The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power.

My father was in the First World War.

Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

My dad was a big admirer of Sergeant York stories from the First World War.

What can I say about the First World War, a war in which I served as an infantryman, a war I hated at the start and to which I never warmed as it proceeded?