“I shall always see the Vision of Love”: Vera Brittain’s Sympathy for the wounded Germans in ‘The German Ward’

Vera with a nursing sister, 1917. Because You Died, pp.77.

As of late I have been interested in Vera Brittain’s perception of Germans as portrayed in her early poetry from Because You Died: Poetry and Prose of the First World War and After.  Brittain herself had served as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse from June 1915 to April 1918 during the Great War, an experience which profoundly shaped her life and writing. Therefore, this post aims to investigate Brittain’s early writing about her experiences as a V.A.D. while paying particular attention to hear treatment of German soldiers in her works.

Vera Brittain’s poem, ‘The German Ward’ recalls the time the author spent caring for wounded German soldiers in France. The poem was initially published as part of Brittain’s first poetry collection in 1918 entitled Verses of a V.A.D. and later included in Brittain’s 1934 collection, Because You Died. Notably, ‘The German Ward’ conveys the fragility of human life and the futility of war with a sharp sense of melancholia as Brittain emphasises her own pity towards the dying Germans. The opening stanza reflects Brittain’s undying memories of her time in the German Ward as she suggests that even if her memory of the miseries of war fades, her remembrance of the wounded will remain vivid:

“When the years of strife are over and my recollection fades

Of the wards wherein I worked the weeks away,

I shall still see, as a vision rising ‘mid the Wartime shades,

The Ward in France where German wounded lay.” (Because You Died L.1-4, pp. 38)

Unlike much of the Great War poetry concerning the German army, Brittain adopts a sympathetic attitude towards all of those suffering regardless of their nationality. Fundamentally, this evident pitiful tone towards the wounded Germans stemmed from Brittain’s exposure to the horrors of modern warfare, which she was subject to as a V.A.D. abroad.

In keeping with her sympathy towards the injured German soldiers, the sixth quartet evokes the poet’s compassion for those confronted with the possibility of death. She presents those serving as  V.A.D.s as indifferent to the nationality of those they nursed, as they helped and pitied the dying Germans without hesitation. Undoubtedly, Brittain portrays that mercy was given to all the Germans as she asserts that:

“I learnt that human mercy turns alike to friend of foe

When the darkest hour of all is creeing nigh,

And those who slew our dearest, when their lamps were

burning low,

Found help and pity ere they came to die.” (l.25-29).

Brittain highlights the significance of forgiveness towards those who killed many British men in the battlegrounds of Europe and undeniably, she depicts the Germans as being equally deserving of pity as all those who are faced with death. The final verse concludes with Brittain’s statement that when she recalls her experience of the Great War, she will solely remember “the vision of Love working amidst arms/ In the ward wherein the wounded prisoners lay” (L.33-34). Thus, the poet fosters a deep sense of forgiveness and empathy towards the dying Germans, offering no indication that she holds them responsible for the myriad of British lives they took while engaged in combat in Europe. Brittain’s growing pacifism inspired a fervent understanding within the author that war is, indeed, futile, stealing lives of men on all sides of the trenches.

Vera Brittain displays no personal distaste towards the Germans despite her fiancé, Roland Leighton’s death being a result of a bullet shot by a German sniper. Instead, she invokes a deep-seated feeling of sympathy for anyone afflicted in the brutal and harsh reality of trench warfare. Furthermore, following much reading of Brittain’s war poetry, I hope to include some element of her poetic writing in my upcoming MA dissertation which enables me to gain a further insight into Brittain’s attitude towards the Great War.