Books: Western Front Englished

HER PRIVATES WE—Private 19022—Putnam ($2.50). Says Arnold Bennett, booster of books, preferably British: "Her Privates We will be remembered when All Quiet on the Western Front . . . is forgotten." Like the German novel, Her Privates We is a record of personal experiences in the trenches, as the plain soldier knew them. It too is plotless, simple narrative, un-propagandist, unrhetorical. Its author has preferred to remain anonymous. Says "Private 19022": "The events described actually happened; the characters are fictitious." He tells of the fighting on the Somme and Ancre fronts...