To the Yetts o' Hell: Neil Munro and War

As Fenella Wilson points out in her Introduction to this collection of Neil Munro's writings on war, the theme is represented in each aspect of his career as a writer - in his fiction, journalism and poetry. A number of the short stories here, including two Para Handy tales, were published Munro's lifetime, as was his introduction to Fred Farrell's 1920 The 51st Division War Sketches, and some of the Poems. What has not previously 'seen the light of day' since The Great War are the reports which Munro wrote as a war correspondent, as a civilian and later in uniform, in 1914, 1917 and 1918. They are vivid, personal, accounts from the Western Front, widely published in a range of newspapers of the time. Stories of Scottish regiments - in kilts, with their Pipers - abound. They cushion, but don't diminish, the reality of everyday life both for soldiers on all sides in the conflict, and for the local population, amid the 'havoc' of the battlefields; 'the filthy job of human slaughter'.