The Western Front Association: furthering interest in the Great War 1914-18 | explore | learn | share

ISBN: 0571 09913 0  Softback 656pp
Published by Faber and Faber. 

The battered state of my copy of this book bears testament to the amount of times I have read it since purchasing it over 20 years ago. Originally published as 3 separate volumes, Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Sherston’s progress, the book is a classic addition to the literature of the Great War, and one of my personal favourites.
Siegfried Sassoon wrote the semi autobiographical volumes, following them with 3 more volumes which were more autobiographical; The Old Century and Seven More Years, The Weald of Youth, and Siegfried’s Journey.
Fox Hunting Man takes the orphaned George Sherston from the comfortable home he shares with his Aunt Evelyn to the Great War. Along the way the descriptions of life in rural Kent and Sussex ant the end of the 19th century are beautifully described. Young George plays a lot of cricket and is introduced to riding by his groom. This leads to hunting and point to point races. Schooling gets a brief mention, but the young Georges main activities in life were on the sporting field.
George joins the Yeomanry just prior to the outbreak of war as a trooper, and the life soon pales. A fall from a horse leads to him breaking his arm, and his eventual commissioning in the Flintshire Fusiliers. The volume ends after George has arrived in France and his service in the Bois Francais sector of the Somme. The loss of friends saddens him, and Sassoon’s homoerotic feelings for an officer are discernable. (By the time he wrote this volume, Sassoon was in a relationship with Stephen Tennant.)
The Second volume takes George Sherston to the 4th Army School at Flixecourt, through the battles of the Somme and Arras, and through his “Independent Action” of defiance which led him being admitted to Slateford war Hospital, where the second volume ends. Throughout the books, Sassoon had changed names, even of those who were dead, but he chooses to name Dr W H R Rivers, the anthropologist who is assigned as Sherston’s doctor. Strangely, Sassoon chose not to mention Wilfred Owen who was also an inpatient at Slateford. (Craiglockhart)
In the 3rd volume after his stay at Slateford, Sherston eventually returns to the army, and after a spell in Ireland which is mostly spent hunting, he is posted to Palestine where the narrative becomes a diary. Following the start of the Kaisers Battle in March 1918, he returns to France where he is wounded for a final time and his war is over. The book ends with Rivers visiting Sherston in hospital.
Readers who wish to find out more about Sassoon and his life before and after the Great War, including the writing of these works, are advised to consult the 2 volumes of biography by Dr. Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon, the making of a War Poet, and Siegfried Sassoon, The Journey From The Trenches.

Reviewer: Michelle Young