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Front Lines
Reproduction of the Front Lines by Boyd Cable
160 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2025
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About the author
Boyd Cable
23 books3 followersErnest Andrew Ewart (1878-1943) was an Australian author who wrote under the pseudonym Boyd Cable.
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December 30, 2025
Boyd Cable was the pseudonym used by Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Andrew Ewart, a British soldier who fought in the Boer War. This collection of stirring and slightly romanticised short stories are about various exploits of derring-do during WWI. I presume that he served there too, but I can't find anywhere online to corroborate this assumption (he would have been thirty-six years old at the outbreak of hostilities).
As you would expect, there are stories of men going "over the top," in which Cable used all manor of onomatopoeic words to describe the 'vicious little hisses and whutts and sharp slaps and smacks' of the flying bullets.
There were no tanks and aeroplanes in the Boer War, yet Cable did such a good job of describing these technological game changers that I can only conclude that he did participate in WWI in some capacity or other. He took a humorous view of the mythical qualities of combat's newly introduced mechanical terror in 'The Diving Tank',' while 'Down in Hunland' illustrates how easy it must have been to get lost in the mist flying those early aeroplanes with open cockpits where snow could get on the instruments.
Humour is a typically British aid to storytelling, even during war. Cable includes a comic tale of friendly fire from a pair of overzealous anti-aircraft gunners ('An Air Barrage'), as well as an amusing "you lucky bastard" yarn about "the only man in this war that’s been wounded by a elephant.” ('Trench-made Art')
He didn't neglect the non-combatants. There are also vignettes paying tribute to the staff officers with their 'cushy' jobs away from the front ('The Golden Staff'), the Army Service Corps and those in charge of distributing ammunition ('A Roaring Trade'), and the men who took the injured from No Man's Land ('Stretcher-bearers')
To this day we salute them all.
As you would expect, there are stories of men going "over the top," in which Cable used all manor of onomatopoeic words to describe the 'vicious little hisses and whutts and sharp slaps and smacks' of the flying bullets.
There were no tanks and aeroplanes in the Boer War, yet Cable did such a good job of describing these technological game changers that I can only conclude that he did participate in WWI in some capacity or other. He took a humorous view of the mythical qualities of combat's newly introduced mechanical terror in 'The Diving Tank',' while 'Down in Hunland' illustrates how easy it must have been to get lost in the mist flying those early aeroplanes with open cockpits where snow could get on the instruments.
Humour is a typically British aid to storytelling, even during war. Cable includes a comic tale of friendly fire from a pair of overzealous anti-aircraft gunners ('An Air Barrage'), as well as an amusing "you lucky bastard" yarn about "the only man in this war that’s been wounded by a elephant.” ('Trench-made Art')
He didn't neglect the non-combatants. There are also vignettes paying tribute to the staff officers with their 'cushy' jobs away from the front ('The Golden Staff'), the Army Service Corps and those in charge of distributing ammunition ('A Roaring Trade'), and the men who took the injured from No Man's Land ('Stretcher-bearers')
To this day we salute them all.
Displaying 1 of 1 review