Although the Great War upended millions of lives, it struck Europe’s young people with the greatest force. For Vera Brittain (1893–1970), as for so many in her generation, the war became life’s defining experience, which she captured forever in her famous autobiography, Testament of Youth (1933).

Brittain grew up in a wealthy business family in northern England, bristling at small-town conventions and discrimination against women. Very close to her brother Edward, two years her junior, Brittain read voraciously and dreamed of being a successful writer. Finishing boarding school and beating down her father’s objections, she prepared for Oxford’s rigorous entry exams and won a scholarship to its women’s college. Brittain also fell in love with Roland Leighton, an equally brilliant student from a literary family and her brother’s best friend. All three, along with two more close friends, Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, confidently prepared to enter Oxford in late 1914.

When war suddenly approached in July 1914, Brittain shared with millions of Europeans a thrilling surge of patriotic support for her government, a prowar enthusiasm she later played down in her published writings. She wrote in her diary that her “great fear” was that England would declare its neutrality and commit the “grossest treachery” toward France.* She seconded Roland’s decision to enlist, agreeing with her sweetheart’s glamorous view of war as “very ennobling and very beautiful.” Later, exchanging anxious letters in 1915 with Roland in France, Vera began to see the conflict in personal, human terms. She wondered if any victory or defeat could be worth Roland’s life.

Struggling to quell her doubts, Brittain redoubled her commitment to England’s cause and volunteered as an army nurse. For the next three years she served with distinction in military hospitals in London, Malta, and northern France, repeatedly torn between the vision of noble sacrifice and the reality of human tragedy. She lost her sexual inhibitions caring for mangled male bodies, and she longed to consummate her love with Roland. Awaiting his return on leave on Christmas Day in 1915, she was greeted instead with a telegram: Roland had been killed two days before.

Roland’s death was the first of the devastating blows that eventually overwhelmed Brittain’s idealistic patriotism. In 1917 first Geoffrey and then Victor died from gruesome wounds. In early 1918, as the last great German offensive covered the floors of her war-zone hospital with maimed and dying German prisoners, the bone-weary Vera felt a common humanity and saw only more victims. A few weeks later brother Edward — her last hope — died in action. When the war ended, she was, she said, a “complete automaton,” with “my deepest emotions paralyzed if not dead.”

Returning to Oxford and finishing her studies, Brittain gradually recovered. She formed a deep, restorative friendship with another talented woman writer, Winifred Holtby, published novels and articles, and became a leader in the feminist campaign for gender equality. She also married and had children. But her wartime memories were always there. Finally, Brittain succeeded in coming to grips with them in Testament of Youth, her powerful antiwar autobiography. The unflinching narrative spoke to the experiences of an entire generation and became a runaway bestseller. Above all, perhaps, Brittain captured the ambivalent, contradictory character of the war, in which millions of young people found excitement, courage, and common purpose but succeeded only in destroying their lives with their superhuman efforts and futile sacrifices. Becoming ever more committed to pacifism, Brittain opposed England’s entry into World War II.

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