Chapters 8-9: Love and Sex

Although images of dead bodies on the battlefield were often withheld from the public during the First World War, ordinary soldiers and official photographers on both sides did not shy away from taking such pictures. The six dead German soldiers shown here were killed in the fight for Pilckem Ridge (31 July-2 August 1917), a British offensive that gained two miles of enemy ground. It marked the first action in the Battle of Passchendaele (or the 3rd Battle of Ypres), which lasted until 10 November.

Love and Sex

These are two very difficult chapters, which explore love and sex in an uncomfortable and challenging way. On the one hand, we have Billy Prior failing to have sex with Sarah, a girl who shares his doubt about whether love is really possible at all. And, on the other hand, Prior admits to feeling an almost sexual excitement when faced with the danger and panic of the battlefield. What is increasingly clear is that the mind of a soldier is a scary and messed up place, and Prior is no exception. On the other hand, there is a far more natural, warmer affection that grows instantly between Sassoon and his new visitor (and fellow patient AND poet), Wilfred Owen.

Gore and Gobstoppers

We also read of some details about the reality of combat, for example:

• going 'over the top' invariably consisted of walking, slowly and in full view of the enemy, over 'no man's land', facing a shower of machine gun fire as you did so!
• death was so commonplace that soldiers were expected to think nothing of routinely cleaning up the trenches by digging up and throwing away any mess (including body parts, charred bone and burnt flesh).

And we read something of the final straw which led to Prior's eventual breakdown, when he found a human eye resting, solitary, between the makeshift floorboards in his trench. His disbelief and shock are so intense that he pretends it is a gobstopper, because the alternative is simply too horrible for his mind to deal with.

Some things to think about:

1. Why does Prior insist on going out into the city on his own, and without his Hospital Badge on?
2. What do you find interesting about Rivers' opinions about mutism, and the different effects the war seems to have on officers and on privates?
3. What do you think are Prior's motives with Sarah, and what is she trying to achieve too?

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Some useful quotations:

The military strategy of the war seems ludicrous to Prior:

"You're describing this attack as if it were a - a slightly ridiculous event in -"
"Not 'slightly'. Slightly, I did not say."

It seemed hard to believe in a 'god' amid such slaughter and carnage, and one soldier takes this anger (and sense of betrayal) out in a very dramatic way:

Whenever he saw an undamaged crucifix, he used it for target practice. You could hear him for miles. "ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, Bastard on the Cross, FIRE!"

There is something 'ancient' about the war - something too powerful to withstand. No wonder they called it 'The Great War':

It's as if all other wars had somehow... distilled themselves into this war, and that makes it something you... almost can't challenge. It's like a very deep voice saying, Run along, little man. Be thankful if you survive.

Like many soldiers, Prior just wanted to 'escape':

It was worth it, though, just to sit quietly, to listen to voices that didn't stammer, to have his eyes freed from the ache of khaki.

One of the more subtle effects of the way was the destruction of language, and linguistic communication:

Language ran out on you, in the end, the names were left to say it all. Mons, Loos, Ypres, the Somme. Arras.

One way to avoid the closeness of 'love' was to treat SEX as just sex. The women talk about using it to get pregnant, and, thereby, benefit from the man's war pension if they are killed:

"You should have fixed him while you had the chance..."

Whereas Prior talks about sex as something more primal, almost just a physical release from all the pain:

He would have preferred not even to know her name. Just flesh against flesh in the darkness and then nothing.

This is how Prior describes his first attack of mutism:

All present and correct, but how they combined together to make sounds he had no idea.

Prior also explains how EMPTY the war has left him feeling - how NUMB to physical and emotional feeling:

Like the speechlessness, it seemed natural. He sat on the bench, his clasped hands dangling between his legs, and thought of nothing.

Like in some of the war poems we are studying, this moment shows how the war can make men into little more than animals, stripped of their humanity by the pain of it all:

This was not an attack, Rivers realised, though it felt like one. It was the closest Prior could come to asking for physical contact. Rivers was reminded of a nanny goat on his brother's farm, being lifted almost off her feet by the suckling kid.

We also learn a great deal more about the way the war has EMASCULATED men, stripping them of what made them 'male' before the war complicated everything:

• He didn’t know what to make of her, but then he was out of touch with women. They seemed to have changed so much during the war, to have expanded in all kinds of ways, whereas men over the same period had shrunk into a smaller and smaller space.
• One of the paradoxes of the war - one of the many - was that this most brutal of conflicts should set up a relationship between officers and men that was...domestic. Caring. As Layard [a traumatised soldier Rivers hadn't been able to help] would undoubtedly have said, maternal.
• The war that promised so much in the way of 'manly' activity had actually delivered 'feminine' passivity, and on a scale that their mothers and sisters had scarcely known. No wonder they broke down.a traumatised soldier Rivers hadn't been able to help] would undoubtedly have said, maternal.

And, finally, we learn just how damaged Rivers himself is by the whole experience, so much so that, at times, he would dearly love to be dead in a trench somewhere too:

Rivers pulled the curtains to, and settled down to sleep, wishing, not for the first time, that he was young enough for France.