The centennial of the start of World War I, the greatest European disaster in the past two centuries, is coming up fast.

The 100th anniversary of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, by the Serbian zealot Gavrilo Princip, is on June 28. The event led directly to the outbreak of war, on July 28, 1914.

The Great War, as it was known at the time, was a disaster because it was a long and bloody stalemate, especially on the Western Front, where attempts to break through the trenches led to shocking casualties and the decimation of a generation of young men from Britain to France to Germany to the Balkans to central Europe and into Russia and Turkey.

The war is one of the best chronicled, at least in English, often by gentleman officers who were writers and/or poets, the sorts of sensitive souls that probably would have found work behind the lines in another era. And as the the 100-year anniversary of the outbreak of war is coming up I decided to read two of the best-known books from the era, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegried Sassoon and Her Privates We by Frederic Manning.

Some thoughts:

–Sassoon’s book is valuable in conveying the life of a lower-ranking officer, which in the British Army a century ago brought privileges and a higher level of discourse not available to men in the ranks.

Sassoon came from a family of some means, and he at all times misses the bit of England where he grew up. He describes actions around the Battle of the Somme, and makes clear the horror and squalor of it all, which includes his going into a sort of “berserker” mode during one battle, which leads to his getting a significant medal, the Order of the British Empire.

Sassoon, however, spends almost no time with the enlisted men, and eschews the diversions behind the lines, which leaves a hole in the book. We do get a very good sense of how a young gentlemen of means who attended Cambridge experienced the war, and his early enthusiasm which leads to increasing disillusionment.

In the book, Sassoon has the protagonist (who is Sassoon himself, clearly), reach a point, after being wounded several times and seeing months and months of slaughter, make a bold attempt to publicly denounce the war, while on leave in England, which he sets in motion only to have the British Army declare him mentally unfit, committing him to a hospital and short-circuiting his bid to criticize the war as it was going on.

–Manning’s book is a bit more edifying in that his protagonist (again, essentially the author) is a man of the ranks, a bit older and bright enough to be an officer — which was Manning’s situation, as well.

Her Privates We is particularly valuable for conveying the sense of hopelessness as the war drags on. The men come to know that they will be severely wounded or killed unless 1) they can get a transfer to some softer job behind the lines or 2) get wounded seriously enough that they do not have to come back — but not wounded so seriously as to be maimed for life.

His main character, Bourne (the name of a town near where Manning lived, in England), is a bit of a scrounger and a loner, aside from a couple of young privates, who is clear-eyed enough to make a point of enjoying himself as much as possible when he and his unit are out of the trenches. He seems to drink Champagne with some regularity, mostly due to his ingenuity and familiarity with French.

The author spend a significant chunk of the book rendering speech, from comrades culled from all over England, and for those with a keen ear for English regional speech, it must be a tour de force. (One character seems to prefer using “thee” to “you”.) But for those of us not from England, all we get is a sense that these guys may have had trouble understanding each other.

Bourne generally likes his officers, some of whom notice that he is a bright guy, with fluent French and he is recommended for a commission. The author actually did become an officer, and did not particularly enjoy it. His Bourne character is out of the war before he can get his promotion.

Her Privates We gives a better sense of the trench experience from the lowest ranks, including their avid if not desperate pursuit of pleasure (or at least distraction) behind the lines. It feels like a more complete description of life at the front than Sassoon’s book.

I would next like to read Good-bye to All That by Robert Graves which, sadly, is out of print and not easily obtainable here in the UAE.

Graves wrote a book more critical of the British Army than did the two just mentioned, but the modern sense is that his version is the more accurate yet. I will try to get my hands on a copy in the next month or two.

This is the war, after all, that ended what had been a century of almost continuous social and material progress in Europe, and set the stage for World War II, which killed more civilians than did the Great War, though quite a bit fewer soldiers.