Excerpt from In the Line of Battle: Soldiers Stories of the War
The narratives in this volume, which is a companion to my Soldiers' Stories of the War, are told on exactly the same lines as those which were adopted for that collection. There was a personal interview to get the teller's own tale; then the writing, the object being to act as the soldier's other self; and finally the submission to him of the typescript, so that he could revise and become responsible for the completed work.
In dealing with these records I have tried to be a faithful interpreter or reproducer of a tale that has been told to me. I have invited a man to tell his story as it came into his mind, and to look upon me simply as a means of putting it into concrete and coherent form, and as a medium between himself and the reader. The greatest difficulty that had to be overcome was a narrator's reluctance to speak of his own achievements, though he never failed to wax enthusiastic when telling of the doings of his comrades. Nothing has left a deeper impression on my mind than the generous praise which a gunner, say, has bestowed upon the infantry, and the blessings that the infantry have invoked upon the gunners. Never in any of Great Britain's wars has there been such an exhibition of universal esprit de corps as we have witnessed in this stupendous conflict between civilisation and freedom and cultured barbarism and tyranny.
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