Sword of Honour

Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh, 796 pages

This volume collects Waugh's World War II trilogy originally published as Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and The End of the Battle (in the UK, Unconditional Surrender).  The protagonist, Guy Crouchback, is a middle-aged English gentleman resident in Italy, who, at the rumor of war, is inspired to return to his homeland and enlist.  What follows is a six-year odyssey with far more bully beef than bravery, from an epic struggle between two officers over ownership of a camp toilet to Crouchback's steadily growing espionage dossier (the latter presages Pynchon when we learn that the officer compiling it seeks to end the war by demonstrating that the whole world is entangled in the same conspiracy).  Above all, it is a demonstration that the age of heroics is over (if it ever really existed), replaced by pettiness and propaganda.  Or perhaps there are still heroes, and we've simply misunderstood what a hero is?

Do not be fooled - there is very little battle and almost no action in this book.  The few times the protagonist is actually in the theater of war (notably on Crete during the German invasion) the story takes on a delirious quality of adrenaline and confusion.  This is a comic, satirical novel.  The obvious comparison is to Catch-22 (which was published in 1961, the same year as Unconditional Surrender), but Sword of Honour is somehow simultaneously more subtle and more grotesque.  It is also more effective, since Guy has a positive set of values which Yossarian lacks.