Word: crouchback
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Waugh's hero. Guy Crouchback, the square and serious scion of an old landed Catholic family, joined the Halberdiers with shining purpose and an oath on the sword of Roger of Waybroke, saintly crusader of the 12th century. To Guy, the Nazi-Communist pact had seemed to simplify things: "The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms. Whatever the outcome there was a place for him in that battle...
What had to be done was to see Guy Crouchback through to a melancholy acceptance of the greying world in which the only crusades are private affairs and the only pilgrimages are within. "I don't think I'm much interested in victory now," Guy tells his father. "It doesn't seem to matter now who wins." What he really wants is to die-as, it appears, do many of the people in the book (one whole section is called "The Death Wish...
...there any place that is free from evil?" cries a Jewish D.P. to Crouchback in Yugoslavia. "It is too simple to say that only the Nazis wanted war. These Communists wanted it too. It was the only way in which they could come to power. Many of my people wanted it, to be revenged on the Germans, to hasten the creation of the national state...
...right?" For more than 4,000,000 of them the answer is yes, to sighs of vast relief. But to the remainder, doctors and nurses try to postpone breaking the news that the baby is in some way malformed. If the child lives, he may later join "Richard the Crouchback" in railing against his fate, and with better reason...
Officers and Gentlemen, by Evelyn Waugh. The deft and relentless British satirist writes his second fine war novel around the exploits and disillusionments of Guy Crouchback, commando officer and "Christian gentleman" (TIME, July...