Read And We Go On Online

Authors: Will R. Bird

And We Go On (44 page)

BOOK: And We Go On
4.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

In her doctoral thesis, Monique Dumontet shows that the most damaging loss in
Ghosts
is the removal of the broad spectrum of voices heard throughout
And We Go On
, from that of Tommy (who largely disappears in the later version), to the Professor and the Student (who are entirely
excised from
Ghosts)
, to others who debate the war's justice, the ethics of killing, the fate of the human soul, and even the value of beauty.
2
The absence of a Socratic symposium in
Ghosts
greatly lessens the weight of the narrative and makes it a far less important work. And the lack of dialogue and the preponderance of monologue in
Ghosts
lend weight to Hugh Laming's question, “Did he never speak of poetry and music or was he deafened by the roar of guns?” As the reader has seen, Bird speaks often and eloquently of such things in the original version of his memoir. Perhaps the best assessment will be made by readers who compare
Ghosts
with
Go On
and then judge for themselves.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author is grateful to the University of Manitoba for travel funding to examine the Clarke, Irwin fonds in the William Ready Archives at McMaster University in Hamilton.

 

1
  Although Capt. P.A. Thompson had used the phrase after the war to criticize the general staff, his sub-title is more critical of the German High Command. See
Lions led by donkeys showing how victory in the great war was achieved by those who made the fewest mistakes
(London: T.W. Laurie, 1927). Who, then, were the “donkeys”?

2
  Those wanting further guidance may wish to explore the textual comparisons on offer in Dr. Dumontet's “Appendix” to her dissertation, “‘Lest We Forget': Canadian Combatant Narratives of The Great War,” which can be found online at
http://hdl.handle.net/1993/4246

Works Cited

Barker, Pat.
The Eye in the Door.
1993. New York: Dutton, 1994.

–
Regeneration.
1991. New York: Plume, 1993.

Bird, Will R.
The Communication Trench.
Amherst,
NS
: self-published, 1933.

–
Ghosts Have Warm Hands.
Toronto & Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin Co., 1968.

–
Private Timothy Fergus Clancy.
1930. Nepean,
ON
:
CEF
Books, 2008.

–
Thirteen Years After: The Story of the Old Front Revisited.
Toronto: Maclean's Publishing Co., 1932.

Bond, Brian.
The Unquiet Western Front: Britain's Role in Literature and History.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Child, Philip.
God's Sparrows.
1937. Toronto: New Canadian Library, 1978.

Clark, Alan.
The Donkeys.
London: Hutchison, 1961.

Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur.
The History of Spiritualism.
1926. New York: Arno Press, 1975.

Davies, Robertson.
Fifth Business.
1970. New York: Penguin, 1977.

Eksteins, Modris. “
All Quiet on the Western Front
and the Fate of a War.”
Journal of Contemporary History
15.2 (1980): 345–66.

Findley, Timothy.
The Wars.
1977. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 1996.

Fussell, Paul.
The Great War and Modern Memory.
New York & London: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Graves, Robert.
Goodbye to All That.
1929. 2nd ed. London: Penguin, 1960.

Harrison, Charles Yale.
Generals Die in Bed.
1930. Toronto: Annick Press, 2007.

Jünger, Ernst.
In Stahlgewittern.
1920.
The Storm of Steel.
Trans. Michael Hofmann. London: Penguin, 2004.

Khayyám, Omar.
The Rubaiyat.
Trans. Owen Fitzgerald. Edition unknown. First published 1859.

Noyes, Alfred.
The Loom of Years.
London: Grant Richards, 1902.

Owen, Harold.
Journey from Obscurity, Wilfred Owen, 1893 – 1918. Memoirs of the Owen Family.
London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1963–65.

Owen, Wilfred.
The Poems of Wilfred Owen.
Ed. Edmund Blunden. London: Chatto & Windus, 1931.

Remarque, Erich Maria.
Im Westen nichts Neues.
1928.
All Quiet on the Western Front.
1929. Trans. A. W. Wheen. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982.

Sassoon, Siegfried.
Diaries 1915–1918.
Ed. Rupert Hart-Davis. London: Faber & Faber: 1983.

–
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.
London: Faber & Faber, 1930.

–
Sherston's Progress.
London: Faber & Faber, 1936.

Scott, F.R.
The Great War as I Saw It.
1922. 2nd ed. Vancouver: Clark & Stuart Ltd., 1934.

Vance, Jonathan.
Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War.
Vancouver:
UBC
Press, 1997.

– “The Soldier as Novelist: Literature, History, and the Great War.”
Canadian Literature
179 (Winter 2003): 22–37.

Winter, Jay.
Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

BOOK: And We Go On
4.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Going Within by Shirley Maclaine
The Soldier's Song by Alan Monaghan
Diary of the Gone by Ivan Amberlake
The King's Agent by Donna Russo Morin
Rabid by Jami Lynn Saunders
Hanging with the Elephant by Harding, Michael
Code of the Wolf by Susan Krinard