Mr Owen Johnson

The Wasted Generation Mr Owen Johnson

Publisher Marketing: August, 1916 I am thirty this day, the twenty-ninth of August, 1916. The guns are roaring along the Somme front. Another great attack is on. The gray waves are passing over the top for the thousandth time and, for the thousandth time, hope is in the air once more. I feel it in the sudden optimism of the daily bulletin, in the groups in the market-place, in the little knot of evacues, here in a Savoyard courtyard, basking in the sun and studying the winding line of pins on the yellowed map of the front. "Brigadier David Littledale, Legion Etrangere, Croix de Guerre, wounded at Verdun, March 5th, shell wound in the shoulder and the leg, shell-shock and gangrene. Entered Val de Grace, March 21st, evacuated on Chambery, July 10th, 1916." The record used to hang at the foot of my bed beside the fever chart and the record of operations. From Chambery, here into a rest area, to put on flesh again, to quiet my jumping nerves and to fatten up for the return to the front. To-day I have no desire to hasten that return. I write it down frankly, -as I intend to keep honesty with myself and my impressions. There are other times when I feel the tug and fret to be back. It is my mood to-day, as war is a succession of unrelated moods.