Not About Heroes - page 65-66 (David's Death)

Page 65-66

From "When I first went out to France..." to "the same madness" 

In this extract Sassoon describes his close friend David's death,

He describes David as a "young officer" this emphasizes the innocence and lack of experience most of the soldiers has and just how young they were, which the case was for many soldiers.

The audience is made to have an emotional attachment with the character david as Sassoon lists various facts about his life such as “He was 19. He came from Wales. Straight from school to officer training.” This gives the audience a context to the character and makes them be able to relate to him.

“He had all those thing that we should be born with: truth, integrity, gentleness, patience.” This suggests that he thinks everyone is born with only good qualities as all of these are positive things. It implies that all babies and young children are completely innocent and void of any negative aspects. This emphasises David’s innocence as he is “young”.

“He shouldn’t have died, you see. He’d had no life.” This makes his death seem unjust and not needed which also implies the war is unjust and unneeded as he died for the war.

He shows the harsh realities of war when he describes David’s death “ He was shot in the throat and choked on his own blood” this creates a gruesome image and also shows how quickly it could happen as there is very little build up to his death just a sentence saying they went on a wiring party”.

“The words of the service were drowned out by mortar and machine gun fire.” This shows the common rushed funeral that was given to the dead soldiers, it seems unfair and makes his death seem unimportant to anyone else.

“I tried to die. I made up my mind to die.” This shows how devastated he was that he wanted to end his own life. It also seems unfair that him, who wanted to die, managed to survive while others that wanted to live died.

“I’m sure I was mad… and it doesn’t just go away.” This suggests he was suffering from depression after David’s death. This relates to many soldiers who got mental illness’ because of the horrors they saw in the war, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. In this time ‘shell shock’ was not recognised at an illness’ so many men went untreated.