War Is Swell
Which
post-World War II Anglo-Catholic trilogy you prefer may depend on whether you
are a glass-half-empty/full kind of person. Young at heart? Positive thoughts?
Faith in a greater good undergirded by a sense of better times ahead? Have a
look at J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord Of The Rings” trilogy, if you haven’t already.
If
you are instead more inclined to pessimism, see decline everywhere, and take
your spirituality with a strong dollop of caustic humor about this vale of
tears you inhabit, you might prefer “Sword Of Honour,” the trilogy by Evelyn
Waugh that begins with this, Men At Arms.
Both
trilogies center on a quiet homebody who answers a call to duty and sets off on
a long and perilous journey to face down a seemingly invincible evil. Beyond
that, though, there’s little similarity. Both writers were men of faith; both profoundly
affected by war. But could you get more different results?
Guy
Crouchback is introduced to us as a dreamer, especially in the original version
of Men At Arms published in 1952. He
longs for a purpose. A dutiful Catholic but not an inspired one, he has but two
grains of faith to rub together. His wife left him long ago. He lives in Italy,
far from his family’s ancestral Somerset estate, Broome. Then, in 1939, the
Nazis and the Soviets sign a non-aggression pact. Germany gears up for war with
Great Britain. Guy is inspired:
News that shook
the politicians and young poets of a dozen capital cities brought deep peace to
one English heart…The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all
disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome there
was a place for him in that battle.
A
thinly-veiled memoir of Waugh’s own first year of military service at the start
of World War II, Men At Arms is a
unique way to begin a trilogy. As a story, it is entirely self-contained. Guy
finds his place in a rather peculiar unit, the Royal Corps of Halberdiers;
deals with some tribulations and rum comrades; and finds himself in the end as
adrift as when he began. It’s a darkly comic novel, pointed in its criticism of
the British mindset during what was known as “the Phony War,” flat in tone and
unsentimental in outlook. Yet you are left wanting to read more about Guy’s
wartime experiences, perhaps the same way you might have felt about Frodo
Baggins at a younger age.
At
least it is so with me.
The
first thing you may notice about Men At
Arms, especially if new to Waugh, is its tone. Waugh had a caustic quality
about him that one might have thought leavened by his service in World War II. But the war was not the same to Waugh as it was with others; there’s
an ironic detachment that extends outward from the very title of this trilogy.
“Sword
Of Honour” refers to a decoration bestowed by the British king to the people of
Stalingrad for their successful defense against the Nazis. For Waugh,
decorating godless Communists was a bit much. It compromised the nature of
World War II, if it was indeed to be a struggle against totalitarianism.
Throughout Men At Arms, and the two
books which follow, Guy struggles with a sense of moral compromise that
eventually darkens into despair.
This
is definitely but an undertone in Men At
Arms. On the surface, the novel breezes along in cheery fashion. Poor Guy
just wants a post, but with everyone volunteering and no shots being yet fired
except in distant Poland, he’s out of luck.
“You’ve
left it rather late, you know,” one tells him. “Everyone’s pretty well fixed.
Of course things will start popping once the balloon goes up. I should wait
till then.”
Guy
protests, rather hilariously:
“But I’m not the
pick of the nation,” said Guy. “I’m natural fodder. I’ve no dependants. I’ve no
special skill in anything. What’s more I’m getting old. I’m ready for immediate
consumption. You should take the 35s now and give the young men time to get
sons.”
Eventually
Guy does find his post, as a probationary officer with the Halberdiers. They
are a rather stuffy, antiquated unit led by Ritchie-Hook, a one-eyed Hotspur
getting on in years. “There are no Sundays in the firing-line,” he tells his
men.
 |
| Waugh at war: Like Guy Crouchback, Evelyn Waugh was in his mid-30s when he reported for duty upon the outbreak of World War II. Also like Guy, he first saw action during an abortive invasion of Dakar, which is recreated near the conclusion of Men At War. Image from http://reidsreader.blogspot.com/2016/01/evelynwaughswordofhonoursomething-old.html. |
The
Halberdiers train in an old boys’ boarding school which provides an ironically
appropriate setting for all the adolescent spirits in evidence. This includes
Guy himself, more mature than most (called “Uncle” by the younger officers) but
prone to boyish dreams of glory.
David
Cliffe ran a Waugh website years ago; I found his detailed annotations on
“Sword Of Honour” immensely entertaining as well as illuminating. As a Briton
who grew up during World War II, Cliffe was clued into the vintage names and
phrases Waugh employs, like “NAAFI” and “Hore-Belisha.” He also points
out tonal differences between Men At War
and a later revision, or “recension” as Waugh called it, when he reworked and
shorted his completed trilogy into a single book published a year before
Waugh’s death in 1966.
One
such difference: The original Men At Arms
includes several passages that give the reader insight into the dreams that spur
Guy, fantasies about coming back to England as a would-be crusader or reverting
to Boys’-Own notions of soldiery. When “Sword Of Honour” was streamlined for its
single-volume 1965 release, Waugh excised these sections, apparently because
they didn’t hold with the more sober tone of the later volumes.
The fact is that Waugh
did not intend a massive and detailed exposition of leadership in war or of the
actual day-to-day actions of soldiers, though they are of course touched upon
as required (usually with ironical comment). Instead he is working out a grand
plan which still has a long way to go by the time Men At Arms finishes: the
reclamation of an individual soul - Guy’s.
Whether one reads the
1952 or 1965 version, there is much comedy here. The plot centers on the sorry
state of the Halberdiers, personified at its poles by the fire-spewing
Ritchie-Hook, who runs a tight ship but is rather too taken with the idea of
“biffing” his opponent; and Apthorpe, a fellow probationary officer near to Guy
in age who has a needling quality that fails to conceal his military
deficiencies.
Apthorpe could be the
novel’s main character; his rise and fall gives the main story its shape and
tone:
It would be a
travesty to say that Guy suspected Apthorpe of lying. His claims to distinction
– porpoise-skin boots, a High Church aunt in Tunbridge Wells, a friend who was
on good terms with gorillas – were not what an impostor would invent in order
to impress. Yet there was about Apthorpe a sort of fundamental implausibility.
Apthorpe’s oddball sense
of entitlement finds its greatest expression in his devotion to a portable
toilet – the “Thunder-box,” which he hides on the grounds of the Halberdier
encampment and repairs to in preference to more communal facilities. Then
Apthorpe discovers Ritchie-Hook has found the Thunder-box and is making use of
it himself. A cat-and-mouse game ensues, with Guy as Apthorpe’s reluctant
partner.
Another
comedy stream is Guy’s relationship to society, in particular his ex-wife
Virginia. She moved on long ago to other husbands and boyfriends; he remains
married in spirit to her, thanks to his strict Catholic beliefs. Eventually the
war finds them together in London, him with a bottle trying to rekindle old
feelings. Then she figures him out:
“I thought you’d
chosen me specially, and by God you had. Because I was the only woman in the
whole world your priests would let you go to bed with. That was my attraction.
You wet, smug, obscene, pompous, sexless, lunatic pig.”
This
is the Waugh people will recognize, the writer of faith who finds much to make
fun of even about his own religion.
Waugh
also was at this point in his career a writer of tremendous shading and
subtlety. He was on a roll by now; having produced in the prior seven years three
of his best novels: Brideshead Revisited,
The Loved One, and Helena. By now his prose had an almost
lyrical quality, even in functional descriptions of settings:
The first week of
February filled no dykes that year. Everything was hard and numb. Sometimes
about midday there was a bleak glitter of sun; more often the skies were near
and drab, darker than the snowbound downland inshore, leaden and lightless on
the seaward horizon. The laurels round Kut-al-Imara were sheathed in ice, the
drive rutted in crisp snow.
The
austere beauty is comparable to Tolkien’s descriptions of Middle Earth. So is
the sense of impending doom. Yet the downbeat nature of the “Sword Of Honour” trilogy
is not as evident in its first volume. Men
At Arms is more about a protagonist who finds himself, who answers the call
to arms and “felt from head to foot a physical tingling and bristling as though
charged with galvanic current.” It can have the same effect on the reader.
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