Description

This book is based on a series of eight articles the author wrote in 1928 though, as he says, in writing it he has revised hasty judgements, made some rearrangement, rewritten ill-considered passages, and added a substantial amount of new material. One can certainly say that the result is an outstanding work and one that has been widely acclaimed. Douie was posted to the 1st Dorsets towards the end of 1915 when he reached the age of nineteen, though before reporting to them he spent a short time with an entrenching battalion, and this record is in the main concerned with his service in his battalion on the Western Front. He joined them at Rainneville a few miles to the north of Amiens, and was posted to No 1 Platoon of A Company of whom he writes: The hand of death lay heavily on that company. To my certain knowledge fourteen, nearly one half, gave their lives, and of the remainder I do not know the fate of several. Apart from a brief two months in the Bethune sector (Aug/Sep 1916) Douie’s battalion (14th Brigade, 32nd Division) was on the Somme from the end of 1915 to May 1917, when the battalion was sent north to Nieuport, and it is this period that takes up much of his powerfully descriptive narrative. At the time of the Armistice he was in Italy, away from his battalion, and the final chapter deals with this period.

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