Alexander Baron joined the Pioneer Corps in 1940, which, according to his unpublished memoir Chapters of Accidents was ‘because I wore glasses’. To him, this was a disappointment – ‘I wanted to be an infantryman’ (his first impulse at the start of the war had in fact been to enlist in the RAF, as he had a passion for flying, but he was sent away immediately for the same reason). Baron eventually transferred to the infantry in late 1944, having served in Italy and France. It is this infantry experience on which the novel is based. ‘Throughout the book, as the story of the battalion develops, I have tried to keep in the reader’s mind the background – the lovely summer of 1944, which made the period of training and waiting seem in some ways so unreal and which in Normandy provided such a contrast to the actual fighting’. The novel’s opening chapters focus on this training of an infantry battalion, based on Baron’s own experience. The author himself was acutely aware of the importance of this time, writing in his memoir, ‘the entire British Army was transforming itself […] leaders were trained in realistic war conditions […] By the time we went into training, it seemed as if every division and area Command had its school for the new tough methods’. Such training was vital – training teaches soldiers, in this case citizen soldiers, to kill against the norms of society, and how to react appropriately on the battlefield.

The first half of From the City, From the Plough, as the battalion awaits the order to move, beautifully evokes the long periods of boredom inherent in both training and soldiering itself. Baron writes, ‘the soldier lives a drama: he never has the time to perceive it. His life, even in battle, is a succession of chores’. He demonstrates the humour and pathos of the soldier, as well as the hierarchy and structure of the battalion – and just how important this is. Baron himself held the non-commissioned officer (NCO) rank of corporal, and in his memoir he comments how ‘in a good unit the NCO ought to be able to convince most of his men that they will be safer and more effective if they become a good team’. As well as these official hierarchies, the novel also shows the unofficial hierarchies amongst the men. Very early on, the reader learns that ‘Charlie Venable [is] the man who matter[s] in this hut’; while the ‘Doggy Boys’ of Chapter Six ‘lacked nothing. In winter, when the rest of the men had four blankets each, every Doggy Boy had six. While the rest of the battalion supped on bread and cheese and cocoa in a cold, gloomy dining hall, the Doggy Boys resorted every night to the officers’ mess kitchen, where they sat at their ease with only a thin partition between them and the colonel and dined, course by course, with the unsuspecting officers’.