By 1915 the trenches of the Western Front were in different states of repair, including the captured trenches, which had all but been destroyed as a result of shell fire. The countryside and villages were a scene of utter devastation, nothing but mud and mounds of rubble where communities and fields of wheat had once stood.
MacGill had somehow penned all but the last two chapters in the trenches of Loos before being wounded. He wrote the last two chapters while recovering in hospital in the latter part of 1915.
Patrick MacGill 1889 1963, was an Irish journalist, poet and novelist, known as "The Navvy Poet" because he had worked as a navvy before he began writing. During the First World War, MacGill served with the London Irish Rifles (1/18th Battalion, The London Regiment) and was wounded at the Battle of Loos on 28 October 1915. He was recruited into Military Intelligence, and wrote for MI 7b between 1916 and the Armistice in 1918. During his lifetime he penned 20 novels, 5 volumes of poetry and 2 plays.