Poignant, heartbreaking, and will stay with you for a long time. ( )

Not an enjoyable book to read. Full of elitist thoughts and opinions, superfluous facts and backfill... And yet, it is unputdownable, required reading for anyone wishing to understand the sacrifices of previous generations- Oh my God, what they had to endure in the name of patriotism and freedom ! How did they do it so nobly, stoically? And where would we be if they hadn't ? Respect. ( )

A first hand account of a woman's journey from academia to the trenches of World War I. Beautifully written with depth and passion with poetry throughout it's a heart wrenching book. ( )

Testament of Youth is Vera Brittain’s memoir of her years just prior to, during, and shortly after World War I. It is a unique look at the war from the perspective of a woman who gave up her studies at Oxford to serve as a nurse in France and Malta. Like so many of her fellows, she lost all the important young men in her life: her brother, Edward; he fiance, Roland; and two close friends Gregory and Victor. When the war years had passed, she was alone and bereft and struggling to think what life could possibly have to offer.

There seemed to be nothing left in the world, for I felt that Roland had taken with him all my future and Edward all my past.

The book is not perfect. There are sections, particularly those after the war when she deals with her feminist activities and her work to further the League of Nations, that go on far too long and with detail that can have little or no interest to the reader. That can easily be forgiven, however, in the face of the genuine and heartfelt account, particularly of the war years, a section in which I hung on every word.

I cried for these young men, whose lives were thrown away so cavalierly by the governments who refused to solve their disagreements without loss of life. So much of the book is based on actual correspondence with them, their poems, their letters. How intelligent and expressive, how young and promising, so much to live for and so little opportunity to reach the potential they exhibited. Vera Brittain’s daughter said she never recovered from the loss of her lover, Roland Leighton. I can understand that. He was eternally young for her, he was always handsome and ready to step into the world and conquer it. He never became old or disappointing.

What revelations I had about the women of this era. The extent of her independent spirit and her ambitions seemed so modern to me. It was hard for me to imagine this woman as a product of the late 1800’s and not the 20th Century. Having recently read All Quiet on the Western Front, which was written from the perspective of a young German soldier, I felt this memoir provided yet a wider view of the war and another important perspective, that of a woman.

I loved that the book was peppered with poems, both those of Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton and those that are more widely known of Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen and Alan Seeger. For me, they added to the atmosphere of loss that must be felt when you consider that this is the story of a vanished generation.

I have a rendezvous with Death by Alan Seeger (who kept his rendezvous in 1916)

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear ...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous. ( )

This books gave me hope, then promptly trampled that hope several times. However, as a narrative of Brittain's account of the great war, it only makes sense for it to have done that to me. War is tragic, and faught with innocents far to young to endure such horrors, not that anyone is every old enough for that. Vera really touched down on the devastation war brings, and the empty void in your heart you feel as a survivor amongst the aftermath. Wonderful read, just grab lots of tissues. ( )