The History of the Prince of Wales' Civil Service Rifles — Edition Insights

The Editor's Collaborative Frame

The editorial note names multiple contributors—Colonel Merrick, Captain Bell, Major Kirkby, Captain Davenport, Major Benké, Major Duncan Lewis, Captain Doubleday—each responsible for a distinct portion of the narrative. This collaborative structure is unusual for a regimental history and shapes the book's voice. The editor acknowledges that the account of the first Battalion in war was prompted by Captain Davenport's initiative, which then "prompted the search for an author" for the second Battalion. The result is a text where authorial choices vary by section, yet the editor's framing ensures a consistent tone of understatement.

The note also reveals practical constraints: the book was produced quickly for a limited audience of "Regimental members past and present, their relatives and friends." This intended readership explains the absence of explanatory glosses on military terms and the assumption of shared knowledge. The editor's language—"the necessarily uneventful story of the third Battalion"—shows a willingness to acknowledge uneven dramatic interest, a choice that reinforces the book's commitment to unvarnished record over manufactured excitement.

Diction of the Ordinary in Extraordinary Circumstances

The narrative consistently employs mundane vocabulary to describe trench life, creating a contrast between the extraordinary setting and the everyday language used to report it. For instance, the battalion's arrival at Maroeuil is described in terms of finding billets, having a hot meal, and going to bed—actions that could belong to any camping trip. The phrase "unpleasantness of war" is notably restrained, avoiding the emotional weight of words like horror or terror. Even when the Germans raid the Black Watch trenches, the account focuses on the "terrific local bombardment" but immediately notes the battalion "was fortunate and sustained no loss."

This choice of diction extends to describing the landscape: "the surrounding country was covered with red poppies, and the setting sun shone gloriously on this carpet of colour." The pastoral image is undercut by the context—ruined farms, shell-destroyed trees, camouflaged battery positions. The authorial decision to include such beauty without comment forces the reader to hold both realities simultaneously, a technique more common in literary fiction than in military history.

Dialogue and Reported Speech as Structural Device

Direct dialogue is rare in the excerpts, but reported speech and indirect discourse serve key functions. The men of the 51st Division "regaled us with the horrible details of war"—a phrase that distances the reader from the actual content of those details while emphasizing the act of telling. Similarly, the battalion "soon acquired the attitude of the 'man in the line'" through instruction from Scottish Territorials, a process described in terms of learning a new routine rather than undergoing psychological transformation.

The use of scare quotes around "asked for" (regarding the hurricane lamps) and "man in the line" signals the narrator's ironic distance from the soldiers' own jargon. This choice suggests an authorial awareness of the gap between official language and lived experience. The phrase "dug-out life was studied" further objectifies the experience, as if the battalion were conducting research rather than surviving. Such linguistic choices prioritize the collective over the individual, consistent with a regimental history but also revealing a deliberate flattening of emotional register.

Description as Orientation and Omission

The descriptive passages in the excerpts serve primarily to orient the reader spatially rather than to evoke atmosphere. The route from Bray to the firing line is traced with precision: "via Maroeuil," "by means of deep communication trenches," "for a distance of four to five miles." Landmarks are named—"the famous Maison Blanche, a deep dug-out, large enough to hold a battalion"—but described only in functional terms. The ruined farms and destroyed avenue of trees are noted without elaboration, as if their condition requires no explanation.

Notably absent are descriptions of the enemy. The Germans appear only as an impersonal force: "the Bosche" who raided, "salvos of shells" that greeted the battalion. This omission is a deliberate authorial choice, focusing attention on the battalion's own actions and environment rather than on the adversary. The effect is to create a narrative that is inward-looking, concerned with the unit's experience of war rather than with the broader conflict. The final line of the excerpt—"Seven days after leaving England the Battalion was in the firing line"—summarizes this orientation: the story is about the battalion's journey, not the war's causes or consequences.

Readers approaching this history should attend to the collaborative authorship and the editorial decisions that shape its voice. The book's value lies not in dramatic narrative but in the accumulation of small, precise details—the cooker hit by a shell, the red poppies, the cellars of Maroeuil. These details, rendered in deliberately plain language, offer a record of how the regiment itself chose to remember its experience. The absence of heroic rhetoric is itself a rhetorical choice, one that rewards careful reading for what it omits as much as for what it includes.

As I turned the pages of the regimental history, noting how its compilers chose plain words over polish, I found myself recalling another volume’s quiet approach to the same raw years. Both works feel less like recorded verdicts and more like shared, hesitant voices. It reminded me of The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days: Scenes In The Great War — A Reader’s Guide, which seemed to hold its breath in the same way.