From Vimy Ridge to the Rhine : The Great War Letters of Christopher Stone

FROM VIMY RIDGE TO THE RHINE The Great War letters of Christopher Stone DSO, MC. Christopher Stone. Edited by G D Sheffield & G I S Inglis. Crowood Press, Ramsbury. 1989 First edition ISBN 1852232021 172pp Illustrated hardback. This copy is in FINE condition in a FINE unclipped dustwrapper. In September 1914 Christopher Stone volunteered as a private soldier for active service in the British Army. No longer young, the literary, bespectacled Old Etonian, brother in law of Compton Mackenzie, nevertheless went on to win the DSO and the MC while serving as a signalling officer in the 22nd Royal Fusiliers. This book is based on his almost daily letters which he wrote from the front to his wife Alyce, his elder by almost 20 years. Here, skillfully edited with the extensive footnotes, they give us a rare and moving pictureof a sensetive man living through tumultuous events. From the letters we learn much of Stone the man, and of how this somewhat unmilitary middle-class Englishman came to endure the horrors of trench warfare and the loss of many friends. Unlike many accounts of World War One, this collection is taken directly from the original material of the time and thus retains its spontaneity. As a professional writer of some standing, Stone captures in a unique and stylish way the daily routines of war on the Western Front, and the reality of life in the trenches. Ref Q3.…