A Moment of War (Penguin Modern Classics)

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It is in stark contrast to 'As I walked out', it could barely be recognised as the same country, the searing heat, swapped for the bitter searing cold, the jovial, welcoming, slightly bizarre characters turned to hostile, terrified and sick.

At the sight of the instrument faces softened, eyes brightened, sleeping children were awoken with pinches. A bomb hit the track near the loading sheds, and two trucks sailed sideways against a halo fire, while torn lines circled around them like ribbons. At the age of nineteen he walked to London and then travelled on foot through Spain, where he was trapped by the outbreak of the Civil War. He then encountered Republican sympathisers who suspected him of being a Nationalist spy and imprisoned him.

There were certainly those who cursed the little bleeder, but the Brigade was proud of its bugler; he was no brash, brassy, spit-or-miss blaster of slumber, but one who pitched his notes carefully to the freezing stars and drew them out like threads of Venetian glass. There followed a series of thumping explosions and blasts of light as parcels of flame straddled the edge of the station.

It seems quite clear to me, from the flow of the narrative and language that they both appear to date and may have been drafted at around the same time.It also helps to explain why I was dismayed at the beginning; there was such an emotional gulf after the execution of the young deserter, and then his detailed account of the volunteers at Figueras. But though he braved icy, storm-swept mountains alone to contact Republican sympathisers, he was immediately suspected of being a Nationalist spy. Laurie Lee published four collections of poems: The Sun My Monument (1944), The Bloom of Candles (1947), My Many-Coated Man (1955) and Pocket Poems (1960). In addition, when you’ve got a word that is French, I think it should be pronounced as the French do.