Charles Yale Harrison - Generals Die in Bed

GENERALS

die in bed

CHARLES YALE HARRISON

2007 Nancy Pike, Judith Rossner, and Joel Shapiro
2007 Robert F. Nielson (introduction)
1957 Eva Harrison
1928, 1929, 1930 Charles Yale Harrison

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This edition published in 2012 by
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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

The young adult version of this novel is also available from Annick Press:
ISBN-13: 978-1-55037-731-6 (bound); ISBN-10: 1-55037-731-0 (bound);
ISBN-13: 978-1-55037-730-9 (pbk.); ISBN-10: 1-55037-730-2 (pbk.)

Cataloging in Publication

Harrison, Charles Yale, 1898-1954
Generals die in bed / by Charles Yale Harrison.

The young adult version of this novel is also available.
First published: London : N. Douglas, 1930; New York : Morrow, 1930.
ISBN-13: 978-1-55451-074-0 (bound)
ISBN-13: 978-1-55451-073-3 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 1-55451-074-0 (bound)
ISBN-10: 1-55451-073-2 (pbk.)

1. World War, 1914-1918Fiction. I. Title.

PS8515.A7896G4 2007 C813.52 C2006-905967-5

Cover photo courtesy Realistic Travels, Library of Congress, LC-USZ62-75152

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To
the bewildered youths
British, Australian, Canadian, and German
who were killed in that wood a few miles
beyond Amiens on August 8, 1918,
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

CONTENTS

1914 1919
A war that killed approximately ten million people, including eight-and-a-half-million soldiers, in four years also saw the death of a myththat war is a testing ground, where a young lad proves his mettle by charging into battle atop a silver steed, brandishing a sword. The First World War demonstrated that things were different now: war was soldiers huddled together in stinking, vermin-infested mudholes, praying not to get blown to bits by an amazing variety of killing machines. If a screaming, one-ton shell launched from six miles away had your name, rank, and serial number on it, it mattered not one damn how brave you were. Technology had neatly eradicated the once profound difference between the hero and the coward.

In 1929, eleven years after the war ended, the book at the top of the United States best-seller list was A Farewellto Arms, a novel by a combatant, Ernest Hemingway. Following it was All Quiet on the Western Front, from a veteran of the other side, Erich Maria Remarque. A battalion of similar books followed, as the men who had fought described, at last, what the war was really like.

One of these was written by a young American, Charles Yale Harrison, who fought overseas with the Canadian army. Generals Die in Bed is a shockingly frank, fictionalized portrayal of the horrors encountered by a gaggle of soldiers stuck in that meat grinder, World War One. It is also a magnificentand controversialclassic of the literature of human combat.

Harrisons novel illustrates the reality of an obscene debacle, which started with a bang (the sound of nineteen-year-old Serbian Gavrilo Princips gun firing the shot that eliminated Bosnias Archduke Francis Ferdinand), dragged most of Europe, thick with alliances, into its maw (pitting the Triple EntenteBritain, France, Russiaagainst the Triple AllianceGermany, Austria, Italy), and culminated in a four-year war of attrition, with millions of men trapped in a zigzag system of trenches stretching six hundred miles from the North Sea to Switzerland.

Described by an American editor in 1984 as among the first books written about modern warfare, Harrisons novel jolted the public from reveries about honor and glory. American novelist John Dos Passos said that GeneralsDie in Bed has a sort of flat-footed straightness about it that gets down the torture of the front line about as accurately as one can ever get it. New York newspapers called it a burning, breathing, historic document (The Times); that stands out among a host of other war books for its honesty and reality (Herald Tribune); that belongs among the very best of the war books (Telegram). On the other hand, a detractor complained of being frogmarched to a war, the bestiality and horror of which are so emphasized that the authors sincere and passionate desire to prevent its recurrence is entirely defeated. In a sense, he was right; ten years later we were fighting World War Two!

Canadiansthat is, some former high-ranking officersvilified Harrisons bookand Harrison. Cy Peck, a Victoria Cross winner and later a Member of Parliament, called it pure obscenity, totally unrelieved by the slightest flash of genius. Its a gross and shameful slander on the Canadian soldier, by a degenerate-minded fool. Sir Arthur Currie, commander of the Canadian Corps, wasnt a fan either: I have never read a meaner, nastier and more foul book. (Being a general, he probably didnt take kindly to the title, either!) Sir Archibald Macdonell, according to historian Jonathan Vance, became almost apoplectic with rage when he read it. I hope to live long enough to have the opportunity of (in good trench language) shoving my fist into that s- of a b- Harrisons tummy until his guts hang out his mouth!!

Fortunately, many admired the book. Roy MacSkimming in The Toronto Star found it a devastatingly powerful work, unsparingly honest, unrelenting in its scenes of horror and pathos anti-war, yet that term hardly does justice to its emotional depths a cauterizing human document.

Why were the detractors so upset? As well as telling the truth about the front lines, Harrison provided two specific goads. One was his description of the looting of the French city of Arras. The other was their seemingly indiscriminate killing of Germans during the Battle of Amiens. (Allied forces had been toldincorrectlybefore the battle that the German navy had sunk the Allied hospital ship Llandovery Castle.) Anticipating trouble, Harrisons publishers had insisted he sign a document verifying that he had observed the controversial incidents. In 1988, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired a documentary about the war that included evidence Harrisons claims were true. But they also pointed out that the battle-weary Canadians who plundered Arras had earlier been ordered by (British) officers to march for three days without food or sleep, ending up in that deserted city, where they were told to stand to attention until their rations arrived. In the meantime, the abandoned shops of Arras stood filled with goodies. As for the tragedy at Amiens, not only was Harrison present, he was wounded while attacking a machine-gun nest, on August 8, 1918 (see his Dedication).