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user-inactivated  ·  3227 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Perfectly Preserved World War I Trench.

I'm fascinated by the British stiff-upper-lip colonial culture that raised many of the men who fought in WW1 among the Allies. It led to the most bizarre juxtaposition of horror and honor, brilliantly captured in Good-Bye To All That. Lots of the British chronicles that came out of the war took that bleak attitude of fake jollity, as a coping mechanism and because what else can you say? Graves often seems as though he's writing about a foxhunting expedition.