The Red Horizonorder this book
Patrick MacGill
Price £30.00 hardback, £20 paperback.

The Red Horizon and its sequel, The Great Push, reflect in a unique way the experiences of the ordinary soldier.

Patrick MacGill, Rifleman No. 3008, London Irish, was one ol many thousands of Irishmen who fought in the First World War, and he articulates the experience of that tragic generation, conveying the horror of war but also the resilence of the men.

From Chapter 12, "The Shelling of the Keep":

"'I heard an artillery man I met outside, say that this place was hot,' Stoner remarked. 'The Irish Guards were here, and they said they preferred the trenches to the Keep.'

'It will be a poor country house,' said Mervin, 'if it's going to be as bad as you say.'

On the following evening I was standing guard in a niche in the building. Darkness was jailing and the shadows sat at the base of the wails east of the courtyard. My niche looked out on the road, along which the wounded are carried from the trenches by night and sometimes by day. The way is by no means safe. As I stood there four men came down the road carrying a limp form on a stretcher. A water proof ground-sheet lay over the wounded soldier, his head was uncovered, and it wobbled from side to side, a streak of blood ran down his face and formed into clots on the ear and chin. There was something uncannily helpless in the soldier, his shaking head, his boots caked brown with mud, the heels close together, the toes pointing upwards and outwards and swaying a little. Every quiver of the body betokened abject helplessness. The limp, swaying figure, clinging weakly to life, was a pathetic sight.

The bearers walked slowly, carefully, stepping

over every shell-hole and stone on the road. The sweat rolled down their faces and arms, their coats were off and their shirt sleeves rolled up almost to the shoulders. Down the road towards the village they pursued their sober way, and my eyes followed them. Suddenly they came to a pause, lowered the stretcher to the ground, and two of them bent over the prostrate form. I could see them feel the soldier's pulse, open his tunic, and listen for the beating of the man's heart, when they raised the stretcher again there was something cruelly careless in the action, they brought it up with a jolt and set off hurriedly, stumbling over shell-hole and boulder. There was no doubt the man was dead now; it was unwise to delay on the road, and the soldiers' cemetery was in the village."

ISBN 1850660026. Hardback & paperback, 306 pages.

top | catalogue | order this book