Three Men's War; The Personal Records of Active Service

First edition. 375 p. illus. 23 cm. Frontis Map. Map. From Wikipedia: "Ralph Hale Mottram (30 October 1883 16 April 1971) was an English writer, known as a novelist, particularly for the Spanish Farm books, and as a war poet of World War I. Mottram went from being a bank clerk in Norwich before the war to becoming lord mayor there in 1953. The Spanish Farm won the 1924 Hawthornden Prize. He also wrote a biography of John Galsworthy." From Wikipedia: "Eric Honeywood Partridge (6 February 1894 1 June 1979) was a New Zealand British lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang. His writing career was interrupted only by his service in the Army Education Corps and the RAF correspondence department during World War II. Partridge was born in Waimata Valley, near Gisborne, on the North Island of New Zealand to John Thomas Partridge, a grazier, and his wife Ethel Annabella Norris. In 1907 the family moved to Queensland, Australia, where he was educated at the Toowoomba Grammar School. He then studied first classics and then French and English at the University of Queensland. During this time Partridge also taught for three years as a school teacher before enrolling in the Australian Imperial Force in April 1915 and serving in the Australian infantry during the First World War, serving in Egypt, Gallipoli and on the Western Front, before being wounded in the Battle of Pozières. His interest in slang and the "underside" of language is said to date from his wartime experience. Partridge returned to university between 1919 and 1921, when he received his BA. After receiving his degree, Partridge became Queensland Travelling Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, where he worked on both an MA on eighteenth-century English romantic poetry, and a B. Litt in comparative literature. He subsequently taught in a grammar school in Lancashire for a brief interval, then in the two years beginning September 1925, took lecturing positions at the Universities of Manchester and London. From 1923, he "found a second home", occupying the same desk (K1) in the British Museum Library (as it was then known) for the next fifty years. In 1925 he married Agnes Dora Vye-Parminter, who in 1933 bore a daughter, Rosemary Ethel Honeywood Mann. In 1927 he founded the Scholartis Press, which he managed until it closed in 1931, publishing over 60 books during this time. From 1932 he commenced writing in earnest. His first major work on slang, Slang Today and Yesterday, appeared in 1933, and his well-known Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English followed in 1937. During the Second World War, Partridge served in the Army Education Corps, later transferring to the RAF's correspondence department, before returning to his British Museum desk in 1945. Partridge wrote over forty books on the English language, including well-known works on etymology and slang. He also wrote novels under the pseudonym Corrie Denison, and books on tennis, which he played well. His papers are archived at the University of Birmingham, British Library, King's College, Cambridge, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the University of Exeter, the University of San Francisco, Warwickshire Record Office, and William Salt Library." From the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry: He [Eric Partridge] eventually himself published 'Frank Honywood, Private', as part of Three Personal Records of the War (London, 1929), which ranks as a minor classic of war literature. He was concerned to commemorate his mate Corporal Howard Phillips who had died at Mont St Quentin, to attempt to describe the terrible battle of Pozières, to expose himself as an example of a soldier broken but somehow carrying on under appalling stress, and to write the war out of his system." Fair. No dust jacket. Boards weak and restrengthened with glue. Cover has some wear and soiling. Spine has fraying at top and bottom. Pencil erasure residue on fep. Bookplate inside front cover. U. S. First Edition [stated].…