In this well-written work on the experiences of upper-middle-class men serving in the Great War, T. G. Ashplant explores themes of masculinity, class, politics, and patriotism. By focusing on the emotional complexity inherent in war service, Ashplant examines both the changing attitudes felt after 1914 among a specific class of volunteer soldiers and the mechanisms of socialization they experienced in their lives, which, he argues, can “illuminate a key aspect of the formation of individual and public identities” (185). Ashplant proposes that the psychological conflicts inherent in adolescence, adult sexuality, religious adherence, and political affiliation merged with the pressures of the Great War to challenge some individuals’ previously held beliefs. This argument is expanded over three sections of theory, case studies, and analysis of the wider context of social identities during and after the war. The crux of the monograph depends upon the case studies of Robert Graves, Scott Macfie, and Alick West, each of which demonstrates Ashplant's focus on the processes of psychosocial and psychosexual development and the acceptance or rejection of social institutions and ideologies.

The first section involves an examination of relevant masculinity theory and a short historiography of the war. Ashplant spends a great deal of time detailing patterns of Victorian and Edwardian male socialization at public school and through the development of patriarchal hierarchies, as the British nation turned boys into men who would defend the empire. For anyone familiar with the work of John Tosh or George Mosse, this section incorporates rather well-known arguments; however, it does serve as a sound introduction for those who are new to masculinity studies. Conversely, Ashplant's discussion of the war's potential for creating periods of liminality and the applicability of Victor Turner's notion of “communitas”—defined as moments of challenging the status quo or social structure—is extremely interesting. “It is war,” Ashplant argues, “which puts the identification of individual with nation to the greatest test and reveals some of its fault lines” (194). These fractures in national ideology allowed men such as Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, W. H. R. Rivers, and others to reflect upon the war as a necessity in their lives and possibly reject previously accepted and expected social roles.

Ashplant's real talent lies in his analysis of individual case studies in the second section of the monograph. Some of the men under examination are quite well known, and Ashplant situates their reactions to the war within a paradigm that, at times, seems to blend social constructionist and psychoanalytic theories of masculinity. His discussion of Scott Macfie is perhaps the most interesting, as Ashplant positions Macfie's personal rebellion and associations with Gypsies and homoeroticism in Turkey prior to 1914 with his sudden adherence to social demands in wartime. Macfie was able to “bring the various elements of his identity into closer alignment” as the war “gave him an unequalled opportunity to channel all his energies into a role and for a goal with which he was psychically at ease, at once dutiful and a rebel” (144).

Ashplant's analysis of the 1914–18 period provides a variation on Eric Leed's imagery of the trenches as a labyrinth, presenting the western front instead as an encounter with “monstrous forms,” where men's daily interactions with mangled body parts could “startle a neophyte into thinking about what they had hitherto taken for granted” (79). Men's bodies, whole or in fragments, changed the opinions of volunteer soldiers regarding the war effort. Bodies of the dead and the living underscored the irony of officers caring for their own soldiers while also having to lead them “over the top” to kill young German men who might easily have been their counterparts in peacetime. This conflict of duties “tested to the breaking point some of the ideologies which sustained and gave meaning to the war” (93). The analysis of Siegfried Sassoon's time with Dr. W. H. R. Rivers at Craiglockhart Hospital directly relates to this theme of breaking down, as Ashplant suggests that Sassoon's oscillations from enthusiastic recruit to bitter protester “represent his attempt to respond to and manage his cognitive and emotional experiences of the Western Front” (88). Sassoon is certainly one the Great War's better-known individuals and his association with Dr. Rivers has been the subject of both academic investigation and popular attention, thanks to Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy (London, 1991–95). That said, Ashplant does situate the events at Craiglockhart within his own particular argument, contending that Rivers and Sassoon were “attached by powerful emotional bonds to the nation, duty, and the men they cared for” with the result that they equally “struggled to accommodate these attachments to the realities of modern warfare” (184). Given that the analysis of Sassoon and Rivers forms such an interesting and thought-provoking part of the monograph, it is somewhat disappointing that there is no further discussion of Sassoon's experiences in the 1920s, as there is with the studies of Macfie and Graves.

Ashplant concludes by reemphasizing that for some of the survivors of the First World War, “coming to terms with their experiences meant embarking on a process of questioning the structures and values through which they had become men” (234). The political and social consequences of these reflections are not the main focus of Ashplant's work; rather, it is the very process of questioning—an officer's specific moments of liminality and introspection—that invigorates Ashplant's analysis. This separates Fractured Loyalties from other social and military histories of the Great War. It is not a general survey of war experiences or a biography of certain members of the officer class. Instead, it is a valuable contribution to the cultural historiography of the First World War that provides plausible reasons for the nuances behind some men's motivations for and reactions to fighting along the western front.