The First World War was a horror of gas, industrialised slaughter, fear, and appalling human suffering.

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.

We all want a world without war, without conflict, without human suffering.

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