SOME DESPERATE GLORY: THE WORLD WAR I DIARY OF A BRITISH OFFICER, 1917. by Vaughan, Edwin Campion. Introduction by Robert Cowley - 1988

New York: Henry Holt, 1988. 232 pp, 8vo (8 1/2" H). "Edwin Campion Vaughan is a cocky nineteen-year-old when he arrives in the trenches, carrying a copy of Palgrave's 'Golden Treasury' in his pack. He looks down on his men and is obviously despised by them. His fellow officers warn him to shape up, and he does, gradually becoming an able officer. His story leads inexorably to the terrible month of August 1917: Ypres. Vaughan's description of that bloodbath in the mud is shattering: the obscure, costly struggles for pillboxes; the strange, brief friendships that develop between enemies; the impossible passages through curtains of shellfire; the wounded drowining in water-filled shellholes. (This book) reads like a novel, and yet it is the sort of story that fiction so rarely re-creates." Cigarette odour, light browning to edges of textblock, light wrinkling at bottom of spine. Dust jacket has very light wrinkling at top of spine and rear flap-fold, tiny area of faint glue residue on spine, light rubbing.. First American Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good.