The first two characters that we, the reader meets are Osborne and Hardy. As we see them the first thing that we notice is the difference in the pair’s moods. Hardy is singing a happy song about women;
‘One and two, it’s with Maud and Lou; three and four, two girls more;’
We later find out in the conversation between the two officers that Hardy has been in the trenches for his six day shift and he is now being relieved of duty for six days by the unhappy Osborne. As the conversation takes place we realise that the war is now part of Hardy’s everyday mundane job. We notice this when he talks in a relaxed manner and tells Osborne to ‘Have a drink’. This shows how the men involved in the war have to cope and have to get on with their lives. During the conversation between them they introduce the points about the war that were unheard of by the general population back in England.
‘Mustn’t hang you legs too low, or the rats will gnaw your boots.’
The next thing that we learn about is about Stanhope. We learn that the war has been a big strain on him and whilst other soldiers come and ‘go home again ill, young Stanhope goes on sticking it, month in month out.’ From the two officers, Osborne and Hardy we get our first two impressions of Stanhope which look at Stanhope’s attributes from basically opposite directions. Hardy believes that Stanhope is a ‘drunkard’ and doubts his abilities to look after the company, instead he believes that Osborne the older soldier should be commanding them;
‘Osborne, you ought to be commanding this company.’
Whereas, Osborne takes the view that Stanhope should be commanding the company and that he is just a ‘hard-drinker’. However, the two do agree on one thing about Stanhope and that is that his nerves ‘are all to blazes’ and that he actually does have a valid reason to leave the war instead of the other soldiers who get sent home for no reason at all. Osborne also shows his affection to Stanhope by stating that he’d ‘go to hell with him’.
The next impression of Stanhope is the ordinary soldiers’ view, told by Mason. Mason shows respect towards Stanhope but he is also scared of the Captain which the reader may interpret as that Stanhope is a bully. We see this as Mason gets flustered over a mistake with apricots and pineapple and doesn’t wish to be there when Stanhope arrives back. Instead he tries to get the ‘uncle’ figure, Osborne to break the relatively unimportant news to Stanhope.
As Raleigh enters the trench we get the home view of Stanhope, which is the view of Stanhope before he was changed dramatically by the war. The conversation that occurs between Raleigh and Osborne during the next few pages shows the changes that Stanhope has undertaken during his command. Raleigh describes how Stanhope used to be against smoking and drinking whilst he was at school, and we discover that Stanhope is Raleigh’s idol or role model, however, Osborne tries to let Raleigh know that Stanhope is not like that anymore, but Raleigh ignores this and carries on talking about how Stanhope was engaged to his sister.
Sheriff has used stage directions and characters to set the scene and to describe Stanhope in a minimalist fashion. The characters like Hardy are not needed for the main story, however they play an important role in suggesting the atmosphere that other people create and how other people react to the alien situation that they are placed in during the war.
