‘The charred skeletons. .’: Henri Barbusse, War Diary, in Jon Glover and Jon Silkin (eds.), The Penguin Book of First World War Prose, p. 197.

p. 143 ‘the most extraordinary. .’: letter of 13 May 1916, Winds of Change (Macmillan, 1966), p. 82.

p. 143 ‘shells never seem. .’: Julian Symons (ed.), The Essential Wyndham Lewis, p. 23.

p. 143 ‘the famous Cloth. .’: Gunner B. O. Stokes, quoted in Lyn Macdonald, They Called It Passchendaele, p. 190.

p. 143 ‘One ever hangs. .’: ‘At a Calvary near the Ancre’, Wilfred Owen, Collected Poems, p. 82.

p. 144 ‘The Calvary stood. .’: Jon Glover and Jon Silkin (eds.), The Penguin Book of First World War Prose, p. 145.

p. 144 ‘The cemetery at. .’: quoted in Michael Hurd, The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney p. 69.

p. 144 ‘like the edge. .’ and ‘the trees of. .’: The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston, p. 279.

p. 146 ‘a landscape of. .’: quoted in Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition (Thames & Hudson, 1978), p. 29.

p. 146 Robert Musil: diary entry for 3 September 1915, Tagebucher, (Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbeck bei Hamburg, 1976), p. 312; translation in Jon Glover and Jon Silkin (eds.), The Penguin Book of First World War Prose, p. 95.

p. 146 ‘a sea of. .’: Lieutenant J. W. Naylor, quoted in Lyn Macdonald, They Called It Passchendaele, p. 188.

p. 146 ‘a dead sea. .’: Undertones of War, p. 221.

p. 146 ‘land-ocean’: The Challenge of the Dead, p. 24.

p. 146 ‘As you look. .’: quoted in Kevin Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness, p. 148.

p. 146 ‘By any earlier. .’: Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition (Thames & Hudson, 1978), p. 13.

p. 149 ‘skinned, gouged, flayed. .’: Peter Vansittart (ed.), Letters from the Front (Constable, 1984), p. 217.

p. 149 ‘In point of. .’: p. 150.

p. 149 ‘plain of lost. .’: War Diary, in Jon Glover and Jon Silkin (eds.), The Penguin Book of First World War Prose, p. 150.

p. 150 ‘The old church. .’: The Challenge of the Dead, p. 256.

p. 150 ‘In a later. .’: In Flanders Fields, p. 296.

p. 150 ‘Aerial photos of. .’: Haig’s Command, p. 46.

p. 150 The vanished villages of Verdun: for an evocation of the topographical and historical legacy of Verdun see the last two parts — ‘Aftermath’ and ‘Epilogue’ — of Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916.

p. 150 ‘Theory of Ruin. .’: Inside the Third Reich (Sphere, 1971), pp. 97–8.

p. 151 ‘special teams spent. .’: The Rebel (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 154.

p. 151 ‘a sponge, an. .’: Jean Rouaud, Fields of Glory, p. 133.

p. 152 ‘I am beginning. .’: diary entry for 7 October, quoted in Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War, p. 751.

p. 152 ‘We didn’t really. .’: John Grout, quoted in Ronald Blythe, Akenfield (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 62.

p. 152 ‘reveals hardly the. .’: Denis Winter, Death’s Men, p. 255.

p. 153 ‘what the Nazis. .’, et al.: ‘Messages in a Bottle’, New Left Review (no. 200, July/August 1993), p. 6.

p. 154 ‘trees not quite. .’: p. 18.

p. 154 ‘when the trenches. .’: The Old Frontline (Heinemann, 1917), p. 11.

p. 154 ‘all semblance gone. .’: Journey to the Western Front, Twenty Years After (G. Bell & Son, 1936), p. 1.

p. 155 ‘Nature herself conspires. .’: Paul Berry and Alan Bishop (eds.), Testament of a Generation: The Journalism of Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby (Virago, 1985), p. 210.

p. 155 ‘And pile them. .’: Archibald MacLeish (ed.), The Complete Poems (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1970), p. 136.

p. 155 ‘A farmer on. .’: The English Patient (Bloomsbury, 1992), p. 123.

p. 156 ‘the ground breaks. .’: ‘A Calvary on the Somme’, Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, Newcastle, 1991), p. 135.

p. 156 ‘Corpses, rats, old. .’: Peter Vansittart (ed.), Letters from the Front (Constable, 1984), p. 263.

p. 158 ‘From that moment. .’: quoted in Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, p. 316.

p. 158 ‘These apparently rude. .’: The Middle Parts of Fortune, p. 205.

p. 159 ‘The century of. .’: a revised version of this lecture was published as ‘Ev’ry Time we Say Goodbye’ in Keeping a Rendezvous, Granta 1992.

p. 162 ‘there are more. .’: The Plague (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1948), p. 251.