Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116995 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

Customer Reviews

Third and final volume of the Sherston trilogy.
This final volume of the Sherston trilogy opens with Sassoon/Sherston's arrival at Craiglockhart War Hospital. Following his protest against the continuation of the War (see Memoirs of an Infantry Officer), Sassoon was sent before a medical board, and on the evidence of his friend Robert Graves (Sassoon's pseudonym for Graves is David Cromlech), was then sent to Craiglockhart in Edinburgh. Here Sassoon becomes a patient of W H R Rivers (of Regeneration fame). It is here also that Sassoon met Wilfred Owen (although this famous meeting is missing from this book owing to Sassoon denying Sherston his poetic side). After 6 months Sassoon rejoins his Regiment and, after a brief spell in Ireland (mostly spent fox-hunting) and an even briefer spell in Palestine, Sassoon returns to the trenches of France. He goes out on a fool-hardy daylight reconnaissance and is accidentally shot in the head by one of his own sergeants. This results in Sassoon being invalided out of the Army and the novel closes with Sassoon's doctor and mentor, Rivers, arriving at his bedside to "put things right".

This volume of the Sherston trilogy is not as good as the previous two. The section of narrative in Palestine largely consists of diary entries (based on Sassoon's own diary entries). It has been suggested that Sassoon never intended to write a trilogy but owing to the way he ended Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, and to his desire to try to get the War out of his system he needed to write a third novel. Given that Sassoon then went on to write three volumes of pure autobiography, this hypothesis has some merit. I would recommend reading this book more for the sake of completeness than for its literary merit.