Regeneration - Pat Barker

Set during World War I, Regeneration starts with a British officer named Siegfried Sassoon who issues a declaration essentially stating he won't fight because he believes the reasons the soldiers were originally given for risking their lives have been twisted and perverted into other things, and that those original goals could be achieved without further loss of life.

The military and government, not wanting to deal with the inconvenient questions testimony in a court martial might raise, instead try to have him found insane, and thus easily dismissed. Thus, Sassoon has to voluntarily attend a mental hospital for soldiers to prove his mental stability, where he encounters a Dr. Rivers.

This is apparently the first of a trilogy Barker wrote, so I don't know how things ultimately play out. Here, he seems intent on teasing apart the various contradictions imposed upon those who fight and serve, either by external or internal forces. To that end, he explores more than just Sassoon and Rivers, but several other patients at the hospital, and more briefly, some of the other doctors. The different forms patients' maladies take, and how they respond to them. How the doctors see their job. To help these men for their benefit, or to repair soldiers so they can do their duty. Or maybe as convenient guinea pigs.

(There's a particularly disturbing bit near the end where we see a doctor who treats patients who have become mute by locking them in a room and electrocuting them until they speak, and insists they should be properly grateful. I wanted to reach into the book and jam the electrodes up his nose until they tickled his brain, then set the voltage to maximum.)

So Billy Prior, another officer who simply reached the limit of the horrors he could endure, does not want to go back to the front, but can't say so. Because he'd be a coward. Neither can he feel truly relieved if the Medical Board deems him unfit, because that means they're saying he couldn't take it. Wasn't man enough to hack it, even though he did for some period of time.

Sassoon himself is no pacifist, he simply thinks the war is no longer being fought for the (proper) reasons it originally was. Yet he too would rather go back and try to protect the men under his command, than sit out. Rivers, though growing more aware of the strain the soldiers are under, is nonetheless pleased Sassoon wants to go back. I think because it saves him from any difficult ethical struggles. "Well the man himself is eager to go fight, so it was all a lot of nothing. The fact he can envision no future for himself, because he fulls expects or even plans to die, is irrelevant."

I thought I'd take 5 days to read it, but blew through it in 2. It snaps along, Barker frequently shifting attention from one character to another, showing their progress or regression. Sometimes we get their thoughts on themselves, such as with Prior and Sassoon, or Sarah a young woman working in a munitions factory who starts a relationship with Prior. But other times, like with a young man named Burns who struggles to eat, or the doctor fond of electrocuting people, we're left on the outside, unsure of their private terrors or motivations.

'Sassoon shifted in his seat. 'I'm not responsible for other people's decisions.'

'You don't think you might find being safe while other people die rather difficult?'

A flash of anger. 'Nobody else in this stinking country seems to find it difficult. I expect I'll just learn to live with it. Like everybody else.''