Clearly, there are many things worse than ‘dirt in your tea’, and one would expect an adjective that was rather stronger than ‘annoyed’ to describe the men’s reaction to the fact that they were being bombed. Osborne tries to put things in perspective and see the beauty in situations to cope with the pressure he is under. He tells Raleigh to “always think of it like that, if you can. Think of it all as – as romantic. It helps.” Osborne epitomises a certain type of cultivated middle-class reticence and self-possession. Like Stanhope and Raleigh, he attended private school, which taught him the traditional and typical English values, which can be summed up in the phrase “stiff-upper-lip”. He maintains an apparent steady clam in the face of danger, and is more controlled and reserved in his speech than most of the others. He submerges himself in quiet pursuits, such as gardening when he goes home on leave, and reading, such as “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. This has an ironic parallel which he highlights when he shows Trotter what he is reading, as the pointlessness of the book echoes the nonsense of the war. When Stanhope tries to confide in him about the way the war makes him feel, and how close he thinks he is to breaking down, Osborne attempts to change the subject, as he believes that the less you talk about things, the better. He clearly is not used to talking about his feelings, and the war put many middle-class men, who had always been taught that they should maintain an outward façade of strength, in the same position. He talks about the sunset, and a show at the Hippodrome, rather than dealing with Stanhope’s problem, which he fears, if concentrated on, will cause Stanhope to collapse.
Stanhope is introduced before the audience actually sees him, through the conversation between Hardy and Osborne. He is courageous and driven, ‘a long way the best company commander we’ve got’, but he is reaching the end of his tether. The turning point which he identifies was ‘that awful affair on Vimy Ridge’, after which the strain has become maddening. He has turned to drink for comfort, which is ironic in view of the fact that he was so against it whilst at school. The strain is showing through this, and his increased irritability and alienation from the others. Whilst talking about Raleigh’s sister, he says: ‘She doesn’t know that if I went up those steps into the front line - without being doped with whisky – I’d go mad with fright.’ He realises the extent of his dependence on alcohol, and dislikes this reliance, which he, understandably, sees as a weakness. He seems to discharge his mounting fear and distress partly through a combination of calculated hardness and anger. He also works hard to block out all that is happening around him, taking his job far more seriously than, for example, Hardy, and not allowing himself to rest and therefore have time to contemplate what is happening to him.
TROTTER: Cheer up Skipper. You do look glum!
STANHOPE: I’m tired.
OSBORNE: I should turn in and get some sleep after supper.
STANHOPE: I’ve got hours of work before I sleep.
OSBORNE: I’ll do the duty roll and see the sergeant major and all that.
STANHOPE: That’s all right, Uncle. I’ll see to it.
He feels that he is beginning to lose his grip on reality, and asks Osborne ‘D’you ever get the feeling that everything’s going farther and farther away…?’ He is troubled by the possibility that he might be losing his mind. One way in which his inner struggle expresses itself is through his increasing emotional dependence on Osborne, which Osborne quietly reciprocates. He is very worried, even to the point of paranoia, that Raleigh will write to his sister and tell her about his drink problem. The ambivalent and wavering relationship between Stanhope and Raleigh help dramatise their suffering, and highlight his disintegrating character and struggle to remain in control of his experience. Raleigh’s recollections of him from the pre-war period, and his reaction to the changed Stanhope, help to emphasise how much Stanhope has been affected by the war. Raleigh’s naïve inclination to idealise his situation, as was the case with many ‘new’ soldiers at the front, provokes Stanhope, as a hard-bitten and war-weary realist. The pathos of Raleigh’s situation arises from the fact that he scarcely lives long enough to cope with the discovery that war cannot be dealt with in terms of the simplicities of school life. Stanhope’s tender compassion for Raleigh in the final scene, the only time in the play when Stanhope uses Raleigh’s first name, is a poignant revelation of his true sensitivity and humanity beneath the shell of relentlessly tough-minded dedication to duty with which he protects himself for much of the time.
Raleigh, as he is only at the front from Monday evening until his death on Thursday afternoon, has little opportunity to develop beyond the unquestioning boyish idealism and enthusiasm that he brings with him to the front. However, he still crams an awful lot of experience into that short time – he experiences the effects of fear through the “wind up” that makes him want to yawn before the raid, the consequences on Stanhope of the relentless pressures of front-line existence, and to feel on Osborne’s death the horror of the absolute and sudden loss that war inflicts on its participants. Sherriff uses Raleigh’s presence in the play to dramatise the inevitable tension between normal human conduct in the face of great loss in the face of death and loss and the grotesque emotional distortions forced upon soldiers by the unnatural and extreme conditions of warfare. He is horrified by the fact that the officers enjoy their meal and cigars ‘when Osborne’s - lying - out there’, which seems natural in the context of normal experience, but he has not learned yet that the strangeness of their situation demand that men find ways of dealing with the war that seem callous in peace-time.
Trotter represents the working-class aspect amongst the officers in the war. He maintains a permanently cheerful good humour, and his pre-occupation with creature comforts, such as food. The other officers, particularly Stanhope and Osborne, view him condescendingly, saying him that ‘all his life Trotter feels like you and I do when we’re drowsily drunk.’ However, there are hints that he is more anguished than he seems:
STANHOPE: I envy you, Trotter. Nothing upsets you, does it? You’re always the same.
TROTTER: Always the same, am I? (He sighs.) Little you know.
Despite the fact that he complains about a variety of inconveniences, and is irritatingly garrulous at times, he is nonetheless dependable and steady in the face of danger.
Hibbert is a significant exception to the other officers, as he is a coward. Although fear was accepted by the soldiers as inevitable, actual cowardice was treated with disgust, and cowards were often regarded in some ways as ‘degenerate’, morally and physically unfit for manly existence. Hibbert is a ‘funky man’, and has some of the other characteristics of a degenerate. He is devious and deceitful, lacks sensitivity towards others, and is pre-occupied with the kind of sex associated with ‘saucy pictures’ and Soho. Stanhope refers scathingly to his ‘repulsive little mind’, and says that he makes him sick. He calls him a ‘worm’, and even the usually sympathetic Osborne agrees that ‘It’s a slimy thing to go home of you’re not really ill, isn’t it.’ Sherriff’s portrayal of Hibbert is psychologically accurate, and also sympathetic insofar as he allows Hibbert some dignity in his defiance of Stanhope and in his agreeing to Stanhope’s insistence that he must try to ‘stick it out’. A thoughtful response from the audience is also provoked by Trotter’s sympathy with him. However, the prevailing view is that Hibbert is a weak and repellent man, whose reaction to the pressures of war is symptomatic of a lack of moral fibre and wholly unacceptable. There was simply no room in the battlefield for that kind of mental collapse in the face of one’s duty.
Sherriff presents many different ways in which men reacted to the pressures of the First World War, all of which are representative of the reactions of some men.