"His book has the force of a mob-protest; an outcry from anonymous throats. The wheel turns and turns and it does not matter, one hardly notices that the captain of the company, killed on page 159, is alive again a hundred pages later. It does not matter that every stock situation of the war, suicide, the murder of an officer, the slaughter of prisoners, a vision of Christ, is apportioned to Company K, because the book is not written in any realistic convention. It is the only War-book I have read which has found a new form to fit the novelty of the protest. The prose is bare, lucid, without literary echoes, not an imitation but a development of eighteenth-century prose."
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In a Graham Greene review of the novel Company K for the newspaper The Spectator.
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William March
William March (18 September 1893 – 15 May 1954), born William Edward Campbell, was an American soldier and author, most famous for his novels The Bad Seed and Company K. His innovative writing style is characterized by a deep compassion and understanding of suffering. A champion of the poor and disadvantaged, March often presents characters who, through no fault of their own, are victims of chance. He argues that true freedom is only obtained by being true to one's nature and humanity.
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