The Secret Battle The Secret Battle is a novel by A . P . Herbert , first published in 1919 . The book draws upon Herbert ' s experiences as a junior infantry officer in the First World War , and has been praised for its accurate and truthful portrayal of the mental effects of the war on the participants . It was one of the earliest novels to contain a detailed description of Gallipoli , or to challenge the Army ' s executions of soldiers for desertion . It is noticeable as being sharply different from Herbert ' s later work — there is no note of humour or lightness in the novel , simply a stark and simple narrative . Background . Herbert went up to New College , Oxford in 1910 , to study law . He went down in 1914 , having had several pieces of his light verse published , in " Punch " and elsewhere , and with the apparent intent of dabbling further in writing . In the summer of 1914 he was working at a mission in Bethnal Green ; on the outbreak of war , like most of his contemporaries , he promptly joined the military . Unlike most University - educated men he did not become an officer – perhaps in response to the working - class men at the mission , who assumed that the " Oxford blokes would go off and take commissions [ and ] so be all right " . He joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve , rather than the army – his brother Sidney , to whom he was close , was a naval officer , and he felt this might make it more likely to run into him . The RNVR was flooded with recruits who had neither sea - training or sea - experience , and once the fleet had mobilised fully the Navy had no real use for them . In response to a foreseen need for naval landing parties to defend Belgian ports , these men were organised into the Royal Naval Division , and equipped as infantry . Herbert was drafted into this unit , commissioned in early 1915 , and sent to Gallipoli in May . He saw action at Gallipoli , was invalided home , then served with Admiralty intelligence before rejoining the division in France in 1916 . It served in the last phases of the Battle of the Somme , and was virtually destroyed fighting in the capture of Beaucourt - sur - l ' Ancre – of the 435 officers and men of his battalion who went into the attack , Herbert was one of only twenty to be fit for service the next day . He was later wounded , in early 1917 , and returned home , where he began writing " The Secret Battle " . He finished the novel in " a few weeks " , but put it aside and made no moves to publish it until January 1919 . It may have been slightly redrafted in the intervening months – he makes a passing comparison of the court - martial to his recollections of the royal stables in Spain , a place he visited shortly after the Armistice . Plot summary . The novel follows the career of a young officer , Harry Penrose , written from the viewpoint of a close friend who acts as narrator . A sensitive , educated young man , Penrose had enlisted in the ranks in 1914 , immediately after completing his second year at Oxford . After six months in training he had been prevailed upon by his relatives – like most educated volunteers – to take a commission as an officer . Penrose slowly asserts himself ; the war takes a toll on his personality , but he begins to live up to his early dreams of heroism . However , his creeping self - doubt grows by degrees ; he is reassigned from his post as scouting officer once on the Somme , knowing he cannot face another night patrol , and earns the wrath of his commanding officer – an irascible Regular colonel – over a trivial incident . The colonel piles difficult , risky work on him – remarking to the narrator that " Master Penrose can go on with [ leading ration parties ] until he learns to do them properly " – and Penrose submits , working doggedly to try and keep from cracking . After a long period of this treatment , by the winter of 1916 , Penrose ' s spirit is worn down ; when the narrator is invalided home with an injury in February 1917 , his last support is gone . He is wounded in May at Arras – a friend remarking in a letter that " you ' d have said he wanted to be killed " – and they meet again in London in November . Penrose has been offered a safe job in military intelligence ; he comes within a moment of taking it , but at the last minute resolves to return to France . Returning to his battalion , he is detailed for a party to the front line by the colonel within an hour ; when the narrator arrives six weeks later , he discovers Penrose is under arrest for cowardice in the face of the enemy . It transpired that each time the party advanced , it had to break for the ditches to avoid shellfire , then regroup and move further ; after some time , Penrose decided to fall back and wait under cover for the shelling to halt . Seeing a dugout down the road , they make a run for it under shellfire – to find it occupied by a senior officer , himself sheltering from the shelling , who promptly reports that " he had seen the officer in charge and some of the party " running down the road – demoralized " " and is ordered to arrest him and return . Penrose is court - martialled on these charges , and convicted ; the court ' s recommendation for mercy is ignored , and he is shot one morning , a week later , by a party of men from his own company . Penrose is presented in a glowing light throughout – " never anything but modest and dutiful ; he always tries his best to do his bit " – but , ultimately , is failed by the system . He faces his trial honestly , without pleading circumstances ( " The real charge was that I ' d lost my nerve – and I had . And I didn ' t want to wangle out of it like that " ) but it is clear that whilst he is strictly guilty of the charge ( " on the only facts they had succeeded in discovering it could hardly have been anything else " ) justice , by any sense of the word , had not been done to him . Historical basis . The character of Penrose bears close similarities to Herbert himself – a man who had left Oxford and enlisted in the ranks , later to take a commission and serve at Gallipoli and on the Western Front . In its portrayal of everyday life it is almost autobiographical – many incidents correspond closely to the author ' s experiences , often down to exact details . However , the book is substantially " more than a disguised memoir " . The case of Harry Penrose ' s trial is thought to be based on that of Sub - Lieutenant Edwin Dyett , who was court - martialled for desertion at the attack on Beaucourt in November 1916 , and later executed . There is no indication Herbert knew Dyett personally – they were in separate battalions – but the matter was generally discussed in the division , and close friends recall him being " so upset " by the events . The events of Dyetts case are somewhat unclear , though a recent book has discussed the case ; it appears that he , like Penrose , was found running away from the front . Dyett was , it should be noted , an unusual case – of the 266 executions for desertion ( and 19 for cowardice ) , only two were officers . Critical reaction and long - term effect . The book was published on 29 May 1919 , by Methuen , advertised as " A novel describing the human side of the soldier – his fears and everyday distresses of his life ; of the gradual decay of his illusions ; of his courage and his failure " . and greeted as a " young man ' s novel , winning favour by its crystal - clear style and hard truth " . Lloyd George " read [ it ] all night " , and mentioned it to Churchill , who wrote in 1928 that it held " a permanent place in war literature " , and described it as " one of those cries of pain wrung from the fighting troops . . . like the poems of Siegfried Sassoon [ it ] should be read in each generation , so that men and women may rest under no illusions about what war means " . H . A . L . Fisher called it " a masterpiece " , whilst Montgomery thought it " the best story of front line war " ; from a purely literary persepctive , it received a very positive review from Arnold Bennett . Other reviews described it as " the best book published about life in the trenches " ( " New Statesman " ) and " one of the most interesting and moving English war books " ( " Athenæum " ) . However , it was not a commercial success . The war was not the most popular of themes among the reading public in 1919 , and the book saw only limited sales ; it was not reissued for another five years , with a second edition appearing in January 1924 . Assisted by Herbert ' s growing popularity as a writer , it gained in popularity during the war novel boom of the late 1920s and early 1930s – five editions between 1928 and 1936 – but never reached the fame that many of its supporters feel it deserved . A BBC radio adaptation was produced in 1957 . The book was the first novel to freely discuss the executions for desertion – the " shot at dawn " of popular legend – and has been argued to play a major role in setting the conventions of that genre , as well as of later historical discussions on the topic . Herbert himself later claimed that it had helped " alter in some way " Army policy on the management of courts - martial – Churchill was Secretary of State for War at the time he read it , in the immediate post - war period . Samuel Hynes argued that the book was an " early and striking example " of a new form of war literature , the novel which dealt with a victim - figure rather than a heroic protagonist . The " damaged man " would become a major component of much post - war war literature – the veteran who is mentally scarred , altered for the worse , by his experiences ; a protagonist who is " . . . not a hero in the traditional sense , but a victim , a man things are done to ; in his war world , " heroism " is simply not a reasonable term . Against the weight of war , the individual has no power of action , he can only suffer . " The immediate commercial failure of the novel has been suggested as pivotal in Herbert ' s later career – it was clear to him that novel - writing was not likely to prove financially rewarding , which helped focus his efforts on light journalism and set the tone for most of his later writings . He would not write anything quite the same again – " The House by the River " ( 1920 ) , a crime novel , retains something of the simple style , but begins to introduce elements of humour not found in " The Secret Battle " . Publication history . From the third edition ( 1928 ) onwards , the book was printed with an introduction by Winston Churchill . The 1982 OUP edition included an additional introduction by the historian John Terraine .