It is Macintyre’s effective use of quotes (such as these) throughout the book that makes the juxtaposition of the abominable and the normal so dramatic as we notice that in fact the abominable became the normal in many ways.
Some form of normality, found amongst the abominable, was vital for the villagers’ mental survival during the occupation. For much of ‘A Foreign Field’ the normal is perceived as a lifeline to counteract the unbelievable devastation people faced. My opening quote describes effectively how a sense of normality in the face of such atrocity brought comfort. When Georges received a letter from his loved one Jeanne his response was ‘At last I have heard something from you after nine months of silence. Now I can live again.’ The description of his wife’s letter at the front was not an emotive piece of writing. The facts are stated. However when we read his response there was little need for Macintyre to make a mountain of the importance of the letter as Georges has already said it all – ‘Now I can live again’. The way that Macintyre has created such an emotional book out of what is essentially a group of facts and journalistic, if somewhat descriptive, writing is by his clever use of what had already been said by people who lived through and saw the atrocities and it is through these accounts that we also see how, after a while, a sense of normality could be felt in the village of Villeret.
On page 99 we hear how ‘Digby and the others cautiously re-emerged from their hiding places’ and ‘a precarious air of normality returned.’ Despite the fact that the village was now under German rule…
The obvious narrative of ‘A Foreign Field’, which highlights the juxtaposition of the normal and the abominable, would be the story of how love blossomed alongside killing:
‘Claire was ready to go into labour when the English bombs began falling on Villeret.’
The quote encapsulates Macintyre’s theme of the juxtaposition of the normal and the abominable. He uses careful diction in this sentence that subtly but effectively forces us to acknowledge the normality and the horror side by side.
This theme for me highlights how Macintyre’s style can be cleverly and subtly bent to fit his dramatic or poetic intentions. Whilst most of the book is very matter of fact and not overly dramatic this story line makes the book. Whilst throughout the book the facts are laid down and the feeling will generally come from a first person account, Macintyre allowed himself to slip into an irresistible romantic storyline with the story of Claire and Robert. Page 147 sees Macintyre begin to write his novel – a love story in which war cannot break up the lovers and the juxtaposition of the normal alongside the abominable shines.
‘As the ‘corpse fields’ of the Western front grew ever more abundant, Robert and Claire talked avidly about the life they would make together after the war’
Rather than talk about how there was a juxtaposition of the normal and the abominable Macintyre has ensured that it is a theme that readers would take away from the book by changing his tone and his style. Until this point ‘A Foreign Field’ had not been a story, but a set of facts joined cleverly together to create the circumstances where a love affair blossomed but also the circumstances where a talented writer can manipulate his factual style to make a truly beautiful love story. Macintyre skilfully and quietly makes this love story seem more romantic as he continues to reel off sad fact after sad fact about the war and the experiences of Villeret. The real quality in his writing is that he never leaves alone the fact that Claire and Robert’s love affair survived the hardship and the horror of the Great War. He masterfully mixes in the factual quotes and knowledge that we become accustomed to throughout the book with story of Digby and Claire, refusing to let us forget how, alongside the terror and murder and pillage, normality and love and children thrived. How lucky Macintyre was with the quote by Frederic Manning:
‘In the shuddering revulsion from death, one turns instinctively to love as an act which seems to affirm the completeness of being’
Once again Macintyre, as he does throughout the book, has used a quote, someone else’s words, which encapsulate the feelings which he could have tried to convey had this quote not have had such dramatic and poetic strength.
In the poem ‘Futility’ Wilfred Owen draws upon the same juxtaposition of the normal and the abominable. The poem is about a soldier who is in fact dead – an atrocity; and how his comrades would still talk about how he always slept a lot and if anything would wake him ‘the kind old sun will know’. The other soldiers continue as if he is alive and think, in despair or desperation, that perhaps the sun will still wake as the last time ‘gently its touch awoke him’. This idea is the juxtaposition of the normal such as having a friend who was always awoken by the sun alongside the absolute desperation in dealing with the fact that their friend is in fact dead. The poem also draws upon the most natural of juxtapositions that was witnessed in World War One and was noted in both books – the inevitable turn of autumn to winter, winter to spring and so forth. The particularly apt change was that from winter to spring, spring being a season of new life and rebirth. When faced with a war on your doorstep the spring would smell less sweet. However it seems that the world goes on, war or no war. We see it today and in ‘A Foreign Field’. Lieutenant Rosenhainer noted ‘We felt spring’s arrival everywhere. With a magical hand it had produced the most luscious green, violets and spring flowers were already in bloom.’ In Futility Owen talks of how the sun ‘wakes the seeds’.
The natural juxtaposition of war and suffering alongside spring is clearly defined in the poem ‘Spring Offensive’ also by Wilfred Owen. At the moment relating to ‘the May breeze’, ‘wasps and midge’ or ‘buttercups’ is not difficult. Spring can be felt and the excitement of a new season and new life never ceases to excite me. This poem shows the juxtapose beautifully. I cannot imagine today standing looking over such beauty knowing that I am about to die for a cause I may not believe in. Owen builds the scene as the soldiers ‘raced together over an open stretch of herb and heather’ in the sun to face ‘the surf of unseen bullets’. The use of the word surf is clever, with the idea of nature and a waves surf - a surf which breaks when it hits the shore (or a body). The use of the word surf highlights Owen’s deliberate use of the juxtaposition of the beauty of spring and the horror of war. Owen talks ironically about a ‘warm field’ in Spring offensive – can a field where death is profit ever be described as ‘warm’? Once again after describing an idyllic day in the world, Owen goes on to talk of ‘hell’s upsurge’ – we know the scene to be beautiful yet to Owen it is hell – a juxtaposition of how beauty can seem to tease when faced with nearly certain death.
The chapter ‘Born to the Smell of Gunpowder’ has particular relevance to the idea that normality might exist alongside the abominable. The village had always known war and conflict and the title is from a nineteenth century song sung by schoolchildren:
‘Children of a frontier town,
Born to the smell of gunpowder’
In a village born to the smell of gunpowder perhaps the idea of people just getting on with life in the face of horror might not seem such a great thing as it does to an audience reading ‘A Foreign Field’. For example Marie Sauvage gave birth to a German soldier’s child and the village continued – the village had got used to conflict and lived with it. Perhaps the idea of the normal co-existing with the abominable was not such a rarity in the village of Villeret.
Throughout the book there are other examples of how normality continues in the village of Villeret. The character Jeanne was always a very strong character opposed to the idea her normality being broken with war – in her story we see Jeanne fight a battle to keep some normality in the face of the war. Jeanne refusing to let go of her precious horse Flirt (which she was even willing to kill to avoid the Germans getting it) is an example of how the villagers had to fight to keep some normality in their lives, ‘to remind them of their own humanity’. Keeping hold of Flirt and hiding the great beast gave Jeanne the feeling that life could go on alongside the frightful war. The horse reminded her of her husband and when faced with the uncertainty of war keeping her horse meant she had something she had always had – something she considered normal, and something which would give her strength in the face of uncertainty.
The beauty of the book is from the way that Digby still loved Claire when he died – he was truly in love and love (or normality) had overcome the war and even death could not dent it. Digby’s noble death in his uniform is not written up. We hear from witnesses as you would in a newspaper report and it is not over the top – there is no pathetic fallacy and we don’t hear how Claire whimpered as he died, because we don’t know that she did. However what we take from the death is the fact that Digby still loved Claire. Alongside the atrocious war something which the Germans could not take away from the village of Villeret had been born and that life continued despite the war raging and the village no longer being there.
The romantic idea of love overcoming the war is not emulated in the poetry of the front line. The dramatic juxtaposition seen in the poem ‘Exposure’ by Wilfred Owen is summed up in the sentence ‘We only know war lasts, rain soaks and clouds sag stormy.’ This quote paints a picture of the horrors of war and how perhaps for the soldiers it became just normality, that in fact the juxtaposition of the abominable and the normal was a phenomenon that had little effect on the soldiers after days and weeks and months in the trenches. Clouds and rain are classic things for English people to complain about – here they are placed alongside a war in a way that makes war seem like little more important to them than the bad weather. For soldiers the things that made life seem normal, such as the letters they sent home or letters from home, were often censored and in fact a search for normality, when faced with death and war, led to a colourless and empty existence. To convey this feeling Owen uses language like ‘dull’, ‘cloud’, ‘melancholy’ and ‘grey’ – all of which have negative connotations. The quote ‘We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow dazed’. This is normality to these soldiers but there seems no future and the abominable has in fact become the normal; the ever present, ever changing weather, something I find a comfort in when I’m away, is in fact as much the enemy to the soldiers as the shells are….
“We pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice”
This sad and accurate picture of the war is perhaps, I feel, the most appropriate juxtaposition of the war and the normal – the idea that the war becomes normal (they ‘pause’ as if to continue) but the faces of their friends are unrecognisable. The use of the word ‘ice’ has connotations of the coldness of the war and the word ‘all’ highlights that in fact this wasn’t just one compatriot but a collective – no longer recognisable. In a similar way to the poems the war seemed to become normal in Villeret – people got to know the German soldiers, continued with jobs and in a way the war seemed no longer as important the longer it continued. The war for the soldiers in ‘Exposure’ was as normal after months of war as it became to the people of Villeret. And perhaps the soldiers in Spring Offensive, taking a few moments to have some normality and take in the midges and wasps, were in fact doing the same as the people of Villeret did throughout ‘A Foreign Field’. It was their attempt to keep normality in the face of what seems the inevitable in war. Whilst it is more immediately noticeable for the men in the poetry –
“Knowing that their feet had come to the end of the world”
- hidden behind so much defiance of Karl Evers and the beauty of a couple’s love in the face of war, the village of Villeret was in fact another victim to the horror of war. In defiance of Evers the villagers kept the British soldiers and in defiance of Karl Evers, to keep normality, Jeanne Dessin kept Flirt; this juxtaposition of some kind of normality in the face of the war was similar to the normality found by soldiers in the arrival of spring - little more than clutching at straws. The people of Villeret defied Evers to the last and it was this defiance that led in fact to the destruction of the village. Evers hated Villeret’s defiance and made a point of desecrating the village. Just like the soldiers putting off death for five minutes to take in the beauty of spring, the villagers constant defiance of Evers was merely biding their time before the inevitable destruction of war won. Most of the villagers never returned to the village and therefore the village, like soldiers in trenches, died. An example and warning of war can be found in the daughter of Robert and Claire Digby, Helene: was her life ever normal? After all ‘before she was an hour old the battlefield child sparked conflict.’ Did the child born out of a so-called normality amongst death and destruction ever really know normality?
‘Sometimes she cried’… (epilogue)
Sam Pollard
