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| Somme Mud - E.P.F Lynch (Written 1916-1919, Published 2006) |
The primary theme throughout the book is "mateship". Lynch and his comrades are characters that are easy to relate to due to their humour, loyalty, and the colloquial and informal language with which the book is narrated. However, the omnipresent mud serves as a constant reminder of the horrendous circumstance they are enduring, and Lynch's disgust at the futility of war and his perpetual fear are continual themes. Somme Mud is a book of contrasts. Comradeship contrasts misery. Humour contrasts fear. The light-hearted narrative voice contrasts the seriousness of the subject matter. Thus, Somme Mud proves itself to be seminal WWI literature as, in the words of Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory, war itself is "Simple antithesis everywhere."
Themes and Relevant Quotes:
Religion
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Attitudes to Death
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Trench Conditions / Fear
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Comradeship / Humour
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Rank
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"We've had our baptism of fire, seen our fist men killed
right among us, and hurry along before another shell comes."
"Pieces of men and fragments of uniforms were draped across
tree limbs everywhere, hung up on view by the window-dressing efforts of the God
of war."
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"You get hardened to death and the dead when you see them
around you all the time."
"Just another plane brought down and another couple of
pilots gone to an awful end."
"Well do we remember those two young Scotty officers,
smashed to a pulp, their legs almost burned off as well. We lost a lot of
interest in fallen planes after that experience."
"'Blast him! He's
got me,' Farmer tells us in an offhand, uninterested sort of way."
"... about twenty of my own company's men lying dead near
the newly won position and I am to tell the colonel we took our objective
with small loss. Heaven help the army's sense of proportion!"
"'The Jerry who
looks over now will deserve an Iron Cross, all right.'
"Yeah! And get a wooden one instead." |
"I tell him of the patrol I've made, but don't mention
those dead Fritz as I'm ashamed of the scare they gave me."
"He finds a big hole of frozen water from which he chops a great lump of ice... We wait till it melts and eventually boils when we drink our tea." "Our damp blankets are frozen stiff on top of our freezing bodies." "We explain that we knew by the sound of the gun that it was not firing in our direction." "It's this ability to camouflage our fear from our innermost selves that saves [us]" "It's strange but they never seem to march in singing about being on their way to Berlin, like we read about." |
"Mate before self, as ever."
"'Shake it up or you'll miss the bus' laughingly advises Longun who is always friendly to the enemy when they're far away... 'Let him go. Good luck to him,' puts the Prof. 'Lucky to be getting out of this mud hole.'" "We discuss the shelling and decide it was to avenge a defeat in some other sector or to celebrate the birthday of some big Fritz general." |
"'Ah! The flamin'
liar! In a leaky little dugout! A bloomin' clerk back at army headquarters,
that's what he is.'"
"Our officers are a pretty efficient crowd." |
- "It has the feel of being written by a soldier for soldiers." - SOLDIER Magazine (March 2008)
- "Somme Mud is a study of man's inhumanity to man, but it is also the tortured tale of how Lynch - a young bloke who came from a Bathurst orchard known throughout the district as "Nulla" - and his mates, such as Darky, Snow and Longun, helped each other survive this hell. What one man will do for another in the heat of battle still astonishes." - The Sydney Morning Herald: Somme Mud (Daniel Lewis)
- "Somme Mud is Australia's version of All Quiet on the Western Front." - Random House Books: Somme Mud
- "It is not written by a polished or professional writer but is a participants true story told in an authentic Australian voice - dispassionate, laconic and free of histronics, false heroics and phony literary flourishes.” - The Mercury Magazine (December 2006)
