From Wikipedia:
"Charles Edward Butler (born 1909 - 1981) was an American poet. He was an Army technical sergeant. His work appeared in The Atlantic,[1] Poetry,[2] Yank.

From foreward:
"Charles Edward Butler is a librarian by profession. He was brought up in Denver, Colorado, and received from its University his A.B. and B.S. in Library Science. From there he went to the university of chicago graduate library school. He began writing in high school in Denver and has previously published poetry in college magazines; in an anthology, trial balances; reveille; war poems; the new yorker, harper's poetry magazine, and the british edition of Yank. Mr. Butler was inducted in the the Army in 1942 and has been in England a a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Air forces since 1943.

From the front flap:
"Cut is the branch is a book written by a soldier, and dedicated to soldiers, but it is not a soldier's book. It is a civilian's book; a book about war as the civilian sees war and feels war-and hates it... Mr. Butler refuses to belong even when the question is one of belonging on this side or the other of an issue which divides the world.
He has his individual convictions, but his individual convictions are one thing and the war is another. The war, in his poems, is not a struggle an individual man might choose to make against an evil he would rather fight than yield to. The war is vast, impersonal, endless, ancient, sad and like the wars of the old Chinese poets of which the causes are forgotten and the victories lost but the suffering and the death remembered."