Books with author P. C. Wren

Bertram Greene, brilliant student, aesthete, intellectual and shy, decides to make his military father proud of him at last and joins the colonial Indian Army Reserve as a second Lieutenant at the start of Great War. Feeling a complete fish out of water, he is dispatched to India without any training whatsoever, and is expected to take charge of a company of native soldiers. He is then posted to East Africa to join the British fighting force there, and finds out what real soldiering means.

Excerpt: ...their kind. Following in the tracks of Ali came another servant, bearing a wooden box, which he tendered to each diner, but as one who goeth through an empty ritual, and without hope that his offering will be accepted. In the box Bertram saw large thick biscuits exceedingly reminiscent of the dog-biscuit of commerce, but paler in hue and less attractive of appearance. He took one, and the well-trained servant only dropped the box in his surprise.

Bertram Greene, brilliant student, aesthete, intellectual and shy, decides to make his military father proud of him at last and joins the colonial Indian Army Reserve as a second Lieutenant at the start of Great War. Feeling a complete fish out of water, he is dispatched to India without any training whatsoever, and is expected to take charge of a company of native soldiers. He is then posted to East Africa to join the British fighting force there, and finds out what real soldiering means.

Bertram Greene, brilliant student, aesthete, intellectual and shy, decides to make his military father proud of him at last and joins the colonial Indian Army Reserve as a second Lieutenant at the start of Great War. Feeling a complete fish out of water, he is dispatched to India without any training whatsoever, and is expected to take charge of a company of native soldiers. He is then posted to East Africa to join the British fighting force there, and finds out what real soldiering means.

At the Depôt at Sidi–bel–Abbès, Sergeant–Major Suicide–Maker was a devil, but at a little frontier outpost in the desert, he was the devil, the increase in his degree being commensurate with the increase in his opportunities. When the Seventh Company of the First Battalion of the Foreign Legion of France, stationed at Aïnargoula in the Sahara, learned that Lieutenant Roberte was in hospital with a broken leg, it realized that, Captain d'Armentières being absent with the Mule Company, chasing Touaregs to the south, it would be commanded for a space by Sergeant–Major Suicide–Maker—in other words by The Devil. Not only would it be commanded by him, it would be harried, harassed, hounded, bullied, brow–beaten, and be–devilled; it would be unable to call its soul its own and loth to so call its body. On realizing the ugly truth, the Seventh Company gasped unanimously and then swore diversely in all the languages of Europe and a few of those of Asia and Africa. It realized that it was about to learn, as the Bucking Bronco remarked to his friend John Bull (once Sir Montague Merline, of the Queen's African Rifles), that it had been wrong in guessing it was already on the ground–floor of hell. Or, if it had been there heretofore, it was now about to have a taste of the cellars. Sergeant–Major Suicide–Maker had lived well up to his reputation, even under the revisional jurisdiction and faintly restraining curb of Captain d'Armentières and then of Lieutenant Roberte.

A vivid picture of life in the French Foreign Legion. The sayings, the doings and adventures of those reckless soldiers make it not only a romance but a reality. Soldats de la Légion, de la Légion Étrangère, n’ayant pas de nation, la France est votre Mère. – War-Song of the Legion. A selection of tales from Wren, including: Ten little Legionaries, A la Ninon de L’Enclos, An Officer and—a Liar, The Dead Hand, The Gift, The Deserter, Five Minutes, “Here are Ladies”, The MacSnorrt, “Belzébuth”, The Quest, “Vengeance is Mine…”, Sermons in Stones, Moonshine, The Coward of the Legion, Mahdev Rao, The Merry Liar.At the Depôt at Sidi–bel–Abbès, Sergeant–Major Suicide–Maker was a devil, but at a little frontier outpost in the desert, he was the devil, the increase in his degree being commensurate with the increase in his opportunities. When the Seventh Company of the First Battalion of the Foreign Legion of France, stationed at Aïnargoula in the Sahara, learned that Lieutenant Roberte was in hospital with a broken leg, it realized that, Captain d'Armentières being absent with the Mule Company.