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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
More serious, September 26, 2002
This book continues the 'Sword of Honor" trilogy begun with Men at Arms. Halberdier Guy Crouchback returns from Africa chastened, but still anxious to serve his country in its time of need. Dismissed from his regiment due to his complicity in the death of his friend Apthorpe, Guy is now assigned to a Commando unit. As part of a patchwork group called Hookforce, X Commando reaches the island of Crete just in time to cover the retreat and embarkation of the regular Allied forces, and are left with orders to surrender to the enemy after the other groups have left.Once again, Waugh points his dry English wit at the freshly-commissioned British officers of WWII to amusing effect, while still making serious points about the readiness of British forces and the military suitability of Britain's gentry. For example, one running gag is an officer frantically rushing to headquarters only to find that the commander doesn't know what to do with him. The comedic high point is when Trimmer (a former hairdresser) is sent on a largely pointless mission by officers who are desperate to score a success - any success - in order to improve public perceptions of their unit. Operation Popgun goes awry when the sub gets lost and accidentally stumbles into enemy territory, and when a sergeant, acting without orders, blows up a supply train, a clever reporter manages to describe the mission as a dramatic success, rather than the comedy of errors that it actually was. More serious are the concluding sections that describe various characters' arduous withdrawal from Crete. While there may be some black humor in these scenes, they seem to played more for dramatic effect, to show how men react to such harrowing situations. Although Major Hound, Guy, and Ivor Claire each make different choices, one can scarcely say that one was really better than the other. Readers who enjoyed Men at Arms will find this volume rather darker, with less emphasis on hijinks and more on military action. Men at Arms really should be read first, however, because this volume assumes a certain familiarity with Crouchback's personality and military record, as well as some of the minor characters who are referred to frequently. If you read Men at Arms but didn't really care for it, be forewarned: this book isn't any funnier, but delves a little more deeply into the misery of war.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
War And The Solitary Man, February 16, 2004
The period of time between the fall of France and the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union justifiably has been called Britain's finest hour, when the island nation stood alone against Hitler and the Axis powers. Trust Evelyn Waugh to write a novel about this effort that manages to find more to mock and be acerbic about than to be proud of. Amazingly, as fiction "Officers And Gentlemen" not only works but shines, and is a gripping account of how one fellow's war may or may not jibe with the larger political effort around him.In the previous volume of Evelyn Waugh's "Sword of Honour" trilogy, "Men At Arms," we met the pallid Guy Crouchback, heir to an Anglo-Catholic aristocratic line of no special importance, struggling to find some personal meaning in the great conflagration that was World War II. Men At Arms is a mostly funny read, a comedy of errors and barracks farce, with some dramatic detours that accumulate in frequency and gravity by story's end. "Officers And Gentlemen" has a starker break point between the humor and the drama, which occurs after Guy and his unit is sent to Crete to cover the British retreat there. The Crete section of this story is harrowing, affecting reading; a collection of isolated moments that never quite gel because they are not supposed to. Waugh based this on his own similar experience doing very much the same thing in that battle, and throws up a dozen or so vignettes that only barely pierce through the fog of war: Radios thrown over the side of a ship; a soldier disguising himself as an officer so he can flee the front easier, a commander too tired to give orders to his newly-arrived reinforcements, a vigil beside a dead soldier lying nameless in a desolate village. Virtually every soldier Guy meets is lacking in some way, particularly a by-the-book brigade major named Hound and a dashing but callow sort named Claire who are among his closest companions. While Stukas dive and rain havoc on the shattered troops, Guy tries to figure out what he's supposed to be doing in this awful place. When he finally gets his orders, they are to do the unimaginable: Surrender. Before Crete, "Officers And Gentlemen" is a fairly funny read, not in a laugh-out-loud way so much as invigorating. The opening part features the aerial Battle of Britain, sacred stuff in the history of the conflict, but leavened here by the fact it is being observed by two tipsy officers inside a private club who watch nearby buildings burn and try to agree on which painter the resulting effect is most reminiscent of: "Not Martin. The skyline is too low. The scale is less than Babylonian." Then its off to the Inner Hebrides, and the mythical island of Mugg, with its rocky outcroppings, its castle "indestructible and uninhabitable by anyone but a Scottish laird," and a troop of Commandos slowly going to seed. Guy struggles to prove himself worthy of this crew, even as he begins to wonder about their merit. War is human tragedy, and Waugh never loses sight of that or allows the reader to. Even light moments are interrupted by grim tidings, like the fate of a minor character aboard a ship of Italian internees sailing to Canada (based on a true incident). At the same time, Waugh doesnt wallow in sorrow or bathos. Even his toughest sections in Crete are unsentimentally and plainly presented. He doesnt expect our tears, or want them. He just wants to involve us in his personal take on mankinds greatest challenge of the 20th century, a take all the more valuable because its not at all what you might expect from World War II storytelling. The ending of the story, for example, when Britain no longer finds itself alone after Hitler attacks the Soviet Union, would be a cause for celebration in any other book, but for Guy (and Waugh) it is something else to mourn. His nations cause is besmirched by the fact it has taken on an ally every bit as diabolically totalitarian as the enemy. Such things make the novel tougher for others to take, but to me it points up the singularity and uniqueness of Waughs vision, which make all his writing, but particularly great works like this one, worth reading. As with the other volumes in Sword of Honour, (Men At Arms before and Unconditional Surrender after), readers wanting insight and context are well off visiting David Cliffes handy notes at http://www.abbotshill.freeserve.co.uk/home2.htm.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A memorable second installment in Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy, April 28, 2009
OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN is the second in the "Sword of Honour" trilogy by Evelyn Waugh, a trio of novels that some have acclaimed the best fiction produced by World War II (I personally would not go that far) and others have stated represent Waugh's best work (with which I tend to agree, although I haven't yet read everything by Waugh). The protagonist is Guy Crouchback, the last in the male line of an upper-class English family that proudly traces its heritage back for centuries but in recent generations has seen its fortunes dwindle. Still, as World War II opens, Guy finds meaning and comfort, and a guide for life, in the traditional values.
The first in the trilogy was Men at Arms ("MA"), and OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN ("O&G") begins where MA ended, without any appreciable pause or break. Indeed, those who have not first read MA might find O&G somewhat bewildering. But the character of O&G, for the first two-thirds of the novel, is markedly different than MA. The satire has a keener edge, and the humor is more frequent and less subtle. There are places where it approaches the "laugh-out-loud" sort of P.G. Wodehouse. The novel is elaborately plotted (again like Wodehouse), with a number of remarkable incidences of coincidence. Most of the novel could easily be classified as comedy, much of it surrounding the army's bureaucratic muddles and messes ("order, counter order, disorder"). In a sense, it is a British forerunner of "Catch-22". (I would be very surprised if Joseph Heller had not read O&G; published six years before "Catch-22", it most probably influenced Heller and the later novel, even if subconsciously.)
But everything changes about two-thirds of the way into the novel when Guy and his army group, Hookforce, arrive in Crete to help defend the island against the German invasion. The British forces are woefully disorganized and under-supplied, and by the time Hookforce is landed, the British army is being thoroughly routed. Guy's disillusionment becomes complete, and the novel becomes somber, with what humor there is of the black variety.
If anything, the pace of O&G is even more rapid than that of MA, with even heavier reliance on dialogue to carry portions of the narrative. O&G also is more British; it assumes in the reader greater familiarity with the British military organization and with British society and culture, so that many small points are unknown to at least this American reader 50 years later. Still, O&G is superbly written, and it is Evelyn Waugh's masterly command of the English language and English narrative that most commend the novel.
As between O&G and MA, I find it difficult to decide which is the better novel. Just as I did with Men at Arms, I round up a few fractions of a point and aware five stars to OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN.
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