In Memoriam by Alice Winn

New York : Knopf, 2023

It's 1914 and Henry Gaunt and Sydney Ellwood, still in boarding school, follow the news from the war with excitement, including the heroic deaths of their friends. Gaunt, half German, enlists as a way to limit the anti-German sentiment he and his family might experience and to leave behind the feelings for Ellwood that he can't acknowledge, much less act upon. Ellwood, also silently pining for Gaunt soon follows.

The author uses a variety of forms, including letters and issues of the school newspaper, The Preshutian, to follow Gaunt, Ellwood and their friends through the actions of the war, including the horrors of the Somme and the deaths of many. 

Boarding school novels set in the 1920s often discuss the 'Old Boys'—those former students who fought in World War I and sometimes return for cricket matches against the current students.  Winn has flipped this by constructing a boarding school novel that highlights the youth and excitement of the students but then follows them into the war. What is glorified in bravery by the school and its students is a horror laid bare through their experience of the war. 

Returning to the Trenches by Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson

Returning to the Trenches (1916)
Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (English, 1889-1946)
Etching and drypoint
13.3 x 20.1 cm.
Victoria & Albert Museum