Going to the Wars: A Journey in Various Directions by John Verney (Ronald Blythe Interest)

From the library of Ronald Blythe. With his neat ownership signature to front endpaper.

First edition in later dust-wrapper. “My brother officers. Are they human?” Thus reads the first journal entry of twenty-three-year-old John Verney, graduate of Eton and Oxford, lover of modern art and literature, who has, almost on a whim, joined a part-time cavalry regiment of the British Army in 1937. At the outbreak of World War II two years later, Verney arrives in the Middle East and there learns, almost in spite of himself, to be a soldier. In 1943, he becomes a parachutist and leads a “drop” into Sardinia to attack German airfields. His adventures there–two weeks wandering through enemy territory, his capture, and his eventual escape–are brilliantly told. Woven into the fabric of this narrative of a young man growing reluctantly to maturity and coming to terms with military life, are Verney’s thoughts and feelings about his wife, Lucinda, and the child he has never seen, and his longing to return to them.

Condition: Unclipped dust-wrapper a little worn and marked with some slight spotting. Green cloth boards a ever so sligthly faded to head of spine. Slight toning to front and rear endpapers.