…that the Great War was not about clean monuments, plastic poppies, and solemnly bowed heads.
While Roger Stanley is a fictional character, the events he describes were all too common during the Great War:
The bombardment hadn’t relented since this morning. The ground trembled incessantly. In the corner of his eye, a dark shape moved. Almost habitually Roger glanced at the barbed wire along the top of the parapet. In the tangled mess hung a soldier, arms spread wide in the wire, head lolling backwards. With every explosion, he swayed. They’d have taken the poor sod down long ago if not for the bullets that
