The Englishmen of Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is a novel that tries very hard to be as much of an anti-war novel as possible, and it succeeds in large part in doing this. Slaughterhouse-Five tries to strip war of any tales of glory, courage, camaraderie, and other positive attributes and shows war as the horrifying experience it is. Some of the most potent imagery from the novel has to do with the horrors of war (details like Roland dying of gangrene from his feet, the experience of the boxcars, and how Dresden after the bombing was like the moon). With most of the depiction of the war involving this sort of imagery, the POW English officers which Billy encounters seem totally out of place.

These Englishmen "made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun." They had been given (way) more than ample amount of food, and they got special treatment from the Germans. Basically, they represent the idealized version of war which is not the dire and horrific circumstances the Russian and American POWs found themselves in but reasonable and comfortable. They are proud of being English and have great camaraderie with each other. The difference between the bond the Englishmen have with each other is about as different as you can get with the bond between Billy and Roland and Lazzaro. 

Vonnegut is taking a risk with including characters such as the Englishmen in his anti-war novel, as including them could potentially restore some of the allure of war. What Vonnegut does not do with his depiction of the Englishmen is show them to be figures of valor or virtue. While they boisterously welcome the Americans in at first, they end up wanting to ship them out as soon as they realize these Americans shattered the idealism of the Englishmen's comfortable fantasy version of the war. Although it is hard for us as readers to empathize with the Americans, it is definitely harder to empathize with the Englishmen who are sort of trying hard to not face the harsh realities of war. They are too far removed from the realities of war we have been shown vividly by Vonnegut for us to derive any pleasure from seeing them in such comfortable conditions.

I think the reason why Vonnegut includes these Englishmen in Slaughterhouse-Five is to speak to his audience. Vonnegut's novel spreads an anti-war message that resonates with his audience which was dealing with the US waging a war in Vietnam, a nation that largely didn't want us there. I think he is trying to paint his audience which supported the effort in Vietnam as the Englishmen. He is saying that the supporters of the war and of war in general likely have a deluded sense of what war is really like. Vonnegut's point with the Englishmen is not the fact that they serve as a foil to the miserable Americans with their enthusiasm for their ideal version of war, but the fact that they are so deluded in their enthusiasm for the war. Vonnegut is trying to expose his readers in the Englishmen's positions with their delusions of war.