42 pages • 1 hour read
Charles Yale HarrisonGenerals Die In Bed
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1930A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Psychological Impact of Combat
In addition to physical injuries, many surviving soldiers of WWI suffered from psychological injuries caused by brutal combat and grotesque living conditions. By the end of the novel, the narrator of Generals Die in Bed exhibits commonly observed symptoms of what was then called “shell-shock” and which is now referred to as PTSD. The novel thus explores the psychological impact of combat, tracing the narrator’s journey from an idealistic recruit into a traumatized veteran.
Initially, the narrator has a very idealistic idea of combat, eagerly imagining himself as a hero. As he stands watch before the first battle, he “conjure[s] up a picture of an imaginary action. I see myself getting the Lewis gun in position. I see it spurting darts of flame into the night. I hear the roar of battle. I feel elated” (11). By the end of the battle, thoroughly terrified by the realities of combat, he weeps. His mental state then continues to decline throughout the rest of the novel. It is not only the actual battles that cause stress but also the waiting for battles to begin. The narrator and the men of his unit exist in a hypervigilant state, knowing that within a short time, many of them will be dead. The anxiety eventually manifests in a breakdown of camaraderie, such as when two men get into a vicious fight over food rations.
The men are consistently subjected to terrible sights. During the battles, dismemberment and very visceral, violent forms of death are common. For example, when Brown is killed, brain tissue spatters on the wall. Likewise, when Fry is hit, his “legs from the knees down are torn from under him. He runs a few paces on his stumps and collapses” (113). Moments like these are what the soldiers try to forget through self-medicating with alcohol or through singing smutty songs at the tops of their lungs. However, the increasingly unsettling nature of these songs reflects their inability to soothe the soldiers, as well as the further deterioration of the soldiers’ mental states.
The circumstances of the narrator’s killing of the German soldier with his bayonet are particularly gruesome, and the psychological impact of this single event nearly leads him to a crisis. Some hours after the death, he becomes cold, shaky, and starts to cry: “I am living through the excitement of the raid all over again […] I do not think things now; I feel them,” he says (70). Flashbacks are a common symptom of PTSD, and the narrator, in his shaking, relives the memory of killing the German over and over, unable to free himself from his fear and guilt over the act. He struggles with this memory and his guilt throughout the novel, and the inability of civilians to empathize with this pain is emphasized when Gladys dismisses the killing because it was done to a German soldier. The novel ends with the narrator being shipped home to heal from a wounded foot, but his experiences with Gladys and others imply that the psychic wounds inflicted on him by his combat experience will be much more difficult to treat.
The Dehumanization of Common Soldiers
Throughout Generals Die in Bed, Harrison depicts how officers, political leadership, and civilians dehumanize the common soldiers. The novel suggests that far from being treated as war heroes, ordinary soldiers must fend for themselves against constant deprivation and a distinct lack of respect for their war efforts.
The soldiers quickly realize that their officers have little regard for them. While the officers are housed in luxury chateaus, the enlistees are housed in vermin-filled barns. While the soldiers have little opportunity for bathing or cleaning their uniforms, the officers have batmen to keep them looking well-dressed and clean. Captain Clark demonstrates his disregard for the troops when he lectures them on cleanliness and requires them to shave every day. He fails to consider that the men have no hot water and are living in unheated buildings. When Fry comments that “they take everything from us” (26), he means that quite literally: By their total disregard for their men’s lived experience, the officers take even the men’s humanity from them.
In addition, the training and rules are harsh. The narrator speaks of how, “A thousand trivial rules, each with a penalty for an infraction, has made will-less robots of us all” (29). Rendering the men without agency through training and rules allows the officers to regard the men as things, not people. Likewise, the narrator’s comment reveals that the common soldiers learn to regard themselves as machines rather than human beings. Thus, when a sniper kills Brown in the trenches, the narrator refers to his body as “it”: “We pull the heavy limp body out of the mud. Its neck is twisted in such a manner that it seems to be asking a question of us. We lay it on the fire step and cover it with a gray woolen regulation blanket” (34). No longer a living, human soldier, Brown has become an object.
The narrator also notes how the behavior of the soldiers changes depending on whether they are in front-line trenches or on a rest period: “On rest we behaved like human beings; here we are merely soldiers. We know what soldiering means. It means saving your own skin and getting a bellyful as often as possible” (49). This description implies that the men are losing their humanity when under stress. Indeed, the fighting over food scraps that follows this statement suggests that the men’s deprivation leads them to turn even against each other.
The common soldiers also become increasingly dehumanized as the war goes on, with their attitude toward the Germans changing dramatically. Early on, the narrator does not think of the Germans as their enemy. Indeed, when they see a group of emaciated German prisoners of war, they throw them cigarettes and tins of canned meat. These are actions of human kindness, something the men lose completely by the final chapters. As the narrator says in one of the last battles, “I am filled with a frenzied hatred for these men. They want to kill me but I will stay here and shoot them until I am either shot or stabbed down. I grit my teeth. We are snarling, savage beasts” (108). The statement marks the fruition of military training, propaganda, and dehumanization. The young enlistees have become hardened soldiers, thinking only of killing.
Disillusionment and Distrust of Leadership
Although the declaration of war resulted in over a million enlistments across the British Empire during the first year alone, the experience of the young recruits in battle soon led to disillusionment and distrust of both military and political leadership. In Generals Die in Bed, Harrison traces the trajectory of a soldier’s initial enthusiasm to his final, overwhelming sense of betrayal.
The unnamed narrator soon realizes that war is not how he imagined it would be: “This is the war; there is so much misery, heartache, agony and nothing can be done about it” (26). The hopes of glory and heroism are dashed during the first battle. Fry gives voice to the disillusionment felt by all the men during what is supposed to be their rest period: “They take everything from us: our lives, our blood, our hearts, even the few lousy hours of rest” (26). The men are given virtually nothing back despite the dangers they confront during battle: Their rations are small, and their officers treat them with open contempt.
The soldiers’ disillusionment soon turns to distrust, and even hatred, of their commanding officers. After being bullied by Captain Clark, Brown angrily declares, “I wish that bloody bastard Clark was dead” (20). At the end of Chapter 3, the narrator says that the troops “have learned who [their] enemies are—the lice, some of [their] officers, and Death” (23). Classifying an officer like Clark as the enemy reveals a deep distrust as if they are no longer fighting on the same side. The hatred and distrust of Clark reach their apex when Captain Clark tries to prevent the men from retreating. At this moment, Clark has become a greater enemy than the attacking force. For this reason, Fry shoots him.
By the time the men arrive in Arras after two years of fighting, they believe their officers are liars. In the midst of their own deprivations, they wonder how much profit the arms manufacturers are making. The more they talk, the more they realize that there are people profiting from the war and that these people—many of them politicians at home—have no motive for ending the war. So long as there are men to fight, there is money to be made. These reflections suggest that the soldiers no longer believe that the countries they fight for care for them.
As the narrator is loaded onto the hospital ship after being wounded at Amiens, he discovers an awful truth: He hears that, contrary to what the officers told the troops before the battle of Amiens, the Llandovery Castle hospital ship was loaded with weapons and war materiel. The sinking of the ship was therefore a legitimate act of war, and the frenzied hatred the troops felt upon hearing the untrue story was misplaced. In the last lines of the book, the narrator, feeling utterly disillusioned and betrayed, recalls the speeches given by the generals and the Germans who begged for their lives, realizing that the leadership has manipulated them all.
