How would you explain this sentence?
That was more or less my life. I was like the curator of a small unvisited museum. I didn’t require much of myself. I might return a small trinket from the war back to a shoebox, take another out. Here a shell casing, there a patch from the right shoulder of a uniform: articles that marked a life I was not convinced had needed to be lived.

How would you explain the last sentence: a life I was not convinced had needed to be lived? I think the proper form should be: a life which I was not convinced that it had needed to be lived. Am I right?
Thanks!

Question

How would you explain this sentence?
That was more or less my life. I was like the curator of a small unvisited museum. I didn’t require much of myself. I might return a small trinket from the war back to a shoebox, take another out. Here a shell casing, there a patch from the right shoulder of a uniform: articles that marked a life I was not convinced had needed to be lived.

How would you explain the last sentence: a life I was not convinced had needed to be lived? I think the proper form should be: a life which I was not convinced that it had needed to be lived. Am I right?
Thanks!

Answer

He's saying that his trinkets of war, upon retrospect, remind him that he could have avoided that pathway in his life and done something entirely different. It's a fancy way of saying that he at least partially regrets his choice to enlist and that he can envision another life without any of it.

Answer

"...articles that marked a life I was not convinced had needed to be lived."  Things left behind from someone, now dead, who's life had so little effect that had they not been born at all no one would've noticed or remembered them in death.