Reads like a long senior English thesis. 
 Early on there is much good description of the type of war it was, its idiocy and futility, and, frankly, one wishes the author had stopped while he was ahead, because at that point, one feels a very strong thesis developing about a general public skepticism, of government and of institutions, growing out of The Great War. One reads on expecting this thesis to be developed and further supported in some way, but instead the author changes direction and starts talking about colors, times of day, poetic references, and, oddly, homosexuals (which, the author speculates at one point, the English have some sort of predisposition toward--say what?), so that the promising argument that Anglo-American culture changed fundamentally because of the experience of The Great War fades into the mist like a doomed frontal attack on the Somme. He spends an inordinate amount of time discussing Sassoon, Wilfred and Graves, and with Graves spends nearly ten pages raising vague criticisms of "Goodbye to All That" as "too farcical" and questioning its veracity, an accusation he never manages to support, and in fact at one point actually contradicts. One wishes he were still alive today so that we could ask him if he is familiar with Aristotle's "On Poetics" where the philosopher points out that "The laughable is a species of what is disgraceful". In other words, there can be (at least) two reactions to the idiocy of the Great War. First, one can deeply regret, with due reverence, the mistakes, the misconceptions, and the lack of questioning of authority; one may even rage against these things. This way serves to honor the dead, in that it does not hurt their feelings that they died for no good reason. The second way is to call into question all of it with humor, since, per Aristotle, humor arises from the despicable. That does not make the humor dishonorable or intended in some way to dishonor. It is merely a different way to get to the same result. Fussell seems to have missed this second possibility entirely with his criticism of Graves.