Character guide

Christopher Tietjens

major

Also known as Tietjens, Captain Tietjens, Christopher Tietjens of Groby, Tietjens of Groby

A brilliant, honorable Yorkshire landowner and captain in the trenches, he recapitulates his wrecked marriage while shells fall and men go mad around him.

Sylvia Tietjens

major

Also known as Sylvia, Mrs. Christopher Tietjens

Christopher's beautiful, faithless wife, whose vindictive passions and sudden returns from a Birkenhead convent keep his marriage a wound that will not close.

General Lord Edward Campion

supporting

Also known as General Campion, Campion, old Campion

A senior general of the old military establishment, whose favor and displeasure shape the fates of the officers beneath him.

Valentine Wannop

supporting

Also known as Miss Wannop, Wannop, Valentine

A young suffragist and intellectual whose connection to Tietjens runs deeper than propriety allows, and whose fate he cannot stop weighing.

Mark Tietjens

supporting

Also known as Mark

Christopher's older brother, a cold, powerful figure of the Yorkshire family whose judgments and silences carry their own kind of force.

Major Perowne

supporting

Also known as Perowne, Major Wilfrid Fosbrooke Eddicker Perowne of Perowne

A pompous, incompetent major and Sylvia's lover, whose vanity and ineptitude make him a walking embarrassment to the officers around him.

Colonel Levin

supporting

Also known as Levin, Colonel Levin

Levin moves between the polished, unreadable General Campion and the wrecked dignity of Tietjens, signalling with his eyes what he cannot say aloud. He cares — 'Do you suppose I don't care what happens to you?' — yet his care mostly takes the form of breathless coaxing, urging Tietjens not to refuse the release from arrest he doesn't want. His helpless decency measures how little room the machinery of command leaves for anyone trying to do right by a friend.

Sergeant-Major Cowley

supporting

Also known as Cowley, Major Cowley, Lieutenant Cowley, Old Cowley

Cowley is the practical spine of Tietjens' unit, translating chaos — a Canadian draft that stampedes at its first German plane — into something like order. He reports the men's panic without contempt and their jokes without sentiment, saying only 'Poor boys!' as they go up the line. His dry competence and oblique humour make him the one figure in the hut who seems to know exactly what everything costs.

Captain Mackenzie

supporting

Also known as Mackenzie

Mackenzie shares Tietjens' hut and his contempt for the mountain of paperwork descending from every headquarters in France. Their sparring — rhymes for a sonnet against Latin hexameters in three minutes — is half hostility, half the only intimacy available to men under strain. He resents Tietjens and defends him in the same breath, and his frayed temper shows how thin the officer class's composure has worn.

Captain McKechnie

supporting

Also known as McKechnie, the brooding and odious McKechnie

McKechnie nurses old injuries and new slights, his bitterness sharpened by the company of dubious men like the returned Jonce or Evanns. He watches Tietjens with an envy that has nothing to do with rank and everything to do with a wife and a life he cannot recover. His presence in the hut is a low, constant pressure — proof that the enemy is not always across the wire.

O Nine Morgan

supporting

Also known as Morgan, Dai Morgan, 09 Morgan, Poor O Nine Morgan

O Nine Morgan comes from the Rhondda, unmarried, and burns with fury because the elder officer refused him leave to chase the buyer of his wife's laundry. He is one of the two men on the hut floor, his red lips still talking as the shellfire settles over the camp. His ordinary, unbearable grievance — a cow, a pocketbook, a laundry — is exactly what the war will not let him finish.

General O'Hara

minor

Also known as O'Hara

An Irish general involved in military administration.

Lieutenant Hotchkiss

minor

Also known as Hotchkiss

A young officer in Tietjens' unit.

Sir Vincent Macmaster

minor

Also known as Macmaster

A government official and acquaintance of Tietjens.

Father Consett

minor

Also known as Father

A Catholic priest and confidant to Sylvia Tietjens.

Major Thurston

minor

Also known as Thurston

A staff officer who clashes with Tietjens.

Old Puffles

minor

Also known as Puffles

An elderly general being starved of men and resources.

Miss de Bailly

minor

Also known as de Bailly

A young woman connected to the Tietjens family.

Mrs. Satterthwaite

minor

Also known as born Satterthwaite

A social acquaintance of the Tietjens family.

Girtin

minor

An artist friend of Christopher Tietjens.

Winnie

minor

A servant or minor character in the household.

Schomburg

minor

A German officer mentioned in passing.

One Seven Thomas

minor

Also known as Thomas

A soldier in Tietjens' battalion.

Second-Lieutenant Pitkins

minor

Also known as Pitkins, horrible little Pitkins

A junior officer disliked by his peers.

Sergeant Morgan

minor

Also known as Colour-Sergeant Morgan

A non-commissioned officer in the battalion.

Lance-Corporal Caldicott

minor

A soldier under Tietjens' command.

Ruggles

minor

A minor character in the military setting.

Old Lady Sachse

minor

Also known as Lady Sachse

An elderly aristocratic woman.

Levitt

minor

A soldier or officer mentioned briefly.

Buller

minor

A historical figure referenced in the narrative.