Soldiers are natural story-tellers.
Blackburn is no exception to this general rule, and he involves the reader through his clever use of the second person and present tense to describe his own experience. While the book is structured around the training of an artillery regiment, Blackburn also develops two stories of love - one for his wife, whom he marries just before he heads overseas, and the other for England itself, which he comes to adopt as a second home. An enormous gulf has opened between what happened 50 years ago and the world we live in today, making it seem as though Blackburn is describing a world of legend. Of course, the tactics of modern warfare have evolved as fast as the technology, but there have been other changes as well. Certainly no generation in history has ever gone into war with its eyes so wide open.