From Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

From Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Jack Firebrace. An honest Tommy.

The Novel Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks is a story of various parts of one mans life, Stephen Wraysford. The first par of the book is a love story, when Stephen Wraysford is living and working in Northern France. The main text of the book is when Stephen Wraysford returns to Northern France again, this time as an officer in the British Army, during the First World War. This is the section in which Jack Firebrace features. The final part of the book is a recurring sub plot set in the seventies.

We initially meet Jack Firebrace in the most horrific circumstances possible. Jack is a miner, tunnelling under enemy positions placing mines in the hope of halting enemy advances. Bizarrely Jack’s life is threatened by both sides. He faces either being blown to pieces by enemy mines or being picked off by sniper fire on his all too infrequent breaks on the surface. Should the enemy fail to get him his own side will. Turning on him when he is overcome by exhaustion. On one occasion he is listening for the enemy tunnelling close to his position, he hears nothing and assures his co-miners that it is safe to continue. He sees some of his colleagues literally blown to pieces, had he heard better, they may still be alive. With little sleep, Jack is put on to sentry duty, tiredness gives way to exhaustion. Jack briefly falls asleep. Only to be woken by his commanding officer. The officer’s arrogance and insensitivity to the horrors that preceded this are graphically portrayed to us when Jack is ordered to appear in front of another commanding officer in the morning.

We are told “it’s a court martial offence……you know the punishment”. The following day the “seriousness” of the offence is forgotten as Jack turns up potentially to meet his death to find his superiors have turned to alcohol to anaesthetise themselves to their own horrors. Keen to talk about anything except the reason Jack is there, the insensitivity of the first officer is further revealed to us as starts to talk about some sketches that decorate the walls of the trench. He is soon rebuked by the other officer, Stephen Wraysford, who says “for god’s sake man...he wants to know if he is here for an art lesson or if he is going to be shot”

The charge is dropped, this relieves the atmosphere, already, through Jack’s eyes giving us an insight into the how cheap life is in the trenches, and how desensitised Jack has become to it. This is Jack’s first encounter with Stephen Wraysford the dreadful significance of which will be shown to us later.

Following our initial encounter with Jack, seeing him emotionally tortured by his own side. We see in Jack a good man, an ordinary man in the most extraordinary of circumstances. We are shown how important his family are to him. His eight year old son John is seriously ill with diphtheria, this prey’s on Jack’s mind. In the death and killing that surround him Jack comforts himself reading letters from his wife.

John Died. In the sea of awfulness that surrounded him Jack sat down and read the words his wife had written. In very simple language she wrote “I have to tell you that our boy died this morning” The starkness of these words appear to underline the tenuous grasp that Jack also has on life. At any moment Jack could be wiped out too. Consistent to the character we have already seen in Jack he tries to pray, to give thanks, however overcome by emotion he can only sob “my boy, my darling boy”. In a premonition to Jack’s fate his wife writes “please do take care of yourself, come home to me”

In a battle scene near Auchenvilliers the troops gathered waiting for “the big push” Meanwhile Jack was wiring up the mines in tunnels underground, sure in the knowledge that their detonation would strengthen the allied positions. However, quite the contrary when the mines were detonated they left an enormous crater to strengthen the enemy’s defences. This allied to the fact that the promised breaches in the enemies barbed wire defences had not been made. Jack, Arthur Shaw and the priest could do nothing apart from watch the allied troops get slaughtered and ripped apart