George Sherston - Sassoon's alter ego - fights in the battles of Somme and Arras. He is awarded the Military Cross. Almost all his friends and companions are killed. And yet, despite all the odds, he survives. Sassoon tells his story simply and with a bleak humour, but the power of his experience - of conditions in the trenches, of incompetent 'staff', of civilian incomprehension - is inescapable.