David Holbrook
Letter to ‘Denys’ [Thompson?]
Ashwell, Hertfordshire, 10 March 1966
MS Add. 9750/251/1 verso

Transcript:

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on the identity that it soon cracks up if men are allowed to oversleep, take their boots off, be lazy about guards &c.

But of course, any centre in which efficiency, drill and alertness are being induced attracts sadists and mad punitive types. These in fact I think are enemies even of efficiency, for in battle conditions the outfits which rely on individual initiative, small groups acting on their own resources, attention to survival, and educating their men in what is happening (and what for) do well. The Germans were often asleep, because no-one dare wake the Fuhrer – I mean, they deferred until a superior gave a command, and then blindly obeyed, only then. Their training was very mechanical I’m sure: ‘marching kills thought’.

I think now that any submission to hate is contributing to doom: I’m pleased if my book has exposed what human hate looks like, in those circumstances, at first hand.

Whether one cracks up or not in battle doesn’t, I think, depend essentially on one’s training, but rather on how much you can bear ‘being let down’ by the group one has trusted: that is, how much separation-anxiety one can bear. One identifies with the trusted group – and then it brings one into great danger. You’ll know Fairbairn’s classic paper on The War Neuroses. This made a lot of sense for me, and helped me to see why in my book I wanted to relate the war horror to the break-up of the youthful love experience: the ‘objects’ all become separated from the protagonist – first Lucy; then the regiment becomes