Sergeant Nelson of the Guards

Night and the City (1938) made Gerald Kersh's reputation, but it was as a war novelist that he reached a wide readership in 1942, via a pair of books about British army recruits, led by Sergeant Bill Nelson, preparing to see service in France. This Faber Finds edition collects both books. "[They Die With Their Boots Clean] is a picture of life in the raw in the Coldstream Guards, with all its rigorous discipline, its humour and comradeship". (TLS). "[In The Nine Lives Of Bill Nelson] the conversations are terse, ferociously slangy, full of hyperbole and outrageous wit, often irresistibly funny". (TLS).