some like president obama serve for a short period but they do not invest themselveses on capitol hill. that is one of the most distinctive features of who he was as a politician. >> when does the book come out? >> january 2015. >> each week, and american history tv sets in on a lecture with one of the nation pro college professors. you can watch the classes here every saturday evening at 8 p.m. and midnight eastern. next ian isherwood looks at how world war i soldiers interpreted their war experiences. he uses works by three writers, hemingway, toest look at how soldiers cope with civilian life to deal with physical and mental trauma

during the war. this class is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> all right, we will go ahead started. we are looking at postwar disillusionment. we will begin this class with a way i have never begun world war memories. we're going to begin it with a canonical column. the column that comes out of the first world war and is reprinted in anthologies over and over again to show us something of warexperience of the great and its memory. you will undoubtedly recognize it because you read it for today fro class.

need, coughing like pegs, we cursed through sludge. still on the hunting, we turned our backs and toward our distant >> began to trudge. men marched asleep many have lost their boots, but slinked on bloodshot. all lying. , outstrippedtigue 5 9's. fittingly, we have a pop mocked -- pockmarked, shell torn landscape behind the soldiers. in ecstasy of fumbling. fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, but someone was still yelling out and stumbling then through the misty panes and thick green light as in a green

sea, i saw him drowning in all my dreams he lunges toward me, choking, drowning. smothering dreams, you too could pace if you could hear at every jolt, the blood, gargling from the thrust -- frost corrupted lungs, my friends, you would not tell with such high zest to children desperate glory -- that it is sweet and fitting to die for one fro country. these are of course the words of wilfred when, written as it was ongoing.

himself was a junior officer in the british army in the first world war. often reprinted words and they tell us something about .he totality of war they also show us something clinical -- polemical. in argument here, especially in the last verse where he talks .bout men dying for nations the mistakes of this one man's becomes very high indeed in his eyes. this gives us a sense of what nations ask men to do in war. to complicate this, i want to give you a quotation from another war rider, a patriotic novelist who, like wilfred owens, was on the western front. his name is ian the hague.

he was reflecting in the 1930's about war box -- books. he writes -- , we havest 10 years been submerged by a flood of so-called war books, that depicts the men who fought as brutes and beast, dissolution, drunken, and godless. some of these works are just --inary dull dirts he is not referring to wilfred owen as builder, but sensationalized war novels. he says we do not need to worry about these sensationalized accounts, but others are undoubtedly sincere. they are genuine. their object is obvious and war inandable, to paint such horrible colors that no one will ever fight again. you can certainly see that in

owen's column and you can see it in so much of the literature. so far, in this class, we have approached the topic of war and individuals, but also wore's reputation, and what i will simply call war's story. works in culture and how historians approach that story within two frameworks. using case studies that we have spent time with all semester war, of courseil fog around us in the fields of gettysburg, and more recently, our discussion about combat experience in the first world war, we have been able to recognize certain similarities within the cultural narrative that are created by people who home, theyto come

survive conflicts and remember them afterwards. some central questions we have exampled are, what motivates people to fight in wars? what sustains soldiers on campaign or at the front? how do soldiers cope with the experience of war? how did they change as a result of what they witness? in this afternoon fro class, how do they show change? how do they write about it? how are memories created and articulated on paper? our case study this afternoon is the first world war in british and american memory, and we are talking about the impact on individuals and the much larger question of the memory of the war within british and american literature. you have read some examples about how the war impacted individual soldiers and how they

treated it as a creative trope. of this creative enterprise -- their problems, their memoirs, their short stories -- these were created out of the aftermath of violence, violence on the --tern front. ittheir work their work demonstrates for a something of the war's memory, but we should use caution in using the term memory. as we have talked about kind of ad not seem in the class, individual memories are not the same thing as a collective consciousness. although individual writers are held up as being the voice of a generation or the experience of the war or the one book you need to know to know something about this or that conflict, these works exist within particular context. they work for particular

audiences. a good caution is a reminder of the way we have examined the british war poets. medicine --as had a significant impact on the way the british view the first world war. look at this as a tragedy, a wilfred owenization of the first world war. impact through the lens of doomed youth. doomed youth, lost generation, what ever grandma moniker we want to use. this is another one of those ioblematic lenses that believe we should remove from our world one glasses. we need a new prescription for the war's memory. we are going to be more aggressive -- we should cut out

the cataract off disillusionment and with clear eyes view the war generation. afternoon,udy this war literature released in the 1920's, has to do with the value of literature to show us the emotional impact of war. we should have no doubt as to this value. but we should still, as exercise good old-fashioned skepticism as to whether literature is an effective way of interpreting complicated historical experiences. we are trying to get at the of the notion of disillusionment. how we use it interchangeably with disenchantment, as war writers of this. did. it is a cultural trope. but why did it become the dominant voice to emerge from the experiences of the tension is -- trenches? our discussion

this afternoon, you should all emerge questioning the way novels, memoirs, poems, films, made-for-tv miniseries, etc. impact the way we view history. you know that history is often times framed by the way social groups choose to remember certain events. and we see this in the way that we remember conflict. the civil war is oftentimes as a redemptive national tragedies. and there are problems with doing so. the first world war is seen as bloody shambles, the lost generation, a precursor to the false starts, leading to the second world war, which is seen by the americans as noble victory. the greatest generation. something that cements the rise of american power before vietnam. vietnam, seen as a political mistake.

shamer, disillusionment, coming from that war. the oliver stone interpretation of vietnam. each of these conflicts are of course complex. the way we remember them, we sometimes become victims of our own narrative productiveness as we attempt to understand their vastness, their meaning, to own identities. sometimes we cut corners with the historical past. there is something very likable doing this. very much so. it is comforting. but if you know anything about history, it's not comfortable. it is messy. i was talking to one of you during office hours last week. how frustrating it is. and it may me very happy. not so much the student, i

think. history is messy. historians, that is our role, to get to the heart of things, to push back against easy generalizations. do when we enter cleo's garden. so, let us leave cleo's garden and going to the murkier trenches. the first world war, as you know, was a global conflict. it was waged by empires. it was bought in many different theaters. an anglo-american memory it is remembered primarily by its principal theater, the western front. the combat experience in the western front was brutal. theirrs adapted to experiences with surprising resilience. most who served in the trenches, most who served in the west return home afterwards. although of course many poor physical and mental scars of their war service.

when the war ended in 1918, it was widely thought by the allies to be a victory over the central powers. in the decades that followed, the great war's hard-fought legacy was internationally remembered in thousands of ways. it was remembered in stone. it was remembered in bronze. it was remembered in what is the subject of this class on paper by those who lived through it. are meantr monuments to convey certain messages to the public, and they all have similar kind of language about sacrifice, about national virtue, about causes, tributes to comrades, etc., war books have a memorial purpose. they convey the sentiments to the public at large. they are a form for doing so. hands --in the

hands of the writers, the poets is about personal experience. to memoirs are also written say something greater than the collection of war anecdotes, greater than war stories. the first first world war generated hundreds of american and british war books. many written by veterans, struggling to find a way to tell their story. some of the1920's, best-known of these books were written and published. quiet on the western front," "goodbye to all that," "a farewell to arms." today we are questioning the way three authors interpreted the war. more specifically, how veterans interpreted their own oncoming. robert graves,

whose "goodbye to all that" we have been discussing and struggling through this week. ernest hemingway, which says something interesting about the american soldier coming home. the third, much well -- much less well-known known, an essay, the epilogue to a war book written in 1929. through these three accounts, we hope to get through something, whatkind of impression of the war memory looks like in the late 1920's to americans and britons who lived through it. like to start with robert graves. graves, i think is the closest to us, so we should probably start with him. i have put up a quote here from cyril falls.

it was a british historian who avidly reviewed war books in the 1920's for the times literary supplement. i rather liked him because he compiles his war book reviews into a rather slim book called he gives a" in which paragraph reviewing all of them that come out after the first world war. and he reviewed robert graves as outdbye to all that" came in 1929. he reviewed it as such. justly claimbeen to be excellent. they are. in fact, among the few books of this nature that are of real historical value. leaves aude, however, disagreeable impression. one might gather that thousands of men instead of a few hundred were executed, and it suicides were as common as blackberries.

he is, in short, another example of an intellectual, whose intelligence into the war penetrates a much shorter distance than that of the plain man. a caustic review of robert graves. when we left off with robert graves, we we had him still in the trenches. last week, we examined graves serving in the western front. he witnesses -- he witnesses the amazingrds as screwup of the british army, and then he does another battle where he is gravely wounded. more than gravely wounded. or ats in that battle, least that is how it is reported back to the family. graves says at the time, i am not dead, but thank you for publishing something. in theves is wounded

trenches. he comes back and is recuperating back in england. he and he starts to think more on his military service. last week we talked about the type of soldier robert graves is. how would you summarize robert graves as a soldier, do you think? how would you characterize him? laura? >> he did not fall into a regular group of doughboys. from the the fringes older soldiers. he was an outsider, which we saw from his life earlier. anmy he seems a bit of outsider. in the charterhouse, on the western front he seems to be an outburst -- outsider. he does not fit in with his regiment. you get that in the subtext of what he is saying. robert graves is an intellectual

outsider. he is not a great team player. you see a little bit of that. little bit of an outsider. how does he view his war experiences? how is he changing during the war, do you think? kevin, what do you think? he views it as a transformative experience where he is an outsider at the beginning of his life. he continues to be so during the war, but he also learns to get along with people a little better. to theble to buy and regimental history. he takes a lot of pride in the group of men he is serving with, even if he is not necessarily the most liked figure. it gives him a new experience he is able to put to use. a graves appears to be surprisingly, slightly reluctant, good soldier. he deeply loves his regiment. he admires many of the men he served with. he is able to recognize her

relic qualities and a lot of the action he sees that the western front. at the same times, graves is very conscious of lampooning what he thinks his military idiocy, and he talks a lot about, you know, kind of the british army, the british army's officialdom and how the british army is screwing up the war as it is ongoing. he is able to talk about the great heroism of his own regiment, this great sense of esprit de corps of the royal welsh fusiliers, but at the same is not ideal on the western front. when i say the words conduct is not a deal -- ideal, how do you think his opinions are shifting and changing toward the notion of the war? memoirt section of his is largely about graves coming out of the trenches and trying to deal with homecoming. trying to create a life after the war, ok?

how those graves are just? how do you reconcile this war experience with an idea homecoming? what do you think? what do you think? what is your impression of him? yes, laura. >> eventually he tries to pick up where he left off. he goes back to oxford, even though he does not really finish it. it seems like it is a bit of a rough transition going back to civilian life. to you talk about him trying go back into officers training before that and now he thought he would be able to get right back in was much more difficult. he kept having flashbacks to earlier parts of the war. wellid not work out too either. >> right, graves comes back with

a case of shellshocked, right? he had to devise coming back with these memories of the war and gives us all kinds of examples of this. not being able to answer a telephone for the fear of a shock coming from it. commandeering private peoples cars as they are passing on country lanes. militarylanguage, style language, even though he has an infant at home. he changes that. everyone has to change that eventually. graves changes that. this is a. of adjustment -- this is a comingof adjustment back. he marries pretty quickly during the war and in the last third of the book, he is discussing this idea of trying to make a normal life. but would you consider his life a normal life? would you consider robert graves's homecoming to be typical of british veterans? yes? morethink it was a little

intellectual than most of them coming back you really did struggles. he drives oxford, is going to egypt to do some teaching, which does not turn out to be that great. also, he is married. his wife is 18, i think. he is 22. they have four children fairly quickly. i think he is really struggling. it is typical for the veterans to struggle, but i don't see -- i don't think you see a lot of them going to oxford and egypt to teach. >> right. >> for a way he is overcompensating for lost time. he does a lot of things -- he tries to do all of this fairly quickly, like going to oxford and taking the job in egypt. it was like he was trying to make up for lost time. >> yeah, yeah, i would agree with that. >> i totally agree with laura. i think something he tried to do, just as she was saying, he

was trying to recover this lost time, and he is also trying to redeem himself intellectually. like, i am going back to england. i am going to redeem myself. i am going to go to oxford and i am going to restart my life and hopefully progress. >> yeah, natalie? on thes going to say small, day-to-day scale, his experiences are more aligned with a lot of the typical british soldier coming home, the fact that he does react to a everyday items in a new and kind of almost frightened way. affects histhat it everyday life seems slightly more typical than extraordinary going to oxford. yeah, you do see the struggle for normalcy that happens with graves. on one hand he does go to oxford and finds oxford to be full of ex serviceman, right?

full of young officers going back and getting an education. also people in transition. charles carrington, it he went to oxford around the same time as graves. there are a lot of ex officers. he runs into and becomes a super te lawrence, right? he runs into him and is hanging out with him. why do you think he is putting that in his book? >> name dropping. >> name dropping. so both you said at the start of the book he wanted to include things that would make it more lawrence was so popular. >> yeah, he is like the avengers, iron man. worldes out of the first war as this middle eastern adventure hero. and graves puts him in. he says kind of snidely later on, he puts them in to sell more books,

but it is pretty apparent that graves really, really likes hanging out with lawrence. he has this tendency to be an individualist unless he is hanging out with someone uber- special. these just seem to be the kinds of people he gravitates toward though. it is non-characteristic of graves to name drop t.e. lawrence. he has been doing that throughout the entire book. >> right, he is done that through the rest of the book. he is sitting with tom as a party, talking about poetry. . lawrence.e with t.e he is talking to sassoon, helps them out when he is going to be court-martialed. all of these great, great british literary figures and he is putting himself in their world, because he was in their world. he was hanging out with t.e.

lawrence. he wrote a biography of them that sold pretty well during this time. a small biography. we can summarize and say "robert graves loves t.e. lawrence." loves riding about him. -- right thing about him. he does things that are individual -- he is still riding war poems. he is trying to make a living by his pen. bohemian lifehis with his wife. they're trying to run a shop, etc.. and he is doing things that are pretty normal, ways he is trying to restart his life. he gets married. he has children. he assesses over things like diapers, money. so, he does try to have very much a normal life. when he leaves oxford and he

goes off to cairo, he is trying his hand at a professional life as a teacher. does not go well though, right? goes back to becoming a saysr, and eventually he goodbye to all that. what do you think he says about british war memory? i got to tell you, i don't know the answer to this question, and i've been struggling with this for a long time. i always ask students, what are we supposed to get from graves? i can't figure it out yet. i need you to try to help me figure this out. what is the take away of this man's autobiography? his experiences in the war? >> actually looking at how the guys in the trenches, who would have been noncommissioned officers, the leaders on the ground and in the trenches who are really making a movement,

whereas the higher echelons of the british army -- but the ones in the regiment going through all of these he is mores, disposed towards them than some of the officers. interest -- i find val's answer very interesting. anybody know why? to paraphrase -- if i do this inaccurately, throw your pen at me, ok? what she is saying, graves is showing us something about how military life works on the western front. the war is being fought by junior officers. in the words of charles carrington "it is a sub all turn's war." it is a war being waged on the

front lines. graves is trying to show us that. he is trying to show a something of spirit or spree to court within these small units. i find this really interesting. i think there are people out there who would pushback against what val is saying and say, hang on, raves does not redeem anything in the war. but i think they might not be listening to her as close as they should be. what she is saying is, though heroismikes to lampoon or military hierarchy, he does not lampoon the notion of hair was him of individuals, right -- right? of individuals, he likes a lot of traditional martial things. you think that is a paradox? yes? >> i certainly think it is a reflection of himself and his

life before as an intellectual. of theepresentational split in classes and how that is parallel to the military. he is certainly doing that. i think it definitely shows. somewhat of a commonplace in the british army, having that rigidity in social class, as well as in the military. >> ok, that makes sense. that makes a lot of sense. you are approaching the memory of graves is rather nuanced. is that what i am getting? raves is more complicated. kevin, you're shaking your head -- graves is more consultative. kevin, you're shaking your head. comes out, people like falls only see one side of robert graves. they see the name dropping charterhouse school boy with a bad attitude. what they are overlooking to is tryinge is graves

to show something about battle. trying to show that this war is a little bit different. a little bit different in the way it is being fought. and within an elite regiment like the royal welsh, what val said is essentially right. it is being fought in this traditional way where morale matters, more than patriotism, more than anything else. comradeship seems to matter most in the trenches to graves. so we are walking away with a different impression of what the war's memory looks like. let's turn our attention to ernest hemingway and "a soldier's home." now hemingway was in the first world war. he was in the red cross. he served in italy. he was wounded in italy while

serving in the red cross, hit by wasench mortar, and severely wounded and had major recoverns on his leg to from his wounds. so, you served as an ambulance , andith the red cross after he was wounded, he came back home. so, he is a little different than graves. he is not, you know, a four-year veteran of the war. he is not serving in an infantry regiment. he is serving in a different way. is the quote we have here from his novel "a farewell to arms." i think you are reading it at the moment, aren't you? >> yes. >> this comes from "a farewell to arms," a novel that he writes that kind of sort of describes real experiences. it is not a novel.

it is based on his service in italy and he was serving in italy during the war and the protagonist in it, frederick henry, in sub getting blown up in wounded in the same way that hemingway does. but hemingway puts in this one is frequently it in anthologies, because is hemingway sharing wisdom he gains from his war experience about how war changes men and the first world war. what he writes is -- "i was always embarrassed by the war's sacred, glory, and sacrifice, and expressions in vain. we had heard them, sometimes sending in the rain, almost out of earshot, so that only be shouted words came through, and he had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by bill posters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and i see nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the

sacrifices were the stockyards at chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. ofical hemingway -- lots ands. thee were the names of places. abstract word such as glory, honor, her edge were i've seen alongside the concrete names of , regiments, and dates. he is try to say these big abstract words that you see on war monuments, they are all hollow to soldiers who go through war. instead what they are focusing on are more pragmatic things. survival. military objectives. living through it, ok? home,"er's "

he examines a veteran returning home. going back to the midwest. coming back home and trying to to civilian life. what is that homecoming like? natalie? >> it is really difficult. he is, as you said, i did not get the sense that he was really expressive before the war, but we certainly get the sense that when he comes home, he has a really hard time relating to others, being outgoing, having genuine interest in a lot of things that are mundane, like going to watch his sister play indoor baseball. it is just, compared to his experience and the war, it is kind of trivial and he is not yet dealt with the trauma of the war. i think we can see that the most

in the scene with his mother where she asks him if he loves her, and he says no. he always hasthat to try to console her, because the civilians can't necessarily deal with a soldier's experience, so the soldiers kind of have to alter what they say to pacify, because nobody can relate to them. that was convoluted. sorry. >> no, that is not convoluted at all. you said a number of things we can point on. trauma, the feeling of alienation, cruelty with the mom. those cruelves lines. "no, i don't love you." quintessential hemingway. and tellse comes home their experience, and by the time he comes home, they do not like to hear it anymore. he bottles everything up inside. he can't really express himself.

>> i love that scene, right? jacob? people willtime listen is when he is exaggerating his war experience. he does not like that because it is not true. public is just infatuated with the idea of the extremes. >> there is a sense of entitlement and it, you know? when he talks about he does not want these consequences. it is interesting how that comes out. this guy is a marine. because of the elite nature of the marines, it is almost like this leaves me to believe comes from what the service was like. you are so elite that you get certain things or -- >> he does want some kind of recognition, right? at he finds himself in competitive landscape. everyone else has come home. he comes home pretty late.

of course with his homecoming, all of the war stories have been sold, and most of them have been lies, that he found. that is not what service was like. so, if you want to his own voice to be heard, he needs to tell a bigger lie. he hates himself for doing it, right? of, or he becomes apathetic from doing it, so he stops doing it. but he just wants to talk about his experiences because he has found that they are good for him to talk about. is an interesting meditation on memory and war books and this idea that memory is in him perfect thing, and i think it is hemingway, so of course he says that very elegantly. listened to, you have to lie. it is curious, because then you have to approach most, if not all memory sources as kind of lie, but talking about a broader truth. it is interesting, because there is a really big debate going on

with memory studies because it is like an exaggeration or a lie or you misremember things. i think that hemingway really gets at that concept. and then when soldiers do tell the truth, it is not what the public wants. do you love me, do you love your mother. no, i don't. not what i want to hear, so i'm going to cry until you tell me otherwise. i think it is an interesting observation on memory studies as a whole. >> of course, there is the parallel between the little mother's story in gravesend deal lying to the mother. i think what natalie is saying is really interesting, kind of more broadly, because it is a difficult thing whenever you're dealing with memory sources to figure out -- and kevin, i was talking to you actually during office hours about this, and we were expressing our frustration

trying to figure out, well, when is robert graves lying? what is he fabricating? why is he fabricating? surely he is conscious he is doing it in certain instances. men are not actually using the water from their machine guns to boil tea, one of the examples he gives, right? out machine tapping gun bullet strafing according to song rhythms, right? he is kind of fabricating the stuff. but he is doing it for a narrative purpose, to show us something bigger, i think. it is interesting, natalie, you should bring this up. there is a quote from guy chapman. he was like cyril falls and that he was interested booksding a lot of war and compiling them.

and he compiles this book called in 1937.y" it is an international compendium. germans, a lot of the british. it, and the introduction, he says the nearest context we have with truth are the accounts of eyewitnesses. he says that they matter far more as historical accounts or be farg else, they will more lasting in terms of the war's impact. chapman was smart enough that accounts by eyewitnesses are, of course, subject to inaccuracy. writeall, when memoirists a memoir, they are constructing a story. and like you all do when you are relating the best weekend you have ever had to your friends, you are cutting corners with the story.

you are telling it for narrative of facts. after all, it is not going to sell if you don't, right? a, hemingway is writing story. this is fiction. but he is hoping to show a something more significant about the way people remember the war, what they are bringing home from it. kevin? that hisinteresting character, given all that, is so interested in waiting for all of the histories to come back, it doesn't even as chapman is saying these will be the memories of the war that will really last, the soldier himself , the character soldier is true., no, this isn't i want to wait until all of this stuff comes out to my so i can put myself on the map where i was then and understand what role i played in the greater war. >> yeah. natalie? >> yeah, that segment reminded

me -- and i put it in the margins of the sheet -- keegan is a battle, in that -- it very emotional story, the eyewitness, the flesh witness that we are going to remember later, but you also need to have that broader context, and you just don't get that from someone in the trenches. the individual in the war. you'd don't get the bigger picture. it is good to have both, both of the war impacted the individual, but then you need that context. >> i think it is really he issting, too, when looking through the map sent to narrative, he designates himself -- i was a good soldier. why do i have to lie to get attention from people? my story is important enough that it should be told and people should look at it. i was a marine.

that right there is the real ordeal by fire for a lot of these marines during world war i, and for him, i think it is really tough for him. and the fact that he is coming back home and the only thing that has changed for him and the community is the girls have gotten older. i think he has trouble -- why isn't my story importance? it is huge. it is huge to the context of the war. >> yeah. it is interesting, kind of military history, as a way to insert himself back into history. you read that piece by daniel hynes at the beginning of the semester about the importance of soldiers' riding, showing they were the man who word there. and one of the things he is trying to show -- people right war memoirs so they can feel part of history.

they can tell people, i was there when great events were going on. he wants to do that to. letfamily will not really him, but he wants to do it as well. depending on what that soldier experienced, it is really going to influence what and how they portray what they saw. even if there are specific lies or stretched truths, what you're getting at is the thing that they found most important or what people might want to hear the most off. at the same time, it is important to look at why they chose this is why they did not choose that. that is something that is even more telling and in the sense of civil war regimental history -- pennsylvania pops into my head the most. just as there is a monument placement here at gettysburg. at the same time though, it is the idea being remembered as

honorable and just the terms of how you want to be remembered. >> yeah. definitely. that is great. and we are here at gettysburg college. we can work the civil war and if we need to. this is really great analysis. this is really well done. when the story is read, it is thatas -- the one word natalie was using. soldier trauma. the feeling of alienation from family. they interpret this, they interpret the struggle. do you see that as the take away from the story? do you see wider importance? a question i love to ask all of you -- if you're explaining the story to someone who does not know anything about the first world war, how would you explain in a few sentences? run-on sentences, like

hemingway, right? [laughter] and it was good. i caught the fish and i ate the fish and he was delicious and i caught the fish. i threw my lineup. i caught the fish. i gutted the fish. i ate the fish. the fish was good. it as ald describe soldier coming home and learning the skills he learned around him were no longer working for him when he was home, so he felt kind of out of place not because of the war, not the war itself, but rather the homecoming really changed things about him. >> that is a good separation there, right? between the war itself and the coming home. girls haircuts are different, but he is not really interested in that. mother makes him the same breakfast and wants him to be in the same place he was before the war, but he's not anymore.

kristin. >> i think it is interesting that hemingway is trying to him as the victim of coming home. i know carrington was mentioned as well. it was after the war he started to get this disillusionment and confusion. i feel like hemingway is sort of following that in a way. he is coming home, he is confident in his war experiences, he was a good soldier, and then because he came home to a community that really had no interest in his to takeymore, he had that the solution that idea and he had to kind of run with it. in his own storytelling. but i feel like he, as well as carrington, both look at the return home as that victimization of the soldiers.

>> that is where it happens. ok. he comes home, people don't understand him. he has changed. he comes back a year later. then understand the people who were left there. they are in their own world and he is in his own world or it i think hemingway does a tremendous... i mean, this whole story. this is kind of a unique family. the methodists call the mob, say we're all in this kingdom together. god's kingdom. -- the methodists call the mom. what has happened here? i think it is a real struggle on both sides. forever for him to let his dad take the car out, right? a guy who fought for his country. say it is a guy who

is dealing with the conflicted nature of making a decision to go to war and then looking for validation, because that is what he wants. he really just want someone to recognize him and the only thing -- that willognize not recognize him, it will recognize the sixth marines. it is really interesting because everybody wants him to move on and he does not have time to move on with anything he is experiencing. and also, it is kind of common when you look at certain memoirs that make it to the big stage. if anyone has seen "the pacific," recently, eugene sledge, sledge comes home and fs about for a few months. it is interesting that it is unique, but it is something that we see played out in reality,

too. >> yeah. there is a little bit of a difference between the second world war and the first world war. a little bit of a difference. i mean that as a delicate way of saying there is a big difference, right? not a little difference. a big difference. the second world war was not at risk of being forgotten in the 1950's. and you get the impression from hemingway in the mid-1920's when this is written, people do not want to talk about the war anymore. do you think that this story had something to do with the way americans remember the first world war? >> i think it says something about sensationalism and war, and that those who did not participate, meaning these civilians left at home, especially in the u.s. where the war did not, here -- did not the civilians did

not have a context of this ultimate suffering the soldiers went through. and to the people at home waiting for their men to come home, they came back, it was a sensationalism in the sense of, oh, my gosh, you guys were heroes in the war. now let's get back to our lives because i have been waiting for you. this idea of civilians waiting, it kind of steamrolls soldier memory, because the soldiers are not waiting in the same sense that the civilians are. so, their experiences are, great, congratulations. >> i am stealing that title. "steamrollers of memory." [laughter] [laughter] talking about sensationalism, right -- this is what i am thinking. in world war i, there is nothing sensational about american

involvement. yeah, you look at history books nowadays and you think that americans are caught on earth for saving everyone, but in the context of what was happening, it americans were really small. that may have been in the papers for a day or two, but other than that, there's almost nothing worth remembering, because there was no glorified american charge. using those words that hemingway says are hollow. >> and that is a question of scale. american involvement is much less than the involvement of other major players in the first world war. >> yeah, that is true, but i think as well that ignores the idea -- and perhaps this comes about later than the 1920's -- but this idea that america injures the war and bam. it is done. we saved it for you guys. we have been sweating it out in the fields with black --

sweating it out in the fields -- >> trenches. >> yeah, this permit is is a move war. it is a little bit later, but america constructs their own exceptionalism into this idea of war, especially into world war i, where we came over, we saved it for you. now the world a safer democracy. we can all go home and enjoy our lives and freedom. is going back to earlier readings from the semester about how civilians really do not understand war. i don't think civilians could complement -- could comprehend how much soldiers had changed through their experience. you expect to hear the story once and move on, but that is not realistic. they have spent them a like grapes, maybe four years in the trenches. like graves,spent,

four years in the trenches. that changes here. >> it is interesting. the stories become important in the 1920's. there are a lot of return all veterans organizations that spring up. is of courselegion a classic example. americans getting together to share their stories with each other, because they feel like they can't share a lot of the stories with the civilian public or even family members. it is interesting, because you will run into hemingway -- whenever you have people talk about american war memory, hemingway is one of these things that comes. i think it is good for us to push back a little bit on the story, the way you have done now, and figure out, what is the heart of the story? disillusionment does not really fit in, or that word is too general to get at the heart of what hemingway is actually riding about. since i brought up the big d, let's bring up charles

carrington. wrote acarrington memoir that is no longer in print. he did write a kind of revised have history, have memoir called "soldiers from the war who are returning" which is still in print. it is the memory of a junior officer's serpas on the western front. it shows principally two battles. like so many british soldiers, he was at both of these battles and shows them in great detail. what makes the book really distinctive is carrington felt the need -- and he wrote his publisher about this, peter davis -- and he said i want to put an essay at the end of my book on the philosophy of war, and that became the essay you read, which was "on militarism."

this was not some kind of tome on here is what war is. this is an essay instead about generations and about war generations and how they are being interpreted. and it is an amazing memorial document. a document that engages with concepts of war memories, not only in britain, but baker war memories.- bigger war i am going to pull up 3 quotes from it. he writes that his intention for the book is to strike a responsive chord in the heart of some old soldiers who are tired of the uniform dissolution of most authors of war books. for it is time that the world remember that among the 15 million that serves, there were other types as well as the conventional prussian militarists and equally conventional dissolution that feminists. what he is saying is we have

created a polarity between militarists and disillusioned pessimists. most of us do not fit in with that. we are somewhere in between, right? he says soldiers were he says soldiers were not disenchanted by war, because war never offered them an enchanting prospect. they were just fed up. he had not wanted war but he engaged in it. he proposed to see it through. when circumstances arose and 19 -- in 1929 he would do it again. there were no great expectations going into the trenches. nobody naïvely looked at the war, and thought that this was going to be a good time. and when they got there, it was pretty terrible. he gives us this striking

statement of marshy alley. -- martiality. this does not fit in with what hemingway would say, the greater the battle, there is no limit to the triumph of the man who is not morally ruined by it. if i was a minister who said that by -- from a pulpit, you would all be scared. ruination, one word. >> i kind of have a little bit of a problem with the second quote. that that is a very disenchanted way of looking back on soldiers and war experiences, because i think that a lot of soldiers did go into the war, maybe not thinking that this would be so much fun, but

certainly thinking, let's go do this. i have looked a lot at prisoners of war, and how they engage with their war, and what i saw was that those, especially who were captured at the beginning of the conflict before they got into the trenches, when they were still above ground and had not engaged too much in battle, they still approached the war with this feeling that i have to get back to the front because i have to do my duty and fight for my country and i want to be anywhere but this prison. seems like a very enchanted way of looking at the war. and you contrast that to the end the battle really sucked. i would do it again but this was awful. it kind of goes against the idea the way of looking like

i did not go into the war with any illusion. did you? a little bit. natalie is being hard on charles carrington. he would probably yell at you. what is carrington getting at the heart of with this essay? int is he trying to show kind of a broad brush with this essay? them, he says in some nasty things about eric remark -- but he is getting at something very serious. think he is saying it is not the soldiers coming home who have this disillusioned idea theirhey come back, experiences were not that horrible, as we interpret it to be. instead they did have fun once in a while, but he blames the

journalist, he blames -- behind the trenches, he is blaming the people who are misinterpreting the war experience for the soldier, that we keep saying that world war i was absolutely horrible, it was an experience that no other group of soldiers ever had to do, but he is saying, everyone suffered. all soldiers suffer in war and we are not the exception. and we should not see world war i as the exception. >> that is interesting point that he brings up, where he is saying, he is saying that there is a generation of people who calledhe age of 25, he these people those who went off to war before their characters were formed. why do you think that he is so careful with this designation? the idea of the war generation?

why do you think that he is so careful? under the age of 25, before their character is formed. they went to war and then what happens in war? they are like him, they are 18. they are 19 when they are in battle. and then what happens, natalie? that experience forms the character that was not previously formed. >> it changes them. in many ways it creates the adults that they are. carrington, certainly his entire life was interested in the anthropological survey of his own war experiences. he goes back and re-examines where he fought. where he served and who he served with. trying to figure out his own personal history, to contrast that with his own memory.

he is a very interesting guy. but impart it is because he is so young when he goes off to war. within most of your age brackets. formed inter becomes the western trenches. so when the soldiers who are so young have this transformational experience, and they come home, they are talking in a different way. they are cynical and a bit rough around the edges. they are swearing a lot. they are a bit different. and society around the misinterpreting that as being disillusioned. done something to the souls of these men. saying, hang on, that is the wrong interpretation. carrington is creating his own alternative generational

narrative, which has its own problems. -- you can't be an absolutist and an anti-absolutist. but he is giving us an alternative, a different way of looking at the war through generations, a different way of looking at people who are coming home. bit moret a little forceful about it, i think. he mentioned something else that i find very interesting. indicated, crispin the first world war i, and all wars are bad, that is interesting but he says postwar problems are issues that are timeless. other nations that fight in war have problems adjusting after, coming together, figuring out what the wars were all about. he mentions specifically the american civil war.

a southern state is trying to readjust, and in this class we have talked a lot about cause,gy, about the lost for example and in other mythologies, and now we are engaging in the mythologies of the first world war. us a is trying to give bigger essay as to what is going war, how nation after they are trying to reconcile trauma, loss, trying to understand these things in terms of a national identity. in terms of who people are. what do you take away from charles carrington? that is what i get from it. is a lot else in here. jacob? says, look at who you are placing the blame on. it is very easy with the english

government and these politicians, where people came out to salute him but he mentioned, yes, these people had to support the war, the public good because they like to the politicians, and they elected to go to war and the men in the public signed up to volunteer for the war, so they come home and the public wants to place blame on someone. pacifists whohese say that war is a horrible thing, he doesn't knowledge that there are some -- he sees the majority of the public as fairweather pacifists, and he comes in with this critique that basically said it is very easy to be a pacifist when someone is not waving a gun in your face. we would come back and we would fight. >> that is very interesting and it is hard not to read the experience of the second world war into that. should take we

carrington on his own terms but you can't help but think that when he writes that in 1939, in 1929, he does volunteer and serve in the second world war. page re is this quote on 1919it is interesting that , the end of the war it was the moment of disenchantment. that the war itself wasn't and it goes back to the idea of, you won't be a pacifist if someone is running -- waving a gun in your face. like, we totally need to fight this war and it was after the war ended that this was a quiet change overall, postwar, people were like, does that mean we did not fight for anything because there was not a dramatic shift and people started to question why they went to war when, in fact during the war, they were completely for it.

>> we see something similar with hemingway's homecoming. we see that the piece is changing the way that people are actually viewing the war, that the time of readjustment -- that time of disenchantment to readjusting with civilian life is changing them -- the memory of the conflict. there is wisdom in that with what he is writing, and he is a person who has had a decade to think about these issues and reconsider them and write his opinion. examples point out 2 before we finish up. i think the quote will leave us in a good place. the first one is from someone you undoubtedly know, it comes from cs lewis. lewis, you know cs popular theologian, the oxford don and the writer of the

chronicles of narnia. memoirs, he talks about his war experience, i am surprised i did not dislike the army more, it was the testable. detestable. -- >> how does this fit into what we are talking about? does it?

i think of dorm life when i read this, kind of. talking about the war as an odious necessity, like carrington refers to this as a shipwreck. it is not something that the nation shows and was justified. >> it was simply something that was horrible, but we have to do it. carrington writes about this as a great shipwreck, he pushes that analogy too far. >> it also speaks eloquently of the idea that i am not really disillusioned at all. surprised i am not as disillusioned as people think that i should be and that is an interesting idea that not too many people write about. >> he does not write too much about it either. wounds, andis war

his memories affected him. there are people who described him as carrying those war memories with them, but he does not necessarily look back at them the way that a lot of people would. you were going to say something? >> the last bit about the fellow sufferers and how they shared the mutual understanding with each other, i think that it is especially poignant coming from cs lewis being from belfast. and understanding the sectarian differences between a lot of the individuals in that, without you actually have people on every side of conflict within each social class coming together, and experiencing this one mutual situation to fret over. >> that is essential.

and it plays into so many different memoirs that talk about the value of comradeship. even graves writes about this. we will in with guy chapman. this is a good place to end. we began with wilfred owen. i want to end with guy chapman. readirst quote that you earlier in the semester -- i want to remind you of it. this section of his memoirs in which he talks about watching a battalion, his battalion marching off to the front. he goes into this with both present and past, and view of things from the 1930's looking back into memory, and he recalls 1930, going back and looking at having this memory of men want -- walking off to the front. and you can imagine the dust kicking up behind them.

and chapman writes about how your life and death are nothing, no more than it is the next man -- the man planning the next attack. --will not make the world the world safe for your children. this is pretty disillusioning stuff. tribulation, and with the dirty devices of this ofld you have won the love these people and all we remember our your living faith, and we love you for being part of our spirit, that is not fitting in with the second half of the paragraph, guy chapman, why are you confusing us? what are we supposed to take away from that? what is the memory showing us? is it showing us anything?

>> experience and soldier sacrifice and the meaning behind it makes an impact on individual and not a national level, the individual sacrifice impacts the individual's life and the people in that life, and the army sacrifice impacts the nation. >> i think what he is trying to say is to leadership and the nation, your death is nothing and you are just a number. person,eality, as one you have changed everything. i think that the one person may whole,ing to the larger but to others, that you know, that you serve with, you mean everything. that this is a nice interpretation. army, is withe

the people chapman served with. second wartes a memoir, piecing it together in the late 60's and early 70's, published by his wife after he dies. with -- he talks about the idea that nobody dies for their country in a good way, line, theown for his pity of war. when --what olin -- oh owen is knwown for. notrites -- would probably like everything we said here today. my lost from it --

friends i knew for such a short time and the impoverishment of life, referring directly to the poetry if not the pity, to hell with your generalized pity. the fear he knew or the pains, but the faces and the few words of the men who were with him. we should embrace. just when we think we have a narrative worked out, just when we think we have a way of long,ning in short or sentences, what a historical source is, to summarize this in an easier and convenient way, that we will always find people

who are representing that war or pushing back against that experience in a way that will surprise the way that we have interpreted it. thank you very much. and i will see you all next week. >> you are watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. to join the conversation like us on facebook at c-span history. >> next on the civil war. confederate captain henry worse wirz was innry charge of andersonville prison camp where