Sapper

Name: No Man's Land (Sapper) — Part 4
Author: Sapper

Biographical details

H. C. McNeile, known by the pseudonym Sapper, was a British soldier and author whose works vividly captured the psychological and social consequences of World War I. Drawing from his frontline experiences, he wrote war stories and later thrillers centered on upper-class English protagonists, notably Bulldog Drummond, a character embodying patriotic determination and military courage.

His novels, such as No Man’s Land and the ten-volume Drummond series, contrasted wartime suffering with postwar concerns, reflecting both the resilience and xenophobia of interwar Britain. McNeile’s legacy endures as a product of his era’s tensions, his fiction mirroring the fractured moral landscape of a nation grappling with the lingering effects of conflict.

Quotes by Sapper

Sapper, No Man's Land (1917)

“ We have all, thank Heavens! had the unforgettable pleasure of killing Huns at close quarters, with our own hands. Now that broadens one's horizon at once. We are not bounded by sandbags and stinks; when we are in the trenches, we know—our imagination tells us—that over the way are men whom we can visualise: living, actual beings whose ideal and object in life is to kill us. Not so, I regret to say, with a new draft: how can you expect it? To them the Hun is a strange something living in a trench, whom they never see, and whom they don't particularly want to. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (1917)

“ Then the next flare went up, and Reginald Simpkins got the shock of his life.
The green ghostly light came flooding in, and then went out as abruptly as it had come. But the moment was enough. Clear stamped on his brain, like a photographic exposure, was the image of two men. One lay at the bottom of the trench and grinned at the sky with his throat cut from ear to ear; the other—huddled in a corner with his hand still clutching a bomb—was even as he looked turning on his head and his knees, only to subside with a squelch in the mud, kick spasmodically, and lie still. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (Sapper) — Part I (1917)

“ It was perfectly true: the Gare de Lyon was shut to all civilians; the first shadow of war had come. As if drawn by a magnet the old men were there, the men who remembered the last time when the Prussian swine had stamped their way across the fields of France. Their eyes were bright, their shoulders thrown back as they glanced appraisingly at the next generation—their sons who would wipe out Sedan for ever from the pages of history. There was something grimly pathetic and grimly inspiring in the presence of those old soldiers: the men who had failed through no fault of their own. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (Sapper) — Part 4 (1917)

“ He will have grand clay—that moulder: clay such as has never been known before. Its God will be the God of Reality, its devil the Devil of Pretence. Just as it has ceased to look at Death through a haze of drawn window-blinds and frock-coats redolent of moth-balls, so it will cease with scorn to look at some of the clumsy sophistries of modern life through the rose-tinted spectacles so kindly provided for the purpose by men of great vocal, and correspondingly small mental, power. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (1917)

“ The man fell back with a bullet through his brain, and slid head down to the bottom of the shaft. "Bomb 'em, boys; bomb 'em."
With a roar the bombs went off in the confined space below the ground; the lights went out, and a confused medley of shouts and groans followed them up the trench as they sought pastures new. Control was impossible: it was every man for himself, and to hell with everything he could see. Each man fought his own little battle, in his own little way, against one or two or three of the bewildered men who appeared suddenly from odd places. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (Sapper) — Part I (1917)

“ In this war it is the patent manure and the vermouth which dominate the situation as far as the fighters, at any rate, are concerned. The talkers may think otherwise, may prate of soul-stirring motives, and great ideals. But for the soldiers, life is a bit too grim and overpowering for gloss. After a spell they come for their vermouth, for something to help nerves a trifle jangled, something to give a contrast to stark reality, and having had it they go back again to the patent manure; while the onlookers see visions and dream dreams. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (1917)

“ She seemed to him like the spirit of the Spring, when the bluebells are flowering and the world is young. But on the German's face there was no answering smile. It was set and stern, and imprinted with a look of such utter hopelessness that the Kid, who saw it over the girl's shoulder, almost cried out with the pain of it.
"Do you love me enough, Marie," he went on at length, "to do a big thing for me—a very big thing?"
"That depends on what it is." She spoke gaily, but the Kid could see her body stiffen slightly. "I'm no good at big things." ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (Sapper) — Part 4 (1917)

“ Self no longer rules; self is sunk for the good of the cause—for the good of the community. And the community, realising that fact, endeavours, by every means in its power, to develop that self to the very maximum of which it is capable, knowing that, in due course, it will reap the benefit. No longer do individual pawns struggle one against the other, but each—developing his own particular gift to the maximum—places it at the disposal of the community who helped him in his development. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (Sapper) — Part I (1917)

“ And now he was going; in half an hour her Pierre was going to leave her. For him the bustle and glamour of the unknown; for her—the empty chair, the lonely house, and her thoughts. Dear God! but war is a bad thing for the women who stop behind. ...
And on Draycott's brain a tableau is stamped indelibly, just a little tableau he saw that night in the restaurant of the Gare de Lyon. They came, the three of them, up the flight of steps from the seething station below, into the peace and quiet of the room, and a roar of sound swept in with them as the doors swung open. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (Sapper) — Part 4 (1917)

“ But more self-reliant and cheery; stronger in character and bigger in outlook; with a newly acquired sense of self-control and understanding; in short, grown a little nearer to its maximum development, the manhood of the nation will be ripe for the moulder's hand. It has tasted of discipline; it has realised that only by discipline for the individual can there be true freedom for the community; and that without that discipline, chaos is inevitable. Pray heavens there be a moulder—a moulder worthy of the task. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (Sapper) — Part I (1917)

“ And even so did Clive Draycott, Captain of "Feet," go to the great war. ...
V Marseilles has always been a town of mystery—the gateway of the East. Going from it one leaves European civilisation—if such a thing can be said to exist to-day—and steps into the unknown. Coming to it through that appalling Gulf of Lyons, beside which the dreaded Bay of Biscay seems like the proverbial duck-pond, Notre Dame de la Garde holds out a welcoming hand, and breathes of fast trains and restaurant cars, and London. It is the town of tongues, the city of nations. It is not French; it is universal. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (1917)

“ It calls for leadership of the highest type. There is many a man capable of supreme devotion in a crisis who is incapable of the steady, unseen strain, day in, day out, of keeping up his men's spirits—in fact, of appreciating human nature in one of its many phases.
The men feel that dull routine on which the limelight does not shine, and only the leader can help them. It claims its victims, just as do the big offensive, that trench life, when the flares lob up ceaselessly and the bursts of machine-gun fire come swishing over the ground. Here men are wiring ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (Sapper) — Part 4 (1917)

“ Winnowed by the fan of suffering and death, the wheat of the harvest will shed its tares of discord and suspicion. The duke and the labourer will have stood side by side, and will have found one another—men. No longer self the only thing; no longer a ceaseless growse against everybody and everything; no longer an instinctive suspicion of the man one rung higher up the ladder. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Sapper, No Man's Land (1917)

“ He laughed gently at the remembrance; and the hand on his forehead trembled. For laughter to be a pleasant thing to hear it is essential that the person who laughs should be in full possession of—well, it is better, at any rate, that his head should not have been hit by a bomb, especially if it was his lower jaw that bore the brunt.
"What are you trembling for, Molly?" The voice was tender. "The pain has quite gone—I must have had a touch of the sun."
But for a question to be answered it must be audible; and the girl whose hand was on his forehead heard no words. ”

Sapper

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