The Officers' Ward

Paperback. English. Phoenix. 2000. In fair/good condition. Previous owner's name inside.

'The First World War? I wasn't there. The muddy trench, the bone-piercing dampness, the black winter rats, the smell of cigarettes and shit, the rain constantly pouring out of God's steely sky - that wasn't the war I knew.' In the officers' ward of a hospital in Paris, three young men and a woman meet in the early days of the First World War. Each of them has suffered horrific injuries to the face: Adrien, the narrator, Penanster, a Breton aristocrat, Weil, a Jewish aviator, and Marguerite, a nurse, one of the few women in the hospital.