Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff

First produced: 1929

First published: 1929

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Impressionistic realism

Time of work: March, 1918

Locale: A battlefield in France

Principal Characters:

• Captain Dennis Stanhope, a British company commander
• Lieutenant Osborne, Stanhope’s middle-aged second-in-command
• Lieutenant Raleigh, Stanhope’s school friend, his fiancee’s brother
• Second Lieutenant Hibbert, a cowardly officer in Stanhope’s company

Critique:

Originally Robert Sherriff had no literary ambitions, and JOURNEY’S END was written to be used by a group of amateurs who were interested in dramatics. At that time Sherriff was an insurance claims adjuster. The play grew out of letters Sherriff had written to his family during World War I, when he served as an officers in the British Army. On a chance suggestion, JOURNEY’S END was sent to George Bernard Shaw, who helped to get the play produced. It was an immense success; at one time there were nine companies playing it in the United States and England. The play made the author famous, and he became a professional writer. Although he has written other plays and novels, none has been as successful as JOURNEY’S END.

The Story:

Captain Stanhope’s infantry company entered the front lines on Monday, March 18, 1918, at a time when the Allied Powers were expecting a strong German attack near St. Quentin. Lieutenant Osborne, a middle-aged officer who had been a schoolmaster in civilian life, met Lieutenant Raleigh, a new officer, when the latter arrived at the headquarters dugout. Discovering that Raleigh was an ardent hero worshiper of Captain Stanhope, who was absent at the time, Osborne tried to make the new officer realize that Stanhope’s’ three years in the lines had made a different man of him.

Raleigh could barely realize just how much his friend had changed. Stanhope had become a battle-hardened, cynical infantry officer who drank whiskey incessantly in order to keep his nerves together.

After supper that evening Stanhope confided to Osborne that he was fearful of young Raleigh’s opinion, and he declared that he meant to censor all the young officer’s mail, lest Raleigh reveal to his sister the kind of man Stanhope, her fiance, had become. Stanhope was bitter that Raleigh had landed in his company when there were so many others in France to which he might have been assigned. He was also concerned over Lieutenant Hibbert, another officer who was malingering in an effort to get sent home to England. Stanhope, who hated a quitter, resolved that Hibbert should be forced to stay.

The following morning the company prepared for the expected German attack. Stanhope sent out parties to put up a barbed wire enclosure in case neighboring units were forced to withdraw. Stanhope, having received orders to stand, meant to do so. During the morning Raleigh and Osborne had a long talk and became very friendly. After their talk Raleigh went to write a letter to his sister. When he finished, Stanhope made him hand it over for censoring. Raleigh, after some bitter words, did so. Stanhope, angry with himself for insisting, could not bring himself to read the letter. Osborne, anxious to keep harmony in the company, read it and reported to Stanhope that Raleigh had written only praise of the captain to his sister.

That afternoon word from regimental headquarters reported that the German attack was sure to occur on Thursday morning, and Stanhope hurried up preparations for the expected attack. As he finished a conference with his sergeant major, the colonel commanding the regiment stepped into the company headquarters for a conference. He had come because the matter was a serious one; he wanted Stanhope to send a raiding party to capture prisoners, from whom the colonel expected to gain information about the Germans’ disposition for the attack. The raid would be a dangerous one because it had to be made in daylight.

The officers selected to lead the raid were Osborne, because of his experience, and Raleigh, because of his youthful vitality. Stanhope hated to send either, for he needed Osborne and he was afraid that Raleigh was too inexperienced. Above that, there was the possibility that they would never return.

After the colonel had gone, Hibbert told Stanhope that he was going to the doctor to be relieved from duty. Stanhope, realizing that the man was feigning illness, threatened to shoot him if he left. Having bullied the man into behaving himself, Stanhope, to show that he held no ill will, promised to stand duty with Hibbert that night.

Later in the afternoon Osborne and Raleigh were told the details of the proposed raid. Osborne was quiet, knowing what they were in for; Raleigh, not knowing how dangerous the raid would be, took the assignment as a great adventure.

By the next afternoon preparations for the raid had been completed. A gap had been made in the barbed wire between the lines by trench mortars. The Germans, to let the British know they realized what was coming, had gone out and hung red rags on the gap, and they had zeroed in their machine guns on the gap. Stanhope tried to get the raid called off, but the colonel insisted that it was necessary. The mortars laid down a barrage of smoke shells to hide the rush of the raid. While Osborne and his party went to the German parapet and kept the way clear, Raleigh and another group of men clambered into the trench to capture a prisoner.

The raid went as well as could be expected. Raleigh and his men returned with a prisoner from whom they obtained vaulable information on the disposition of German troops. Osborne and several of his enlisted men had been killed by the Germans, and Raleigh was crushed by the death of his newly made friend. The other officers, trying to pass off the incident, had a chicken dinner with champagne that night to celebrate the success of the raid. Raleigh, thinking them barbarous in their conduct, remained away from the dugout. He could not see that the other officers were simply trying to forget what had happened; any one of them might be killed during the next raid.

After the dinner Stanhope gave Raleigh a violent tongue-lashing for his conduct and tried to explain to the young officer why it had been necessary for the living to celebrate, even though Osborne had been killed.

The next morning the German attack began. During the first bombardment several men in the company, including Raleigh, were wounded. Stanhope ordered Raleigh to be brought into the dugout, where the captain tried to comfort him with word that the wound was serious enough to require evacuation to England for treatment and convalescence. For the first time since Raleigh’s arrival at the company the two were able to meet as friends. Their renewed friendship was short-lived, however, for Raleigh was wounded so severely that he died within a few minutes. Stanhope, turning his back on his friend’s body, went out to direct the defense against the Germans.

Further Critical Evaluation of the Work:

It was not until 1929, eleven years after the end of World War I, that England had its first memorable “anti-war” play (Sean O’Casey’s THE SILVER TASSIE being Irish) and that one was largely accidental. Robert C. Sherriff, a junior insurance was called upon by his boat club to write an all-male play and he complied with JOURNEY’S END. But, as soon as Sherriff tasted play-writing, he became enthused, abandoned insurance for artistic creativity, and persisted in marketing JOURNEY’S END until it was commercially produced. Once on the boards, it was a tremendous success, both popularly and critically, and Sherriff seemed destined to become one of England’s most important post-war dramatists. Unfortunately, however, he was never able to match his first theatrical achievement.

By contemporary standards the “anti-war” message of JOURNEY’S END is quite muted. Sherriff certainly creates a believable milieu, demonstrates that combat is an unpleasant experience, and points out the insensitivity of those who plan and carry out the war from a distance, using combat troops as mere pawns in a grand design. But the absolute necessity of the war and the correctness of the long-range vision of those who oversee it are never questioned. However meaningless the men’s activities may seem to the contemporary reader, Sherriff leaves no doubt that there is purpose in their sacrifice. War, he suggests, is a necessary evil, and the important thing is to face up to it with intelligence and courage. Thus, the lasting importance of JOURNEY’S END lies not in its rhetoric, but in its dramatic potency and psychological insights.

In spite of its context of combat violence, JOURNEY’S END is, for the most part, a leisurely play. Most of the action occurs offstage, and except for the final moments, the pacing is deliberately slow. The atmosphere in the trenches is one of anxious boredom as the men wait for the big German assault. To escape the tedium and forget the sudden destruction and death hovering about, they indulge in aimless banter, stale jokes, and a kind of grotesque parody of domesticity. But the more casual the men try to be, the more tense the atmosphere becomes.

The play focuses on the contrasting reactions of the five officers. Each of them has his own special “defense” against the pressures of combat. Lieutenant Osborne, the second in command, is the most stable of the five. A middle-aged schoolteacher in peacetime, he has managed to keep himself under control by scrupulously separating his civilian and military roles and by viewing the entire process with an ironical distance and detachment. Throughout most of the action, Second Lieutenant Trotter seems to be an unimaginative clod, until he reveals, in a heated exchange with Stanhope, that he has suppressed his imagination as a way of keeping his emotions in hand. Second Lieutenant Hibbert has no effective defense at all and so, when denied the chance to malinger out of combat, he cracks. Only Stanhope’s threat to kill him on the spot forces Hibbert to a precarious self-control. Second Lieutenant Raleigh, fresh from training, is still buoyed up by the cliches of military honor and personal glory; given the almost suicidal mission to kidnap a German soldier in the face of the enemy’s fire, he says “it’s most frightfully exciting.” But, once exposed to active fighting and the death of Osborne, he quickly sheds these cliches, comes to understand the anguish and fears of his companions, and dies with stoic courage at the final curtain.

But the most interesting and important study of a man under pressure is that of the Commanding Officer, Captain Dennis Stanhope. Lacking Osborne’s detachment, Trotter’s unimaginativeness, or Raleigh’s naivete, he cannot adopt any of their survival strategies and so teeters near the edge of breakdown during most of the play. An impressive man in college and sports, Stanhope has brought considerable ability to the military. He is an excellent leader, a good strategist, a perceptive judge of his men, and an extremely capable officer in an emergency. At the same time he is intense, emotional, and depressed. His “decline” is given special emphasis by the arrival of Raleigh, who has known and idolized him before the war and now sees him in a haggard and dissipated condition. The Captain’s decline is most obvious in the way he abuses himself physically, drinks to excess, and doubts his own sanity out loud.

Late in the play he almost goes into an hysterical rage over Raleigh’s slighting of the other officers following Osborne’s death. But he gets control over himself and later, in the final, crucial moments he holds himself together. When he returns to combat after Raleigh’s death, it is clear that he has faced the worst in himself and comes out of it with purpose and confidence.

Thus, JOURNEY’S END may be pessimistic about the nature of war, but it is optimistic about the men who must fight them. In the end it is a powerful tribute, not to battlefield glory, but to the practical heroics of survival with dignity.