Description

Based on its author’s own experience with theBritish Army, this new edition of a 1942 classicincludes an introduction from IWM which puts thenovel into historical context and shines a light onthis seminal moment in the British experience ofthe Second World War. It is September 1939. Shortly after war is declared, AnthonyRhodes is sent to France, serving with the British Army. Hisdays are filled with the minutiae and mundanities of Armylife – friendships, billeting, administration – as the monthsof the ‘Phoney War’ quickly pass and the conflict seems adistant prospect.It is only in the spring of 1940 that the true situationbecomes clear; the men are ordered to retreat to the coastand the beaches of Dunkirk, where they face a desperateand terrifying wait for evacuation.