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Chapter 13
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Long Long Way, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Youth, Naivety, and Growing Up
The Horrors of War
Family, Camaraderie, and Love
Political Conflict and Divided Loyalties
Resilience and Shared Humanity
Summary
Analysis
Willie’s company marches from the rear camp to the front lines. The soldiers are all aware that they’ve reached a dark and deadly time of the war. The Allied forces have taken the village of Guillemont, but it’s difficult to celebrate this victory when so many soldiers died to secure it, including hundreds of Irishmen. Now Willie’s company is supposed to secure Guillemont and push on to Guinchy.
The cost of victory is so high that even winning battles feels meaningless and futile to the soldiers. This bleak reality suggests that no good can come from war, and yet the soldiers must follow orders and continue fighting anyway.
Themes
At night, Willie’s company stops in a field strewn with the dead bodies of Irish soldiers. Father Buckley holds a religious service there, assuring the living men that they have God’s protection. The priest commends them for defending the Catholic people of Belgium and fighting for Ireland’s independence. As Father Buckley recites the Hail Mary, Willie feels comforted and strengthened by the prayer. He reflects that words are a “natural music,” and he hopes that the dead find solace in Father Buckley’s words as well.
By encouraging the soldiers to keep living and fighting for Ireland, Father Buckley reveals his own nationalist leaning. He supports Home Rule and implies that many of Willie’s comrades do as well. Overall, the priest’s speech and his faith both have a powerful healing effect. Words, music, and prayer hearten Willie and his fellow soldiers, helping them face the approaching battle.
Themes
Willie and his fellow soldiers pass through the approach trench, which is full of decaying corpses that they must walk on. Their own bombs fall all around them, causing needless deaths, because the aim of their missiles is too short. Then the soldiers enter a moonlit cornfield. The cornstalks are so high that Willie has to hold onto Christy Moran in front of him so that he doesn’t get lost. Willie repeatedly stumbles over dismembered limbs and bodies, including Quigley’s corpse, as bombs continue to fall.
The violence of war is not only sickeningly gruesome but also tragically absurd. The fact that soldiers are being killed by their own side’s weapons renders the bombardment pointless. It also means that countless of men, including some of Willie’s comrades, are dying in vain.
Themes
Willie thinks about all the new recruits who will come from Ireland to replace the fallen soldiers. He panics and fervently wishes that the dead could come back to life and the living could return home. In his terror, Willie starts praying aloud to Gretta. Joe Kielty hears him and promises that they’ll be alright. O’Hara also encourages Willie, and Willie’s spirits lift. The men jokingly argue what the crop they’re wading through is. Their laughter is as healing as a prayer.
Witnessing so much death takes a severe emotional toll on Willie, as his sudden fear and despair demonstrates. In this moment, Willie’s love for Gretta acts as an important lifeline for him. Also, Willie’s comrades are able to cheer Willie up, emphasizing the value of human connection as a source of comfort and support in difficult times.
Themes
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Willie’s company comes upon a battlefield full of hundreds of British and German corpses. Captain Sheridan, Christy Moran, Willie, O’Hara, and Joe Kielty force their way through the decaying bodies, many of them retching from the smell of death.
Encountering such a grisly site of death is yet another horror of war that the soldiers are forced to undergo.
Themes
Willie’s company passes through Guillemont, where Chinese laborers are repairing a road during the active bombardment. Then the soldiers reach their assigned trench. There, they eat hot stew, which seems to all the men like a wonderful luxury, and rest for several hours. However, they can’t settle into the new trench because they have orders to take Guinchy village.
That the Irish soldiers have come to view basic necessities—food and rest—as luxuries highlights the hardship they’ve endured during their time on the Western Front. Meanwhile, the Chinese laborers face their own suffering in the war, especially as the British Army appears to have little regard for their lives.
Themes
At four o’clock in the morning, Willie’s company, along with several others, gets into position to launch an attack. As a fierce barrage begins, Willie fearfully waits by an assault ladder. Then Captain Sheridan orders the men onward, and Willie and his fellow soldiers emerge onto no man’s land. They march together in a line, following close after their own barrage for cover. At first, the advance is easy, and Willie feels a burst of love and strength. Soon, however, German machine guns fire at them, and Captain Sheridan falls, wounded. More members of the battalion are killed from the shooting and bombing. Willie weeps as he marches forward with Joe Kielty and Pete O’Hara beside him.
While the assault is going well, Willie feels almost as if his earlier dreams of heroic victory are finally coming true. However, when Captain Sheridan is shot, this fantasy of glory instantly shatters. Confronted with the brutal reality of war once more, Willie is overcome with sorrow. He also seems to weep out of love for his comrades Joe Kielty and O’Hara, who Willie is grateful to still have alive and by his side.
Themes
Christy Moran yells at the advancing soldiers to maintain order, and Willie suddenly finds himself leaping down into the enemy trenches. A German soldier almost strangles Willie, but Joe Kielty strikes him with a hammer. The German soldiers surrender, and Christy Moran groups them up as prisoners.
Unlike how Willie used to imagine war, real fighting in the trenches is chaotic and desperate—not orderly and heroic. Willie is dazed, hardly aware of what he’s doing, and only narrowly escapes death with Joe Kielty’s help. The Irish soldiers’ capture of an enemy trench is a small victory but no glorious triumph.
Themes
For the rest of the day, Willie’s company waits in the enemy trenches without water or food, expecting a counterattack that never comes. Finally, a battalion from the 16th Division comes to relieve them, and Willie’s company marches back to Guillemont, learning that Captain Sheridan is dead. Along the way, other soldiers cheer for them as the “heroes of Guinchy.” However, Willie and his fellow soldiers feel like ghosts, not heroes, as they’re devastated by their grief and the terrible slaughter they witnessed.
In return for their efforts, Willie and his fellow soldiers receive only hollow praise. Their basic needs are neglected, and the battle has left them traumatized and grief-stricken. Victory is meaningless when so many human lives have been lost. Thus, the capture of Guinchy emphasizes that no good—only pain, death, and suffering—comes out of war.
Themes
