Sherriff's play manages to capture the narrative of young men going to war and the horrors that they face by setting up a small cast of characters who represent many different aspects of the war experience; the officer who cannot function without the aid of alcohol, the fresh-faced new recruit coming straight from school. Stanhope is angry that Raleigh has been allowed to join him and describes the boy as a hero-worshipper. Yep, he said, we went from village to village, across fields and gardens, through woods and so on, always looking over your shoulder. Act III includes a scene that encapsulates a great deal of class tensions, when Stanhope disciplines Raleigh for violating class expectations (yes, other things are involved, too). Ben also describes company structures and isn’t very complimentary about managements following World War Two, bound as they were into not taking risks as a result of what he describes as absurd conditions created by the 1930 Road Traffic Act.

I really have to thank the professors who put together my pre-course reading list because it's exposed me to a world of literature that I can't get enough of. Apparently Sherriff originally wanted to title it Suspense or Waiting, which are actually better titles in some ways.The play was staged as the final production of the Edinburgh Gateway Company during the Edinburgh International Festival in August 1965. Given these facts there seemed to be no shortage of volunteers eager to travel through this dystopian landscape where the average life expectancy of a soldier or officer was a mere six weeks. He yells at Hibbert for no reason and argues with Raleigh over his preference at eating with private troops rather than with other officers. Meet Olga, Masha, and Irina, warm and cultured young sisters who were reared in the exciting hubbub of Moscow, but have been living in the dull, gossipy backwaters of Russia for far too long. He figures that Stanhope will be happy to see a familiar face; instead, he’s enraged that Raleigh would intrude on his life.

Pour ces volumes, les illustrations de Sternberg ont fait l'object d'un tirage special sur chine, enlithographie, deux teintes. He gets up to leave and, after he has exited, a mortar hits the dugout causing it to collapse and entomb Raleigh's corpse. Printed on handmade paper and specially bound in dark cloth with vellum spine; top edge trimmed, the other edges uncut. It reminds me of Pat Barker's Regeneration (1991), which similarly resists condemning men for deciding to fight and likely die.

He also takes a swipe at “government’s pathetic attempts to understand the role of the country bus between 1950 and 1970 and the appropriate way to fund and regulate it“. It follows a company of men, who all know that an offensive is imminent, and how they deal with the knowledge that they could possibly die soon.

In the second part of the 2011 tour, after the West End run, Nick Hendrix took over the role of Stanhope and Simon Dutton the role of Osborne. Stanhope also becomes angry at Raleigh, who did not eat with the officers that night but preferred to eat with his men. The luck also rubbed off on Victor Gollancz, for whom the text was a first major publishing coup, selling 175,000 copies. Smoke-bombs are fired, the soldiers move towards the German trench, and a young German soldier is captured. His was a career of attrition: “Robert noted that his father started as junior clerk in one corner of the office and forty-five years later ended up in the opposite corner as senior clerk, an average move, he computed, of five inches a year.Stanhope is the commander and I don't blame him for drinking too much because 90% of the commanders (in France and Britain) were drunk almost everyday.