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.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “An Interlude”
Chapter 11 Summary: “Arras”
For the first time, the narrator provides the date: April 1918. The Canadian soldiers listen to speeches by their officers and discover that they have been designated as “shock troops to break the German offensive” (118).
The troops are loaded into trucks and begin their long journey. The men grow increasingly hungry but are told they will get rations when they get to their destination. Conditions get steadily worse; they are tightly jammed into the trucks, and they are even forced to defecate through the slats of the truck since they never stop moving. As they talk amongst themselves, they consider the costs of the war, particularly in a battle like Passchendaele. They conclude someone must be growing rich on profits from bombs and guns.
After two days of travel without food or water, in increasing discomfort, they arrive at the city of Arras. The town is deserted because the citizens all left when the Germans began shelling the town. The men are very hungry, and the shops are filled with food. Someone throws a rock through a window, and the men begin running into the stores, gathering food and cigarettes. Next, they break into a house to find a place to rest. A group of drunken soldiers soon find their way to the house and begin destroying the furnishings.
English military police come to the town, but the soldiers fire on them and they retreat. Eventually, the men, hung over from the debauchery, are brought to order by the officers and made ready to march to the front line. Finally, in the trenches, they discuss the futility of the war. Eventually, the unit is relieved by a contingent of Americans who have not yet been in a battle.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Vengeance”
In the midsummer of 1918, the men are far behind the lines. The troops have been replenished and they drill each day, preparing for a big battle. Tactics have changed, and there will no longer be wave attacks. The men will charge the German line in groups of five or six men, thus reducing the size of their target. Discipline becomes tighter and the men march and drill repeatedly. The narrator reports that the men “are being hardened” (136)
They stand for inspection by a brigadier general, who tells them that the hospital ship Lllandovery Castle was torpedoed by the Germans who did not help save the wounded Canadians. The general tells the Canadians they must avenge this act. A colonel tells the men that while he cannot tell them not to take prisoners, he also tells them that they will have to feed any prisoners out of their own rations. The men understand this to mean they should not take prisoners but rather kill any captured enemy.
The battle of Amiens is about to begin. The men spread rumors that this will be the last battle of the war. Not only do they think about the Llandovery Castle, but they also spread stories about a Canadian officer crucified by the Germans. The men vow that they will be ruthless in the battle.
As the fighting begins, the Canadians charge the line. The battle is horrific. A group of very young Germans jump into a shell crater, hold hands, and beg the Canadians for mercy. Canadian troops fire on them and kill them all.
In a charge toward the ridge, the narrator’s foot is wounded. He finds Broadbent with one of his legs almost detached from his body. The narrator waits with him for stretcher bearers, but Broadbent bleeds out, crying for his mother.
The scene shifts to the narrator in a hospital train. Orderlies bring in a wounded German officer, who becomes angry that he is supposed to be in the car with common foot soldiers. He speaks perfect English and demands to be moved to an officers’ train car. The men are livid with disgust.
Finally, the narrator is on the dock, waiting to be loaded onto a hospital ship. He talks with an orderly about the Llandovery Castle, who tells him the ship had ammunition war supplies on it, and that is why it was torpedoed. The narrator recalls the lies told to the troops about the disaster and thinks about the unarmed German soldiers they killed. The novel ends as he is carried up the gangplank.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
In the final section of the book, Harrison notes that airplanes and tanks are used during the closing battles of the war and that by 1918, the strategy around frontal assaults has changed because of the machine gun. Such mentions reflect the fact that WWI not only accelerated technological change, but also required the adaptation of battlefield strategies to combat new technologies.
The novel’s closing chapters deepen The Dehumanization of Common Soldiers. When the men arrive in Arras after several days of travel without rations, they are exhausted, stressed, and starving. When they see the shops in the deserted town, their response is to break windows and begin looting. The inhumane treatment of the soldiers becomes an important factor in the looting, leaving them desperate for the supplies and shelter that their officers should have provided for them. The general neglect of the common soldiers’ well-being thus reinforces the sense that the men are being exploited and used rather than honored as important combatants in the war.
This dehumanization is also illustrated through the radical changes in attitude the men undergo in their feelings toward the German soldiers they must fight. Before the battle of Amiens, the brigadier general attempts to inspire a deep hatred within the ranks by telling the story of the sinking of the Lllandovery Castle, with the brigadier general’s account depicting the German enemy as utterly devoid of humanity or worth. The soldiers respond to the story by vowing to be ruthless, which forms an important contrast to how they felt at the novel’s beginning. At the start of the war they regarded death, deprivation, and their own officers’ misrule as their enemies while feeling no real hatred toward the ordinary German soldiers; now, they are quite susceptible to feeling enraged against the Germans. Instead of seeing both themselves and the Germans as pawns of the military establishment, they are now willing to dehumanize the common soldiers of the other side.
In a similar manner, the brigadier general manipulates the men by telling them that if they take any Germans as prisoner, they will have to share their food rations with them—this makes the soldiers more determined than ever to kill their opponents instead of showing them mercy, as they have already experienced food shortages and difficult living conditions. The narrator is later haunted by the memory of killing German soldiers who tried to surrender during this battle, especially after he hears conflicting reports about why the Lllandovery Castle was torpedoed. His lack of mercy toward the prisoners reveals how effective the pre-battle propaganda was in dehumanizing the Germans in the eyes of the troops.
Harrison’s depiction of the Canadian troops rampaging through Arras caused significant controversy. In the Introduction to the novel, military historian Robert Nielson comments that a 1988 CBC documentary “included evidence that Harrison’s claims were true” (iv). However, the Canadian military maintained that the description of the Arras looting was completely without basis. In addition, the military has also maintained that Canadian soldiers did not murder German soldiers trying to surrender (Cook, Tim. “The Politics of Surrender: Canadian Soldiers and the Killing of Prisoners in the Great War.” The Journal of Military History, July 2006). Likewise, evidence that conflicts with Harrison’s account of the sinking of the Llandovery Castle claims that the ship was entirely a hospital ship and that the Germans did commit an atrocity in sinking it.
Finally, the novel closes with another look at The Psychological Impact of Combat. The Canadian soldiers reflect upon how they are often used as “shock-troops,” meaning that they are employed to lead charges where other units have failed. Since the Canadians have earned the reputation of being among the fiercest warriors of all the British troops, they often find themselves in the fiercest fighting. The novel suggests that the Canadians suffered not only huge casualties on the battlefield but that many men were permanently psychologically damaged. The narrator in the final section of the book exhibits flashbacks, palsied shaking, and a strong desire to forget the ghastly images of the war. The culmination comes as he is wheeled to a waiting hospital ship, recalling the German soldiers trying to surrender. Whether this scene has historical accuracy or not, Harrison’s point is that the narrator, like so many other young men, has been scarred by the experience.
