AustLit

'The Somme, July 1916: like theatrical curtains, a blanket is pulled aside and an introverted soldier, Private Bourne, enters a dug-out. The eyes of all the men regard him: ‘Pitiless faces turned to see who it was as he entered, and after that flicker of interest relapsed into apathy and stupor again.’ Awaiting the order to enter battle, the infantrymen are weighed down with a sense of impending destiny, sitting ‘like men condemned to death’, and in ‘bitter resignation, with brooding enigmatic faces, hopeless, but undefeated’.' (Introduction)