A Farewell to Arms

I finished the book today. If you haven’t read it I recommend it. I didn’t like Catherine Barkley. I felt that her character was too wishy washy, there was nothing about her that you could get your teeth into. I seem to remember thinking something similar of the leading lady in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.

Anyway, this post is about a strange and interesting coincidence. In the book, while Frederic Henry is having his wounds tended to, the doctor says ‘You will have nothing to worry about if it doesn’t infect and it rarely does now’. Amongst our purchases at the auction in Limoges this week we picked up a leaflet written for French surgeons in 1914. The leaflet explains how German bullets are smooth and leave clean wounds that do not infect, are easy to deal with and heal well. Allied bullets however, left a lot of damage and danger of infection, etc. as they shattered on impact. How is that for propaganda? Even your wounds healed better if you were on the right side.

At peace

A few months ago we sold a postcard on eBay from the first World War. We sell lots of cards from that epoch so selling it wasn’t too special. What was special though was the image. It was a row of dead soldiers lined up on the ground after a battle. Their wounds had been covered up and non had facial injuries. I’d rather not see cards like that. Even the ruins of towns, villages and farms can be shocking.

Yesterday I had to put the same card up for sale, another had arrived with a lot of postcards we bought recently. I have to scan the postcards and scale them down to fit eBay’s requirements; I managed to do all of this without looking too much at the image. Then I have to write about the card and examine the corners, look for creases and bends etc. I don’t know why I felt peace from the card – silence and peace. It reminded me of the extract from a poem by Wilfred Owen I'd used to accompany a postcard for armistice:

“Of them who running on that last high place
Breasted the surf of bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.”