Receive Some Desperate Glory: The World War I Diary Of A British Officer, 1917 Created By Edwin Campion Vaughan Disseminated As Electronic Format
on Some Desperate Glory: The World War I Diary of a British Officer, 1917
diary rivals All Quiet on the Western Front as a battlefront narrative and an insight into the thought life of a soldier in the trenches.
The authors detailed descriptions of his experiences at Ypres allow the reader to observe history from a truly firsthand perspective.
This is one of the great books to come out of World War I, It is a diary, from the authors arrival in France in Januarythrough fighting at Passchendaele in August of that year.
Vaughn would later become a decorated company commander and survived the war, but was fated to die atof an overdose when his doctor gave him cocaine instead of novocaine.
The manuscript remained in his familys possession for decades until it was submitted to a publisher in thes.
Had Vaughn worked on the manuscript after the war to bring it into publishable form, it almost certainly would have been worse for the effort, with its embarrassing and unedifying incidents homogenized or removed.
Instead, it has the sense of immediacy that comes from events written about as soon as they happen, Vaughn was not a natural military commander and leader of men he made mistakes, got yelled at, got angry and sulked, and got better at his job.
Its all there in the text, the raw story of a young man growing up under fire,
The last thirty pages of the book are horrifying, and they are written in a flat, dispassionate style that only seems to emphasize the hellishness of the events.
Madness seems to claw at the mind Vaughns, and perhaps the readers too when he writes
From the darkness of all sides came the groans and wails of wounded men faint, long, sobbing moans of agony, and despairing shrieks.
It was too horribly obvious that dozens of men with serious wounds must have crawled for safety into new shellholes, and now the water was rising about them and, powerless to move, they were slowly drowning.
And we could do nothing to help them,
His company attacked a fortified bunker through driving rain and mud and murderous enemy fire, When they captured it he talked to a dying German officer inside whose leg had been shot away, The German told him that his men saw the British coming and were about to mow them down with a machine gun when a tank, which had crawled up past the side of the bunker, sent a shot through the rear entrance, killing or wounding everyone inside.
Minutes later the tank took a direct hit from an artillery shell and was destroyed with all hands,
By the time the position was captured the company had been reduced from ninety men to fifteen.
Vaughn struggled to find words that would convey the ghastliness of the chaos and terror they had experienced, If ever an author has summoned the horrors of a season in hell, it is in these pages,
The book ends abruptly the day after the remnants of the company were pulled out of the line.
Vaughn felt no reason to continue with the diary, no hope remaining for anyone or anything, The diary ends with, "So this was the end of 'D' Company, Feeling sick and lonely, I returned to my tent to write out my casualty report but instead I sat on the floor and drank whisky after whisky as I gazed into a black and empty future.
"
I am not usually a fan of diaryform books, but this one is great, It tells the story of a young second lieutenant, Edwin Campion Vaughan, of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment throughdays' of service in France from the beginning ofto it's end in late August and the aftermath of the Battle of Passchendaele where his unit was decimated.
During this time he takes you on a journey through the Western Front, from the hell of the trenches to the haven of carefree life off the line and all the ways these young officers and troops entertained themselves.
It sees a young boy grow into a hardened man through all the horrific things that faced these men on a daily basis in the trenches, and sees the friendships forged by common suffering of the men, and of these friendships lost in battle.
In these writings it is heartbreaking to see that these officers and troops were mostly just still boys in their teens or early twenties and their tomfoolery on and off the line to help them cope with everything.
Also interesting is how much they drank both on and off duty and there was always time for a quick nip of whiskey of rum.
There are no grand strategies discussed in the diary and it is all just daytoday entries of things seen and thoughts thought.
Very good book and highly recommended to all military readers, Read during a period of immersion in World War I memoirs, diaries, and histories, Read in conjunction with a similar book from the German side: see my review of Storm of Steel, by Ernst Junger.
Vaughan's book is REALLY graphic and horrible yet humorous at times, One wonders how they stood it and how ANYONE survived, Covers an eightmonth period in detail,
Would reread.
So this was the end of 'D' Company, Feeling sick and lonely I returned to my tent to write out my casualty report, But instead I sat on the floor and drank whiskey after whiskey as I gazed into a black and empty future.
The above being the concluding sentences of this diary, Eerily reminiscent of sentiments expressed by the fictional Paul Baumer in Erich Maria Remarque's masterpiece written about ten years after Vaughan's diary All Quiet on the Western Front.
Edward Campion Vaughn
from The Independent
This book will not appeal to some, since there are stretches in which not much happens it is a diary, after all.
What does happen is a combination of the small events of army life in and around the trenches, punctuated with combat action night patrols, advances, meeting the enemy's advance.
The diary begins on January,, From then until thest of August occupies aboutof the book,
After a week's leave in London, Vaughan returns to Le Havre on August, After kicking around for a couple days,
the entries for the next few days begin:
August, Sunday. We had sudden orders in the forenoon to move up nearer the line, . .
August. We heard this morning that we are moving up again tomorrow, . .
August. The others were all astir and excitedly examining the walls and roof, . . Over each bed was a hole through which had passed shrapnel, . .
August. I could not sleep, but lay awake thinking and wondering about the attack, . .
August. Ata. m. a guide led us out of the camp in an easterly direction, . .
This is the day that theyear old Vaughan and his company are thrown into the battle of Passchendaele Third Ypres.
The assault of the British Second and Fifth Armies, with a portion of the French First Army, had begun on July, following a bombardment which had lasted fifteen days and expended four million shells.
The battle was to last almostdays, by which time the British and later ANZAC and Canadian forces managed to advance aboutmiles, at a cost of perhaps a quarter of a million casualties with likely higher numbers on the German side.
The lastof the book is the chilling account of Vaughan's experiences in this battle, lasting less than two weeks.
The last entry in his diary which ends as quoted above is for August, His company has been reduced frommen to, and is withdrawn from action, Vaughan saw more action in the last year of the war, spent the rest of his short life in and out of the armed forces, and died in, at the age of, when he was administered cocaine instead of Novocaine while in hospital.
His diary spent four decades in a cupboard, was then uncovered, and published inas Some Desperate Glory, fifty years after he had died.
For me the experience of reading the book was one of being immersed in the sights and sounds, the adrenalin rushes and the horror of the First World War, from the infantry soldier's point of view.
There is no overview given of the bigger picture, of the "history" of the war, Rather this is just the history of eight months in the life of a young man,
This is a fine book relating to World War I, a good read for someone wanting to steep themselves in that time a hundred years ago when the future of Europe, indeed the future of the entire world, was shaped by four years like nothing previous in mankinds history.
Perhaps wait until, and read in conjunction with sitelinkAll Quiet on the Western Front