The Wasted Generation

by Owen Johnson

TO
HUGH WALPOLE
IN FRIENDSHIP AND IN ADMIRATION

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THE WASTED GENERATION

PART I

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I

August, 1916

I am thirty this day, the twenty-ninth of August, 1916. The guns are roaring along the Somme front. Another great attack is on. The gray waves are passing over the top for the thousandth time and, for the thousandth time, hope is in the air once more. I feel it in the sudden optimism of the daily bulletin, in the groups in the market-place, in the little knot of evacués, here in a Savoyard courtyard, basking in the sun and studying the winding line of pins on the yellowed map of the front.

“Brigadier David Littledale, Légion Etrangère, Croix de Guerre, wounded at Verdun, March 5th, shell wound in the shoulder and the leg, shell-shock and gangrene. Entered Val de Grace, March 21st, evacuated on Chambèry, July 10th, 1916.”