Fox Hunter

By Stefan Kanfer

SIEGFRIED SASSOON'S LONG JOURNEY

Edited by Paul Fussell

Oxford; 180 pages; $19.95

The Britons who came of age in the early part of this century had no doubt as to when the world ended: the date of Armageddon was July 1, 1916. A generation suffocated in the poisoned air of France and drowned in the mud of the Somme. On that first day of battle, said a German eyewitness, "the English came walking, as though they were going to the theater or as though they were on a parade ground. We felt they were mad." And so they were, driven by generals who nourished a vision of the Great War as glorious venture. By nightfall, almost 20,000 guileless volunteer patriots lay dead between the lines. The survivors kept their lives at the price of their illusions. The ages of blind obedience to institution, tradition and dogma were over. The modern epoch of distrust and terror had begun. T.S. Eliot spoke for all the sad young men: "After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"

In the literary renaissance that followed the Armistice, few spoke of the conflict firsthand. Its clearest witness was also its most reticent; the quiet testimony of Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), soldier, poet and novelist, was outshone by the doomsday verse of Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen and the grieving recollections of Ernest Hemingway and Robert Graves. In Siegfried Sassoon's Long Journey Critic Paul Fussell, whose The Great War and Modern Memory is a classic feat of scholarship, has annotated the author's long-neglected work with authority and grace. Sassoon's three autobiographical novels collectively titled The Memoirs of George Sherston have been pruned of extraneous material and augmented by almost 200 photographs. In this remarkable collaboration, both author and editor appear as masters of the ironic detail. Sassoon; " 'And now God go with you,' [the clergyman] would conclude, adding, 'I will go with you as far as the station.' " Fussell: The book's photographs "are very often posed, and it's clear that the subjects have been adjured not to look downhearted. Still, if we darken the implicit misery by about 30%, we'll get an idea of what things looked like to Sassoon and his fellow soldiers."

What things looked like is conveyed not merely by snapshots of English troops and German casualties, but by the hero's mounting distrust of anthems and imperial rhetoric. Yet the Long Journey is no mere triptych of war stories. George Sherston, Sassoon's alter ego, is a privileged countryman for whom hunting, cricket and golf represent the highest cultural achievements. Sherston's diffidence continues on the way to the front, until he spies "an English soldier lying by the road with a horribly smashed head." Slowly he comes to perceive that "life, for the majority of the population, is an unlovely struggle against unfair odds, culminating in a cheap funeral." Yet he never becomes much of an agitator or even a pacifist. In fact his performance in combat remains worthy of the Distinguished Service Cross.

Much of this coincides with the author's own early life: Sassoon, who regarded himself merely as an uncomplicated "foxhunting man," once captured single-handed an enemy battalion frontage that the Royal Irish Regiment had failed to take the day before. Then he turned around and wrote:

"You smug-faced crowds with

kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads

march by

Sneak home and pray you'll never

know

The hell where youth and laughter

go."

This interplay of opposites, this urge for combat coupled with a sense of war's futility, seems especially contempo rary, a striking instance of the modern temper born in trenches sever al wars ago. In his unobtrusive manner, Sassoon was one of the makers of that temper. Thanks to Fussell's adroit editing, readers can once again accompany him on the author's Long Journey and, in the process, discover much about that worthy hunter of foxes and truth, and far more about their own time.

--By Stefan Kanfer This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.