The poet Edmund Blunden records his experiences as an infantry subaltern in France and Flanders. Enlisting at the age of 20, in 1916, he took part in the disastrous battles of the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele. He tells of the many evidences of endurance, heroism and despair found among the officers and men of his battalion. This volume, which also contains a selection of his war poems, reveals the close affinity which Blunden felt with the natural world. While he laments the loss of optimism, the betrayal of promise and the futility wrought by the war, Blunden finds hope in the natural landscape.