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CASSON (Stanley)
Steady Drummer.
1st Ed., 281pp., 2 col. & 18 b/w plates, 2 maps. VG in dw. Bell.
1935
#63187
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![[HLMainPic]](booksThumbs/63187.jpg "Click on the left or right of the image for more images")
Commissioned in 1914 (after education at Oxford), the author (later a well known archaeologist & writer) provides memoirs of service with the 2nd East Lancshire Regiment in France & Flanders in 1915 until wounded at the 2nd Battle of Ypres, then later service on the Staff in Salonika 1916-18. Had this book been published when Falls issued his bibliography he would doubtless have praised its eloquent, unaffected prose & artistic depiction of novel surroundings such as Casson's account of his initiation to the trenches in March 1915: "As I wound my way along a communication trench in pitch darkness a stray bullet suddenly hit a tree not far off with a crack like that of a whip. I had always imagined that bullets were silent tings that hit you or vanished quietly elsewhere... That first crack made me jump. My first shell on the other hand left me unmoved, for it made very little noise... The trenches were more or less what I had expected... sandbagged & traversed. Behind them stood the gaunt ruin of a convent in whose watery cellars the company officers had their meals... Night in the trenches was the most enduring experience of all. I can remember every detail with stark clarity... The relief at being able to stand up at full height without dyspepsic stoopings, the joy of being able to climb on the parapet & look undeterred over at the Germans, & wonder what was stirring in that alien land, made the nights worth waiting for. At intervals along the trench came the discreet glow of coal braziers, well screened. Round them sat the misty figures of men off duty... Those nights had a beauty of their own which will never be repeated..." Orig. yellow cloth, gilt, VG in chipped & sl. torn but attractive dw, & scarce thus with author press obit. loosely inserted. See illustration on our website.
£120
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