Honour satisfied

"This is [Frank Warren's] diary; a vivid and detailed account illegally written down from memory soon after the events occurred. Warren's appreciation of detail makes this fascinating document a remarkable source of absorbing eye-witness material. In these pages we read of the horror of the Somme battlefield soon after the grim and costly infantry fighting had ground to a halt and of his next tour of duty in the Ypres Salient, which he describes as 'a wilderness and a solitary place, nothing whole remains' ... Warren's accounts of the blowing of the bridge on the Somme canal and the rescue of the guns at Mercourt are wonderful set-piece depictions, among the most graphic of all reports of battlefield events. Together with descriptions of soldiers dangling their legs from railway waggons on their way to the front and of bully-beef tins being thrown from hand to hand in the front line, this is a ... evocative account of war"--Jacket.