Generals Die in Bed is an anti-war novella by the Canadian writer Charles Yale Harrison. Based on the author's own experiences in combat, it tells the story of a young soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I. It was first published in 1930 by William Morrow. This Canadian WWI narrative starts in Montreal, where an unnamed soldier of 20 years old is among those Canadian soldiers preparing to deploy confront the Germans on European soil, mainly in France and Belgium. Though the story begins with the narrator's close relationships with fellow soldiers, named Brown, Cleary, Fry, Broadbent... and Anderson, and almost seductive experience of deployment, it soon shifts to scenes of the infamous WWI trenches; here, the conditions are unsanitary at best, as the soldiers are constantly exposed to lice, gigantic rats, and flesh-rotting rainfalls. The unnamed narrator is incrementally disillusioned towards the war, particularly when given no choice but to question its purpose and its socio-economic implications.
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| Author: | Charles Yale Harrison |
| Genre: | Fiction, Children's literature |
| Number of editions: | 7 |