Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-ling-a-ling, The

The author of this ‘autobiographical fragment without maps’ (his words) was a fourteen year old schoolboy in Oxford when The Great War broke out, and the Kaiser’s hordes invaded Belgium. A year later he was a fully fledged soldier in the Royal Fusiliers, marching with men old enough to be his father. He received his baptism of fire in the Ypres Salient and suffered the full horror of the mud and blood of Passchendaele, and the water logged, rat infested trenches that were to bring him two wounds, close friendships – and an enmity that brought in its unhappy train a Field General Court Martial. The author stayed a serving soldier after the Armistice and went to Cologne with the Army of Occupation. There are no illusions about war in this dramatic out-spoken narrative, and the mystique expounded by young poets like Rupert Brooke soon evaporated into the realism of the war scarred poets Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Nichols, Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves. The author suffered bitter disillusion, witnessed the death of most of his friends, but returned to his home town determined to rid himself of the mental and physical scars received while he was still under the age of descent into hell. pp. 149 #0817 Small stamp on front blank. World War I