The Long Way Home
An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War
David Laskin

Service and Sentiment

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Last Sunday I stumbled on a review in the New York Times Book Review of a new book about the First World War called The Remains of Company D by James Carl Nelson.  Reviewer Elizabeth D. Samet, an English professor at West Point and the author of Soldier’s Heart:  Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, was not impressed, but to me the book sounded promising.  Nelson, a journalist fascinated by his grandfather’s service in the Great War, set out to reconstruct whatever he could about the battlefield experiences of the men in his grandfather’s unit, Company D, 28th Infantry Regiment, First Division (the same division, incidentally, in which my great uncle Hyman Cohen served; both Uncle Hyman and Nelson’s grandfather Pfc. John Nelson were wounded at Soissons in July, 1918 – in Hyman’s case it was exposure to mustard gas, which seared his lungs and left a permanent scar on his chin).  The Remains of Company D is clearly a labor of love and imagination – an endeavor to breathe vivid life into archives, old newspaper accounts, letters, regimental histories.

Samet found little to admire in Nelson’s book; but what struck me most in the review was the stinging slap she delivered in the closing paragraph:  “Nelson ultimately falls victim to the civilian’s temptation to sentimentalize someone else’s war – to imagine that mysterious ‘nightmares and knowledge’ must inevitably texture the veteran’s every moment.”  This hit a nerve.  The pain I felt for Nelson got me thinking about my own endeavor to write about “someone else’s war.” It seems to me that this “temptation to sentimentalize” arises, ultimately, from gratitude, from a sense of humility mixed with a little shame:  they served, I didn’t – at the very least I owe them respect.  If that respect verges into reverence, if it triggers the civilian writer to imagine a soldier’s private nightmares, well so be it.

Maybe the fundamental problem for civilians who write about war is that we don’t know the answer to the nagging question of how we would behave under fire.  We devote years of our lives to finding soldiers to write about, following in their footsteps, reading their diaries and letters, poring over their unit histories, seeking out and standing by their graves.  We squeeze our eyes shut and try to imagine what it was like for them – and inevitably, what it would have been like for us.  What would I have done the first time a shell whistled down in my vicinity or the first time I heard what one Doughboy described as the “queer zeep-zeep, like insects fleeing to the rear” of machine-gun fire?

The civilian writer stands at the graveside and wonders.  We can’t know.  We can’t not ask.  If asking leads us into the temptation to sentimentalize – well, maybe that’s an occupational hazard.  Better too much imagination devoted to the veteran’s “nightmares and knowledge” than too little.  We learned that lesson after Vietnam – at least we citizens did.  Some members of our government, including those who voted to send troops to Afghanistan and Iraq, have decidedly not learned that lesson.  Take Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn, commonly known as Senator No, who opposes passage of a bill to aid wounded veterans and their strained families unless the money to fund it be offset with immediate budget cuts.  “Now he is demanding balanced books for wounded vets?” fumed the editorial page of the New York Times on November 15.  “Sheer embarrassment should drive the senator into retreat as he trifles with veterans’ needs and burnishes his petty role as Dr. No.”

I agree with Elizabeth Samet that “sentimentalizing someone else’s war” is deplorable if it means getting misty over patriotic service while you vote to deprive veterans and their families of improved care.  But if it means finding out everything you can about when and why and how your grandfather was wounded in a wheat field in France 91 years ago and writing about it with reverence and love – then I’m all for it.

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Comments

  1. Holly Hughes  |  November 26th, 2009

    Amen, David! This world needs more sentiment, not less. There’s too much dry and objectified analysis of military history; those troops aren’t just x’s on a battlefield map. But perhaps Samet has fought in WWI herself and can tell when an account is overwrought….

  2. Dan Laskin  |  November 30th, 2009

    It’s also worth pointing out that non-civilians sentimentalize, too, or are tempted to aggrandize or rationalize. It’s only natural to want find meaning; the trick, I guess, is to avoid imposing it. Those who “were there” have an advantage: they know what it felt like. But translating that feeling into language and meaning that are adequate to the experience – not so easy, probably no easier for the first-hand witness than for the civilian.

  3. James Carl Nelson  |  December 1st, 2009

    As the author of The Remains of Company D, I’ll just say that if “sentimentalization” means that I portrayed the ordinary, forgotten citizen soldiers of Company D as the men that they were, and if it means as well that I described in a less than cold-blooded, impartial, objective manner the effect that the loss of these men had on loved ones back home, then I stand guilty as charged. I prefer to think that The Remains of Company D puts a fresh and very human face on the American effort in WW1 — that, at least, was my intent. I really don’t know what the point would have been in writing a book in which the reader feels no emotional connection to or identification with its characters. Thanks again for the post, David.
    jcn

  4. John A. Riggs  |  January 7th, 2010

    Sentimentalization in books, letters, and other writings helps us all to deal with the terrible things we saw in warfare on the personal, and ground zero level. It is not a dream or wish to fight but a way to put it aside and not cry every time you read about the harshness of the daily life of the combat soldier. The infantry is not for dreamers because the sudden realities of life and death situations jolt your soul through both heaven and hell. “Sentimentalization” shows the lovingly soft human aspect of these brave men and their families. They have been where even angels fear to tread. Thank you for your book.

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