Pyramids and Poppies. The 1st SA Infantry Brigade in Libya, France and Flanders 1915-1919

8vo; original pale grey boards; laminated pictorial dustwrapper; pictorial endpapers; pp. xiv + 444, incl. index; liberally illustrated with maps, photographs and contemporary artwork. Spine a little sunned; some spotting to top edge. Near fine condition. "Pyramids and Poppies is the very personal story of the 1st South African Brigade on the Western Front during World War I. On this 'front of all fronts', as it was called by the millions of men who lived and died in the mud of trench warfare, South Africans were present. Nearly four and a half thousand men of the South African Brigade were never to return from that front alone. John Buchan rated the 1st SA Brigade 'to have had no superior and not many equals'. Yet, since Buchan wrote The South African Forces in France in 1920, no book has been written that covers the whole spectrum of the 1st SA Brigade in World War I. That account has now been updated and expanded with a wealth of material. Delville Wood is here, so is Butte de Warlencourt, Arras, Ypres, Marrières Wood, Messines; the parched desert of Africa and the stinking mud of Flanders. Through it all bursts the bravery and compassion of men who offered themselves in innocence, and learned the cruel indifference of war waged by armchair generals."