Twelve Days. by ROGERSON, Sidney - [1933]

London: Arthur Barker Ltd.,, [1933]. With a foreword by B. H. Liddell Hart, and eight drawings by Stanley Cursiter. Octavo. Original black buckram, titles gilt to spine and front, top edge black. Colour plates by Cursiter. Spine somewhat rolled, very light rubbing to ends and corners, light spotting to edges and occasionally within, front hinge just split at the tail, but a very good copy. First edition, first impression. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to one of his company officers, "To George Hall, with every good wish and in memory of so many happy days spent together in 1916-1917 from Sidney Rogerson, Nov 14th 1933". Hall was one of Rogerson's two company officers, and is ever-present in the text - he is introduced on page 4: "George Hall was a very different type. Whereas Mac and I were in our very early twenties, he was over thirty - a real Yorkshireman, stubborn, stolid, and cheerful. After many years of service in the ranks of the regiment he had been commissioned, and made a very conscientious, dependable officer." Liddell Hart notes in his foreword that the book "deals with the 'fag-end' of the Battles of the Somme in 1916..." but "recreates the normal atmosphere of a Battalion in war more truly than anything else I have read.