I have just started this today, reading the version from Gutenberg, and am finding it very good indeed. It is totally convincing - I almost feel I am there in the trench with these men in their motley array of clothing, their dirt and exhaustion. The end of chapter 2 really grabbed me:
Quote:
We leave by the communication trench at right angles to our own, and straight ahead towards the changeful frontier, now alive and terrible.
Up in the sombre sky, the strong staccato panting of an invisible aeroplane circles in wide descending coils and fills infinity. In front, to right and left, everywhere, thunderclaps roll with great glimpses of short-lived light in the dark-blue sky.
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And this from earlier in the same chapter:
Quote:
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"We've got to do what they tell us to do, until they tell us to go away." ... This evidently, is the credo of the men who, a year and a half ago, left all the corners of the land to mass themselves on the frontier: Give up trying to understand, and give up trying to be yourself. Hope that you will not die, and fight for life as well as you can.
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Powerful stuff.