Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy, published by Penguin between 1991 and 1995, and culminating in the Booker Prize-winning The Ghost Road, is widely considered to be the definitive modern statement on the brutality of war - and the First World War in particular. In War Talk, an extract from Regeneration, Barker movingly recounts the first meeting of the poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in a hospital for those wounded at the Front.
Rivers watched the play of emotions on Prior's face as he fitted the recovered memory into his past. He was unprepared for what happened next.
"Is that all?" Prior said.
He seemed to be beside himself with rage. "I don't know about all," Rivers said. "I'd've thought that was a traumatic experience by any standards."
Prior almost spat at him. "It was nothing."
He put his head in his hands, at first, it seemed, in bewilderment, but then after a few moments he began to cry. Rivers waited a while, then walked round the desk and offered his handkerchief. Instead of taking it, Prior seized Rivers by the arms, and began butting him in the chest, hard enough to hurt. This was not an attack, Rivers realized, though it felt like one. It was the closest Prior could come to asking for physical contact. Rivers was reminded of a nanny goat on his brother's farm, being lifted almost off her feet by the suckling kid. Rivers held Prior's shoulders, and after while the butting stopped. Prior raised his blind and slobbery face. "Sorry about that."
"That's all right." He waited for Prior to wipe his face, then asked, "What did you think happened?"
"I didn't know."
"Yes, you did. You thought you knew."
"I knew two of my men had been killed. I thought." He stopped. "I think it must've been my fault. We were in the same trenches we'd been in when I first arrived. The line's terrible there. It winds in and out of brick stacks. A lot of the trenches face the wrong way. Even in daylight with a compass and a map you can get lost. At night.I'd been there about a week, I suppose, when a man took out patrol to see if a particular dugout was occupied at night. Compasses don't work, there's too much metal about. He'd been crawling round in circles for God knows how ling, when he came upon what he thought was a German wiring party. He ordered his men to open fire. Well, all hell was let loose. Then after a while somebody realized there were British voices shouting on both sides. Five men killed. Eleven injured. I looked at his face as he sat in the dugout and he was.You could have done that and he wouldn't've blinked. Before I'd always thought the worst thing would be if you were wounded and left out there, but when I saw his face I thought, no. This is the worst thing. And then when I couldn't remember anything except that two of my men had been killed, I thought it had to be something like that." He looked up. "I couldn't see what else I'd need to forget."
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