David Jones In The Great War

The great modernist artist and poet David Jones grew up in Brockley, London. He finished art school in the summer of 1913, ready to pursue a career as an artist. But then Britain declared war on Germany, and Jones joined the army. He was sent to France in 1915, serving in the same regiment as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen; unlike them, however, he was a private, a rank he kept throughout the war. He fought in and survived the Somme, Ypres, and Passchendaele, experiencing the war of the common soldier - the camaraderie, the humor, the grief, and above all the senseless, mechanized brutality - all under the stress of years of relentless artillery fire. "As Professor Dilworth makes the background of these writings clearer and more comprehensible he confirms the power, depth, and relevance of the work as a whole."--W.S. Merwin.