In his 1924 book about working with the novelist Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford recalled his experiences of the Front Line:<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2018A great many novelists have treated of the late War in terms solely of the War: in terms of pip squeaks, trench coats, wire aprons, shells, mud, dust, and sending the bayonet home with a grunt. For that reason interest in the late War is said to have died. But, had you taken part actually in those hostilities, you would know how infinitely little part the actual fighting itself took in your mentality. You would be lying on your stomach, in a beast of a funk, with an immense, horrid German barrage going on all over and round you and with hell and all let loose. But, apart from the occasional, petulant question, \u201cWhen the deuce will our fellows get going and shut \u2019em up?\u201d your thoughts were really concentrated on something quite distant: on your daughter Millicent\u2019s hair, on the fall of the Asquith Ministry, on your financial predicament, on why your regimental ferrets kept on dying, on whether Latin is really necessary to an education\u2026You were there, but great shafts of thought from the outside, distant and unattainable world infinitely for the greater part occupied your mind.\u2019<\/p>\n
Joseph Conrad<\/em>, A Personal Remembrance<\/i>, The Ecco Press, New York, 1989, p. 205.<\/p>\n Compare this sense of waiting and distance with Owen\u2019s poem \u2018Exposure\u2019 where four of the eight stanzas end with the statement \u2018But nothing happens\u2019.<\/p>\n Our brains ache, in the merciless iced cast winds that knive us… See the rest of the poem here http:\/\/warpoets.org.uk\/splashpage\/poem\/exposure\/<\/a><\/p>\n It might also be worth comparing both these passages with the conversations that take place in Journey\u2019s End<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In his 1924 book about working with the novelist Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford recalled his experiences of the Front Line: \u2018A great many novelists have treated of the late War in terms solely of the War: in terms of pip squeaks, trench coats, wire aprons, shells, mud, dust, and sending the bayonet home with Continue Reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":817,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"template-resources.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n
\nWearied we keep awake because the night is silent…
\nLow, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient…
\nWorried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
\nBut nothing happens.<\/p>\n