- No Man's Land
-
Download the book
This book was written by a British Army officer and decorated Western Front veteran. Soldiers could not publish books using their real names, so newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe christened McNeile, Sapper, to reflect his Royal Engineers background, under which pseudonym the book was published. McNeile also wrote the Bulldog Drummond spy/wartime adventures.
No Man's Land is made up of five parts: The Way To The Land is a preface to the rest of the book in which fictional character Clive Draycott travels in Europe prior to the outbreak of the war. Part II The Land consists of 8 stories detailing the day to day lives of soldiers in the trenches. Part III Seed Time is about a salesman turned soldier, and Part IV Harvest in which Sapper puts forward the theory that war is awful, and many suffer but those who survive it can be changed for the better. Themes of class, gender, history abound.
- Chapters
- Preface
- Part I. The Way To The Land - Sections i - xii
- Part II. The Land - Section i. A Day Of Peace
- Part II. The Land - Section ii. Over The Top
- Part II. The Land - Section iii. The Man-Trap
- Part II. The Land - Section iv. A Point Of Detail
- Part II. The Land - Section v. My Lady Of The Jasmine
- Part II. The Land - Section vi. Morphia
- Part II. The Land - vii. Bendigo Jones - His Tree
- Part II. The Land - viii. The Song Of The Bayonet
- Part III. Seed Time - i. The Seed
- Part III. Seed Time - ii. The First Lesson
- Part III. Seed Time - iii. An Impersonal Demonstration
- Part III. Seed Time - iv. Somewhat More Personal
- Part III. Seed Time - v. A Project And Some Side-Issues
- Part III. Seed Time - vi. The Second Lesson, And Some Further Side Issues
- Part III. Seed Time - vii. The Third Lesson And A Digression
- Part III. Seed Time - viii. The Third Lesson Is Learned
- Part III. Seed Time - ix "And Other Fell On Good Ground"
- Part IV. Harvest