Authors: Jon E. Lewis
B00D2VJZ4G EBOK
Edited and Introduced by C. B. Purdom
Foreword by Malcolm Brown
Constable • London
Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
First published in the UK by Robinson Publishing Ltd, 1997
This revised and updated edition published by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson, 2009.
Foreword © Malcolm Brown
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
is available from the British Library
978-1-84901-067-2
eISBN: 978-1-47211-181-4
Printed and bound in the EU
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Cover photograph: Wiring party of the 12th East Yorkshires near Roclincourt, 1918/Imperial War Museum;
Cover design by
stuartpolsondesign.com
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This book was first published in 1930, appearing under the imprint of Messrs J. M. Dent, the originator of that illustrious, long honoured library of books bearing the name ‘Everyman’. Also in that year there appeared on the scene that much consulted, much admired, magisterial work entitled
War Books: A Critical Guide
, written by Cyril Falls: professional soldier, noted historian and destined to become Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford. This was, as we might now see it, an Ofsted report on works relating to the recent Great War published in the period from the Armistice of 1918 to the end of the 1920s. Falls was able to include, presumably as a last-minute entry, a comment on the present work. His verdict is worth quoting in full:
This is a very striking book, throwing light upon almost every phase of the War. It contains sixty short narratives by writers of all ranks from private to lieutenant-colonel, but unfortunately only three from the Navy and the Royal Air Force. Practically every campaign is mentioned, though of course the vast majority of the incidents are from the Western Front. The narrators are in no case professional writers, and though some (but by no means all) lack literary skill, they are far more representative of the British Army, Navy, and Air Force, than any professional writer with his overcharged sensibilities and his inevitable reaction to literary influences and conventions.