Some Desperate Glory : The Diary of a Young Officer 1917

About this book

An officers diary hidden away for 40 years reveals the horrors of World War One in harrowing detail. The SunSome Desperate Glory charts the progress of an enthusiastic and patriotic young officer who marched into battle with Palgraves Golden Treasury a collection of English poemsin his pack. Intensely honest and revealing his diary evokes the day-to-day minutiae of trench its constant dangers and mind-numbing routine interspersed with lyrical and sometimes comic interludes. Vividly capturing the spirit of the officers and men at the front the diary grows in horror and disillusionment as Vaughans company is drawn into the carnage of Passchendaele from which of his original happy little band of 90 men only 15 survived.This diary of a few months in the life of a young officer on the Western Front in 1917 deserves to rank close behind Graves Owen Sassoon among the most brilliant and harrowing documents of that devastating period. Max Hastings author of An Epic Tragedy 1945-1975This stark WW I diary by a 19-year-old subaltern in the British army begins with an account of his eager departure for the western front and ends eight months later with an awesome description of the battle of Ypres in which most of his company died. Publishers Weekly