How Young They Died

This evocative novel, published in 1969, is set in England and on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. Much of what is described in the novel is informed by the author’s own experience of the war. Although much of the war narrative is serious and sombre, there are also several scenes of black humour. The central character, James Hilton, turns 19 in the summer of 1915. He arrives in Flanders with the Wiltshire Light Infantry in April 1916. As in the author's war experience, he is twice invalided home, being wounded first at the Somme and again in the summer of 1918. The novel ends with his marriage on 11 November 1918 to one of the nurses who treated him in hospital (so also did the author marry one of his nurses).

The author, Stuart Cloete (born 23 July 1897), was born in France to a South African family. He was educated in Lancing College, Sussex and served in the school’s officer training corps. He went to Sandhurst and in September 1914 received a commission as a second lieutenant in the 9th Battalion, King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. On being wounded in August 1916 he was invalided to London. He later returned to the Western Front with the Coldstream Guards and was severely wounded in the attack on Saint-Leger in August 1918. After the war he settled in Transvaal but in the mid 1930s abandoned his farm and his failing marriage to return to England to launch a career as a writer. His first novel, Turning Wheels, was published in 1937 and was very successful. He went on to write a further 13 novels, numerous volumes of short stories, a two-volume autobiography and several other works on non-fiction.

For much of the war Jimmie Hilton pursues a relationship with a London prostitute called Mona. She befriends numerous soldiers in the war and sends them food packages when they are at the front. At one point at the Somme he merges his thinking about Mona with the senses and shapes of warfare:
“He thought of Mona... But what was the good of thinking about them? Of aching for it? Still, you had to think of something and it was better than thinking about the war. Food, books, pens, paper, rifles, bombs, women. He thought of all the things a man touched and held in his hands! The soft nose of a horse, the soft thighs of a girl. He thought of Mona's thighs. Hands and fingers had a kind of life of their own. The hard, cold feel of a Mills bomb; its weight. The weight of Mona's breasts when he came up behind her and held them. The hard, smooth feel of a rifle-butt and the cold of its barrel. The softness of a woman's belly, the wiry harshness of her pubic hair. The messages the hands flashed back to the brain; the return messages from the brain to the body, every man his own bloody signal corps.”