Generals Die in Bed

"Generals Die in Bed" is an anti-war novel by the Canadian-American writer Charles Yale Harrison. Based on the author's own experiences in combat, it tells the story of a young soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I. It was first published in 1930 by William Morrow.

Plot summary

The novel starts off in Penetanguishene ,as a young unnamed soldier is about to depart with the Canadian army to fight the Germans in France. His squad consists of people with whom he builds close relations: Brown, Fry, Cleary, Anderson and Broadbent. The book quickly shifts to the trenches, where the protagonist’s perspective of war quickly changes as he faces the terror of war, along with the wounds and lice he has to deal with while resting after battle. Beginning with Brown, his comrades start to die. He soon is emotionally affected when he stabs a German soldier with his bayonet. His emotional status worsens with the death of his comrade Cleary. This event leads him to change his perspective of war and become more ruthless. Eventually he is rewarded a ten day vacation in England, where he comes to despise people for laughing at the war, while the soldiers are fighting so hard. During the first battle to take place after his return, there is an attempt to raid the Germans. Fry is injured and, dying on field, is ignored by the protagonist. In that battle, only the protagonist and Broadbent, who kills many Germans, live. After the amateurish way in which the battle was fought, they train for what will turn out to be the last battle of the war. They are told by a general that German U-boats have sunk one of their medical ships. As a result, the soldiers are eager to kill their enemies. Thanks to their training, they are successful in attacking the Germans. However, as they rush up their trench, the protagonist's foot is injured and he is unable to continue. As he searches for water, he comes upon Broadbent. Severely injured, one of Broadbent's legs is hanging by one strand of flesh. Moments later Broadbent dies from blood loss. The story cuts to a hospital train in which the protagonist is riding. The protagonist discovers that the Germans sunk the hospital ship because it contained weapons, and that the generals lied to the infantry so it would show no mercy to the Germans. Yet he is too weary from his traumatic experiences and his relentless struggle for survival, to feel any anger or resentment towards the authorities.

Major themes

At the core of "Generals Die in Bed" is the thesis that war is a futile and bloody endeavour in which men fight fruitlessly for ideals that turn out to be meaningless. Newspapers and "fighting parsons" spew patriotic slogans about "our" side in the war, without any sense of how horrible and traumatic trench warfare really is. Set up as brave and unconquerable heroes, the Canadian infantrymen turn out to be nervous, under-trained, inexperienced boys who enlisted without a fair sense of what they were getting into. Like the poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, or such European novels as Henri Barbusse's "Under Fire", "Generals Die in Bed" attempts to strip war of its romance and glamour, to show the real experiences of men at war.

Literary significance and criticism

"Generals Die in Bed" was an international bestseller upon its release, and was by far the most successful of Harrison's novels. The New York Evening Standard called it “the best of the war books”. The reception was lukewarm in Canada, however, because of scenes depicting Canadian soldiers looting the French town of Arras and shooting unarmed Germans (which amounted to a war crime). Former Canadian Expeditionary Force commander General Sir Arthur Currie, said that the novel denigrated the legacy of Canadians in the war. Harrison denied the allegation in a 1930 interview with the "Toronto Daily Star", praising Canadian soldiers and justifying his novel as an attempt to depict the war "as it really was."

After its initial success as part of the "war book boom" of the late twenties and early thirties, "Generals Die in Bed" was largely forgotten, until the Hamilton, Ontario publisher Potlach Publications reissued it in the 1970s. In 2002, Toronto's Annick Press re-issued the original text of "Generals Die in Bed" packaged for young adults, and further editions by Penguin Books Australia and Red Fox in the UK followed. In 2007 Annick republished an edition intended for adult readers and course adoptions. The text generally states the horrific nature of world war 1.

Charles Yale Harrison wrote several other novels and non-fiction books before his death in 1954.

ee also

* Battle of Amiens
* Canadian literature
* War novel