Customer Reviews

Sword of Honour (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Guy Crouchback is almost saintly. He is Catholic, patriotic, and selfless. When World War II comes along he is eager to serve his country and to be thrown into the caldron of war. But, by his own admission, he is not "simpatico" and he always seems to be the square peg trying to fit into a round hole. Perhaps his military career parallels that of the author, Evelyn Waugh.

There is of course no place for Guy in the British Army where his hard work and dedication are little rewarded and his war experiences are spotted with malfortune, little of which is of his own making. Guy "blots his copy book" early on and ends up being suspected of spying for the Italians. Waugh dots this novel with a cast of clownish characters and comic adventures in which Guy sadly participates.

Waugh's irreverent attitude toward World War II has probably made this novel less popular than it should have been. For example, at the opening of the war, Crouchback wonders why England, in the face of simultaneous invasions of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union, chose to go to war with one and not the other. At another point, Guy muses that "he was engaged in a war in which courage and a just cause were quite irrelevant to the issue." In the best Waughian tradition, he does a hatchet job on the much-celebrated Yugoslav resistance movement of Marshall Tito.

Waugh, oddly enough, has also made the interesting comment that he wrote the "obituary" of the Roman Catholic Church in England with this novel. I take him at his word although perhaps I can't fully appreciate the Catholic subtleties of the novel.

Waugh originally published this novel in three volumes between 1952 and 1962. He then published the three volumes in one, omitting "tedious" passages. One of the tedious passages he omitted was, to me, the most memorable of the book -- the tale of children evacuated from London at the beginning of the war and thrust, with hilarious consequences, upon the country gentry for caretaking. So, you might read the novels -- Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and The End of the Battle -- separately as well as together.

Beyond thrillers, World War II seems to have produced few good novels. Waugh's comic, sad, and cynical novel is one of the best.

Smallchief

Of all of Waugh's works, his semi-autobiographical Sword of Honour resonates most closely with me - not only is it somewhat more complex and sympathetic to human weakness than his earlier classics, but he has captured the ambigiuities, absurdity and complexities of soldiering (in a British Commonwealth Army, anyway) to a greater extent than almost any other author I have come across. The frustrations and disappointments of Waugh's main protagonist, Crouchback, as he transitions from idealistic officer cadet hoping to find fulfilment in a crusade against evil to a disillusioned junior officer in a military backwater at the end of the war closely parallel those of the author, although I am willing to bet the bombastic and buffonish Apthorpe and aloof and uncongenial Ludovoc reflect a bit of Waugh as well. Waugh's eye for the absurd and ironic captures the essence of the everyday and humdrum in the military, and his casual yet vivid impressions of military personalities or institutional oddities certainly offers ready parallels in my experiences of unit and headquarters life when far from the front. While his accounts of the tedium of enforced idleness while waiting for X Commando's special operation, Ritchie-Hook's completely unreflective enthusiasm or the bureaocratic manouvering of General Whale at HQ Hazardous Offensive Operations may bring a flash of recognition and grim amusement to the modern day soldier, the accusation of the refugee Mme Kanyi demands reflection - perhaps the willingness of good men to accept hardships and danger to absolve personal selfishness and laziness doesn't always end for the best.