War stories

     

As it's Remembrance Sunday, it's timely to think about war stories and suggest a few books written during or about the first and second world wars which already have a wide readership or deserve an even wider one.

     I was in Germany when I read Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong. On a walk in nearby woods one day we'd discovered an amphitheatre built by the Nazis on a hilltop and inaugurated by Joseph Goebbels in 1935. It had a peculiar atmosphere about it - it was, even so many years later, redolent of a fanaticism and a fervent, misplaced idealism which made us feel uncomfortable. "Birdsong" was, of course, about the Great War, but that place high up on a steep slope above the River Neckar brought with it the realisation that war was not just a topic depicted in films and fictionalised in books; it actually happened and goes on happening. Faulks's powerful story of the Somme reinforces that. I remember it as deeply affecting, as is Vera Brittain's classic memoir of the time, Testament of Youth.

    On to the second world war and Faulks's Charlotte Gray, is a good book, too, though less overwhelming than "Birdsong". For something less well known but desperately poignant, try Duff Cooper's Operation Heartbreak; or for a marvellously accomplished first novel and one of my reading highlights of the year, have a look at Owen Sheers's Resistance which imagines a German invasion of Britain and its effect on a remote Welsh valley. It combines to great effect the taut atmospherics of a thriller with a poet's gift for language.

     For factual accounts of aspects of the war, Mr. C. was very impressed by Geoffrey Wellum's First Light; then there's Len Chester's Bugle Boy which I mentioned here recently, and for diaries, To War with Whitaker: Wartime Diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly, 1939-45, and Vere Hodgson's Few Eggs and No Oranges, to name but two.

    Lastly, two of my absolute favourites: Good Evening, Mrs Craven: the Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downesfor short story writing of the highest order, and Mollie PD's superb novel, set in the immediate aftermath of World War II, One Fine Day. I can't recommend them highly enough.

Comments

[Peter the flautist]

Can I commend also "With a machine gun to Cambrai" by George Coppard and "Alamein to Zem Zem" by the poet Keith Douglas. Both are exceptional accounts from the perspective of men at the front line in WW1 and WW2 repectively. My father, a submariner in WW2, tells me that no book captures the reality of the boredom and fear of underwater warefare than "Das Boot" by Lothar-Günther Buchheim.

[Margaret Powling]

I thoroughly enjoyed To War with Whitaker.
Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly (who died in 2001) also wrote her childhood memoirs, The Ugly One (Michael Joseph, 1998.)
I also enjoyed Mollie Panter-Downes' One Fine Day (although have yet to read Vere Hodgson although it's on the bookshelp.)

[Becca]

Thank you for "remembering" on this Veterans/Remembrance Day.

Having just completed two of the three books I have been juggling, I had been thinking of ordering a Mollie Panter-Downes, specifically One Fine Day. So, now I will.

[Lesley]

I would have to add 'Goodbye to All That', by Robert Graves, for his unforgettable accounts of the trenches of WWI — and the ludicrous English class system, at work even among all that horror.

[Maggie]

I just finished "The Welsh Girl" by Peter Ho Davies. While I enjoyed it, somehow it was unsatisfying. I should own up that my Mum was Welsh, and spent the war in Wales. Her family were bakers, so reserved occupation (is that the right words?). I recognised some of the attitudes from when I used to visit my Grandparents in the town where Mum grew up. And yet it didn't quite ring true to me. But suspect I am a harsh critic given my personal viewpoint! Definitely worth a read though.

Best wishes from Liverpool, where we had a pretty stunning sunset into the clouds a bit ago.

[Elizabeth]

I experienced that feeling of acute disccomfort and worse in Tiananmen Square; even though it was full of smiling people I couldn't get out of there quickly enough.
On war books can I recommend Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy?
Also, I agree with you about One Fine Day; I think it captures the atmosphere of that time really well; I have the 1980's Virago edition with one of their irresistible covers.

[Simon]

Mrs. Ranskill Comes Home, another Persephone book, is great - and a very brave publishing choice initially. Mrs. R has been on a desert island or some such, and returns in the middle of war - and her fresh eyes see how ridiculous much of it is. Touching, and also amusing.

[glo]

Not a book but a very moving song: 'The green fields of France' by the Corries.

[Nan]

I'd like to read Mollie Panter-Downes' letters to the New Yorker magazine. I'm more of a home front girl when it comes to war stories. I like to read about how the women and children and the men still at home are coping. I can recommend one of the dearest, dearest books ever, called Ethel & Ernest by Raymond Briggs. It doesn't cover just the war years but they are certainly a presence in the book which goes from the 1920s to the 1970s, and tells the story of the author's parents' lives. Oh, how I love it. I also own a book I haven't read yet called Bombers and Mash, The Domestic Front 1930-45 by Raynes Minns. Along with text, it has photos and advertisements from those years. And some of my favorites are the Mrs Tim books by D. E. Stevenson. Have you read them? Lovely writer, she is.