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ID
b175
Title
"How Sleep the Brave."
Genre
Novella
Page Count
51
Word Count
15800
Publication Year
1943
Document Types
First-Person Narratives
Flying Officer X Byline
Topics
Pilots, War

The longest of Bates's "Flying Officer X" stories, in eleven numbered sections, contains vivid descriptions and action as a plane is downed in battle, its crew reaches land after sixty hours in a dinghy, and the men reflect on their lives and losses.

Two poems bear the same title, one by the eighteenth-century poet William Collins, the other written by the Kentish poet Walter de la Mare in 1916. Bates didn't made clear which poem inspired the title of his story. 

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