David Holbrook
Page from the manuscript of Flesh wounds
[Ashwell, Hertfordshire?, August 1962]
From MS Add. 9987

Transcript:

3

final loss of a sense of any sense of value of human life.

Beside the exquisitely chased fine Renaissance swords in the cases of museums the Spam gun could only, from its lumpy scars of welding and its dull utilitarian finish, grunt of the new bestiality of the million mass society at war, the conflict of grotesquely simplified political concepts, to which lovely human individual life was sacrificed. It belonged to the age of indifference to life, the age of abortion, and later, of atomic radiation and its sicknesses. The Sten was a symbol of decadence.

Trying to feel confident behind the ungainly triangle of welded bracket that formed the butt of the thing, Paul tried to stop his tired brain spinning a Phantasy. Thought leaped up in him, as though the intellect sought to live its last hour in ebullience. But he knew that thought is a grave disadvantage when you are supposed to be watching for German steel helmets or faces in the dark. He had no sentry experience in war: he could not imagine what it was he was looking for. He couldn’t challenge or shoot everything that moved, since bushes moved in the night wind, and as a star shell soared a whole hedgerow would suddenly advance like