World War I: The Human Stories

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception 

Sent to hell on double-deckers: Months earlier the buses had taken them to work in the City... now they ferried the same men to the bloodbath of Ypres

In final extract of MAXHASTINGS'S masterly new book, World War I: The Human Stories, the historian tells the story of the heroic fighting around Ypres, where the horror of trench warfare (left) first emerged in all its blood-soaked futility. The Belgian town came 'to represent all the blood-letting horrors of World War I'.