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Her Privates We

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For almost seventy years, this book was only readily found in an 'expurgated' version--that is, an abridged edition published first in 1929. Manning originally published his novel privately, but when it was introduced to the public (anonymously in the first editions), his editors felt that the language was too crude and for the genteel reading public and cut the book down to fit the day's standards. It is only now that we can appreciate the true power and honesty of a book that has been overlooked for too long.
Her Privates We is not a story of war so much as it is the story of men involved in that war--it is only in the final chapters that any real battle scenes take place. For the majority of the book, we are treated to an account of the life of Private Bourne (Manning himself in a literary disguise) during the five months of the Battle of the Somme (July-November, 1916), one of the most tragic and deadliest battles of World War One. To really explain the plot would be to give away the true experience of reading the book, but I guarantee, there is no account of World War One that can be compared to this work. It is unique and as relevant today as it was in 1929.
There is no attempt at hero-worship or empty patriotism in Manning's work. He telling the story of a group of men trapped in a world for which they were never prepared, and their humanity shines through it all. Their language is coarse, their opinions of the war, women, their fellow soldiers differ, but ultimately, they are all in the same Hell and are bonded together in a desperate hope of survival. Manning's is one of the few War works that does not follow the Victorian pattern for novels (hence why it is seldom mentioned in reviews of war literature). He is not trying to help his readers escape, but rather forcing them to face the reality they had created.
It is clear, even in his prose, that Manning was a skilled poet. Throughout the novel, there are flashes of beauty in the writing itself:

"She knew nothing of their subterranean, furtive, twilight life, the limbo through which, with their obliterated humanity, they moved as so many unhoused ghosts, or the aching hunger in those hands that reached, groping tentatively out of their emptiness, to seek some hope or stay."

As well as humor. After a paticularily confused conversation with a French woman with whom they have been billeted, Bourne's superior complains to him:

"I wish to God I knew a bit o' French" said the corporal earnestly.
"I wish to God you wouldn't mix the little you do know with Hindustanti," said Bourne.

The incredible humanity in this book has seldom been paralleled, even in modern literature. Manning's genuis has been overlooked for too long and it is time that his masterpiece was rediscovered to teach a new generation what war is really like.

This novel focuses, not so much on moral arguments, as on what the experience of trench warfare did to ordinary men. Much of it also refers to the gap between officers and men in the British army. The men knew they had been drafted into or volunteered for something very different from what they were led to believe, and did not have the luxury of arguing why. At times the prose is beautiful, but the most brilliant thing about the book, way ahead of it's time, is the capturing of the bad language and coarse behaviour of the men. These men, contrary to stereotypes, came from hugely diverse backgrounds and fought, swore, quarelled and indulged themselves just like anybody else would if thrown into such a stressful melting pot. This really brought the subject to life, and made me think how lucky I am. Few of the last survivors of WW1 are under 100 years old, and this is a unique and moving memorial to the few living survivors of the first generation subjected to modern warfare and what they endured.

Of course, I say this work is elegant, true, vivid and memorable as a work, not the events it depicts. In parts of the world that used to make up the Commonwealth and serviced by Penguin books, the title may be THE MIDDLE PARTS OF FORTUNE. Having had 25 years in the military I can only say I read this book from cover to cover, and relished every word in it. Artistically, as an artifact, it has a satisfying structure and conventional narrative. Like the characters in it, especially Private Bourne, it manages a superb tone, neither hiding the horror, the detail, but never sentimentalizing the common bravery of the ordinary man whilst despising the shirker. I could go on but I just draw to your attention on P58 the brilliant detail of having to carry an awkward box three miles by hand: - ....he was glad to dump the box he and Lance-Corporal Johnson had carried the three miles from Philosophe on the floor of the Quartermaster's office. It had those handles which hang down when not in use, but turn over and force one's knuckles against the ends of the box when it is lifted. By reversing the grip, one may save one's knuckles, but only at the expense of twisting one's elbow, and the muscles of the forearm. Having tried both ways, they passed their handkerchiefs through the handles, and knotted the corners, so that it was slung between them, but the handkerchief being of different sizes, the weight was not equally distributed. The quartermaster's store was a large shed of galvanized iron, which may have been a garage originally. He was not there, but the carpenter, who was making wooden crosses, of which a pile stood in one corner, thought he might be back at the transport lines; on the other hand he might be back at any moment, so they waited for as long as it took to smoke a cigarette, watching the carpenter, who, having finished putting a cross together, was painting it with a cheap-looking white paint. -That's the motto of the regiment,- said the carpenter, taking up one on which their badge and motto had been painted carefully. - It's in Latin, but it means WHERE GLORY LEADS.
Bourne looked at it with a sardonic grin. - That is just one paragraph of 247 pages of fine prose, and itself could be a study as a sample of quite brilliant writing.
A classic of the 20th century.

In his novel, "Her Privates We," Frederic Manning does something almost unique in Great War literature. He gives voice to the English common soldier. This was the man the British public personified as Tommy Atkins and whom Americans in a later conflict would call GI Joe. This was the man who did the work of war with bayonet, rifle and hand grenade.

Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen and Vera Brittain--among others--have given us a look inside the English middle-class perspective of the Great War. Through their poetry and prose, we can gain some understanding of what they and their educated counterparts suffered and endured.

The clerk, the taxi driver and farm laborer who went to war had no such heavy-weight advocates. Until Manning's novel first appeared in a limited edition during 1929, English private soldiers spoke primarily through letters home, not through literature. We know them best through the mute, exhausted faces that stare out at us across time from black-and-white Great-War-era photographs.

Manning, an educated Australian, worked as a minor literary figure in pre-war England. He enlisted in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry during 1915 and served as a private soldier in France through much of the 1916 Somme Campaign. Not coincidently, most of the novel's action is set within British lines during the time of that huge offensive.

Because Manning was a man who combined a writer's skills with a soldier's experience, his work gives us a rare and vivid glimpse of what trench life and fighting felt like from the viewpoint of the English private and non-commissioned officer. The book reflects the emotional and physical costs of battle. It also gives us some knowledge of the ways men related to each other and to their superiors. Any American who soldiered during the 20th Century will almost certainly find echoes of his own service experience within Manning's story.

In its 1929 printing "Her Privates We" was called "The Middle Parts of Fortune." The first mass publication the next year was ruthlessly edited to reflect 1930s sensibilities. The current paper-bound version of "Her Privates We," offered through Amazon, is completely uncut.

The Book's title derives from some obscene banter in Shakespeare's Hamlet, during which two characters describe themselves as the private parts of Fortune. Private parts, private soldiers, you get the picture. After listening to them, Hamlet concludes that Fortune is a strumpet. This would seem an equally valid conclusion for those of any rank or station caught within the titanic social and military struggle that played out during the 1914-1918 war.

The most moving book on warfare that I've ever read. Manning takes the reader into the trenches of WWI and through a masterful use of language shows the struggles of one young, educated Private as he endures the hardships of war. This book was formerly titled The Middle Parts of Fortune. Outstanding from cover to cover.

This semi-fictional story is set in a brief 6 month (or so)period in 1916 in which the British Army began to assume the major contribution to the Allied effort. By this time of WW1 the French had been somewhat degraded and pretty exhausted by the combined efforts of Verdun and the Somme. The story is set on the Somme front after the opening phases of the battle and includes the description of a long recovery period behind the lines to refit-a luxury denied many German units. The story reflects to some degree the British class system , and many of the soldiers themselves seem somewhat bewildered about the nature of war confronting them. The Germans themselves are shown as remote and treated somewhat indifferently. Despite the possibility of death each soldier seems distracted with obtaining alcohol, women and decent food in that order.

The 1 difficult aspect of the book is the phonetic nature of the spoken words. The characters are, after all, British, and Americans may have a tough time understanding what's being said. When compared with All Quiet on the Western Front, which focuses more on the futility and abstract nature of the war, Her Privates, We is more insular and personal.

In the past half-century of reading and being attuned to literature, somehow I altogether missed HER PRIVATES WE, by Frederic Manning. In his introduction to this edition, William Boyd calls it "the finest novel * * * to have come out of the First World War." Ernest Hemingway claimed to have read it once each year and deemed it "the finest and noblest book of men in war that I have ever read." I can well understand such lavish praise, though why I never heard about the novel for so long remains a mystery.

Frederic Manning was born in Australia in 1882 and moved to England in 1903. He was a minor author and poet and he moved around the fringes of British literary circles, becoming friends with luminaries such as T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Max Beerbohm. When the First World War broke out Manning was eager to serve, but initially his age and poor health were obstacles. As recruiting standards were relaxed, Manning got his chance, and in August 1916 he went to the Western Front as a thirty-four-year-old private. He was on the front lines about four months, at the Somme and later on the Ancre front at Serre. He participated in a few "shows" and went "over the top" a few times. He survived, at least physically, and he returned to England to attempt officer training, but there his military career fell apart, done in by his heavy drinking and his shattered psyche. In 1929 a publisher urged him to write his war memoirs. He did so in the white heat of a few weeks, though in the form of a novel. He died a few years later, in 1935, at age fifty-two.

The most striking aspect of HER PRIVATES WE is that it is written from the perspective of a soldier of the ranks. The protagonist, Bourne, is the alter ego of Frederic Manning -- educated, somewhat older, but still a private. Most of the classic British accounts of the Great War were written by officers (e.g., Blunden, Graves, and Sassoon). Manning writes from the underside of the British Army. He also honors the ranks as perhaps only one of its members could: "When one was in the ranks, one lived in a world of men, full of flexible movement and human interest: when one became an officer, one became part of an inflexible and inhuman machine."

Much of the dialogue is raw. In fact, in 1929 the language was too raw for the general public. An unexpurgated edition of the novel (entitled "The Middle Parts of Fortune") was published in a limited edition of 600 copies, but the public version was thoroughly bowdlerized. This edition, though retaining the title of the censored version, contains the original uncensored text, which, with its demotic Anglo-Saxon dialogue, is quite effective.

Even the odd title reflects the coarse vein that runs through the novel. It comes from "Hamlet", Act II, scene 2, where Hamlet asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern how they are doing. Guildenstern admits that they are not overly happy: "On Fortune's cap we are not the very button." But neither are they at "the soles of her shoes." So Hamlet, jestingly, narrows it down: "Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favour." Guildenstern: "Faith, her privates we." Hamlet completes the risqué trope: "In the secret parts of Fortune? O, most true, she is a strumpet." Privates in the private parts of that whore called Fortune.

Still, Manning/Bourne was not the typical Tommy. Although he is a private and shares the miseries, fears, and frustrations of the common soldier, he also is distanced and reflective and highly articulate. HER PRIVATES WE is more philosophical, more cerebral, than most war fiction is. "There is an extraordinary veracity in war, which strips man of every conventional covering he has, and leaves him to face a fact as naked and as inexorable as himself." It also contains much hauntingly vivid imagery: "In the distance a star-shell would rise, and as its light dilated, wavered, and failed, one saw against it the shattered trunks and boughs of trees, lunatic arms uplifted in imprecation, and as though petrified in a moment of shrieking agony."

HER PRIVATES WE is both singular and great. I don't have the background to say whether or not it is the finest novel to come out of the First World War or the noblest book of men in war, but I know that in the fullness of time I want to read it again, which is the highest praise I can give a novel.

One might think that a book about WWI would offer little that a reader today could relate to. Not true. I found much in Her Privates We with which to identify. In his modern intro to the book first published in 1929, William Boyd notes that the unexpurgated version, with its vivid and vulgar language typical to the talk of rank and file soldiers, makes the book curiously contemporary, and he's right. The usual Anglo-saxon crudities used by the British soldiers in the book are the same ones still used by soldiers in any army in the world.

Hemingway remarked that Her Privates We was one of the best books he'd ever read about men at war, and that he read it often.

I have to agree with Boyd and Hemingway. There is something so very real, so 'now' about the story Manning tells, about his main character, Bourne, and the other soldiers he befriends and observes throughout the narrative. There was one particular anecdote, one in which Bourne and another soldier had to escort a couple of large stupid Lancashire men to a military prison which reminded me almost immediately of the plot of a popular novel (and film) of the 70s Vietnam era, Darryl Ponicsan's The Last Detail. I wondered idly as I read this section whether Ponicsan had ever read Manning's book.

Another passage which struck me deeply, was a passing comment Bourne made about friendship versus the comradeship the military life often forces upon you.

"I have one or two particular chums, of course; and in some ways, you know, good comradeship takes the place of friendship. It is different; it has its own loyalties and affections; and I am not so sure that it does not rise on occasion to an intensity of feeling which friendship never touches."

And that is exactly what the phrase "old army buddies" is all about. It can't be explained to someone who has never served, but friendships made outside the military rarely rise to that level, to that lasting feeling of "comradeship."

There were many such passages here - truisms and even casual conversations between chums that I understood easily. My own experiences in the US Army in the 60s, then 70s and 80s, were the same. I had my own Bournes, Martlows and Shems, and the end of the story, as heartbreaking as it is, seemed inevitable. That's how real and immediate this book still is. So I understand why Hemingway, Arnold Bennett, T.E. Lawrence and others marked this book for greatness. It is deserving of its status as a classic of war literature. Terrific stuff. I cannot recommend it highly enough. - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoirs SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA and BOOKLOVER

Initially, this book did not engage me, either intellectually or emotionally. The first 132 pages simply conveyed the monotony of war - The Great War - "the war to end all wars"; World War 1, when 60,000 British soldiers were killed in the first day (THE FIRST DAY!) of the Battle of the Somme. Anyway, until that page, the book was one of forging friendships, various characters and the sheer persistence of army procedure and administration, all seemingly in preparation for the next attack. Then, on page 133, the declaration of friendship appeared between the three central characters: `The three of us shall be together and then... well, it's not much use looking ahead, is it?' Then on page 140: `...into which some voices would interject "another poor mother has lost her son" as though to affront the sinister fate against which they were determined to march with a swagger'. They were swaggering to the Somme! Then on page 213: `They shook hands, the three among themselves and then with others near them. Good luck chum. Good luck. Good luck... he (then) moved towards the ladder' (to go over the top)! If this is what it was like, then it was a monotonous hell, interspersed with fighting, trenches, mud and comradeship bordering on love, acknowledged often as transcending its conventional form between man and woman. Ultimately, it is a fascinating book.

Ian Hunter.
Author of `e-Love'.

Lawrence Arabia is said to have read this book three times over the course of a few weeks, and he was the first to guess the identity of the then anonymous author.

Manning's gift at describing both the crudities and subtleties of life in the ranks almost matches Lawrence's book on barracks life, "The Mint."

I never cease to be amazed at the intellect of the British soldier/author of that era.

You will most likely read this work in one sitting and then read it again and again for years to come, but the shock that comes from the ending is an unforgettable one-time experience.