Aldington was a veteran of World War I. He claimed that his novel was accurate in terms of speech and style. It contains a lot of colloquial speech, including profanity, discussion of sexuality and graphic descriptions of the war and of life in the trenches. There was extensive censorship in England and many war novels had been banned or burned as a result. When Aldington first published his novel, he removed or changed a number of sentences in order to make sure the book was published. He insisted that his publishers include a disclaimer in the original printing of the book with the following text: