Her Privates We

"She knew nothing of their subterranean, furtive, twilight life, the limbo through which, with their obliterated humanity, they moved as so many unhoused ghosts, or the aching hunger in those hands that reached, groping tentatively out of their emptiness, to seek some hope or stay."

As well as humor. After a paticularily confused conversation with a French woman with whom they have been billeted, Bourne's superior complains to him:

"I wish to God I knew a bit o' French" said the corporal earnestly.
"I wish to God you wouldn't mix the little you do know with Hindustanti," said Bourne.

The incredible humanity in this book has seldom been paralleled, even in modern literature. Manning's genuis has been overlooked for too long and it is time that his masterpiece was rediscovered to teach a new generation what war is really like.


Most underrated novel about soldiers in WW1   February 18, 2000
M. J MUIR (United Kingdom)
25 out of 25 found this review helpful

This novel focuses, not so much on moral arguments, as on what the experience of trench warfare did to ordinary men. Much of it also refers to the gap between officers and men in the British army. The men knew they had been drafted into or volunteered for something very different from what they were led to believe, and did not have the luxury of arguing why. At times the prose is beautiful, but the most brilliant thing about the book, way ahead of it's time, is the capturing of the bad language and coarse behaviour of the men. These men, contrary to stereotypes, came from hugely diverse backgrounds and fought, swore, quarelled and indulged themselves just like anybody else would if thrown into such a stressful melting pot. This really brought the subject to life, and made me think how lucky I am. Few of the last survivors of WW1 are under 100 years old, and this is a unique and moving memorial to the few living survivors of the first generation subjected to modern warfare and what they endured.


Elegant, true, vivid, and memorable   October 16, 2004
Ian Muldoon (Coffs Harbour, NSW Australia)
28 out of 30 found this review helpful

Of course, I say this work is elegant, true, vivid and memorable as a work, not the events it depicts. In parts of the world that used to make up the Commonwealth and serviced by Penguin books, the title may be THE MIDDLE PARTS OF FORTUNE. Having had 25 years in the military I can only say I read this book from cover to cover, and relished every word in it. Artistically, as an artifact, it has a satisfying structure and conventional narrative. Like the characters in it, especially Private Bourne, it manages a superb tone, neither hiding the horror, the detail, but never sentimentalizing the common bravery of the ordinary man whilst despising the shirker. I could go on but I just draw to your attention on P58 the brilliant detail of having to carry an awkward box three miles by hand: - ....he was glad to dump the box he and Lance-Corporal Johnson had carried the three miles from Philosophe on the floor of the Quartermaster's office. It had those handles which hang down when not in use, but turn over and force one's knuckles against the ends of the box when it is lifted. By reversing the grip, one may save one's knuckles, but only at the expense of twisting one's elbow, and the muscles of the forearm. Having tried both ways, they passed their handkerchiefs through the handles, and knotted the corners, so that it was slung between them, but the handkerchief being of different sizes, the weight was not equally distributed. The quartermaster's store was a large shed of galvanized iron, which may have been a garage originally. He was not there, but the carpenter, who was making wooden crosses, of which a pile stood in one corner, thought he might be back at the transport lines; on the other hand he might be back at any moment, so they waited for as long as it took to smoke a cigarette, watching the carpenter, who, having finished putting a cross together, was painting it with a cheap-looking white paint. -That's the motto of the regiment,- said the carpenter, taking up one on which their badge and motto had been painted carefully. - It's in Latin, but it means WHERE GLORY LEADS.
Bourne looked at it with a sardonic grin. - That is just one paragraph of 247 pages of fine prose, and itself could be a study as a sample of quite brilliant writing.
A classic of the 20th century.


Tommy Atkins Speaks   September 16, 2007
Bruce Owen Brady (Santa Clara, California United States)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

In his novel, "Her Privates We," Frederic Manning does something almost unique in Great War literature. He gives voice to the English common soldier. This was the man the British public personified as Tommy Atkins and whom Americans in a later conflict would call GI Joe. This was the man who did the work of war with bayonet, rifle and hand grenade.

Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen and Vera Brittain--among others--have given us a look inside the English middle-class perspective of the Great War. Through their poetry and prose, we can gain some understanding of what they and their educated counterparts suffered and endured.

The clerk, the taxi driver and farm laborer who went to war had no such heavy-weight advocates. Until Manning's novel first appeared in a limited edition during 1929, English private soldiers spoke primarily through letters home, not through literature. We know them best through the mute, exhausted faces that stare out at us across time from black-and-white Great-War-era photographs.

Manning, an educated Australian, worked as a minor literary figure in pre-war England. He enlisted in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry during 1915 and served as a private soldier in France through much of the 1916 Somme Campaign. Not coincidently, most of the novel's action is set within British lines during the time of that huge offensive.

Because Manning was a man who combined a writer's skills with a soldier's experience, his work gives us a rare and vivid glimpse of what trench life and fighting felt like from the viewpoint of the English private and non-commissioned officer. The book reflects the emotional and physical costs of battle. It also gives us some knowledge of the ways men related to each other and to their superiors. Any American who soldiered during the 20th Century will almost certainly find echoes of his own service experience within Manning's story.

In its 1929 printing "Her Privates We" was called "The Middle Parts of Fortune." The first mass publication the next year was ruthlessly edited to reflect 1930s sensibilities. The current paper-bound version of "Her Privates We," offered through Amazon, is completely uncut.

The Book's title derives from some obscene banter in Shakespeare's Hamlet, during which two characters describe themselves as the private parts of Fortune. Private parts, private soldiers, you get the picture. After listening to them, Hamlet concludes that Fortune is a strumpet. This would seem an equally valid conclusion for those of any rank or station caught within the titanic social and military struggle that played out during the 1914-1918 war.



Her Privates We   April 2, 2000
J. Scott Shipman (Annandale, VA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

The most moving book on warfare that I've ever read. Manning takes the reader into the trenches of WWI and through a masterful use of language shows the struggles of one young, educated Private as he endures the hardships of war. This book was formerly titled The Middle Parts of Fortune. Outstanding from cover to cover.