"Man, it seemed, had been created to jab the life out of Germans"
About this Quote
A line like this lands with the deadpan brutality of a trench report filed by someone who can no longer afford lyrical consolation. Sassoon isn’t describing a battlefield so much as indicting the logic that makes a battlefield feel natural. The phrasing "it seemed" is doing sly, corrosive work: it registers the speaker’s disbelief while conceding how persuasive the war’s machinery has become. Not "men were ordered" or "trained" but "created" - as if evolution, God, and nation-state propaganda have merged into one obscene origin story.
The verb "jab" is the real knife. It’s small, intimate, almost petty. Not the grand, heroic "strike" of patriotic verse, but a quick, repetitive motion: bayonet work, close enough to see a face. Sassoon collapses modern war’s supposed grandeur into something ugly and workmanlike, a job performed at arm’s length that still requires proximity. Then comes "the life out of Germans", a grimly colloquial phrasing that turns killing into extraction, like squeezing the last air from a body. It’s horrifying precisely because it’s phrased like an everyday act.
Context sharpens the cynicism. Sassoon, a decorated WWI officer who famously protested the war’s continuation, wrote against the romantic myths that kept men cycling into slaughter. "Germans" matters here: the enemy is named, but the line also exposes how easily a whole people can be reduced to a target category. The subtext isn’t hatred of Germans; it’s disgust at a culture that teaches men to treat murder as destiny.
The verb "jab" is the real knife. It’s small, intimate, almost petty. Not the grand, heroic "strike" of patriotic verse, but a quick, repetitive motion: bayonet work, close enough to see a face. Sassoon collapses modern war’s supposed grandeur into something ugly and workmanlike, a job performed at arm’s length that still requires proximity. Then comes "the life out of Germans", a grimly colloquial phrasing that turns killing into extraction, like squeezing the last air from a body. It’s horrifying precisely because it’s phrased like an everyday act.
Context sharpens the cynicism. Sassoon, a decorated WWI officer who famously protested the war’s continuation, wrote against the romantic myths that kept men cycling into slaughter. "Germans" matters here: the enemy is named, but the line also exposes how easily a whole people can be reduced to a target category. The subtext isn’t hatred of Germans; it’s disgust at a culture that teaches men to treat murder as destiny.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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