"Book review – Harry's War: The Great War Diary ..." Topic
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Tango01 | 03 Jul 2015 3:57 p.m. PST |
…of Harry Drinkwater. Sorry. Because of thecnical problems I cannot put any text here. link Amicalement Armand |
Editor in Chief Bill | 03 Jul 2015 4:36 p.m. PST |
Amid the array of books marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, this is a real find: a full-length, contemporaneous diary kept by a soldier who served throughout the entire conflict, initially joining up in 1914 as a volunteer private and later commissioned as an officer.Harry Drinkwater, a cobbler's son from Stratford-upon-Avon, joined a Birmingham ‘Pals' battalion after being rejected by the regular army for being too short. Shipped to the western front after training in November 1915, he was immediately plunged into the realities of war. As he wrote: "Heard a fearful crash and found the next dugout to ours blown to blazes and Sergeant Horton with it. He had been our physical drill instructor since the beginning. He was a fellow I liked. As soon as I heard the crash I made my way out, and, with the help of Sergeant Wassell dug him out; he was very near a ‘gonner'. Wassell and I carried him to the rear. Before we could get him anywhere near a dressing station he had departed this life. He was our first casualty, and our first experience of death." Drinkwater was to have plenty more experience during the next three blood- drenched years. Shells dropped all around him, decimating groups he had just left; bullets whistled past his ears; mines erupted in flames beneath his feet. Poison gas wafted on the breeze, his friends dropping one by one. But from the Somme and Passchendaele to the Italian front and the German offensives of spring 1918, Drinkwater remained miraculously unscathed… |
Tango01 | 03 Jul 2015 11:39 p.m. PST |
Many thanks Bill! (smile) Amicalement Armand |
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