Diary of a Dead Officer : Being the Posthumous Papers of Arthur Graeme West

Born in September 1891, Arthur Graeme West was a quiet and self-effacing youth with a passion for literature, who went on to become a keen Oxford scholar.

When war broke out in 1914, for some time it left him untouched.

However, in January 1915, in a rush of enthusiasm, he enlisted as a private in the Public Schools Battalion.

From that time, until his death in April 1917, his life was a succession of training in England and fighting in France, with short intervals of leave.

West joined due to a feeling of duty and patriotism, but the war was to have a profound effect on him.

He developed an intense abhorrence of army life and began to question the very core of his beliefs — in religion, patriotism and the reason for war.

This growing disillusionment found expression in two particularly powerful war poems, _God!

How I Hate You, You Young Cheerful Men_ and _Night Patrol_, which stand deservedly alongside those of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

In August 1916, he became a second lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

Shortly after, he wrote to his CO renouncing the war and any further part in it — but he could not bring himself to post the letter.

Less than a year later, on April 3rd, 1917, he was shot dead by a sniper's bullet near Bapaume. Written with complete frankness and sincerity, _Diary of a Dead Officer_ gives voice to West's struggle to come to terms with the realities of war and is a poignant tribute to a lost generation of soldiers.