Vernon Bartlett’s sketches from the Western Front are short, vivid impressions of trench life — the mud, the cold, the camaraderie, the random violence, and the strange beauty of a landscape torn by artillery. Writing as a young soldier and later as a journalist, Bartlett captures the texture of daily existence in Flanders and northern France with an eye for telling human detail.
Less well known than Sassoon or Graves, Bartlett’s voice is equally authentic and his account comparably moving. The sketches are accessible individually and compelling as a whole — a valuable primary document of the British experience on the Western Front.