Customer Reviews

Undertones of War

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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I was inspired to read this book by a visit to the Thiepval War Memorial this past Spring.

During World War I, Blunden served as an officer in the Royal Sussex regiment. He fought through the war to its end, serving in the battles of both Ypres and the Somme.

Undertones of War is the memoir which he wrote about that period.

Delicately written and insistent, Undertones of War focuses on both the nostalgia for the countryside left behind and on the deep sorrow of trench warfare. It is a lovely and haunting little memoir. The Penguin edition is bound with a selection of Blunden's poetry. This works well for the overall effect of the book.

Recommended, particularly for those with an interest in World War I or military memoirs.

"A pleasant summer-evening read"? So says a negative reviewer. Huh?

Undertones of War is, with those by Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, one of the best English memoirs of the First World War (John Lucy's 'There's A Devil in the Drum' is by far the best British memoir, and perhaps the best of all time). Blunden is, however, more subtle than they. An intellectual and poet, he portrays himself as a "pastoralist at war," and pays especial regard to the sacrilegious impact of war on the countryside--and life. And while his style may not provide the in-your-face appeal so dear to many American readers, it rewards the careful reader with an elegant, insightful view of the meaning of war.

Yet it can also be brutally honest. Who can forget the eyeball on the duckboard?

Read it while listening to Ralph Vaughan Williams' 'Pastoral Symphony' #3, which was composed behind the front lines of WWI. It goes with the book.

I have read hundreds of World War I memoirs. This book remains in my top five. Take your time reading it. Ponder it. You won't be disappointed.

Right up there with Graves' Good-Bye To All That, Undertones takes you right into the trenches of the Western Front. I re-read every few years.

This is a great book. Unlike Seigfried Sasson's "Memoirs of George Sherston" or Robert Graves "Good-Bye to All That" or Vera Brittain's "Testament of Youth", Blunden's book has no non-war introductory chapters. You are simply in the war from the outset of the book. Blunden arrived on the scene - the Western Front - at age 19 in time for the Somme offensive of July 1916. His writing has a poetic sense to it and sometimes the beauty of nature and Blunden's recording of it appear as a wonderful counterpart to the killing and agony going on almost everywhere Blunden happened to be. Although nature doesn't make-up for the horrors of World War I with its poison gas, rat filled trenches, relentless artillery, murderous machine guns and loss of friends and comrades, it is a tribute to Blunden's mind that he could take the time and remind us of the resolute qualities of nature. It also gives us an opportunity to get a sense of what soldiers on that front may have experienced by way of gettting away from the battles and wondering how they still lived. From the Somme offensive - a terrible slaughterhouse in its own right - Blunden is moved to Ypres just in time to be part of the Third Battle of Ypres. In this battle the blunders, the rain, the mud, the death, the confusion are everywhere on display. Fortunately Blunden survived it all and was able to chronicle this sad, sad war in a most poetic manner.

Blunden set out to be honest, not to embellish, to tell it like it was. And succeeded magnificently. As others have commented, it can feel like hard going compared with Graves or Sassoon - there are some rather obscure references and tangents; but if read with the necessary patience - that is to say, with respect for the way in which Blunden has clearly measured every word a dozen times in his quest for accuracy - it is a deeply rewarding book, and takes one down into the gutter-like trenches, the putrid mud and the thudding nightmare of minenwerfers and nine-fives like no other. A book that absolutely cannot be rushed.

I bought this book due to the author's being a poet thinking that only a poet could best write of great war and trench experience. The quality of writing is very good with passages of excellence. An area of frustration was his reticence of his own experiences. Two of special note was failing to mention how he earned the military cross (possibly this was not to be covered in this book) and another was the landing of a dud artillery round near him with no personal reaction.

The writing is too flowery for what it is about. There are times that it is difficult to imagine that he is in a battlefield of carnage, waste, and mud rather than out on a rambuctious hunting party. He seemed to be somehwat disconnected from the fighting; he rarely mentioned his own emotions or fears and his descriptions of battle are somewhat vague. If you don't reagrd it as a book about WWI and think of it as strictly literature it can be a pleasant summer-evening read.