The Anonymous N.C.O. “A Corporal”

Recounts his experiences as a stretcher bearer in the mud of Flanders Fields in 1917.

The trenches for him and many of his comrades have changed them and here “...Life here is furtive and crouching; a “downward-looking” life; life under a lid. Here men acquire a strange mole-like character: quick to scent the danger that they cannot see; prompt to divine a line of escape where none seems possible. The clay that ingrains their skins seems to have inoculated them with some of the wisdom of Earth and her creeping things. They are subtle as weasels, sensitive as the naked worm…”

As he and his fellow stretcher bearers go and collect the men injured and wounded at the front, they face the dangers of snipers, shelling, trench collapses, all the while carrying a heavy human bearing.

Not as sanguine as some writers about facing the dangers for King and Country, our author does his duty with aplomb, great courage and a pinch of cynical black humour.