Written well over 90 years ago while the experiences of youth were still fresh in the author's mind, this is the story of a seventeen-year-old boy from the time he joined Kitchener's Army, as one of the first hundred thousand in 1914, until he found himself in hospital - an officer with the Military Cross - recovering from his last wound, on the day of the Armistice, 11 November, 1918.

In no way a formal record of the great and terrible events it describes, this is a purely personal, almost private, account. It is a plain, unvarnished tale - and all the more effective for that - of heroism, and the horror peculiar to trench warfare of the First World War.

Interspersed with moments of pity, humour and a deep response to natural beauty and peace out of the firing line, it is a record which in its details, direct simplicity and manner of telling, comes nearer to the truth than many more ambitious accounts.