Elena’s Reviews > Testament of Youth > Status Update

Waiting, watching, suspense, mourning–will there never be anything else in life. I am so weary of it all–but I bow my head before the storm now, I don't try to fight it any more. I no longer expect things to go well for me; I don't know that I even ask that they shall. All I ask is that I may fulfill my own small weary part in this War in such a way as to be worthy of Them, who die and suffer pain.

I have got used to facing the long empty years ahead of me if I survive the War, but I have always before me the realization of how empty they are and will be, since he will never be there again.

It's absurd to say time makes one forget; I miss him as much as ever I did. One recovers from the shock, just as one gradually would get used to managing with one's left hand if one had lost one's right, but one never gets over the loss, for one is never the same after it.

. . . at all costs I must preserve my self-respect – preserve the self which he loved and I have lost . . . I only wish I could see a little light in all the depths and blackness – only wish I knew what my obvious duty was. Perhaps it is not impossible to regain one's self respect.

"Who is there who has known and seen who can say that Victory is worth the death of even one of these?"

Had a really been a time, I wondered, when I believed that it was?

"... and in among the chaos of twisted iron and splintered timber and shapeless earth are the fleshless, blackened bones of simple men who poured out their red, sweet wine of youth unknowing, for nothing more tangible than Honour or their Country's Glory or another's Lust of Power."