Generals Die in Bed by Charles Yale Harrison
Stark, brutal, real. No glamour here, no heralding of bravery…just life in the trenches replete with corpse-fed rats, suffocating mud and the endless, sanity-stealing lice.
It’s fascinating and enlightening to read how Canadian soldiers regarded their superiors and the English as enemies – even more so than the Germans…to learn how a man could kill one German soldier with his bayonet and then share a cigarette with his victim’s brother as they shelter from the bullets raining down from both sides. Such situations are so horrific and insane they become chillingly ludicrous.
In this account of WWI by a man who fought in the trenches, the numbing fear is tangible; the scream of bombs is audible. Unrelentingly Harrison describes battles merging into marches marked by desperate fatigue or drunken escape. It is a deeply moving account of young men who do not know why they are fighting, and who long for good food, clean sheets and quiet safety.
Mrs Sweeney
